Bishops before him. Gradually all the Bishops of one province or nation came to use the same; and thus each country had its own Prayer-book. In public worship, all Christians had the head uncovered; they turned to the east and bowed at particular parts of the Service. They kneeled at the prayers, and stood all the rest of the Service. They had service, shorter or longer, at first every day; and while this was the custom, they used not to kneel at all on the day of the Lord's rising, (Sunday,) but stood the whole Service through to honour the day. The whole Congregation joined aloud in prayer and praise; so that in Christian Churches it was said, "there was but one voice, only it sounded from every part of the Church at once." How cheering it would be were it so now! TRUE HISTORIES. The Worth of a single Text Well Remembered. THE REV. A. T., now a clergyman of the Church of England, was when young at a school in France; and being known as a quiet, serious boy, was persecuted and laughed at by his thoughtless or wicked school-fellows. On one occasion particularly, he was driven up into a corner of the play-ground, and the leader of his persecutors threatened to beat him or use him very ill, if he did not immediately preach them a sermon. It was in vain that he begged them to let him go, THE DICTIONARY. Oracle-Has different meanings in the Bible; but always has to do with speaking what is very needful to be known, or speaking what can only be known by one way. In the Old Testament, it means the place where God's presence was, and where he spoke his will to his servants, or where he told them what should happen. That was the holy place, where the ark and the mercy-seat were, (Ps. xxviii. 2; 2 Chron. iv. 20,) whether in the tabernacle, (2 Sam. xvi. 23,) or in Solomon's temple, (1 Kings vi. 16; viii. 6.) But in the New Testament, it generally means, not the place, but the thing spoken by God himself, (as in Acts vii. 38;) or the Bible which he commanded holy men of old to speak or write, (Rom. iii. 2; Heb. v. 12; 1 Peter iv. 11.) The heathen had places called by them oracles. In these places their false gods gave answers about what was to happen, or about things which men could not of themselves know. Sometimes their priests pretended so, and sometimes the devils were permitted to give answers, either deceiving, as 1 Kings xxii. 19-23, or true, as Acts xvi. 16, 17. It was done by charms, by signs, by divining, or by false miracles. And the Bible saith, that these lying miracles shall be permitted again to be on earth, (2 Thess. ii. 8-12; and 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2; 1 John iv. 1.) Suborn-To prepare a person privately beforehand, so that he may tell whatever we wish, and other people may think he speaks from his own knowledge. The Jews wished to kill St Stephen, and provided false witnesses to swear against him what would be enough to prove him guilty, (Acts vi. 11; 1 Kings xxi. 9, 10.) Readings for any of the Six Days. THE TROUT. SPRINGING, and happy, and blithsome, and gay, Up on the ripple, and up on the spray, A. I. B. A GHOST STORY. Do you love the churchyard? I hope you do. The dust in it is very precious; and belongs to souls which are only waiting until the joyful day of resurrection comes, and the archangel's trumpet arouses their dust to be raised incorruptible, and become glorious bodies for them again to live in -bodies which never more can die. Should you not love the churchyard? Under its peaceful turf is quietly sleeping the dust which belongs perhaps to your father or your mother, your sister or your brother, or some friend who has gone before you. Your friends themselves are not there, but only their dust-every grain of which God knows and accounts precious. The Church carefully guards and watches over that dust; knowing that it must rise and live again, and that every departed soul shall at the great day, in a moment, find its own dust, and be joined to it, never again to part. You must not think of the churchyard as if the spirits of the dead are there. When the dead were buried, the Church said, "For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother or sister here departed, we therefore commit their body to the ground-earth to earth-ashes to ashes-dust to dust-in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life." The spirit, whether good or bad, has returned to God who gave it, (Eccles. xii. 7,) and is not on earth; it cannot appear, because it is elsewhere; there is nothing but dust there-very precious dust indeed, but only dust. But some foolish people are afraid of seeing spirits in the churchyard. Even if there were spirits, you could not see them; but there are none, for the spirits have returned to God who gave them, and are far otherwise occupied. If they were of "the righteous," their bodies are resting in their clay beds, and their souls are walking with God in their uprightness, (Isaiah lvii. 1, 2; Rev. vii. 13-17.) If they were not, then are their souls in prison; reserved in chains of darkness unto the great day. Whether good or bad, it is only their bodies which are in the churchyard; their spirits are not there. Some people fancy that there are ghosts, and that they have been seen: but it is not so; and those who say they have seen them have mistaken something else for them. I will tell you something very startling which I once saw in Pytchley churchyard. There had been a funeral that day, and it was late in the year, and the weather dark, stormy, and gusty. Returning home at night, when all the village was silent, from visiting a sick person-as I passed through the quiet lonely churchyard, surrounded with trees, I saw a pale blue haze in a corner of the churchyard. I went towards it, and saw a number of strange-looking bright blue lights, larger than candles, all about the new-made grave; and the gleams danced upon the trees as the hollow gusty wind shook their wet leaves. It was so dark I could not avoid stumbling over the old graves; and even when I got near the new grave, I could not tell what those still death-like blue gleams could come from, until I took hold of one, and lifted it up, and then my hand was also covered with blue light. It was some very decayed pieces of an old coffin, which had been buried there perhaps a hundred years before, and had not been thrown back into the new grave. Wood and many other things always have mixed up in them a small quantity of phosphorus, (or light-giver,) a whitish looking gum, which shines whenever it is separated from other things; and if wood or bones are kept from the air, and decay under ground in such a manner as that this phosphorus comes unmixed to the outside of them, then they will shine until the wind wastes it away. But this does not often happen, and one may not, above once or twice in one's life, meet with it just at the very moment when it is set free to shiné. If I had not gone up to the grave I should not have known what these corpse-candles, or dead-lights, were; and if any people passing along the roads near the churchyard had seen from a distance the pale blue gleams over the grave, they might have fancied it was a ghost, and thus a story would have got abroad about a Pytchley Ghost. |
