commandments; and whereinsoever ye shall perceive yourselves to have offended, either by will, word, or deed, there to bewail your own sinfulness, and to confess yourselves to Almighty God, with full purpose of amendment of life." It is presumed that a man coming for the first time, or coming seldom, will make a careful selfexamination and preparation beforehand, that an habitual frequent communicant is probably also in the habit of constant self-examination or self-observation; but at the revision of A.D. 1552 it was directed that the Commandments should be recited here in the beginning of the service as a kind of formal fulfilment of this preparatory self-examination and confession to God. They who have done it at greater length in private beforehand now solemnly sum up their private exercise; they who have not formally gone through such a private preparation now at least are solemnly reminded to glance into their hearts and compare their lives with the great Rule of Life; and all are called upon, as each Commandment is recited, to confess their sinfulness under that head, Lord, have mercy upon us; and to ask God's help to sin no more under that head, Incline our hearts to keep this law; and, in fine, that He would write all these laws in our hearts; a phrase which clearly alludes to Heb. viii. 10 (and Jer. xxxi. 33, from which it is quoted): "This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people;" which means that God will put the knowledge of His will into our minds, and dispose our wills to conformity with His will, which is the evangelical fulfilling of the commandments; and He will be a gracious God to us, and we a loving and obedient people. Collect for the Sovereign (two alternative ones). -This prayer for the sovereign and people seems as if it were intercalated here without any organic connection with what goes before or follows. It is conjectured that it was inserted here at the desire of the sovereign, so that he might be recognised in the prayers of the Church on days when there was no celebration and the service stopped short before the prayer for the Church militant, in which the sovereign is mentioned. That we pray for the sovereign is no badge of the bondage of the Church to the State, as our opponents sometimes say. Ezra tells us (vi. 10) that Darius, in giving aid for the building of the temple and restoring the sacred vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had taken away, desired that they should "offer sacrifices unto the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king and of his sons; and this they continued to do for Persian, Greek, and Roman sovereigns till after our Lord's time, viz., till the beginning of their last war against Rome. So in the Christian Church, St. Paul, giving directions to Timothy (1 Tim. ii. 1), says: "I exhort that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men; for kings, and all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty." St. Paul taught plainly that the emperors were "God's ministers," even when those emperors were heathens and persecutors; and were to be reverenced and obeyed in all things lawful, "not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake" (Rom. xiii. 5). So the early Churches prayed, e.g., in the ancient Greek office, "for our most religious and God-protected sovereign, for all the palace and their army, let us beseech the Lord." THE INSTRUCTION. This part of the service consists of The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the day-The Nicene Creed-The Sermon. The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the day.— The greater part of the liturgy is invariable, for the relations of the Church to God continue the same; she has the same great act to plead, the same worship to offer, the same thanks to render, the same petitions to make for body and soul, day by day. But the collect, epistle, and gospel vary for every Sunday and great Holy day in the year. The object is to give a carefully chosen series of instructions, to offer a carefully selected series of subjects for meditation, arranged in an annual cycle. In the former half of the year, from Advent to Trinity Sunday, the Gospels bring before us in order the principal events in the life of our blessed Lord. In the latter half of the year they give us a selection from the parables, miracles, discourses. The Epistles in the early part of the year are so chosen as to form an inspired commentary on the events recorded in the corresponding gospels; in the latter part of the year the epistles are gone through in more regular succession, and such portions selected as tend most to edification. the The collects are adapted to the epistles and gospels. It is as if the event of the Lord's life, brought forward as the chief lesson of the scriptures of the day, had formed the subject of a profound spiritual meditation, and then very heart of the meditation had been taken and turned into prayer. It is obvious that this system carries the faithful churchman through a course of teaching, doctrinal and practical, which will save him from one-sidedness-the parent of error, and ensure fulness of knowledge, and the proportion of the faith; this system prepares materials 1 for the more thoughtful and devout for a course of meditations, arranged with great learning and spiritual insight.2 1 To which, on the great festivals, the special Lessons and special Psalms should be added. 2 It will interest you to know that the system is of great antiquity; the selection of the epistles and gospels is attributed to Jerome in the fourth century, and the greater part of the epistles and gospels still stand in our Prayer-Books as they were then |