anniversary is distinct and decisive. Thus the festival year is a bulwark of ortho- doxy as real as our confession of faith." History shows, however (especially that of Germany and France), that neither the church year nor creeds can prevent a fear- ful apostasy to rationahsm and infidelity. § 76. THE cHURcn yeak. 389 so early as the second century we meet with the general ob- servance of Easter and Pentecost, founded on the Jewish pass- over and feast of harvest, and answering to Friday and Sunday in the weekly cycle. Easter was a season of sorrow, in remem- brance of the passion ; Pentecost was a time of joy, in memory of the resurrection of the Redeemer and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.' These two festivals form the heart of the church year. Less important was the feast of the Epiphany, or mani- festation of Christ as Messiah. In the fourth centmy the Christmas festival was added to the two former leading feasts, and partially took the place of the earlier feast of Epiphany, which now came to be devoted particularly to the manifesta- tion of Christ among the Gentiles. And further, in Easter the Trda')(a aravpcoaLfiov and dvaardcri/iov came to be more strictly distinguished, the latter being reckoned a season of joy- From this time, therefore, we have three great festival cycles, each including a season of preparation before the feast and an after-season appropriate : Christmas, Easter, and Pente- cost. The lesser feasts of Epiphany and Ascension arranged themselves under these.' All bear originally a clmstological character, representing the three stages of the redeeming work of Christ : the beginning, the prosecution, and the consumma- tion. All are for the glorification of God in Christ. The trinitarian conception and arrangement of the festal half of the church year is of much later origin, cotemporary with the introduction of the festival of the Trinity (on the Sunday after Pentecost). The feast of Trinity dates from the ninth or tenth century, and was first authoritatively establish- ed in the Latin church by Pope John XXIL, in 1334, as a com- prehensive closing celebration of the revelation of God the ^ Comp. vol. i. § 99. ^ There was no unanimity, however, in this period, in the number of the feasts. Chrysostom, for example, counts seven principal feasts, corresponding to the seven* days of the week : Christmas, Epiphany, Passion, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and the Feast of the Resurrection of the Dead. The last, however, is not a strictly ec- clesiastical feast, and the later Greeks reckon only six principal festivals, answering to the six days of creation, followed by the eternal Sabbath of the church tri- umjihant in heaven, Comp. Augusti, i. p. 530. 390 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. Father, who sent His Son (Chi-istmas), of the Son, who died for us and rose again (Easter), and of the Holy Ghost, who re- news and sanctifies ns (Pentecost).' The Greek church knows nothing of this festival to this