"I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of Hell and of Death." And in His servant St. John's description of Him—
"Who is the Faithful Witness and the First-begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth."
All this assuredly, so far as the young child, consecrated like David, the youngest of his brethren, conceived his own new life in Earth and Heaven,—he understood already in the Lion symbol. But of all this I had no thought[31] when I chose the prayer of Alfred as the type of the Religion of his era, in its dwelling, not on the deliverance from the punishment of sin, but from the poisonous sleep and death of it. Will you ever learn that prayer again,—youths who are to be priests, and knights, and kings of England, in these the latter days? when the gospel of Eternal Death is preached here in Oxford to you for the Pride of Truth? and "the mountain of the Lord's House" has become a Golgotha, and the "new song before the throne" sunk into the rolling thunder of the death rattle of the Nations, crying, "O Christ, where is Thy Victory!"
NOTES.
1. The Five Christmas Days. (These were drawn out on a large and conspicuous diagram.)
These days, as it happens, sum up the History of their Five Centuries.
| Christmas | Day, | 496. | Clovis baptized. |
| " | " | 800. | Charlemagne crowned. |
| " | " | 1041. | Vow of the Count of Aversa (Page 80). |
| " | " | 1066. | The Conqueror crowned. |
| " | " | 1130. | Roger II. crowned King of the Two Sicilies. |
2. For conclusion of the whole matter two pictures were shown and commented on—the two most perfect pictures in the world.
(1) A small piece from Tintoret's Paradiso in the Ducal Palace, representing the group of St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Augustine, and behind St. Augustine his mother watching him, her chief joy even in Paradise.