the 6th of January was maintained in its stead by the African churches so late as the sixth century. It becomes a curious subject of inquiry therefore, what circumstances led to the selection of the day which is now every where observed. It is evident that no new light had been suddenly thrown through that obscurity, in which the exact time of our Lord's birth had been hidden for three hundred years. No ancient and authentic record had been just drawn out from the ruins of the Jewish institutions and the poor remnants of their annals, to determine that time. No plausible traditions could have led to it, for it was too late even for them. No established usage was in favor of this computation of it, for the little and uncertain usage that there was rather opposed it. It might be rash to speak confidently on a subject on which perfect certainty cannot be attained; but the mention of a few facts will make it appear extremely probable, that the winter solstice was selected for the festival of the Nativity, because the sun at that point begins to return to our hemisphere, bringing with him a gradually increasing length of the daylight,adding to it, it may be, only a single minute, but that minute the promise of summer time. The ancient nations saw with uneasiness that king, that divinity, as they styled the sun, receding from them farther and farther, rising later to his task and retiring earlier from it like a giant wearied in his course, and leaving the night to encroach by insensible degrees on his dominion. And when he stopped in that fearful retreat, when he directed towards them again his beneficent way, they marked that period with festival and rejoicing. This was the case among them all, from Italy to China. The winter solstice was a season of religious pomp. In Egypt and Persia they then celebrated the birth of the solar deity under different names; and at Rome there were ceremonies instituted in honor of the sun. The day devoted to these ceremonies was the 25th of December. Not that the winter solstice falls precisely on that day; but in the observance of public solemnities men are not usually anxious after exact calculations; besides that it was difficult in the present instance to arrive at them. The fact however is not to be controverted, that since the time of Julius Cæsar that day was decreed to be the civil and religious solstice of the Roman Empire. What could be more natural then, than that the Bishop of Christian Rome should seize on so obvious, so remarkable an analogy; that he should think it worthy of the Divine providence, to send to us the light of his salvation at the very time when it was returning over us the natural sun? It seemed admirable, that while the Pagans were exulting in the approach of the king of the year, the Christians should be hailing a spiritual Prince and Saviour; while the Pagans were paying homage to a mere orb suspended in the sky, kindled by its Maker's breath, and if he please to be turned into darkness, they should be pouring out their thankfulness for "the day-spring from on high?" There is something indeed beautiful in this analogy, which has been fondly dwelt upon by many writers from that age to our own. A Christian poet, who lived at the close of the fourth century, uses language so remarkable as this with respect to it : "Why is it that the sun Comes back from the goal he won? Is it that Christ's young ray Fulfils the track of day?" The same eloquent Bishop, whom we have mentioned already as chiefly instrumental in extending the observance of this day into the Eastern provinces of the Empire, thus writes:-" You speak of the birth of the Invincible. Who is this Invincible, if not our Lord? You call it the birth of the sun; it is he who is the true sun." In the middle of the fifth century we find the Roman Pontiff, Leo the Great, cautioning the faithful against listening to those who represented this venerable festival as being hallowed not so much on account of the birth of Christ, as on account of the return or annual birth of that great luminary; and it is remarkable, that he should have been obliged to forbid the turning of the face towards the East in prayer, on the morning of Christmas day. It is likely therefore that there were believers, who even then assigned the same motive for the choice of this particular day, which has just been represented as the most probable. Far be it from us to fasten it as It did well to appoint a partic And it was a laudable motive. a reproach on the ancient Church. ular season for praising God, that he had sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world for its moral and religious illumination. And since there were no means of ascertaining that season, it judged wisely to select for its representative the one which had most to recommend it for that purpose. Here it found such an one, already separated as holy in the customs and feelings of the people; and why should it not avail itself of the advantage, especially when the transition was so easy and so happy from the objects of the one to the more glorious objects of the other? In saying this we are not sanetioning one of its frauds; we are commending rather an expression and provision of its piety. As it did not demolish the splendid temples of Heathen devotion, but converted them to its own use, and threw them open to the pure air, and made them sanctuaries for the faith, and dedicated them to the One Living and True, why should it not in like manner convert and baptize anew an ordinance of mistaken worship; and teach men to look from "the tabernacle of the sun" to the throne of its Maker, from the changeable beams of transient days to the immortal "ray of the Father's brightness ?" We may add, that we ourselves lose nothing by ascribing such an origin to the date of this high day in Christendom. It is of no consequence to us at what point in the circle of the months, according to Jewish or Roman or any other computation, our Master was born. How does it concern our faith, or hope, or any thing but an idle fancy, on which of those flying portions of time that soon make up a year the child of an humble parentage but a divine fame was laid in a manger at Bethlehem? We only want to commemorate in company the event itself; to have a common centre, round which the reflections and sympathies of his disciples may gather together; to be able to stop once in the annual revolution of every sun, and say, 'This is the season when the birth of Jesus is the subject of thanksgiving in the world that he came to save.' Now the eyes of all his followers, however widely they may be scattered from each other, are turned towards his first appearing, and there is but one feeling among them. We know that we are engaged with an innumerable band in blessing the advent of the one who came for the many; and that the voice of our ascriptions is mixed with the chorus of the ransomed earth. Now the high and the low look back together on the poor and helpless circumstances, out of which was revealed the glory of the Lord. Now the learned and the ignorant remember the gifts of the wise men of the East, laid before an infant who was to grow up superior to their best philosophy, though a stranger to it all. Now they who are made as one by the imperfections and burthens of mortality recount the vision of "a multitude of the heavenly host," and the praises and the benedictions of immortal tongues. We can desire no more than such associations and assurances as these. They would not have their effect increased, if we could know the very instant at which each event was transacted. But are they not greatly heightened by the analogy just described,—by the comparison of those Pagan observances with our own, which have taken their place? We are reminded that the coming of Christ into our part of the moral world resembles the return of the sun towards our part of the natural world. To tell in what various respects the resemblance holds, might seem too fanciful, and would at best be only to repeat what has been often repeated before. But still we cannot avoid being impressed with it. The Gospel is everywhere presented to us as light; like that, glorious in its course, genial in its influence, and the medium through which all objects are truly discerned. God himself is light; and the Author of our faith and the Revealer of his counsels is predicted by the last of the Prophets as "the Sun of righteousness, with healing in his wings." It will be well for us to rejoice that it is up over the nations, and that it shall continue to go forth with still an earlier rising and a more ardent strength. No change of seasons shall ever carry it away into a wintry feebleness. No power shall check its progress. No eye shall witness its failing glories. Conquering and yet to conquer shall its course be, till that vision of the Apocalypse shall be fulfilled,—" there was no more night.” It may be of little consequence whether we observe this Christmas-tide or not; whether we join with so many of our brotherbelievers in ancient and present times, or hold fast to our Puritan peculiarity. But oh! that "the day-spring," which it undertakes to commemorate, may rise on our understandings in wisdom, on our convictions in faith, on our dispositions in obedience, on our affections in charity,-dispersing the shadows and thick mists that hang over the prospect of death, and guiding our feet into the way of peace. N. L. F. STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. A SERMON, BY REV. CHARLES T. BROOKS. * * * 2 KINGS, xxii. 8, 10, 11. And Hilkiah the priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. THIS is a very singular passage in the Jewish history, and one which does not easily admit of a satisfactory, or at least decisive explanation. It may be presumed that few readers of the Scriptures, excepting theological students and men specially curious in their biblical inquiries, have ever examined it. It is however worthy of examination, and cannot, it seems to me, be studied without suggesting, even to us at this late day, some profitable and practical reflections. It seems, that in the eighteenth year of his reign and the twentysixth year of his age, the good king Josiah, who (according to the simple and venerable phraseology of the sacred narrative) “ did that which was right in the sight of the Lord"-unlike his predecessors for the previous fifty years, who had done "that which was evil in the sight of the Lord"-this pious young monarch sent Shaphan the scribe of the temple to the high priest Hilkiah, with directions to make an estimate of the amount of monies which had been contributed from time to time into the temple-treasury, and deliver over the same to the overseers and committee of repairs, that they might immediately hire carpenters, masons, and so forth, to repair the breaches in the temple, which had probably been made during the reign of his ungodly predecessors. The money was paid into the hands of the overseers of the public works, and the repairs went on. But Hilkiah the priest, as he was searching the various possible places of deposit to glean all the tribute-money that might lie hidden in nook or corner, lighted upon what would seem to have been to him and all concerned, (strange enough to say!) a very unexpected curios |