Words from an Advent sermon by Keble, another example of the Tractarians continuing the High Church recognition of the power of a Prayer Book Advent. Similarly, here is Keble commencing the first of four sermons - "summing up of catechising after the 2nd lesson at the Evening Service" - on the Advent collects:
I do not know that we can well find a more profitable subject for our meditations on the four Fridays of this Advent, than the four collects appointed by the Church for the four several weeks. The first of them, which we have now been using for nearly a week, is appointed also, as you know, to be repeated during the whole season: being in fact a prayer that we may use that season aright.
He also points to the formative power of the yearly Epistles and Gospels for Advent. Take, for example, this reference to the Epistle for Advent Sunday:
As if, when the light is just about to shine forth in the morning, some friend should come to the room where a man is sleeping, and stir him up, to prepare him self and be ready to set about his day's work ; so does the Apostle, in this and every Advent, knock at the door of our hearts. He cries aloud to us in our Saviour's Name, and if we are not very dead asleep, very dull and hard-hearted indeed, we can hardly help starting up and attending to him. What is his cry ? "The night is far spent, the day is at hand."
Above all, Keble points to the Advent Collects, Epistles, and Gospels as the means of centring the Church on the reality of the eschatological judgement:
To bring her children into this mind, the Church sets before us the great Day of the Lord as the continual subject of our meditation for a full month, or near it, before Christmas day. Advent goes before Christmas: the second coming of our Lord must be in our minds to prepare us for duly regarding His first coming. The lessons, therefore, and collects set down in the Prayer Book for these four weeks all look that way. They are all meant to keep up in the minds of Christians the aweful image of our Lord coming in the clouds, with His glorious Body, yet bearing the marks of the Cross; of the angels around Him; of the world burning under His feet; of the dead, small and great, standing before Him; of the judgement set, and of the books opened.
There is little, if anything, here that could not be gleaned from 18th century High Church commentaries on the Prayer Book's Advent provisions. It is further evidence of the significance of High Church Advent observance, shared by the Tractarians, and pre-dating the later introduction of liturgical colours, seasonal hymnody, and additional liturgical material. The Tractarians, therefore, become witnesses to a well-established High Church perception of and piety surrounding the dignified, rigorous simplicity of the Prayer Book Advent.
(All of the above extracts are from various sermons in Sermons from Advent to Christmas, by the late Rev. John Keble, 1875)
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