THE LORD'S PRAYER PARAPHRASED. Lead us not into Temptation. O LORD, Thou knowest our infirmities, and the power of our enemies whenever it pleases Thee to TEMPT any of Thy children as Thou didst once tempt Abraham, to try and prove our hearts; do not lay upon us more than we are able to bear; with the temptation, make for us a way to escape, according to Thy promise. And, whenever our great enemy, the devil, is permitted to TEMPT us, may the fiery darts of his temptation be quenched, and not become sins. Give us light and grace to see the deceit of our corrupt hearts and lusts; that we may shun the evil, and choose the good. Lead us not into temptation. May we never lead our neighbours into temptation, nor rush foolishly into it ourselves. Make us the members of Thy dear Son, to abide with Him in His true Church, under all temptations, visible and invisible; that we may continue to be one in Him and with each other. But deliver us from Evil. FROM all EVIL that may happen to the body: From poverty, pain, and sickness : From war, pestilence, and famine: From accidents, and sudden death. Especially from all EVIL that may assault and hurt the soul: From the crafts and assaults of THE EVIL ONE: From blindness and hardness of heart: From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism: From strife, debate, and discontent: From bad company and bad habits; And from all the EVIL of punishment for sin, From Thy wrath in this world; And from everlasting destruction in the world to come; Good Lord, deliver me and every member of Thy Church. PRESBYTER. THE CHURCH CALENDAR. ST. LUKE THE EVANGELIST, Oct. 18th. THE name of Evangelist, though first given to all who were first commissioned to preach the Gospel, was afterwards limited to those four holy men, who each wrote a History of the life, teaching, and death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, forming the most important part of the New Testament Scriptures. Of these four Evangelists, or preachers of good tidings, two were apostles, and two apostolic men, that is, men who were followers of the Apostles, and lived in the same age with them. To this latter class belonged ST. LUKE. But though himself not called to be an Apostle, and therefore not possessing the advantage of being an eye-witness of the events he relates, or of hearing with his own ears those gracious words, which fell from the lips of Him, "who spake as never man spake," yet in all other respects he was singularly qualified for the task assigned to him. St. Luke was a native of Antioch, the capital of Syria, a city famous at that time, not only for its wealth, its pleasant situation, and its fertile soil, but for the attainments in learning and the polite arts at which its inhabitants had arrived. It was one of the first heathen cities in which the Gospel was preached, and it was here that the followers of the new doctrine were first called Christians. St. Luke, as we learn from St. Paul, was a physician, a man therefore who had received a learned education; this also is proved by his writings, which shows him to VOL. VIII.-No. 10. L have been possessed of those great merits in an historian, fidelity respecting the occurrences he relates, and elegance in relating them. He very early attached himself to St. Paul, by whom, in all probability, he was converted to the faith, and became his faithful companions and fellow-labourer in the ministry, almost, if not entirely to the close of St. Paul's life. We know that he accompanied him to Rome, where the blessed Apostle suffered crucifixion, but whether St. Luke remained to be a witness of that event, we have no certain records. His Gospel, as we learn from himself, was compiled from the statements of those "which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word," and was written partly to supply what seemed wanting in the two Evangelists that wrote before him, and also to prevent and correct those false and fabulous relations, which had already begun to be obtruded on the world. In this Gospel St. Luke dwells chiefly on the priestly office of our Saviour. His other work, the Acts of the Apostles, is chiefly a record of the labours and journeyings of St. Paul, but it contains besides the account of our Lord's Ascension, of the miraculous proceedings on the day of Pentecost, of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, and many other important particulars of the first days of the Christian Church. After the death of St. Paul, he devoted the rest of his life to preaching the Gospel in various parts of Greece and Macedonia, and at last suffered martyrdom in the eightieth or eighty-fourth year of his age. Our next Festival is honoured by the names of two Apostles, one of them the brother of our Lord. Simon, called Zelotes, is sometimes also called the Canaanite, from which some have supposed that he was born at Cana, in Galilee. But as Canaanite in Hebrew, also signifies to be zealous, it is more probable that both appellations referred to the same circumstance, namely, to the warm and zealous temper of Simon; or else, to his belonging to the Jewish sect of the Zealots, a body of men who took this name from professing a more than ordinary zeal in all that related to the honour of God. ST. SIMON remained with the rest of the Apostles after our Lord's Ascension, until they had together celebrated the Feast of Pentecost, and received the miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit, which was to fit them for their great work of preaching the Gospel to all nations; he then departed, it is said, into Egypt. Some assert that he subsequently passed into Britain, and that here, after enduring many persecutions, and also converting many to the faith, he was crucified by the infidels. Others allege that he was put to death by the idolatrous priests of Persia. But where and in what manner soever his death took place, we may be sure that it was conducive no less than his life had been, to the glory of God and the spread of His Gospel. JUDE OR JUDAS, the son of Alpheus, and brother to James the Less, and therefore in the same sense as he was likewise the brother to Jesus Christ, is distinguished also in the New Testament by two other names, both honourable :-Lebbeus, denoting Prudence and Understanding; and Thaddeus, signifying a person Zealous in praising God. These names serve also to distinguish him from that other Judas, whose name has become a bye-word and curse throughout the whole Christian world. Except that question which he put to his Divine Master, "How wilt thou manifest thyself to us and not unto the world ?” showing that he too clung to the idea of an earthly and visible kingdom, we have no further mention of St. Jude by the sacred historian. But he has left to the Church an Epistle, which though short, is remarkable for the tone of deep and solemn earnestness in which it is written, and which seems to make it a fitting introduction to the Revelation of St. John, following it immediately in the sacred canon. He urges upon his hearers by references to the vengeance poured out upon sinners in past ages, and by prophecies respecting the judgment received for the ungodly at the last day, "to contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered to the saints," and "to keep themselves in the love of God." He tells them also of scoffers, who shall come in the last times, walking after their own ungodly lusts. These last times may or may not be our times, but in any case the warning and the exhortation of the Apostle are equally applicable to us; for there is enough of evil in us and arround us to need all our efforts and all our watchfulness, and that we should daily and hourly seek strength from Him, who, in St. Jude's words, is alone "able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy." There seems little doubt that after a faithful exercise of his ministry for several years, St. Jude suffered for his boldness in declaring the truth, and was put to death by some of the idolatrous people among whom he laboured. Persia is the country in which it is believed, he preached the Gospel, and received the crown of martyrdom. H. E. THE CALENDAR. My Prayer-book is a casket bright, I open to the Lord: Yet when I first unclasp its lids, The Church's Calendar. |