The first Epiphany Collect was a prayer for knowledge: "That we, who know Thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of Thy glorious Godhead." The last, echoing the Epistle, is a prayer for holiness: "That having this hope we may purify ourselves, even as He is pure."

So does Epiphany lead out toward Lent, Manifestation toward Penitence. An undercurrent of sadness, a growing sense of shame, may be clearly discerned throughout the joyous weeks. None the less, the prevalent temper of this season is praise and glad thanksgiving. Christianity, newborn, faces the task of expansion rather than of repentance. Thought is centred not in ourselves, but in the Sinless Master, Who albeit He moves through a bewildered and latently hostile world, proceeds with serene and gracious joy on His great work of instruction and healing. It is, like Advent, a season of flux, of hope; the exhilaration attendant on discovery and growth pervades and suffuses it. There could be no better summary of its spirit than that given in the last year of his life by the great social Christian, Scott Holland:

"Epiphany is both the salute and the call to adventure. It is the summons to dare the illimitable tracts of the desert for one remote and in

tangible star. . . . The promise, it may be, is never the promise we look for. Abraham looked for a whole land and found only a grave: the children of Abraham looked for rest and found unrest: the wise men set forth for a king and found a child: the twelve sought for a prince and discovered a Cross. It is ever so. To none is the

promise ever fulfilled. Not here.

But no matter.

The one vital need is to go on,-after the gleam. Adventurers all!

"Then the adventure itself. What is that? Well, it is surely the very living of the life,-His Life. To be that, to live that,—that is the soul of the Christian endeavour. Within the short earthly life there is always the temper of adventure. It begins in boyhood among the Temple doctors. He casts Himself adrift: He disappears: He is lost. So again in the later years. . . . He has no home: no regular and ordered routine: no set hours: no guarded and secluded times for rest and meat. No! He just "goes about": He wanders at random: He depends upon charity. Then, as He adventures Himself, so He calls upon others to take risks too. Launch out: sell all: forsake everything, 'Follow Me.'

"And it is Epiphany that recalls to us this essential note of our common creed.. Yet it is a little odd to see how quick we are to admire

the touch of adventure in others while we rather back from it for ourselves. We all read "lives" of St. Francis, but it hardly seems to dawn upon us that the spirit of St. Francis is but the unrestrained expression of a mood that should be strong in every believing heart. . . It is probably the feeling that he was right that has been the secret of the undying inspiration of his name through the centuries.

“... Shall then the Epiphany challenge go unanswered and unheard? Will no one take it up? Shall the spirit that stirs today in a thousand thousand soldier souls find no counterpart in the Christian heart and in the life of the Church at home? If only it could! If only here and there men would break away from the ordinary ways, and do big and bold and rash deeds in the name and for the sake of Him Who made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant, what might not happen, what might not come to pass?'' 1

1Scott Holland in The Commonwealth, Epiphany, 1918.

CHAPTER IV: SEPTUAGESIMA TO LENT

Antiphon: I so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air. V. Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and have not charity,

R. It profiteth me nothing.

O Lord, Who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send Thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before Thee. Grant this for Thine only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.