went an examination. This is certified for us by the fortysixth canon of the Council of Laodicea-held in the course of the fourth century—which fixes this redditio symboli to the fifth day of the Great Week, as well as by Theodorus Lector, who writes that "Timotheus, Bishop of Constantinople, ordered the Creed to be recited in every Church assembly, which formerly had been recited only once in every year, to wit, on the day of the Great Parasceve, or Preparation of the Passion of our Lord, in the course of the catechizing of the candidates for baptism by the bishop.”* One other custom observed on Maundy Thursday may be recorded in the words of Wheatly:-"On this day the Penitents, that were put out of the Church upon Ash Wednesday, were received again into the Church, partly that they might be partakers of the Holy Communion, and partly in remembrance of our Lord's being on this day apprehended and bound, in order to work our deliverance and freedom (Innocent. Epist. ut citat ab Ivo, part 15, cap. 40, et a Bachardo, 1. 18., c. 18.). "The form of reconciling penitents was this: the bishop went out to the doors of the church, where the penitents lay prostrate upon the earth, and thrice, in the name of Christ, called them, Come, come, come, ye children, · hearken to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Then, after he had prayed for them, and admonished them, he reconciled them, and brought them into the church. The penitents thus received, trimmed their heads and beards, and laying off their penitential weeds, reclothed themselves in decent apparel. "It may not be amiss to observe, that the church-doors used to be all set open on this day, to signify that the penitent sinners, coming from north or south, or any part of the world, should be received to mercy, and the Church's favour."+ * Ecclesiastical History; Lib. ii., c. 52. + Rational Introduction of the Book of Common Prayer. 66 179 GOOD FRIDAY. Oh! for a pencil dipped in living light, To paint the agonies that Jesus bore! Henry Kirke White; The Christiad. THIS momentous day-a day on which the principle of utter self-sacrifice" was shown to be nothing less than Divine-derives its appellation "from the blessed effects of our Saviour's sufferings, which are the ground of all our joy; and from those unspeakable good things which He hath purchased for us by His death, whereby the blessed Jesus made expiation for the sins of the whole world, and by the shedding of His own blood obtained eternal redemption for us (Heb. ix., 12.)."* Dr. Neale claims for Good Friday that it "is another example of an English appellation that surpasses in beauty the vernacular terms of other languages, except the Flemish, where it is also used. But that we are so completely used to it, we should probably feel what a touching acknowledgment is the name of the work accomplished on that day. In some parts of England it is Char-Friday, that is, Passion Friday; a name also in use in Germany. There, however, it is usually called Still Friday. Denmark has a far less appropriate name, Long Friday. It is not a mark of very high devotion, that the length of the office. should be that which has given the title to the day. Black Friday, a name common over Southern Germany, gives the popular view of the season, and Holy Friday is the somewhat commonplace title adopted in most of the Romance languages. In Welsh, it is Gwener y Corglith, Friday of the Lesson of the Cross."+ The commemoration of our Saviour's sufferings has been kept up from the very first age of Christianity, and was *Nelson's Festivals and Fasts. + Neale's Church Festivals and their Household Words. always observed as a day of the strictest fasting and humiliation; not that the grief and affliction therein expressed by the faithful arose from the loss they sustained, or from any indignation against our Saviour's mortal persecutors, but from a sense of the guilt of the sins of the whole world, as the cause that drew upon Him the painful and shameful death of the Cross. The sympathetic despair of Christendom seems in some places to have been carried out to the length of closing the churches altogether during the whole of Good Friday, as if there were no heart left either for the service of praise or for prostration on account of sin. Everywhere, indeed, the offices for the Day, where these had not been stayed by a hopeless silence, manifested the prevailing feeling by the most sombre symbols of grief and desolation. Historically, the sufferings of what Wither calls "the insufferable passion of Jesus" anticipated the dawn—sorrow broke upon the divine Victim before the struggling light of a sun whose beams were presently to be eclipsed as if in horror and affright. The remarks we made upon the impossibility of worthily treating or describing the various events of Holy Week in general, press upon us with greater force than ever, when it falls to us to invite a consideration of the phenomena of Good Friday. The poetry of the Day, and of its several events is extremely wealthy; and we cannot pretend to exhaust it, even representatively, in our illustrations. One circumstance is so intimately connected with another, one topic so interestingly involved with another, and the great doctrine of the Day so informs everything related to it, that we can make little attempt at even so much as precise historical arrangement, and must be content with offering a few poems which will illustrate, with a loose or approximate sequence, some of the great occurrences of the day. Where these are so many and so various, we naturally hurry to the catastrophe, or to the circumstances immediately preceding or leading up to it. PERSONAL PARTICIPATION IN GUILT. 181 The procession to Calvary seems to have had a great attraction for the mind of Robert Herrick, who in his "Noble Numbers," devotes four or five poems to the subject, the largest of which is called "Rex Tragicus, or Christ going to His Crosse." This, however, we pass by to transcribe a simple and shorter piece which bears a kindred title, and paraphrases" His Saviour's Words, going to the Crosse." Have, have ye no regard, all ye A man both bruised and broke, and one Ah! Sion's daughters, do not feare The crosse, the cords, the nailes, the speare, For Christ, your loving Saviour, hath Lesse for to tast, then for to shew, Had He not drunk them up for you. In a little poem, ""Twas I that did it," which occurs in Dr. Horatius Bonar's "Hymns of Faith and Hope," the author reviews generally the persecuting incidents of the Day, for the purpose of founding on each act of barbarity a personal accusation of complicity with the Jews in the despite done to the Saviour in His arraignment, mocking, scourging, and crucifixion. I see the crowd in Pilate's hall, And in that din of voices rude, I recognize my own. I see the scourges tear his back, I see the piercing crown; And of that crowd who smile and mock Around yon cross, the throng I see, Mocking the Sufferer's groan, 'Twas I that shed the Sacred Blood, Yet not the less that blood avails To cleanse away my sin, And not the less that cross prevails The same spirit, the same contrite tendency to convict oneself of being the cause of Christ's suffering, animates the verses "To the Instruments of the Passion of Jesus," which we transcribe from "Hymns and Verses on Spiritual Subjects: Being the Sacred Poetry of St. Alphonso Maria Liguori, Founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. Translated from the Italian, and edited by Robert Aston Coffin, Priest of the congregation of the most Holy Redeemer." O ruthless scourges, with what pain you tear My loving Lord torment no more; Wound rather, wound this heart of mine, Ye cruel thorns, in mocking wreath entwin'd, Oh, cease to rend that flesh divine, My loving Lord torment no more; Wound rather, wound this heart of mine, The guilty cause of all He bore. |