IV. This is our present Festival; it is this
which we are celebrating to-day, the Coming of God to Man, that we
might go forth, Ephes. iv. 22, 24. or
rather (for this is the more
proper expression) that we might go back to God—that putting off
the old man, we might put on the New; and that as we died in Adam, so
we might live in Christ, 1 Cor. xv. 22. being born with
Christ and crucified with Him and buried with Him and rising with
Him. Col. ii. 11. For I must undergo the beautiful
conversion, and as the painful succeeded the more blissful, so must the
more blissful come out of the painful. For where sin abounded
Grace did much more abound; Rom. v. 20. and if a taste
condemned us, how much more doth the Passion of Christ justify
us? Therefore let us keep the Feast, not after the manner of a
heathen festival, but after a godly sort; not after the way of the
world, but in a fashion above the world; not as our own but as
belonging to Him Who is ours, or rather as our Master’s; not as
of weakness, but as of healing; not as of creation, but of
re-creation.