leslie - Homeschool Blogger

The Cloud of Witness pages 65, 66

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:29:00 -0600

[065]

Sunday.

The Consecrated Life.

How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?--Gospel for the Day.

Thy life is God's, thy time to come is gone,
          And is His right.
Herbert.

Thou that in life's crowded city art arrived, thou know'st not how
By what path or on what errand--list and learn thine errand now!
From the palace to the city on the businessof thy King
Thou wert sent at early morning to return at evening.
Dreamer, waken!--loiterer, hasten!--what thy task is, understand!
Thou art here to purchase substance, and the price is in thy hand.
Has the tumult of the market all thy sense and reason drowned?
Do its glistening wares attract thee? or its shouts and cries confound?
Oh! beware lest thy Lord's business be neglected while thy gaze
Is on every show and pageant which the giddy square displays!
Ruckert.

Oh let our adoration for all that He hath done
Peal out beyond the stars of God, while voice and life are one!
And let our consecration be real, and deep, and true,
Oh, even now our hearts shall bow, and joyful vows renew!

"In full and glad surrender we give ourselves to Thee,
Thine utterly, and only, and evermore to be!
O Son of God, Who Iovest us, we will be Thine alone,
And all we are, and all we have, shall henceforth be Thine own!"
F. R. Havergal.

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[066]

Monday. 1st after Epiphany.

The Consecrated Life.

If ye offer the lame and sick is it not evil?--Mal. i. 8.

I was not good enough for man
And so was given to God!
C. Kingsley.

My God must have my best, e'en all I had.
Herbert.

All we have we affer,
     All we hope to be:
Body, soul, and spirit,
     All we yield to Thee.
Thring.

While life is good to give, I give.
E. Arnold.

Deep in the warm vale the village is sleeping,
     Sleeping the firs on the bleak rock above;
Nought wakes, save grateful hearts, silently creeping,
     Up to the Lord in the might of their love,
What Thou hast given to me, Lord, here I bring Thee,
     Odour and light, and the magic of gold;
Feet which must follow Thee, lips which must sing Thee.
     Limbs which must ache for Thee ere they grow old.
What Thou hast given to me, Lord, here I tender,
     Life of mine own life, the fruit of my love;
Take him, yet leave him me, till I shall render
     Count of the precious charge, kneeling above!
C. Kinglsey.

They give their best--O tenfold shame
   On us their fallen progeny,
Who sacrifice the blind and lame,
   Who will not wake or fast with Thee!
Keble.

The Cloud of Witness pg 63, 64

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:58:00 -0600

[063]

Week of The First Sunday After Epiphany

"The Consecrated Life"

"Better is it that thou hadst not vowed than thou shouldest vow and not pay."

A Prayer for the Week

Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto Thee. And although we be unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto Thee any sacrifice, yet we beseech Thee to accept this our bounden duty and service.

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[064]

Saturday. 1st after Epiphany.

The Consecrated Life.

Called to be saints.--1 Cor. i. 2.

What offering, what transcendent monument
Shall our sincerity to Thee present?
--Not work of hands; but trophies that may reach
To highest Heaven--the labour of the Soul!
That builds, as Thy unerring precepts teach,
Upon the internal conquests made by each,
Her hope of lasting glory for the whole!
Wordsworth.

Bring thine all, thy choicest treasure,
   Heap it high and hide it deep!
Thou shalt win o'erflowing measure,
   Thou shalt climb where skies are steep.
For as Heaven's true only light
Quickens all those forms so bright,
So where Bounty never faints
There the Lord is with His saints.
Keble.

Who shall dare make common or unclean
What once has on the Holy Altar been?
Newman.

Know that His might is yours, Whose breathing seal'd your vows!
Keble.

Teach me, my God and King,
   In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything,
   To do it as for Thee!
All may of Thee partake,
   Nothing can be so mean,
Which with this tincture (for Thy sake)
   Will not grow bright and clean.
A servant with this clause
   Makes drudgery divine!
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws
   Makes that and th' action fine.
Herbert

The Cloud of Witness pg 61, 62

Wed, 7 Nov 2007 10:57:00 -0600

[061]

The Epiphany

"The Universal Fellowship"

"Ye are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus."

The Readings for the week-days intervening between the Epiphany and the following Sunday are to be taken from the Sixth Week of the season, "The Supreme Fatherhood," pp. 103-110.

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[062]

Feast of The Epiphany.

The Universal Fellowship.

To make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery.--Ephesians III. 9.

God, being so great, great gifts most willingly imparts;
But we continue poor that have such narrow hearts.
Trench.

               He sees the gleams
Of better thoughts across the murkiest gloom,
The seeds of good amid the howling wastes,
And perfects them at last; and in the depths
Of His divine forbearance, suffereth long,
And passeth by transgression. That vast throng,
The multitude of peoples, nations, tongues,
Shall stand before His Throne, and every act
Of human kindness He will own as His,
And crown, as service rendered unto Him.
Plumptre.

Ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ.
Ephes. II. 13. (R. V.)

Small, Great, are merely terms we bandy here:
Since to the Spirit's absoluteness, all
Are like!
Browning.

Lord visit Thou our souls
     And teach us by Thy grace,
Each dim revealing of Thyself
     With loving awe to trace!

All who speak truth to me commissioned are;
All who love God are in my Church embraced.
Not that I have no sense of preference--
None deeper!--but I rather love to draw,
Even here, on earth, on toward the future law
And Heaven's fine etiquette, where "Who?" and "Whence?"
May not be asked; and at the Wedding Feast,
North shall sit down with South, and West with East!
Burbidge.

The Cloud of Witness pages 59, 60

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:47:00 -0500

[059]

January 4.

Onward and Upward.

Leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto
perfection.--Heb. vi. 1.

Thou who canst *think* as well as *feel*,
Mount from the earth! Aspire! Aspire!
Wordsworth.

Thou might'st have been one of us,
   Cleaving the storm and fire;
Aspiring though faith to the glorious,
   Higher and ever higher;
Till the world of storms look tremulous
   Far down, like a smitten lyre!
Mac Donald.

Man was made to grow, not stop;
That help he needed once and needs no more,--
Having grown but an inch by,--is withdrawn.
For he hath new needs,--and new helps to these.
   This imparts solely, man should mount on each
New height in view; the help whereby he mounts--
The ladder-rung his foot has left,--may fall,
Since all things suffer change, save God the Truth
Man apprehends Him newly at each stage
Whereat earth's ladder drops,--its service done;
And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved.
Browning.

          Then be it so!
For in better things we yet may grow,
Onward and upward still our way,
With the joy of progress from day to day;
Nearer and nearer every year
To the visions and hopes most true and dear!
Children still of a Father's love,
Childrin still of a home above!
        Thus we look back
Without a sigh, o'er the lengthening track.
F. R. Havergal.

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[060]

January 5. The New Year.

Onward and Upward.

We know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perect is
come, then that which is in part shall be done away.--1 Cor. xiii. 9, 10.

Man knows partly but conceives beside,
Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,
And in this striving, --this converting air
Into a solid he may grasp and use,--
Finds Progress,--man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's, and not the beasts'. God is,--They are,--
Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be!
Browning.

Learn the mystery of Progression duly,
Do not call each glorious change Decay;
But know we only hold our treasures truly
When it seems as if they pass'd away!
Nor dare to blame God's gifts for incompleteness!
In that want their beauty lies; they roll
Towards some infinite depth of love and sweetness,
Bearing onward man's reluctant soul.
A. Procter.

O eye, and O soul, is your thirst yet sated?
Or what more do ye claim for your own?
Must this world, at the best, be so lightly rated,
For the sake of a better, unknown?
Lyton.

Ends accomplished turn to means.
Browning.

Hints haunt me ever of a more beyond;
I am rebuked by a sense of the incomplete,
Of a completion over-soon assumed,--
Of adding up too soon.--
Clough.

So oft the doing of God's will
   Our foolish wills undoeth!
And yet what idle dream breaks ill
   Which morning-light subdueth?
And who would murmur and misdoubt
   When God's great Sunrise finds him out?
E. B. Browning.

The Cloud of Witness pages 56, 57, 58

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:46:00 -0500

[056]

January 1. The New Year.

Onward and Upward.

Choose you this day whom ye will serve.
Josh. xxiv. 15.

Thou canst not choose but serve,--man's lot is servitude,--
But thou hast thus much choice, a bad lord or a good.
Trench.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood for for the good or evil side!
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
Lowell.

Are your minds set upon righteousness?
Ps. lviii. 1. (P. B.)

Merely thyself, O man, thou canst not long abide,
But must for less or greater presently decede.
Trench.

God! fight we not within a cursed world
Whose very air teems thick with leagued fiends?
Each Word we speak has infinite effects--
Each Soul we pass must go to heaven or hell--
And this our one chance through eternity
To drop and die, like dead leaves in the brake!
Be earnest, earnest, earnest!
Do what thou dost as if the stake were Heaven,
And that thy last deed ere the Judgment-day!
Whin all's done, nothing's done. There's rest above--
Below let work be death, if work be love!
Kingsley.

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[057]

January 2.

Onward and Upward.

Fargitting those things that are behind and reaching forth unto those things
that are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling.--Phil.

iii. 14.

Our only greatness is that we aspire.
J. Ingelow.

Go with the spiritual life, the higher volition and action,
With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth!--
Not for the gain of the gold, for the getting, the hoarding, the having,
But for the joy of the deed;--but for the Duty to do!
Clough.

A blessing such as this our hearts might reap,
The freshness of the garden they might share,
Through the long day an heavenly freshness keep,
If knowing how the day and the day's glare
Must beat upon them, we would largely steep
And water them betimes with dews of Prayer.
Trench.

If every year we would root out one vice we should sooner become perfect
men.
Thos. A Kempis.

Alas, long-suffering and most patient God,
Thou needst be surelier God to bear with us
Than even to have made us! Thou aspire, aspire
From henceforth for me! Thou who hast Thy self
Endured this flesh-hood, knowing how as a soaked
And sucking vesture it can drag us down
And choke us in the melancholy Deep,
Sustain me, that with Thee I walk these waves
Resisting!--Breathe me upward, Thou in me
Aspiring, Who art the Way, the Truth, the Life--
That to Truth henceforth seem indifferent,
No Way to Truth laborious, and no Life,
Not even this life I live, intolerable!
E. B. Browning.

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[058]

January 3. The New Year.

Onward and Upward.

New wine must be put into new bottles.--Mark ii. 22.

Joy for the promise of our loftier homes!
Joy for the promise of another birth!
For oft oppressive unto pain becomes
          The riddle of the earth.
Burbidge.

Man must pass from old to new,
From vain to real, from mistake to fact,
From what once seemed good, to what now proves best;
How could man have progression otherwise?
Browning.

I therefore go and join head, heart and hand,
Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight
Of science, freedom, and the truth in Christ.
S. T. Coleridge.

The distant prospect always seems more fair,
And when attained, another yet succeds
Far fairer than before.
Kirke White.

You need the lower life to stand upon
In order to reach up unto that higher;
And none can stand a-tip-toe in the placce
He cannot stand in with two stable feet.
E. B. Browning.

A man's best things are nearest him,
     Lie close about his feet,
It is the distant and the dim
     That we are sick to greet;
For flowers that grow our hands beneath
     We struggle and aspire,--
Our hearts must die, except they breathe
     The air of fresh Desire.
Houghton.

Go where thou wilt, seek whatsoever thou wilt, thou shalt not find a higher
way above, nor a safer way below, than the way of the Holy Cross.
Thos. A Kempis.

The Cloud of Witness pages 52, 53, 54, 55

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:45:00 -0500

[052]

blank page

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[053]

The New Year and The Season Of Epiphany

          ------

"Thy Light Is Come"

          ------

The Feast of the Circumcision - Jan. 1st

The Epiphany - Jan. 6th

The Conversion of St. Paul* - Jan. 25th

The Feast of the Presentation* - Feb, 2nd

*When there are less than *four* Sundays after the Epiphany, one or both of
these festivals will fall within the following Season.

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[054]

Feast of the Circumcision.

The Divine Brotherhood.

In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren.--Heb. 11. 7.

Thou would'st like wretched man be made,
     In everything but sin,
That we as like Thee might become
     As we unlike have been.
Stennett.

He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
Heb. 11. 11.

                    Give me an heart that beats
In all its pulses with the common heart
Of human kind, which the same things make glad,
The same make sorry! Give me grace enough
Even in their first beginnings to detect
The endeavours which the proud heart still is making
To cut itself from off the common root,
To set itself upon a private base,
To have wherein to glory of its own,
Beside the common glory of the kind!
Each such attempt in all its hateful pride
And meanness, give me to detect and loathe,--
A man, and claiming fellowship with men!
Trench.

               He is bound to me,
For human love makes aliens near of kin.
J. Ingelow.

Such was the life Thou livedst; self-abjuring,
          Thine own pains never easing,
Our burdens bearing, our just doom enduring,
          A life without self- pleasing.
Faber.

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[055]

The New Year

"Onward and Upward"

"Forward out of darkness, forward into light!"

A Prayer for the Week

O Lord, Thou knowest what is best for us, give whatThou wilt, and how
much thou wilt, and when Thou wilt! Deal with me as Thou thinkest good,
and asbest pleaseth Thee, and is most for Thine honour! Set me where
Thou wilt, and deal with me in all things just as Thou wilt!
Confirm and strengthen me in all goodness, and grant that the rest of my life
hereafter may be pure and holy, so that at the last I may come to Thine
eternal joy!

The Cloud of Witness pages 49, 50, 51

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:44:00 -0500

[049]

December 30.

Retrospect.

We are unprofitable sevrants.--Luke xvii. 10.

     I never glanced behind to know
If I had kept my primal light from wane,
And thus insensibly am--what I am.
Browning.

Sin, not till it is left, will duly sinful seem;
A man must waken first, ere he can tell his dream.
Trench.

Comfort me not!--for if aught be worse than failure from over-stress
Of a life's prime purpse, it is to sit down content with a little success.
Lytton.

Let us look back on life:--was any change,
Any now blest experience, but at first
A pang, remorse-like, shot to the inmost seats
Of moral being?
Clough.

Too true it is, my time of power was spent
In idly watering weeds of casual growth,--
That wasted energy to desperate sloth
Declined, and fond self-seeking discontent,--
Too true it is that, knowing now my state,
I weakly mourn the sin I ought to hate,
Nor love the law I yet would fain obey;
But true is is, above all law and fate
Is Faith, abiding the appointed day.
H. Coleridge.

In doing is this knowledge won,
To see what yet remains undone.
   With this our pride repress,
And give us grace, a growing store,
That day by day we may do more
   And may esteem it less.
Trench.

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[050]

December 30. The Dying Years.

Retrospect.

What I have written, I have written.--John xix. 22.
That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting

cannot be numbered. Eccles. i. 15.

The year departs! a blessing on its head!
We mourn not for it, for it is not dead:
Dead? What is that? A word to joy unknown,
Which love abhors, and faith will never own.
   The passing breezes gone as soon as felt,
The flakes of snow that in the soft air melt,
The smile that sinks into a maiden's eye,
They come, thay go, they change, they do not die.
So the Old Year--that fond and formal name--
Is with us yet,--another and the same.
   And are the thoughts that ever more are fleeing,
The moments that make up our being's being,
The silent workings of unconscious love
Or the dull hate which clings and will not move,
Are these less vital than the wave or wind
Or snow that melts and leaves no trace behind?
H. Coleridge.

To forget is not to be restored;
To lose with time the sense of what we did
Cancels not what we did; what's done remains!
Clough.

Now, it is gone. Our brief hours travel post,
Each with its thought or deed, its Why or How,
But know, each parting hour gives up a ghost
To dwell within thee--an eternal Now!
S.T. Coleridge.

                    Alas! alas!
Whatever hath been written shall remain,
Nor be erased nor written o'er again;
The Unwritten only still belongs to thee,
Take heed and ponder well what that shall be!
Longfellow.

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[051]

Watch Night.

Hitherto hath the Lord helpe us.--1 Samuel vii. 12.

Mark how there still has run, enwoven from above,
Thro' thy life's darkest woof, the golden thread of love.
Trench.

I have always had one lode-star; now,
As I look back, I see that I have wasted
Or progressed as I looked towards that star--
A need, a trust, a yearning after God.
Browning.

Have I laid by from summer hours
Ripe fruits as well as leaves and flowers?
Hath my past year a growth to harden,
As well as fewer sins to pardon?
Is God in all things more and more
A king within me than before?
Faber.

What hath been bringeth what shall be, and is,
     Worse--better--last for first and first for last;
The Angels in the Heavens of Gladness reap
          Fruits of a holy past!
E. Arnold.

The Past is something, but the Present more;
Will it not, too, be past? Nor fail withal
To recognise the Future in your hopes;
Unite them in your manhood, each and all,
Nor mutilate the perfectness of life!--
You can remember; you can also hope.
Clough.

The Cloud of Witness pages 46, 47, 48

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:43:00 -0500

[046]

The Holy Innocents. Christmas-tide.

The Ministry of Children.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength.--Psalm viii. 2.

Children are God's apostles, day by day
Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
Lowell.

Like lamp beside sepulchral urn,
Much teaching that it ne'er did learn,
Revealing by felicity,
Foretelling by simplicity,
And preaching by its sudden cries,
Alone with God the baby lies.
H. Coleridge.

The chidhood shows the man
As morning shows the day.
Milton.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Prov. xxii. 6.

The most childish sin which man can do
Is yet a sin which Jesus never did,
When Jesus was a child, and yet a sin
For which, in lowly pain, He lived and died;
And for the bravest sin that e'er was praised
The King Eternal wore the crown of thorns.
H. Coleridge.

Er thou wert born into this breathing world
   God wrote some characters upon thy heart.
Oh, let them not like beads of dew impearl'd
   On morning blades before the noon depart!
But morning drops before the noon exhale!
   And yet those drops appear again at even,
So chidish innocence on earth must fail
   Yet may return to usher thee to heav'n.
H. Coleridge.

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[ 047]

The Dying Year

"Retrospect"

"It were better that we were not at all, than that we should live still in wickedness."

A Prayer For The Week

We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us. But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us!--Forgive us all that is past, and grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please Thee in newness of life!

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[048]

December 29. The Dying Year.

Retrospect.

Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock?--Jer. xiii. 20.

Think first what you are! Call to mind what you were!
     I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,
     Gave health and genius, and an ample scope.
Return you Me guilt, lethargy, despair?
S. T. Coleridge.

Famisht hopes press fast behind me, weakly wailing,
Faint before me fleets the good I have not done!
Lytton.

No action, whether foul or fair,
Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere
A record written by fingers ghostly,
As a blessing or a curse, and mostly
In the greater weakness or greater strength
Of the acts which follow it,--till at length
The wrongs of ages are redressed
And the fustice of God made manifest.
Longfellow.

Sin may be clasped so close we cannot see its face,
Nor seen nor loathed until held from us a small space.
Trench.

I had a noble purpose and the strength
To compass it; but I have stopp'd half-way,
And wrongly given the first-fruits of my toil
To objects little worthy of the gift.
   Why linger round them still? Why check my fault?
Why seek for consolation in defeat,
In vain endeavours to derive a beauty
From ugliness? Why seek to make the most
Of what no power can change, nor strive instead
With mighty effort to redeem the past
And, gathering up the treasures thus cast down
To hold a stedfast course till I arrive
At their fit destination and my own?
Browning.

Cloud of Witness pg 43, 44, 45

Thu, 6 Sep 2007 14:10:00 -0500

[043]

Christmas Day.

Perfect God and Perfect man.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. - Gospel for the Day.

Blest day which aye reminds us, year by year,
What 'tis to be a Man; to curb and spurn
The tyrant in us; that ignobler self
Which owns no good save ease, no ill save pain,
No purpose, save its share in that wild war
In which through countless ages living things
Compete in internecine greed!
While ever out of the eternal heavens
Looks patient down the great, magnanimous God,
Who, Maker of all worlds, did sacrifece--
All to Himself? Nay, but Himself to one;
Who taught mankind on that first Christmas Day
What 'twas to be a Man; to give, not take;
To serve, not rule; to nourish, not devour;
To help, not crush; if need, to die, not live?
Kingsley.

Thou cam'st fron Heaven to Earth, that we
Might go from Earth to Heaven with Thee;
And though Thou found'st no welcome here,
Thou didst provide us mansions there.
H. Vaughan.

What is man, that Thou are mindful of him? and the son of man that Thou visitest him?
Ps. viii.4.

Immanuel! God with us in His meekness,
Immanuel! God with us in His might,
To bind our wounds, to gift with strength our weakness,
To bring us, angels, to the home of light!
Shiloh is come; His feet our earth have trod;
Now thanks and glory to the Child our God!
Morgan.

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[044]

St. Stephen. Christmas-Tide.

Faithful unto Death.

They stoned Stephen, calling upon God and saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."--Acts vii. 39.

   Who follows in His train?
Who best can drink his cup of woe
   Triumphant over pain;
Who patient bears his cross below,
   He follows in His train!
Heber.

Many loved Truth and lavished life's best oil
Amid the dusk of books to find her,
Content at last for guerdon of their toil
     With the cast mantle she hath left behind her,
     Many in sad faith sought for her,
     Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
     But these our brothers fought for her,
     At life's dear peril wrought for her,
     So loved her that they died for her!
          Their higher instinct knew,
They love her best who to themselves are true,
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do!
     They followed her and found her
     Where all may hope to find,
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,
But beautiful,--with danger's sweetness round her:
     Where faith made whole with deed
     Breathes its awakening breath
          Into the lifeless creed.
Lowell.

If high feelings live, the Man a Martyr dies.
Houghton.

Blssed are those who die for God
And earn the Martyr's crown of light;
Yet he who lives for God may be
A greater Conqueror in His sight.
A. Procter.

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[045]

St. John the Evangelist.

The Sanctuary of Home.

Then saith He to the Disciple, "Behold thy Mother!" and from that Desciple took her to his own home.--John XIX. 27.

Sweet is the smile of Home; the mutual look
Where hearts are of each other sure;
Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook,
The haunt of all affections pure.
Keble.

The many make the household
But only One the Home.
Lowell.

O Near ones, dear ones, you in whose right hands
     Our own rests calm; whose faithful hearts all day
Wide open wait till back from distant lands
     Thought, the tired traveller, wends his homeward way!
Helpmates and hearthhmates, gladdeners of gone years,
     Tender companions of our serious days,
Who colour with your kisses, smiles, and tears
     Life's worn web woven over wonted ways,
Oh shut the world out from the heart you cheer!
     Tho' small the circle of your smiles may be,
The world is distant, and your smiles are near,
     This makes you more than all the world to me!
Lytton.

Let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents; for that is good and acceptable before God.
1 Tim. v. 4.

                    Home is the resort
Or love, of joy, of peace and plenty, where
Supporting and supported, polished friends
And dear relations mingle into bliss!
Thomson.

Cloud of Witness pg 38-42

Thu, 6 Sep 2007 14:09:00 -0500

I seem to have nine pages missing (I thought I had posted these, I really did!) so here they are (again?)

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Christmas
And
The Dying Year

"God To Men Is Drawing Near"

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
Dec, 24th and 25th

Festivals of St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy Innocents
Dec. 26th-28th

The Dying Dear
Dec. 29th-31st

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Christmas Eve. Christmas-Tide

"Perfect God and Perfect Man"

This I did for thee.--What hast thou done for Me?"

Saints Commerorated In Christmas-Tide

St. Stephen
Dec 26th

"Faithful unto Death"

St. John The Evangelist
Dec 27th

"The Sanctuary of Home"

The Holy Innocents
Sec 28th

"The Ministry of Children"

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Will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? - 2 Chron. vi. 18.

Let not the hearts, whose sorrow cannot call
   This Christmas merry, slight the festival;
Let us be merry that may merry be,
   But let us not forget that many mourn;
The smiling Baby came to give us glee
   But for the weepers was the Saviour born.
H. Coleridge.

O Blessed day, which giv'st the eternal lie
To self, and sense, and all the brute within;
Oh! come to us amid this war of life;
To hall and hovel come! to all who toil
In senate, shop, or study! and to those
Ill-warned and sorely-tempted--
Come to them, blest and blessing, Christmas Day!
Tell them once more the tale of Bethlehem,
The kneeling shepherds, and the Babe Divine;
And keep them men indeed, fair Christmas Day!
Kingsley.

Was it a fancy bred of vagrant guess,
Or well-remember'd fact--that He was born
When half the world was wintry and forlorn,
In Nature's utmost season of distress?
And did the simple earth indeed confess
     Its destitution and ist craving need,
     Wearing the white and penitential weed,
Meet symbol of judicial barrenness?
     So be it: for in truth 'tis ever so,
That when the winter of the soul is bare,
     The seed of heaven at first begins to grow,
Peeping abroad in desert of despair.
H. Coleridge.