Such be our thoughts, my dear brethren, about the Holy Mass. I have alluded to the efforts which mankind have made to offer a worthy offering to God, sometimes to the extent, even, of sacrificing their own lives and their children. While we abhor these excesses, let us not forget the earnestness which inspired their misguided devotion. And we, to whom God has given a perfect worship, a worship not cruel, but beautiful, inviting, consoling, satisfying, shall we be less devout in offering it? No! come to Mass, and come to pray. When the Lord drew near to Elias on the mount, the prophet wrapped his face in his mantle; so when we come to Mass, let us wrap our souls in a holy recollection of spirit. Remember what is going on. Now pray; now praise; now ask forgiveness; now rest before God in quiet love. So will the Mass be a marvellous comfort and refreshment to you. You know the smell of the incense lingers about the sacred vestments worn at the altar long after the service is over; so your souls shall carry away with them as you leave the church a celestial fragrance, a breath of the odors of Paradise, the token that you have received a blessing from Him whose "fingers drop with sweet-smelling myrrh."
Sermon XXIX.
The Lessons Of Autumn.
(Last Sunday After Pentecost.)
"All flesh is grass,
and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field.
The grass is withered and the flower is fallen."
—Isaias XL. 6, 7.
It is but a few weeks since you were told that the natural world has lessons of deep spiritual importance to teach us. Our Lord, as we see in the Gospel, sometimes drew the text of His discourse from the flowers of the field, sometimes from the birds of the air; and it must be evident to any reflecting mind that this was not done as a mere exercise of fancy on His part, but was the Divine Interpretation of these messages of love which from the beginning He had commissioned Nature to tell us. Nature, then, is really intended by God to be our Teacher. It is my purpose this morning, to direct your thoughts to one part of its teaching—that is, the spiritual instruction suggested to us by the season of Autumn.
Here, in the Church, where we have always the same doctrines, and the same worship, we might forget how all things without are full of change and decay, were it not that the Church uses Nature as a handmaid, and calls her within the sanctuary to adorn the Altar with her gifts. We miss today the flowers that have been so plentiful all summer, and this tells us what is going on without. The crown of flowers which the Spring brought forth to grace our Easter festival, and which were the truest type of the Resurrection, which made that feast so joyful, have all perished. The rose of Whitsuntide, the floral wealth of Corpus Christi, the white lily of midsummer, have all gone their way. "The glory of Lebanon is departed; the beauty of Carmel and Sharon." In the garden and the field, where so lately there was every kind of fruit and flower that is pleasant to the eye and sweet to the smell or taste—there are now but a few dried leaves, and the skeletons of trees and shrubs shaking and rattling in the wind. Nothing green is left except "the fir-tree and the box-tree and the pine-tree together," patiently enduring cold and snow so as to be on hand when the Holy Night comes round, and the Heavenly Babe is born, to make his humble home glad and beautiful with their green wreaths and branches. The birds that peopled the woods and made them merry with their music have gone south, leaving their summer home silent and desolate. The days are short. Clouds flit across the sky. The air is strong and keen, and men shut it out and make all warm and snug within. Yes, the little time that has elapsed, since we began to number our Sundays from Easter, has been a full cycle of being in the vegetable world. Spring has given place to summer, and summer to autumn. Seed-time and harvest have followed each other, and now the dreary winter has commenced. "The grass is withered and the flower is fallen.
And what does all this mean to us? I am sure all of you understand it well. This season speaks to us in tones that reach every human heart. It tells us that we are dying. It is strange how slow we are to realize this. I look around this church, and I see many dressed in the dark garments that tell they are mourning for the dead. In what house, indeed, is the family unbroken? Where is there not a vacant seat at the table? Who of us has not lost a friend? And yet we rarely think that we too are soon to follow them. Now, God wishes us to think of this. He tells us of it by our reason, He tells us of it by our vacant hearths and homes; He tells us of it by sermons, and by His word, but, not content with this, He makes the natural world, heir with us of the sentence of mortality, a monitor to us of this great truth. "Day unto day uttereth speech if it, and night unto night sheweth knowledge of it." [Footnote 237]
[Footnote 237: Ps xviii. 3.]