S. Joseph of the Studium.

The third period of Greek Hymnology opens with its most voluminous writer, S. Joseph of the Studium. A Sicilian by birth, he left his native country on its occupation by the Mahometans in 830, and went to Thessalonica, where he embraced the monastic life. Thence he removed to Constantinople, but, in the second Iconoclastic persecution, he seems to have felt no vocation for confessorship, and went to Rome. Taken by pirates, he was for some years a slave in Crete, where he converted many to the faith; and having obtained his liberty, and returned to the Imperial City, he stood high in the favour, first of S. Ignatius, then of Photius, whom he accompanied into exile.

On the death of that great man he was recalled, and gave himself up entirely to Hymnology. A legend, connected with his death, is sometimes represented on the walls of the churches in the Levant. A citizen of Constantinople betook himself to the church of S. Theodore in the hope of obtaining some benefit from the intercessions of that martyr. He waited three days in vain ; then, just as he was about to leave the church in despair, S. Theodore appeared. "I," said the vision, "and the other Saints, whom the poet Joseph has celebrated in his Canons, have been attending his soul to Paradise hence my absence from my church." The Eastern Communion celebrates him on the 3rd of April. But of the innumerable compositions of this most laborious writer it would be impossible to find more than two or three which, to Western taste, give the least sanction to the position which he holds in the East. The insufferable tediousness consequent on the necessity of filling eight Odes with the praises

of a Saint of whom nothing, beyond the fact of his martyrdom, is known, and doing this sixty or seventy different times,-the verbiage, the bombast, the trappings with which Scriptural simplicity is elevated to the taste of a corrupt Court, are each and all scarcely to be paralleled. He is by far the most prolific of the hymn writers.

SUNDAY OF THE PRODIGAL SON. (SEPTUAGESIMA.)

The Sunday before Septuagesima, and Septuagesima itself are, respectively, in the Greek Church, the Sunday of the Pharisee and Publican, and the Sunday of the Prodigal Son,-those parables forming the gospel for the day, and serving for the keynote to the offices. The following Troparia are from the Canon at Lauds on Septuagesima. (Ode VI. and Ode VIII. Trop. 2, 3.)

βυθὸς ἁμαρτημάτων.

The abyss of many a former sin
Encloses me, and bars me in :
Like billows my transgressions roll:
Be Thou the Pilot of my soul:
And to Salvation's harbour bring,

Thou Saviour and Thou glorious King!

My Father's heritage abused,
Wasted by lust, by sin misused;

To shame and want and misery brought,
The slave to many a fruitless thought,
I cry to Thee, Who lovest men,
O pity and receive again!

In hunger now,-no more possessed
Of that my portion bright and blest,
The exile and the alien see

Who yet would fain return to Thee!
And save me, LORD, who seek to raise
To Thy dear love the hymn of praise!

With that blest thief my prayer I make,
Remember for Thy mercy's sake!
With that poor publican I cry,
Be merciful, O GOD most High!
With that lost Prodigal I fain

Back to my home would turn again!

Mourn, mourn, my soul, with earnest care,
And raise to CHRIST the contrite prayer:-
O Thou, Who freely wast made poor,
My sorrows and my sins to cure,
Me, poor of all good works, embrace,
Enriching with Thy boundless grace!