at the head of the great feasts in the Western church year. It continues to be, in the entire Catholic world and in the greater part of Protestant Christendom, the grand jubilee of children, on which innumerable gifts celebrate the infinite love of God in the gift of Ms only-begotten Son. It kindles in mid-winter a holy fire of love and gratitude, and preaches in the longest night the rising of the Sun of life and the glory of the Lord. It denotes the advent of the true golden age, of the fi-eedom and equality of all the redeemed before God and in God. No one can measure tbe joy and blessing which from year to year flow forth upon all ages of life from the contemplation of the ' Naialis^ or nalalUia Domini or C/irisii, rjnipa yevebXios, yevedKia TO 0 XOKTTO V. § 77. THE CHKISTMAS CYCLE. 395 holy child Jesus in his heavenly innocence and divine humility. Notwithstanding this deep significance and wide popularity, the festival of tlie birth of the Lord is of comparatively late institution. This may doubtless be accounted for in the fol- lowing manner : In the first place, no corresponding festival was presented by the Old Testament, as in the case of Easter and Pentecost. In the second place, the day and month of the birth of Christ are nowhere stated in the gospel history, and cannot be certainly determined. Again : the church lin- gered first of all about the death and resurrection of Christ, the completed fact of redemption, and made this the centre of the weekly worship and the church year. Finally : the ear- lier feast of Epiphany afforded a substitute. The artistic re- ligious impulse, however, which produced the whole church year, must sooner or later have called into existence a festival which forms the groundwork of all other annual festivals in honor of Christ. For, as Chrysostom, some ten years after the introduction of this anniversary in Antioch, justly said, with- out the birth of Chi'ist there were also no baptism, passion, resurrection, or ascension, and no outpouring of the Holy Ghost ; hence no feast of Epiphany, of Easter, or of Pente- cost. Tlie feast of Epiphany had spread from the East to the "West. The feast of Christmas took the opposite course. We find it first in Rome, in the time* of the bishop Liberius, who on the twenty-fifth of December, 360, consecrated Marcella, the sister of St. Ambrose, nun or bride of Christ, and addressed her with the words : " Thou seest what multitudes are come to the birth-festival of thy bridegroom." ' This passage implies that the festival was already existing and familiar. Christmas was introduced in Antioch about the year 380 ; in Alexandria, where the feast of Epiphany was celebrated as the nativity of Christ, not till about 430. Chrysostom, who delivered the Christmas homily in Antioch on the 25th of December, 386,* ' AmbiDse, De virgin, iii. 1: "Vides