Chapter V.—Eucharistic Rites.  Liturgy. § 1.  First Communion.  When the rites of Baptism and Chrism were completed, the new-made Christians, clothed in white robes (Myst. iv. 8), and bearing each a lighted taper in his hand, passed in procession from the Baptistery into the great “Church of the Resur- rection.”  The time was still night, as we gather from the allusion in Procat., § 15:  “May God at length shew you that night, that darkness which shines like the day, concerning which it is said, darkness shall not be hidden from thee, and the night shall be light as the day.”  As the newly-baptized entered the church, they were welcomed in the words of the 32nd Psalm.  “Even now,” says Cyril (Procat., § 15), “let your ears ring, as it were, with that glorious sound, when over your salvation the Angels shall chant, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; when like stars of the Church you shall enter in, bright in the body and radiant in the soul.”  During the chanting of the Psalm the neophytes seem to have stood in front of the raised ‘bema’ or sanctuary, as we learn from Cyril’s eloquent contemporary, Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. XL. § 46:  “The station in which presently after Baptism thou wilt stand before the great sanctuary prefigures the glory from yonder heaven; the psalmody, with which thou wilt be welcomed, is a prelude of those heavenly hymns; the lamps, which thou wilt light, are a mystic sign of the procession of lights, with which bright and virgin souls shall go forth to meet the Bridegroom, with the lamps of faith burning brightly.” From the Syriac “Treatise of Severus, formerly Patriarch of Alexandria (Antioch), con- cerning the rites of Baptism and of Holy Communion (Synaxis) as received among the Syrian Christians” (Resch, Agrapha, § 12, p. 361); we learn that it was the custom “to lift up the newly-baptized to the altar, and after giving them the mysteries the Bishop (Sacerdos) crowned them with garlands.” The white garments (Procat., § 2:  Mystag., iv. 88) were worn until the Octave of Easter, Low Sunday, Dominica in Albis (Bingham, XII. c. iv. § 3). § 2.  The Liturgy.  In Cyril’s last Lecture, Mystagogic V., he reminds his hearers of what they had witnessed at their first Communion on Easter-day, and thus gives a most valuable testimony to the prescribed form of administering the Holy Eucharist in the Eastern Church in the middle of the fourth century. Passing over all the preparatory portion of the Liturgy, he tells us first that the Deacon brings water to the Bishop or Priest (τῷ ἱερεῖ) and to the Presbyters who stand round the altar, that they may wash their hands in token of the need of purification from sin; a ceremony which evidently had reference to the words of the Psalmist, “I will wash mine hands in in- Eucharistic Rites.  Liturgy. 44 Eucharistic Rites.  Liturgy.