these Christian heroes underwent on their way to the possession of that happiness and glory which we are, on their festivals, invited to contemplate. And upon this principle, probably, it is, that no fast is appointed before the feast of St. Michael and all Angels. We have no previous struggles with sin or evil, to commemorate in the history of those exalted beings who have never partaken of mortality or of its troubles; but have, from the beginning, been happy, pure, and holy, in Heaven.
Lent,—Or the season of forty days, excluding Sundays, which precedes Easter. The earlier part of this solemn season is intended to prepare us for the great week of our Lord's passion, with which it concludes. And the space of forty days seems marked out as a proper period for fasting and humiliation by the instances, not only of Moses and Elias, but of one far greater than they, who prepared Himself for the commencement of His ministry by a fast of forty days in the wilderness.
Ash-Wednesday.—The first day of these forty has ever been observed by the Church with peculiar solemnity. On that day, in early times, her ministers maintained the custom, which the Apostles had introduced and enjoined, of putting to open penance and shame notorious offenders against her laws or her authority; thus, according to the direction of Scripture, punishing them in this world, that they might be led to repentance, and that their souls might consequently be saved in the world which is to come.
But those happier, because purer, days of the Church's history have past away. God in His own good time will renew them; and that He will speedily do so, we are bound to pray. In the meanwhile, the Church calls upon us, upon this day, collectively to humble ourselves before Him whom our sins and our abandonment of this godly discipline have deeply offended; and to implore His pardon for those transgressions, committed among us, without meeting such rebuke, for which we affirm with our own mouths, His vengeance and curse to be due. In making this acknowledgment, we continue, in the Christian Church, a ceremony which God Himself ordained for the Jewish. See Deut. xxvii. 13–26.
