Christ Himself, being made living Members of His Body, partaking a common Life and Sense with Him; by it we are compacted into the same spiritual Edifice, dedicated to the Worship and Inhabitation of God; our Bodies and Souls are made Temples of His Divinity, Thrones of His Majesty, Orbs of His celestial Light, Paradises of His blissful Presence."*

It was the day of the introduction into the world more specially His own, of the same Spirit of order as had already moved in the beginning to evolve the physical cosmos. Dr. Isaac Williams devotes the first of a pair of Whitsunday Sonnets to a statement of this analogy. It is from the "Altar," and has for its motto:-"Their eyes saw the majesty of His glory, and their ears heard His glorious voice."

"Let there be Light!" God said: and at the sound,
With varied order, beautiful and young,

From the dead formless void Creation sprung;
And sea and land, with their alternate bound;
And shining worlds that range the blue profound,
With hills and woods, and beasts the hills among,
And painted birds that in the forest sung,

And flowers of scent, and hue that decked the ground,
And seas and streams where roamed the finny herd.
But how much more when that creative Word,
The Gift Unspeakable on man conferred,
Was seen in flaming tongues that came to sight,
And heard in rushing winds of viewless might,
Saying to man's dark soul, "Let there be Light!"

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The second of the pair of Dr. Williams's Sonnets on “The Descent of the Holy Ghost" is a companion one to the first, in much the same sense that the pictured Peace" of Sir Edwin Landseer is a companion to his "War." The instant execution of the Fiat Lux in the natural world, as compared with the age-by-age deferred fulfilment of the

* Dr. Isaac Barrow's Whitsunday Sermon: Of the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

THE CONQUEST OF WILL.

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same Fiat in the spiritual world, is startling, humiliating, and confounding. The progress of modern evangelization is so inconsiderable that the mind is thrown back almost violently on its very reserves of faith, if it would cleave to the conviction that the same Christ as of old, by the same Spirit as of old, is with His ambassadors even unto the end of the world."

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And yet there need be no surprise at the pace of operations conducted by an Almighty Worker, with whom a day and a thousand years are convertible durations. It is for man to hasten, who fears to grow old ere his task be begun, or to die before it be completed; not for Him, who, having the universe for a stage, and eternity for a working-day, is independent of the trivial conditions of time and space. Certainly if there be anything adapted to put to proof the power of Omnipotence, it might well be reckoned to be the subjection of a world so populous with souls. Nature is soft and fictile. The granite, the marble, the diamond, yield to mortal skill and power; and Will is the one really stubborn thing in the universe. The subordination of the universal aggregate of wills to the universal Will-this is, if we may say it, the labour and the triumph of God. To His Omnipotence, such a triumph would be, if He so willed it, the fruition of a moment. But His law is a law of growth; His results are those of development, not of revolution. The process of ripening is long or short, just in proportion to the time during which the state of perfect maturity, without decay, is to continue. It is the same law under which the oak that rules the greenwood for a thousand years occupies longer in becoming than a violet or a gourd; and under which the building of a Church for eternity requires a larger period than to create a world that shall endure for an æon.

To some such effect as this is the burden of Dr. Williams's second Sonnet, the motto of which is the appropriate one :—“The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the

end it shall speak and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry."

"Let there be Light!" Dead matter heard of old,
When the foundations of the world were laid,
And even in hearing instantly obeyed.

But twice nine hundred years have onward rolled,
Since with His gifts and graces manifold

The Spirit hath gone forth, with light arrayed,
And the Almighty fiat hath been said;

Then why is the fulfilment yet untold?

There was of days a numbering and delay,
When rose this visible scene of earth and sky,
Which hastes so fast to fade away and die :
To the All-wise it needs a longer day,
From the soul's endless ruin and decay,

To form a world for immortality.

Still, the inspiration of Pentecost, the "rushing mighty wind," once set in motion, ceases not, in the face of what let and hindrance soever, to blow hither and thither throughout the earth; whilst prayerful zeal looks for a speedy and decisive cast of that divine alchemy which shall transmute the iron of the present age into the glory of an endless "golden year." With such an aspiration, the expression of which we owe to Mr. J. W. Hopkins, junior, an American writer, we close our examples of the poetry of Pentecost. The verses are entitled, "The Rushing Mighty Wind,” and occur in "Lyra Americana," published in 1865 by the Religious Tract Society.

Blow on, thou mighty Wind,

And waft to realms unbounded

The notes of faith and hope and tender love
The Gospel trump hath sounded.

Those sweetly piercing tones,

That charm all wars and tears and groans,
Through earth and sea and sky

Upon thy rushing wings shall fly:

Therefore, thou mighty Wind, blow on.

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THE RUSHING MIGHTY WIND."

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Blow on, thou mighty Wind;

For tempest-tossed and lonely,

The Church upon the rolling billows rides,
And trusts in thy breath only.

She spreads her swelling sails

For thee to fill with favouring gales,
Till, through the stormy sea,

Thou bring her home where she would be ;
Therefore, thou mighty Wind, blow on.

Blow on, thou mighty Wind,

On hearts contrite and broken,

And bring in quickening power the gracious words
That JESU's lips have spoken.

Lo! then, from death and sleep,
The listening soul to life shall leap;
Then love shall reign below,

And joy the whole wide world o'erflow:
Therefore, thou mighty Wind, blow on.

Trinity Sunday.

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!

God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Holy, holy, holy! all the saints adore Thee,

Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and Seraphim falling down before Thee,

Which wert and art and evermore shall be !

Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee,

Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see,

Only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee,
Perfect in power, in love, and purity!

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!

All Thy works shall praise Thy name in earth and sky and sea, Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!

God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Bishop Heber.

S compared with the generality of ecclesiastical anniversaries, the Feast of the Holy Trinity was of late introduction; and it was not indeed, till the fourteenth century that its observance was authoritatively decreed by Pope John XXII. (1316— 1334) to be binding on the universal Church.*

Yet in

Benedict XIV.: De Festis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi; De Festo Sanctissima Trinitatis.