appears to have fully justified the choice of those, who placed him in that station of honourable eminence, and thus authorized him to take the lead in the councils and judgment of the primitive Christian Church. In the same course he persevered to the hour of his death, when he laid down his life in testimony of the truth of Jesus, and in the act of praying and pleading for his murderers; thus exhibiting a bright example of the value of the principles which he had inculcated in his teaching; of those Christian graces, which, according to the tenour of his Epistle, are the surest evidence, the constant accompaniment, the fairest ornament, the only infallible criterion, the very crown and perfection, of a true Christian faith. At the same time the fact of our Apostle's elevation to the episcopal seat of Jerusalem is matter of no slight interest and importance to the whole Church in subsequent ages. Jerusalem was the metropolis of Christendom; the Church of Jerusalem was the mother of all Christian Churches: it was thence that "the word of the Lord sounded forth" unto the uttermost part of the earth: of that Church, by the choice probably of Peter, and other Apostles, with the concurrence surely and approbation of all, under the providence of the divine Founder, St. James was appointed Bishop: as such he presided in the council of "the Apostles and elders," and regulated their deliberations, no man gainsaying him an unanswerable argument, as against any other Church of Christendom claiming to herself the character of the mother of all Churches, so against the Bishop of any other Church, by virtue of a supposed succession from any other Apostle, arrogating to himself any spiritual authority or pre-eminence over the rest of the Christian world. Collects. "O ALMIGHTY God, whom truly to know is everlasting life; Grant us perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life; that, following the steps of thy holy Apostles, Saint Philip and Saint James, we may stedfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." "ALMIGHTY God, who through thine onlybegotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life: We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we • Collect for the day. may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen." "O SAVIOUR of the world, who by thy cross and precious blood hast redeemed us, save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord." P Collect for Easter. tion of the Sick. From the Order for the Visita Holy JESUS, Saviour blest, Holy JESUS, when the night Holy JESUS, when our pow'r Who would reach his heavenly home; ST. BARNABAS. Joses, who by the Apostles was surnamed Barnabas. ACTS iv. 36. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF ST. BARNABAS. THE festival of this day, having been omitted in the former editions of the Common Prayer, was added to the Calendar by the last Revisers in 1661 and with reason; for St. Barnabas, who is commemorated on this day, was not only "a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith"," but, as the Church describes him in the language of holy writ, an Apostle also: not an Apostle, as were the twelve, originally called and ordained to their apostleship by the Lord Jesus Christ in his own person upon earth; nor as Matthias, who, after the fall of Judas, was chosen by the Lord's appointment to supply the vacancy, and was Acts xi. 24. |