_Observance of the Church Year._--The Church Year was a very natural development for the early Christians, familiar with the great annual festivals of the ancient Jewish Church. By a series of anniversaries and holy-days, with suitable services, the different seasons of the year were in like manner made to serve a Christian purpose. Time as it passes thus becomes a perpetual memorial of the events of our Saviour's life, and of the work and virtue of the Apostles and other saints.
The year is divided into eight great seasons: Advent, Christmas-tide, Epiphany-tide, Lent, Easter-tide, Ascension-tide, Whitsuntide, and the Trinity season. Of these Whitsuntide is the shortest, { 116} lasting but one week. The Trinity season, including from twenty-three to twenty-eight weeks, is the longest. The four greater Festivals are Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Whitsunday. The penitential seasons are Advent, preceding Christmas, and Lent, preceding Easter. The two great Fasts are Ash-Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent, and Good Friday, the day of our Lord's crucifixion. Other days of fasting and abstinence are the forty days of Lent, all the Fridays in the year, the Ember-days (the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday before the four stated Times of Ordination to the holy ministry), and the Rogation-days (the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day).
From Advent, with which the Church Year begins, to Trinity, our Lord is set before us in His life and His work. "We live over again, year by year, the time of the Incarnation from Bethlehem to Bethany." The design is to "bring out, and to bring home to the minds and hearts of all who shall reverently use these holy festivals and fasts, the great representative facts of Christ's life--to exhibit and to glorify Him. And that not in a vague, mystic, or one-sided way, but by setting Him before us in all the majesty and beauty and completeness of His character, from the manger to the Cross, and from { 117} the Cross up to the mediatorial throne. Thus a complete Christ, if one may so speak, is set before us. All the great facts of His life are marshaled into line and proportion; every feature and lineament of His character is revealed and illuminated; every office He sustained in the work of redemption is affirmed and emphasized."