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 me, until my appointed time shall come, may I at length reach the wished-for haven of safety and of peace.

BLESS Thee, and give thanks to Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, most gracious fashioner of man, and Restorer of his fallen nature, for the shame of nakedness endured by Thee at the foot of the Cross, when before the eyes of the mob who, like beasts of prey howling for their food, were roaring at Thee, Thou wast stripped of Thy clothes, and put to open shame. After all Thy clothes had been roughly taken from Thee, and had been given away as prize, there didst Thou stand blushing, trembling, girt only about the loins with a thin linen cloth, and crowned, instead of a diadem, with a garland of thorns, set at nought of men and utterly despised and rejected: there didst Thou stand, absolutely stripped of this world's goods, as an outcast of the people and a poverty-stricken alien, nay rather as the very poorest of the poor, bereft of everything and of every human consolation. For as, in the Garden of Eden, before Paradise was lost, the first Adam went naked; so now Thou too dost, in like manner, ascend the Cross naked, to regain for us that lost Paradise, from which Adam was cast out, and driven forth. For it was in order that the innocence which had been lost might be restored to fallen man; and in order