Festival times.
I. FESTIVALS ARE COMMEMORATIONS. The joyful occurrences of our own lives we by a natural instinct commemorate yearly, as the day comes round when they happened to us. Our birth-day, our wedding-day, are thus made domestic festivals. Similarly, a nation commemorates the Day of its Independence, or the three glorious days of its Revolution, or the day on which its armies gained a great and crowning victory. It is reasonable that the practice thus established should be followed also in the Church of God, and the days on which great spiritual blessings or deliverances were granted to it kept in remembrance by some appropriate and peculiar observance. The Jews kept three great festivals, to which afterwards two others were added, all of them more or less commemorative. The Passover commemorated the passing over of the houses of the Israelites by the destroying angel and the hasty flight out of Egypt; the feast of Pentecost commemorated, according to Jewish tradition, the giving of the law; tabernacles recalled and perpetuated the dwelling in tents in the wilderness; Purim, the deliverance kern the malice of Haman; the Dedication, that from Antiochus Epiphanes. And Christian festivals are of a similar character. Advent commemorates the approach, and Christmas the birth, of Christ, Epiphany his manifestation to the Gentiles, Easter his resurrection from the dead, Ascension-day his ascent into heaven, Whitsuntide the coming of the Holy Ghost. "Saints' days," as they are called, commemorate the entrance into final bliss of those whose names they bear. All the greater, and almost all the lesser, festivals of the Christian Church are commemorations, days appointed for perpetuating the remembrance of events dear to the Christian heart and deeply interwoven with the Christian life. It follows that—
II. FESTIVALS ARE TIMES OF SPIRITUAL JOY'. There are some to whom religion seems altogether a melancholy thing. Religious persons they suppose to be dwellers in perpetual sadness, gloomy, ascetic, dull, cheerless, miserable. But this is altogether a mistake. Holy joy is continually required of men as a duty in the Bible. "Rejoice evermore," says the great apostle of the Gentiles (1 Thessalonians 5:16); and again, "Rejoice with them that do rejoice" (Romans 12:15). "O be joyful in the Lord," is a constant cry of the Psalmist. Our Lord bade us "rejoice and he exceeding glad," even when we are persecuted, and assured us that "our joy no man taketh from us." There may be a sobriety in Christian joy which distinguishes it from the fitful, feverish, and excited joy of the world; but it is joy—true joy—nevertheless. And for this joy no times are so fitting as festival times. "This is the day which the Lord hath made," said holy David; "let us rejoice and be glad in it." "Offices and duties of religious joy," as Hooker notes, "are that wherein the hallowing of festival times consisteth" (Eccl. Pol. 5:70, § 2). The set services of religion on festival days take a tone of gladness beyond the common; and the "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" suited for such occasions are of a still more jubilant type. Then especially do the precepts hold—"Rejoice in the Lord," "Serve the Lord with gladness," "Show yourselves joyful unto the Lord—sing, rejoice, and give thanks."
III. FESTIVALS SHOULD BE TIMES OF THANKSGIVING. Nothing is more remarkable in man than his deadness, and dulness, and apathy in respect to all that God has done for him. Warm gratitude, lively thankfulness, real heartfelt devotion, are rare, even in the best of us. Festivals are designed to stir and quicken our feelings, to rouse us from our deadness, to induce us to shake off our apathy, and both with heart and voice glorify God, who hath done so great things for us. Festivals bring before us vividly the special Divine mercy which they commemorate, and at the same time present to our view the beneficent side, so to speak, of the Divine nature, and lead- us to contemplate it. God is essentially love; "he declares his Almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity" (Collect for Eleventh Sunday after Trinity). Festivals remind us of this. We lose the advantage of them wholly if we do not stir ourselves, on occasion of them, to some real outpouring of love and thanks to him who granted us the blessing of the time, as well as every other blessing, and every "good and perfect gift" of which we have the enjoyment.
IV. FESTIVALS SHOULD BE TIMES OF BOUNTY. When the soul of a man is glad, and penetrated with the sense of God's goodness and mercy towards it, the heart naturally opens itself to a consideration of other men's needs and necessities. Being glad itself, it would fain make others glad. Hence, in the old world, great occasions of joy were always occasions of largess. The Israelites were commanded to remember the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow at the time of their festivals (Deuteronomy 16:14); and the practice was to "send portions" to them (Nehemiah 8:10; Esther 9:22). We shall do well to imitate their liberality, and to make, not Christmas only, but each festival season a time of "sending portions" to the poor and needy.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR