as the "use of Sarum" (or Salisbury), and this, with other diocesan uses, was maintained until the time of Edward VI., or the Reformation days of the sixteenth century.

During nine hundred years of increasing ignorance and tyranny, which had then elapsed since the days of Augustine, false doctrines and superstitious practices had corrupted the pure Liturgy. These were swept away by learned Bishops and Clergy of what had now become a vigorous National Church, with Archbishop Cranmer at its head; and the tyranny and usurpation of the Bishop of Rome were thrown off, the purely political designs of the corrupt King Henry VIII. being made to serve the purposes of God. The Church Services were not rewritten, but compiled from existing Service-books, and enriched from primitive and forgotten sources. They founded no new Church, nor did they attempt to do so, like the mistaken reformers on the Continent. They simply uprooted and destroyed the weeds which had long choked and cumbered the fair garden of the Church, and restored it to something of its original purity. They were reformers like Hezekiah and Josiah in the Hebrew Church of old, and their work was the work of masters. Unhappily the evil political alliance of Church with State was retained, to be laboriously disentangled by later generations.

They found four classes of Service-books: the Breviary (or Daily Service), the Missal (or Communion Office), the Pontifical (or Ordination Offices), and the Manual (or Occasional Services). These they curtailed in bulk and reduced to one Book. They found several uses or editions, those of Sarum, York, Hereford, Lincoln, Bangor and Durham; and they blended them into one purified

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form. They found the Services in Latin and translated them into English, retaining a few Latin and Greek titles, dear through long association.

They found the Services arranged for nine different "hours" or periods of the day, i. e., Nocturne (middle of the night), Matins (before day-break), Lauds (day-break), Prime (six A. M.), Tierce (nine A. M.), Sexts (noon), Nones (three P. M.), Vespers (evening), Compline (bedtime). Matins, Lauds and Prime were reckoned but one Service, leaving the theoretical number seven. Omitting entirely Tierce, Sexts and Nones, the reformers condensed these burdensome practices into Matins and Evensong, or Morning and Evening Prayer, adding the Litany or General Supplication on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. They rearranged the Psalter, so that it might be read through in twenty-eight (now thirty) days instead of seven, and omitted all Lessons or Selections for reading except those from Holy Scripture. They pruned away all superstitious and extravagant expressions, and then submitted their work to Convocation, by whom it was approved and adopted.

(b) Modern.

This was the first authoritative Book of Common Prayer (called the FIRST PRAYER BOOK OF EDWARD VI.) which appropriately came into general use on Whitsunday, the Christian Day of Pentecost, June 9, 1549 A. D. The birthday of the Christian Church and that of the Anglican Prayer Book are thus identical; and this revision, known in the following pages as the First Book, has always been considered a model of liturgical and devotional excellence,

and has largely and loftily moulded Anglican worship. As such it will have frequent mention here. In America the Prayer Book was first used by Rev. Francis Fletcher, a chaplain of Sir Francis Drake, at Drake's Bay, on the coast of California, on St. John Baptist's Day, in 1579. A second revision was made in Edward's reign and a subsequent one under Queen Elizabeth, but neither was for the better, both being rather in the interest of the ultra-Protestants. Under James I. in 1611 A. D., came the present Authorized Version of the Bible, which, however, as regards the Psalms, did not supersede, for use in Churches, the venerable Prayer Book Psalter, already greatly endeared by over sixty years of use. Other Scripture selections employed in the Services are also from the Great Bible, like the Psalter, or else especially translated for this purpose.

With the growth of the Puritan party the Prayer Book was abolished under Oliver Cromwell, and its use forbidden. At the restoration of Charles II. a new revision was set forth in 1662, by Convocation, after the sessions of the famous Savoy Conference. This Caroline revision, though a decided variation from the First Book, was much nearer to it than the two intervening ones, and has held its place in constant use for more than two centuries. No change of moment has since been made in the English Prayer Book, except the introduction of a new and greatly improved Lectionary, or Table of Scripture Lessons, in 1871. It has been translated into nearly one hundred languages; and chiefly from it was made and set forth by our General Convention, at the beginning of our national life in 1789, the revision known as the First American Prayer Book.

Before and during the early years of our independence

as a National Church, we had a hard struggle for existence. The Anglican Service was forbidden in Massachusetts until liberty was secured by the Royal proclamation in 1662. Opprobrium, often unreasonable, sometimes cruel, attached to anything of English origin. In spite of the fact that a majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and of the framers of the Constitution, were Churchmen, including the Father of his Country, still a Churchman was, in many minds, a synonym for a royalist. Added to this, the Church suffered terribly from her long existence in the colonies without the presence and supervision of Bishops. Nominally the Bishop of London had jurisdiction over the entire continent, but he never personally exercised it, and the anomaly existed for generations of a Church, Episcopal in government, without the Episkopos, or overseer. Confirmations and ordinations were unknown except in theory, or unless long and dangerous journeys were taken to England to obtain them; while the Puritan spirit, so long prevalent in our country, could see nothing good in a Church of English association.

At last in 1784 Bishop Seabury obtained consecration in Scotland under great difficulty, followed by Bishop White and others consecrated later in England, and these brought the Episcopate to America. The story of these early struggles is almost too interesting to forego here. To Bishop Seabury's dauntless sagacity we are primarily indebted; but his career was short as compared with that of Bishop White, who remained Presiding Bishop until 1836. During a period of nearly fifty years his saintly life and consistent example were very useful factors in maintaining and defending ground already acquired.

But discouragements were great, and we dared not claim our heritage in anything like its integrity. The missionary spirit flagged in England and America, and the evils of a Church across the water, then too subservient to the State and too worldly in its spirit, were felt by her daughter here. In 1821, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society was organized, and the Church itself was declared to be, by its very charter, the great Missionary Society. In the third decade of this century occurred the famous Tractarian or Oxford movement, which revived in the English Church the theology of the Incarnation, and quickened and spiritualized worship. In 1835, following the grandly constructive work of Bishop Hobart, the aggressive and evangelizing spirit fairly took possession of the American Church; the consecration of Bishop Kemper in that year to be the first Domestic Missionary Apostle of the Northwest Territory having been preceded, in 1830, by the establishment of our first Foreign Mission, a purely educational one, to Athens, in Greece.

Rigid adherence to a formal attitude was still too common; standards of canonical uniformity, then thought sufficient for our needs, would ill beseem us now as a working theory; and observances of great beauty and fitness, to-day almost universal and unchallenged, were then practically unknown. The need of some relaxation of rubrics was originally suggested, in 1853, by the Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg (one of the Church's very greatest names, well called "the saint among the priests"), in his celebrated Memorial looking towards Christian Unity, which resulted in the appointment of the first Commission on the subject. In 1856, the House of Bishops formally declared