"Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity." We must travel here out of the Epistle for a Scriptural reference; for nowhere in it is the agency of the Blessed Spirit in producing love explicitly mentioned. But we are expressly told in the Epistle to the Galatians that "the fruit of the Spirit," the earliest result of His working "is love." And in Romans v., which was doubtless the passage principally in the thoughts of the composer of the Collect, we read, "hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." Persons tolerably familiar with the exposition of St. Paul's Epistles are well aware that there is a great question among interpreters of Holy Scripture as to whether the love of God, of which the Apostle here speaks as shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, is to be understood as our love towards Him, or His love towards us. Probably he interprets most safely and soundly both the Scriptural passage and the petition of the Collect founded upon it, who holds that the expression "love of God" in the text, and the equivalent expression "most excellent gift of charity" in the Collect, should be understood both of God's love to us and ours to Him, -of the first as the source and essence of the second. "We love Him," says St. John, "because He first loved us." Our love for Him bears to His for us exactly the same relation which the moonlight bears to the sunlight.

Moonlight is not only caused by sunlight; it is sunlight reflected from the moon.

"The very bond of peace and of all virtues." Here, too, the Collect-writer gives us incidentally his interpretation of certain passages of Holy Scripture. The first of these is to be found in the Epistle to the Ephesians-" endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Origen, expounding this phrase, "bond of peace," speaks of "love binding together those who are united according to the Spirit." The Collect-writer takes the same view of the meaning as Origen. Seeing that it is love which holds together the true children of God, he thinks that by the phrase "bond of peace" is meant "love." And this, though not the only possible explanation of the phrase, is a very old and very good one. But what are we to make of the "bond of all virtues"? Observe, first, that the "virtues" here are "the doings" of the earlier part of the Collect, the almsgivings, the endurances, and the labors, at which we have already glanced as being nothing worth without love. These virtues need something to bind them together, so that they may not drop off from us and fall away. The reference is to Colossians iii. 14, where, after enumerating divers graces, which he exhorts Christians to put on, "kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering," and so forth, he adds: "And above all these things" (rather, over them all, as a girdle, or outer garment, is put on over our other dress)

"put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness," that is, the power which unites and holds together the various graces which constitute perfection. Without love the virtues and elements of perfection are a detached series. And when our Lord was asked which was the great commandment of the law, He did not name (probably much to the surprise of His questioner) any one of the ten; but simply announced the first of all the commandments as being that which prescribes perfect love to God, and the second that which prescribes the loving our neighbor as ourselves.

And thus we pass by a natural sequence of thought to the last clause: "Without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee." A strong assertion indeed. Can it be justified by Holy Scripture? Most conclusively and abundantly. "God is love," we are twice solemnly assured; and, therefore, he who lives without love,-lives only an animal and an intellectual life-must be counted dead before Him, since love constitutes God's life, His most essential life. And therefore we read: "He that loveth not his brother abideth in death;" because the life of God, which is the true life of all rational creatures, the life of love, has never been quickened in such an one. And again we hear from one Apostle that "faith without works is dead," which is tantamount to what another tells us: "though I have all faith, . . . and have not charity, I am nothing." For when St. James speaks

of works as the vitalizing principle of a religious profession, he clearly means works, not as separate and detached virtues, but as wrought into a living organism by love, works which express and betoken the life of love, that life which is akin to, and indeed is a scintillation from God's life, and in the absence of which " whosoever liveth is counted dead before " Him.

Ash Wednesday.

Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (A.D. 1549).

THIS

HIS Collect may be said to have made its earliest appearance in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. (A.D. 1549). For, though its invocation and first clause seem to have been borrowed from one of the medieval Collects which were used at the benediction of the ashes on Ash Wednesday (before they were laid on the heads of members of the congregation with the words, "Remember, man, that thou art ashes, and unto ashes shalt thou return "), the body of the prayer-its petition and aspiration--are quite new, and inculcate most important doctrine.

"Almighty and everlasting God." "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God." One object of the prayer being to produce and foster in the heart a feeling of profound humiliation, those attributes of Almighty God are appropriately recited in the opening clause, which bring before us His Majesty and loftiness. He is omnipotent; He is everlasting; His being has no limits, but reaches from the past into the future Eternity.

"Who hatest nothing that thou hast made." The implication here is, though the thought is not expressed, "however man may have abused and spoiled it." Man's nature became, by the fall, debased and depraved, blinded and hardened. God, however, hates not him, but the sin that is in him. There are noble capacities in man, however depraved and debased-capacities of mind and heart-which God would gladly see unfolded in His service. Our nature was originally made with exquisite skill for the enjoyment of no lower an end than that of communion with God. Could a painter, a statuary, a poet, bear to see the productions, on which they had stamped the impress of their genius, consigned to the flames, or dashed or torn to pieces? One of the old saints used continually to plead this tie with God in the touching words: "Thou who hast moulded and formed me, have compassion on me."