harvest," there was contained in this feast a commemoration of the giving of the Law from Mount Sinai, which must have occurred about fifty days, and certainly may have been on the exact fiftieth from the celebration of the first Passover.

Weather between

ment.

During the four intensely hot summer Pentecost and months which followed the day of PenDay of Atone- tecost there appear to have been no great gatherings or festivities of the Jews. During all this time the sky is absolutely devoid of clouds, no rain waters the parched ground, the streams dwindle into rivulets, the rivulets disappear. If it were not for the "dew of heaven," the "fatness of the earth" would soon vanish. It was mercifully ordained that, throughout this period of fiercest heat, there should be no necessity for a single journey connected with the worship of Jehovah laid on any inhabitant of Palestine.

pets.

Feast of Trum- On the first day of Tisri (October) it was ordered that there should be "a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation" (not however a gathering of all the people to Jerusalem), "Ye shall do no servile work therein, but shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord" (Lev. xxiii. 24, 25). Of this, which is generally known as The Feast of Trumpets, we have hardly any more information than what is contained in this text.

The middle of Tisri is said to have been the commencement of the Civil Year of the Jews, and of their Ecclesiastical Year also till the solemnities of the Passover caused Nisan to be chosen as its starting-point. Tradition alleged, too, that the Creation happened at this time, so that the first of Tisri was in fact the birthday of the world. A larger number of feasts and fasts took place in this month than in almost all the rest of the year, and the conjecture is a probable one that the trumpets were thus blown to

announce to Israel that the Sacred Month was indeed begun. Some, also, have seen in this rite an allusion to the truth that our whole life is a warfare, and must be spent in arms against a spiritual foe. The later Jews have blended with the observance imaginations of their own as to the yearly judgment-night of the Universe, to which we shall have occasion to allude presently.

Climate of Pales

the year.

rain.

The

Let a little more than a week elapse tine during the from the Feast of Trumpets and we shall last six months of have reached the tenth day of Tisri, and early and latter shall be at that point of the Jewish year which corresponds roughly to the early days of our own October. We need not remark how little similarity exists between the crisp freshness of those autumn mornings which we associate with that name and the yet fierce heat (as our Northern frames would feel it) of a Syrian autumn. Yet indications

are not wanting that the sceptre of summer is broken. A fine gentle rain is falling, borne on the wings of the west and south-west winds from the purple Mediterranean, falling mainly at night, but partly also by day, and occupying altogether a space of three or four days duration. This is "the early rain" for which the husbandman waits with patience (James v. 7), for he knows that it is loosening the pores of the parched earth, baked as it is with the heat of an almost absolutely rainless summer, and that seed-time is at last now nigh at hand.

For this purpose he will have, to begin with, about twenty days of bright, warm, cloudless weather, during all of which the wind will be coming hot and dry from the Eastern deserts, or milder, but still devoid of moisture, from snowy Lebanon. Then, when the early wheat is all well-sown, and the fruits of the earth are completely gathered in, will this "Indian summer" come to a close, and the drenching and well-nigh

continual rains of winter commence, the skies weeping with the weeping husbandman as he goes forth "bearing precious seed" to his ungenial task, sowing the rest of his wheat, and all his barley, rye, and millet. And thus, attended by chilly north winds indeed, but otherwise marked by swollen streams, brooks magnified into rivers, thunderstorms and misty vapours shrouding the mountain-tops, rather than by the crystal clearness of the true winter of the North, will the next four months, the "rainy season. "of Palestine sweep over

the land.

But this is all by way of anticipation. We are still at the tenth of Tisri, probably in one of the few warning days of the early rain; seed-time is before us the in-gathering of the fruits of the earth is just coming to a close. Some grateful remembrance of the bounteous provision made for us by the Giver of all good things should surely be expressed. On the point of committing our seed to the ground in the faith that He will grant us another season of bountiful increase, we must thank Him for that which is drawing to a close; for the grapes and the olives, the figs and the pomegranates wherewith He is lading us, "crowning the year with His goodness while His paths drop fatness.' So a devout Jew might naturally argue, and so it was ordained.

The last of the three great feasts, a festival of pious thankfulness and national rejoicing, is before us-the Feast of the Ingathering, or the Feast of Tabernacles. But that our joy may be perfect and unclouded we must be assured that our sins are forgiven by this allloving Father: before the brightness of the Feast of Tabernacles we must pass through the solemn gloom of the Great Day of Atonement.

The spirit of Juda- And here I would ask you for one

ism and Roman

Catholicism con

moment to mark a contrast between the

trasted. The Feast spirit of Judaism and that of Roman

of Tabernacles preceded by the Day of Atonement.

Lent, by the Car

nival.

Catholicism. The Roman Catholic on the eve of Lent, on the point of undergoing "voluntary humiliation," and abstinence for forty days, plunges into the wild excesses of a Carnival ("carne-vale " Farewell to Flesh) to take his fill of worldly pleasures while his Church yet allows them to him; to carry out the maxim of the revellers of old-"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," or at least we renounce the world for a season. Far other than this, far nobler, far more expressive of childlike love and thankful trust towards the Father of all mercies, was the spirit of that earlier creed. The devout Jew consecrated his gladness by thanksgiving, but prepared himself for it by the putting away of sin. With joyful and loving heart he sang, Praise the Lord, which maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest of the wheat; " but before uttering these words he was taught to realise the truth: "The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy" (Psalm cxlvii. 12, 14, and 11).

We must leave until a future number the notice of the Great Day of Atonement and Feast of Tabernacles, together with that of the Dedication and Purim. We will also then consider all the notices as to the Jewish Feasts which occur in the Gospels.

THOMAS HODGKIN.

COMING HOME.

A YEAR'S-END ESSAY.

"Of all sound of all bells-(bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven)-most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the old year. I never heard it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelve months; all I have done or suffered, performed, or neglected in that regretted time."-The Essays of Elia.

IN the round of the whirligig of Time there are eternal transmutations, but there is little loss. These transmutations seem to affect all creation, and to extend their range into that shadowy domain where imagination revels, lending a charm to all seen by its fairy-coloured light. And so, in the course of the centuries that have elapsed since the world which calls itself Christian fixed on the date to celebrate the coming of the babe-born Lord, there have been changes in the mode of its celebration, and the accidents of time and the transmutations of the external world have affected even the shape of the intangible feelings accompanying that "charmed time. Lay aside the grosser if legitimate delights of the period, lasting from near the end of the old year to the first few days of the new; put away the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light and fire-side conversations and innocent varieties and jests," in which vast transmutations are perceptible, even since the fifty years ago when the words were first written; and in the higher pleasures of the time there are changes as vast.

66

Who does not see that in the outward semblance