individual need at all times, though its resources are indeed copious and unfailing. It is the daily solace and inspiration of thousands of Christian hearts in the closet and at the hearth-stone, and thus, in a true sense, it is a treasury of devotion. It is set forth by authority as the Church's Book of common and public worship. It is not an accidental nor an ill-considered formation; no fortuitous arrangement, but a living organism, instinct with life and redolent with sanctity. An organism implies scientific method; and the Prayer Book (a point very generally overlooked), is constructed on strictly scientific principles; a feature by no means incompatible with, but on the contrary essential to, the orderly and effective rendition of public worship. Everything which comes from God is based on scientific principles and governed by scientific laws. From the increase of the grain or seed sown to the growth of the most complex nervous organism, all true development is orderly, and dictated by an intelligent Mind. Such should be the case with all that relates to Him, who is the Source of our being, and the Centre of our worship; and above all, with the methods and principles which underlie that worship, which is the highest expression of our faculties. Here, indeed, nothing should be left to chance or ignorance, which are fruitful sources of irreverence. Obscured in America by generations of popular usage of extemporaneous forms of prayer (which are not common prayer, and which, because extemporaneous, are none the less in danger of becoming empty forms and vain repetitions), there has existed from the beginning a distinct science of Liturgics, thoroughly understood in the Church after centuries of devout study and constant use. This holy science finds its best exemplification and fruitage in the composition and rendering of the Book of Common Prayer, which is a living exposition of "divine courtesy, reverent etiquette and worshipful decorum." No liturgy, no form of creed can for a moment compare for effectiveness of logical expression, reverent and dignified treatment of sacred themes and scholarly insight into the deep things of God, with the venerable symbols and formularies of the Anglican Communion. "Liturgical science, like the technique of music, is, if rightly inspired, a master-key to divine harmonies." The argument for forms of worship and a prescribed liturgy need hardly be pressed in these days, when the tendency is all in the direction of a return to a more reverent and seemly ritual, and when the speech of extemporaneous prayer about us is so often saturated with the Church's phraseology. The strength of the argument lies in the sober second thought of Christian hearts, and above all in the example of Our Lord, who was Himself the Author of the kernel of all religious forms, the Lord's Prayer. Throughout His earthly life He was a constant participant in the daily Temple and Synagogue worship, and habitually used the forms handed down by the elder Hebrew dispensation, whose teaching is not yet abrogated, but spiritualized and expanded; not destroyed, but fulfilled, in Christ and His Church. He submitted in due liturgical form to the Jewish rites of Circumcision and of Baptism, which last He made a Sacrament, with a prescribed form. In the Synagogue, He followed the usual postures of the Jewish Service, which was markedly lit urgical; a familiar form of words was on His sacred lips even in the Agony of the Garden; He quoted from the Psalms of David in the Last Seven Words from the Cross; He was the Ordainer, at the Feast of the Passover, in set words of solemn and momentous import, of the central religious observance of all Christendom, the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. His Apostles, taught by their Divine Master, were, first in the Temple and then in Synagogue or Catacombs or Christian Church, the daily observers of hours and forms of prayer. Their Bible was at first the Old Testament, for the Christian Church existed for thirty years before a line of the New Testament was written; just as the Hebrew Church antedated the Elder Scriptures. The Law, the Prophets, above all the Psalms (really the Hebrew Prayer Book) were the staple of their Daily Prayer, while the Liturgy proper, the Service of the Lord's Day, was always the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper; coupled with usages and forms of sound words growing directly out of and built around the original words of His own Institution, and supplemented later by Epistle and Gospel, when these last came to be written. II. THE GROWTH OF THE LITURGY. "The particular forms of Divine worship, and the Rites reasonable that upon weighty and important considerations, (a) Ancient. INQUIRY into the significance of the simple facts of Historical Christianity from its early days will work wonders in removing misconceptions and establishing a logical ground of religious belief. From the days of the Apostles themselves there existed forms of Daily Prayer more or less variant; and with these the Divine Liturgy, or Communion Office for the First Day of the week. In different parts of Christendom these Divine Liturgies varied in detail, as would be natural from lack of intercommunication and from multiplication of manuscripts. Yet their points of resemblance are many and unmistakable, and are distinctly traceable to four primitive forms, named for the respective Apostles, who, either personally or through their successors, gave them authority. These are known as the Liturgies of (1) St. James, Bishop of Jerusalem; (2) St. Mark, Bishop of Alexandria; (3) St. Peter, Bishop of Rome; and (4) St. John, Bishop of Ephesus. They are known as the Eastern, Alexandrine, Roman and Gallican Liturgies, and are perpetuated in some measure to this day in those parts of the Christian world. They are even referable to an apparently common and presumably Apostolic original, which it would not be difficult to suggest, by analysis of points of identity and divergence. The nucleus and essence of each is the Words of Consecration and Administration, as given at the original Institution. The channel through which England and America obtain their present Office of the Holy Communion is the same through which the Apostolic Succession or Historic Episcopate is derived, i. e., from the Gallican Church through the Bishops of Lyons, to the See of Canterbury; this (French) branch of the Church having been colonized from Ephesus, which was the See or Bishopric of St. John. A similar Liturgy was in use by the ancient Britons, and may have been derived from St. Paul, who probably visited the British Isles. When the Saxons, who were heathens, drove out the Britons, a remnant of the ancient British Church was left, with its threefold Ministry; and this Church was found existing in England by Augustine, the monk sent by Bishop Gregory, of Rome, in 596 A. D., to convert the Saxons. Through his influence these two Liturgies, the Gallican and the British, influenced also strongly by the Roman, were amalgamated, and were thus continued in use until 1085 A. D. after the Norman Conquest. Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, then revised it |