Outside the precincts a great tent has been erected, and here, all through the night, the Bishop and his assistants have been praying the prayers of David the great penitent. All night long the penitential psalms have been going up, beseeching the Lord to wash away the sins of His people, His exiles on earth who are waiting without the camp and entreating Him to take them into grace and bring them to their Father’s home. With the first faint light of dawn the prayers cease, the supplicants arise, and the Bishop puts on his vestments, one by one and with a special prayer for each, because he thus figures the Son of God putting on the garment of our humanity. And because Christ, as man, prayed to His Father and ours, the Bishop comes forth from the tent and prostrates himself before the steps of the church in fervent prayer, with all his clergy kneeling around him. Now the natural soul is cold and blind, and closed to Grace; so the church stands, unlighted and with fast-closed doors. And because the Spirit of God is all gentleness and mercy, and condescends to most patient stratagems to capture the heart He covets, the Bishop goes three times round the great building, praying and knocking softly at its doors, while the clergy follow him and pray too, as the angels pray for us. At last the first barrier falls; the doors open, reluctantly as it were. The Bishop crosses the threshold saying, “Peace eternal to this House, in the Name of the Eternal.” The procession passes within, the shadows swallowing up the gold and crimson of the vestments that had been sparkling in the sun. A strange sight the empty church presents now. On the pavement two broad paths of ashes traverse its entire length and breadth, in the form of a Greek cross. The assistants stand in silent groups while the Bishop, slowly moving down from the apse to the entrance, and then across from one transept to the other, traces in the ashes the Latin and Greek alphabets with his crozier. Why? Because the first need of the soul is instruction. “How shall they know except they first be taught?” And since God will not take possession of a soul without its own concurrence and consent, it must know Him before it receives Him.