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RURAL HOURS 
Sinai, an event which took place fifty days after their departure 
from Egypt. To the Christian Church this has also been a high 
festival, for on that day took place the miraculous outpouring of 
the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Jerusalem, as recorded in 
the Acts. And this is the Whitsunday of our own Calendar. 
The third great festival, the Feast of Tabernacles, was entirely 
Jewish, and peculiar to themselves. As the Passover occurred 
in spring, Pentecost in summer, so the Feast of Tabernacles was 
held in the autumn. On some accounts, it was the most import- 
ant of all their festivals ; it fell during the seventh month of their 
ecclesiastical year, which commenced at the Passover ; but this 
was also the first month of their civil year, answering to our 
October, and a period of peculiar importance for the number of 
religious observances which fell during its course. The first of 
this month was their New- Year's day, and kept by a very singu- 
lar custom, the priests blowing a solemn blast on the trumpets, 
whence it was called the Feast of Trumpets, and they believed, 
on traditional authority, that the world was created at this season. 
Ten days after the Feast of Trumpets followed the great national 
fast, or day of atonement. But it was the third week of the 
same month that concluded the greater festivals of the year by 
the Feast of Tabernacles, one of their most pecuhar and most 
joyous celebrations. They were enjoined to live in booths for a 
week, to remind them of the tents of their ancestors, wanderers 
in the wilderness for forty years. These booths, or tents, or tab- 
ernacles — for such is the import of the latter word — were ordered 
to be made of branches " with boughs of goodly trees, branches 
of palm-trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook." 
But while thus commemorating the poverty and hardships of 
