JAPANESE AND JEWISH FESTIVALS, FASTS, AND OBSERVANCES.
JAPANESE.
NEW YEAR'S DAY.-First of January.
GEN-SHU-SAI. The festival of opening all public business.
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KI-GEN-SETSU. The 11th of February; the Commemoration of Jimmu-Yennō, the first emperor of the present dynasty.
YEN-CHO-SETSU.-The 3rd of November, the birth day of the reigning Emperor.
JEWISH.
The festival of the Jews were held weekly, monthly, and yearly. Each seventh and fifteenth year, moreover, was kept with peculiar solemnities.
The weekly festival was the Sabbath, a day consecrated to rest and cheerful devo- tion. It was instituted when God rested, on the seventh day, from the work of Creation, and the precept was renewed to the Hebrews at Marah, ere yet the Decalogue had been given from Sinai. It was kept from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday.
The monthly festival was held on the day of the new moon, or the first day of every month, which was proclaimed by sound of trumpet; the law, however, did not oblige the people to rest on these days, though it appointed particular sacrifices.
The Feast of the Passover, of Pentecost, and of Tabernacles, were the three principal festivals observed under the law, and they were times of real joy and festivity. As all the male inhabitants throughout the country were required on these occasions to go up to Jerusalem, and the females also permitted to accompany them if they chose, the concourse was generally very great. These religious assemblies, besides commemorating important events in their history, also subserved other important purposes. They kept them steadfast to their religion, by the views of ceremonies and the majesty of the divine service; they afforded the means of religious instruction, for the law of God was then read and explained; and they served, moreover, to renew the acquaintance and friendship of tribes and families, who from all parts of the country thus met three times in the year in the holy city.
The PASSOVER was instituted to commemorate the departure out of Egypt, because on the night preceding that departure, the destroying angel who slew the first-born of the Egyptians passed over the houses of the Hebrews, they being marked with the blood of the lamb, which for this reason was called the Paschal Lamb. It was celebrated on the fourteenth day of the first month of the ecclesiastical year. It falls at the end of March and finishes at the beginning of April, and lasted seven days. A lamb, or, if that could not be found, a kid, without blemish, was killed, roasted, and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The first Pas-over was eaten with their loins girded, their shoes on their feet, and their staves in their hands, that they might be in readiness for their journey, circumstances which were not observed in its celebration after the Exodus.
The Feast of PENTECOST, or WEEKS, was celebrated on the fiftieth day after the Passover, and was a feast of thanksgiving to the Lord, wherein they acknowledged his dominion over their country and their labours, by offering to him two loaves as the first fruits of all their harvest. It also commemorated the giving of the law from Mount Sinai, two years and fifty days after their departure from Egypt. The Hebrews counted seven weeks from the Passover, beginning on the second day of that solem- nity, and bene called it the Feast of Weeks; but by the Christians it was called Pentecost, a name which signifies t'e Fiftieth Day. It was on the day of Pentecost that the Holy Spirit was poured out from the ascended Saviour upon his Apostles, qualifying them with miraculous gifts for esblishing the New Testament kingdom.
The Feast of TABERNACLES was instituted as a memorial of their fathers having dwelt in tents for forty years, during the passage through the wilderness. It was kept in the first month of the civil year, falls at the end of September and finishes at the beginning of October, and lasted eight days, the first and seventh being the most solemn. During its contiuance they lived in booths, tents, or arbours, constructed of the branches and leaves of trees. On the first day they cut down branches of the handsomest trees, with their fruits, which they carried in ceremony to the synagogue. Holding in their right hand a branch of palm tree, of myrtle, and two of willow, tied