but he has instructed the Fathers,-exercised the learning and wisdom of all the ages,-refashioned Philosophy, determined causes,-decided Councils? Who but he has been the human instrument whereby GOD, for eighteen hundred years, has comforted the afflicted,-lifted up the sorrowful, sustained the weak,-strengthened the strong? These writings have transfigured society, remodelled Europe,-revolutionized the World!... Survey those writings of S. Paul, I therefore say. This done,-Survey thine own life, (as I do mine,) and say,-Is it possible to rise from the survey without a sense of humiliation for which language has no words?

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany.

TEACHING OF THE EPIPHANY SEASON.

S. JOHN ii. 11.

This beginning of Miracles did JESUS in Cana
of Galilee, and manifested forth His Glory.

THE Church has been very mindful of the wants of her children, in her choice of the subjects she brings before their notice, as the weeks of each successive year of their lives roll away. No thoughtful heart can afford to overlook her teaching. It seems impossible to survey her Table of Proper Lessons for Sundays; and to note that Christmas, or the anniversary of CHRIST'S Birth, has six Sundays ;-Epiphany, or the record of His Manifestation to us Gentiles, six Sundays;-Lent, or the memorial of His conflict with the Powers of Darkness, six Sundays;-Easter, or the Anniversary of His Resurrection, six Sundays;-without growing attentive without asking oneself from time to time, What practical use am I making of all

L

this?.... Let us attend now to the teaching of the Epiphany season.

This then is the yearly solemnity which specially belongs to us Gentiles. CHRIST was born, -He was tempted-He suffered, died and was buried, He rose again and ascended into Heaven, for all. The very Angels seem to have some marvellous unexplained interest in the sacrifice of the Death of CHRIST. But "the Epiphany" is His manifestation TO THE GENTILES. This great secret of God's Almighty purpose, which, for forty centuries, had been kept close from the Commonwealth of Israel, was at last to transpire. All races of men were to be gathered into the Church. "Ye know" (said S. Peter, addressing the friends of Cornelius the Roman Centurion,)

"Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean." The lesson specially taught the great Apostle by his vision of the great sheet knit at the four corners, had been prefigured long before by the gathering of all the creatures, of whatever kind, clean and unclean alike, into the Ark. They had all, moved by a new instinct, obeying a Divine impulse,—

all had come unto Noah and his family, in grand procession; the strangest, the most august and wondrous spectacle which the world has ever witnessed in connexion with the brute Creation. The same wondrous sign, no longer in type however, but in magnificent reality, was about to be exhibited now, in respect of all the various races of Mankind. We find our place in that second grand procession, of which the Church is the preserving Ark; and the water of Baptism that which saves from perishing; and CHRIST Himself the better Noah who "shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands." We Gentiles are those animals of diverse instinct, those fowls of various wing, those creatures of strange and curious aspect which came in unto Noah and his family, in the Ark. But the one point to which at this instant I desire to call your at tention, is, that foremost in that long procession of the Gentile races, come the "Wise Men from the East," the Magi,-bearing "gold, and frankincense, and myrrh." Behold in them the firstfruits of the heathen World! In their persons, GOD, by the leading of a Star, did manifest His Only Begotten SoN to the Gentiles. That is the one point to be remembered now. why the Gospel for the Epiphany is taken from the

It explains

beginning of S. Matthew's second chapter. The Proper Lesson from the New Testament is S. Luke's account of the Baptism of CHRIST, because of the glorious manifestation which attended that august event,-the Voice from Heaven and the descent of the Heavenly Dove.

On the first Sunday after the Epiphany, we are invited to contemplate the beautiful spectacle of our Divine LORD exemplifying in His own person the prophetic experience of the Psalmist, -"I have more understanding than my teachers, because Thy testimonies are my study: I am wiser than the aged, because I keep Thy commandments." In His own FATHER'S House, His Mother and Joseph find Him "sitting in the midst of the Doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions." It is plain that the Jewish Doctors questioned Him, the Child of twelve years old, in turn: for it follows, "And all that heard Him were astonished at His un

derstanding and answers. This was an early

manifestation of the Godhead of the Son of Man, and as such is now brought before us. If the former Gospel illustrated the present season from an historical point of view, it seems not unfair to consider that this Gospel illustrates the same Divine mystery, from its intellectual side.