shrink from a critical interpretation, and hate to know about badness, instead of gloating over it as some "good people" do, if we can bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things,-why then we have our share in the love that never fails, and have escaped from the temporal order into the eternal. Now we see reality only darkly, reflected as in a mirror; but some day we are to see face to Face, and know even as we are known. That perfect knowledge, says the apostle, shall be perfect love: an assertion of Christian faith, putting to rout the insidious fears of the cynic.

It is well that this meditation on true charity should precede our summons to the stern selfdisciplines of Lent: lest as we seek the higher sanctities, the mood of the Pharisee should betray us and we turn hard. There are three types of people: the first, including most of us, whose standards for others are more severe than those for themselves: the second, who have a high standard for personal life but insist on a like standard for others: and finally the third and Christian type, which St. Paul wishes to recommend, severe toward itself, lenient toward its brethren. As a man mounts to the higher levels in his quest of sanctity, the second type is that to avoid.

The Quinquagesima Gospel has, as is fitting, the first, solemn prediction of the Passion; and the prayer of blind Bartimæus, "Lord, that I may receive my sight," is the cry of the soul, born out of all the teaching which precedes.

CHAPTER V: THE SEASON OF LENT

Antiphon: As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

V. Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly;

R. Gather the people, sanctify the congregation.

O Lord, Who for our sakes didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey Thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness, to Thy honour and glory, Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

CHAPTER V: THE SEASON OF LENT

E

PIPHANY leads the gaze outward to the spread of the Good News through the world; Lent leads it inward, Easter upward. To watch and share the expansion of the Gospel of the Kingdom was at first pure joy. But Christianity undefiled, illumining a hostile world, is not the whole story. The three Sundays of transition have changed our mood. Progressive vision normally ends in humility and shame; now, only the ashes on the brow can satisfy the penitent soul.

The Church grew slowly into recognizing the necessity for Lent, and the present length of the season is arbitrary. "It seems clear that the original fast before Easter was one of forty hours, this being the period between the death of Our Lord and His resurrection.”1 Gradually and irregularly the time was extended; Ash-Wednesday, and the three days preceding the first Lenten Sunday were probably added by Gregory the Great. The present length of the season, though 'The Prayer-Book Interleaved. Campion and Beamont, p. 99.