support and encourage them in all Christian endeavour, we should befriend them on our knees, we should pray for them and with them, we should add our prayers to theirs, that all the sicknesses of the soul, whether spiritual palsy or spiritual deafness or blindness, may be healed, that their sins may be forgiven them, their iniquities pardoned, their souls strengthened and confirmed, their fleshly lusts subdued, their spiritual life nourished and increased. There is no friendship like the friendship of the good; religious love is that which we should shew, and those of us who are able to draw near to Christ, should seek to bring those who are not able, that we may all stand before Him, and all find that blessing which is surely given to all who truly believe and truly love.

COLLECT.

O GOD, forasmuch as without Thee we are not able to please Thee; mercifully grant, that Thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. ΑΜΕΝ.

JOHN HENRY PARKER, OXFORD AND LONDON.

Tracts for the Christian Seasons.

TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

The Christian Duty of Sympathy, and the Church's Provisions herein.

IT is to be observed that while the various parts of the special services for each Sunday in the former half of the Church's year do, for the most part, directly correspond in their teaching, those in the season after Pentecost only incidentally mark out different portions of the one revealed type of the Christian life. And this is easily accounted for; from Advent to Whitsuntide we keep in memory specific acts whereby God, the one Object of man's faith, worked out man's deliverance from the punishment and power of sin; and to these several particulars Proper Lessons, Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, and occasionally Proper Psalms, do all in their measure and degree directly apply. But during the whole season after Trinity, the Gospel, in its bearing

Νο. 69.

upon the life of the individual Christian, is that which the Church brings before her devout children. Hence the unity of her teaching in the dif ferent parts of the service of any particular Sunday is rather to be looked for in agreement with the same portion of service on the preceding or succeeding Sundays than in the exact coherence of the different parts on the same Sunday. This is especially true of the Lessons, which for the most part agree more with themselves Sunday after Sunday, than with the Collect, Epistle and Gospel of the same week. At the same time, seeing that all come out of the Book of God, and that the mind of the blessed Spirit who inspired holy men of old to write the contents of that Book, is the very law of unity throughout the universe, we may well expect to find instances of minute correspondence where none was of set purpose intended by the compilers of our Book of Common Prayer.

It will be no small benefit arising from this and similar publications, if thereby the willinghearted children of the Church are led to set an increased value upon the privilege they possess in having a set form and order for the reading of

Holy Scripture, to which year after year they are

to have regard in their preparation for eternity.

Of this we may be sure, that none who thus seek to be clothed as guests meet for the Master's presence, shall be found without the weddinggarment when the marriage of the King's Son shall be come, and the wedding be furnished with guests.

Leaving it then to each reader to trace out circumstantially the agreement in all the several parts of this day's service according as his own mind fastens with peculiar thankfulness on any one incident, it shall be our aim to set before you the admirable provisions which the Church has made for our being ready both in body and soul, cheerfully to accomplish the things which God would have done, as in all respects, so especially in that caring for one another in which we most effectually emulate the love of that Good Shepherd who so loved His brethren that for them He laid down His life.

We have been enjoined in the Epistle to walk circumspectly, redeeming, or buying up the time, and exhorted to find our joy in mutual submission one to another in the fear of God. Taking these requirements together with the truly social (in the highest sense of that much-abused word) aspect in which the Christian scheme is set before us in the day's Gospel, we shall be following