G b c

Hitctarç C3utbe a n d r a t i o n a l i s t r e v i e w .

[ESTABLISHED 1883.]

No. 43. ( N kw S e r i e s .)

JANUARY 1, 1900.

M o n t h l y ; T w o p e n c e .

Contents

Christmas Day. By Lector .

It Is Evkr the Few Who Move the World. By

G . J. H o ly o a k e ...... 2 C o u r a g e , S h e p h e r d s ! Hy F. J. Gould . . 3 M r s . L y n n L i n t o n ’s R e m i n i s c e n c e s . I!y Frederick

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M i l l a r ................................................................................. 3 A P r o p h e t o f R a t i o n a l i s m .... 4 A n E x c e l l e n t B i b l e D i c t i o n a r y . 5 A M o s t C o n v i n c i n g B o o k .... 6 P r im i t i v e R e l i g i o n i n E n g l a n d . . . 6 A n A n c i e n t M y t h I l l u m i n a t e d . . .7 O u r D e b t t o G r e e c e a n d R o m e . . . 7 A H e r e t i c ’s C r e e d ..... 8 R a n d o m Jo t t i n g s ...... 8 R e a s o n a n d R e l i g i o n . B y L e o T o ls to y . . 9 S i g n s a n d W a r n i n g s ( Gleaned from the Religious

P ress) . . . . .

R a t i o n a l i s m in t h e M a g a z i n e s

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10

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S h o r t N o t i c e s .

13

C o r r e s p o n d e n c e . . • . . . 1 3

Cbnstmas Dap. “ O ur Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Holy Virgin Mary, in Bethlehem, at one o’clock in the afternoon of December 25th so we are gravely informed by Anastasius (sixth century), quoting, ostensibly, from “ the Apostolical Constitutions,” a passage found in no known MS. or other authority. Such historical precision leaves little to be desired, and is only approached by Ephrem Syrus (ob. 378), who gives the date of the conception as well (March 10th), though, through some strange oversight, he omits to specify the hour. But, though we may smile at the refinements of these good old fathers, there is, after all, not much to choose between them and modern divines, judging from the dates (beginning 4004 b.c.) given, without one note of warning, in the margin of the Variorum Bible, edited by three such scholars as Cheyne, Driver, and Sanday.

Inspired writers had large ideas where chronology and statistics were concerned. With them “ one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day and a too faithful adherence to this principle by Luke has resulted in its being now impossible to determine, nearer than within ten or fifteen years, the true date of Jesus’s birth. And not only does the year elude us, but the month and day as well During the first few centuries the birth-day seems to have been unknown, and regarded as absolutely unimportant. Clement of Alexandria (210) is the earliest writer by whom it is referred to, and calculations, such as April 18th and 19th and May 29th, he only mentions to dismiss as the products of an idle and irreverent curiosity. The D e Pascha Computus (243), on the other hand, gives March 28th, while Epiphanius (375) knows only January 5th, others the 6th o f that month, and it is not until the middle of the fourth century that December 25th is met with. The utter lack o f authority for any of these dates appears clearly from the following statement o f Jacobus Baradteus, Bishop of Edessa (ob. 578) : “ No one knows exactly the day of the nativity of our Lord : this only is certain, from what Luke writes, that he was born in the night." Poor Anastasius !

As to the festival itself, there is little doubt that it did not come into existence until about three centuries after the event which it commemorates.

The earliest witness to its institution is the Roman calendar (drawn up 336 or 354) contained in the collection of Philocalus, where it appears under date December 25th. But this usage was confined t(j.the Latin or Western Church, and was not introduced into the Eastern until later. Chrysostom, in fact, in a sermon delivered at Antioch in 386, expressly states that the festival of December 25th had been introduced there less than ten years previously.

There was, however, in the Eastern Church, by the middle of the fourth century (though how much earlier is unknown), a festival analogous to that of the Latin Christmas — viz., the Epiphany, celebrated on January 6lh. In its inception it does not appear to have had any reference to the Nativity, but simply to the Baptism ; and in the course of the fourth century it came to combine in one joint commemoration both of these and the Adoration of the Magi as well. It is noticeable that in the canons of the Council of Saragossa (380) the Nativity and December 25th are not so much as mentioned, though special directions are given as to the observance of the Epiphany on January 6th.

Towards the close of the fourth century, under the influence or the pressure of the Roman see, the Eastern celebration of the Nativity began to be transferred from January 6th to December 25th. But this innovation aroused much opposition and took long to establish, and not until the middle of the fifth century did Alexandria adopt it, while in the Church of Jerusalem the old usage lingered until the close of the sixth century, and it has been retained by the Armenian Church to the present day.

We must now consider how the date came to be selected. The theory recently propounded by the learned Abbé Duchesne— that the date of the Nativity was arrived at by unseemly calculations as to the commencement of Mary’s pregnancy, based on the imagined coincidence of the day of the incarnation with that of the death— need not detain us long, as there was, during the first few centuries, no general agreement even as to the latter, the best accredited guesses being March 21st, 23rd, and 25th, and April 9th, 13th, and 19th. It is indeed obvious that the date of the Incarnation was obtained from that of the Nativity by reckoning nine months backward, and not vice versa ; and, as a matter of fact, Augustine states that this was so. Further evidence of this is supplied by the circumstance that the Feast of the Conception or Annunciation (absent, by the way, from the Calendar of the Armenian Church) was not instituted until the seventh century. As, moreover, Duchesne admits the influence of the N a ta lis In v ic t i (presently to be mentioned) in the fixing of our Christmas Day, he practically gives his case away.

Another theory, which has found many supporters, refers the origin of Christmas to the Roman festival of the Sa tu r nalia, which was held in the latter part of December, and was devoted to mirth and feasting, a special feature being the interchange of presents, strenœ, whence the French étrennes and our Christmas presents. The festival was concluded by the fê te of Infants, the S ig illa r ia , so-called from the custom of making presents of small images or dolls, especially by parents to their children. The identity of the Christian with the Roman custom is clear from Tertullian’s and Augustine’s condemnation of it as pagan ; and strence diabolicce was the epithet applied to it by the Council of Auxerre (578).

But though the Saturnalia had much in common with the Christian festival, exact correspondence between the dates is wanting, since the Pagan feast ended on December