evening worship was held. The high festivals were introduced by a night service, the vigils. § 76. The Church Year. R. Hospinian: Testa Christian. (Tiguri, 1593) Genev. 1675. M. A. Nickel (R. C.) : Die heil. Zeiten u. Feste nach ihrer Entsteliung u. Feier in der Kath. Kirche, Mainz, 1825 sqq. 6 vols. Pillwitz: Ge- Bchiclite del* heil. Zeiten. Dresden, 1842. E. Ranke : Das kirchliche Pericopensysteni aus den altesten Urkunden dargelegt. Berlin, 1847. Fk. STRArss (late court preacher and professor in Berlin) : Das evange- lische Kirchenjahr. Berl. 1850. Lisco: Das christliche Kii'chenjahr. Berl. (1840) 4th ed. 1850. Bobeetag: Das evangelische Kirchenjahr, &c. Breslavi, 1857. Oomp. also Augtjsti : Handbuch der christlichen Archaologie, vol. i. (1836), pp. 457-595. After the fourth century, the Christian year, with a cycle of regularly recurring annual religious festivals, comes forth in all its main outlines, though with many fluctuations and variations in particulars, and forms thenceforth, so to speak, the skeleton of the catholic cultus. The idea of a religious year, in distinction from tlie natural § 76. THE CIIUECH YEAR. 387 and from the civil year, appears also in Judaism, and to some extent in the heathen world. It has its origin in the natural necessity of keeping alive and bringing to bear upon the peo- ple by public festivals the memory of great and good men and of prominent events. The Jewish ecclesiastical year was, like the whole Mosaic cultus, symbolical and typical. The Sabbath commemorated the ci'eation and the typical redemption, and pointed forward to the resurrection and the true redemption, and thus to the Christian Sunday. The passover pointed to Easter, and the feast of harvest to the Christian Pentecost. The Jewish observance of these festivals originally bore an earnest, dignified, and significant character, but in the hands of Pharisaism it degenerated very largely into slavish Sabbat- ism and heartless ceremony, and provoked the denunciation of Christ and the apostles. The heathen festivals of the gods ran to the opposite extreme of excessive sensual indulgence and public vice.' The peculiarity of the Christian year is, that it centres in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and is intended to minis- ter to His glory. In its original idea it is a yearly representa- tion of the leading events of the gospel history ; a celebration of the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, and of the out- pouring of the Holy Spirit, to revive gratitude and devotion. This is the festival part, the semestre Domini. The other half, not festal, the semestre ecclesicBj is devoted to the exhibi- tion of the life of the Christian church, its founding, its growth, and its consummation, both as a whole, and in its in- dividual members, from the regeneration to the resurrection of the dead. The church year is, so to speak, a chronological . confession of faith ; a moving panorama of the great events of salvation ; a dramatic exhibition of the gospel for the Chris- tian people. It