ness as a new form of worship. And I am now glad
that it was not introduced. For while I am as much satisfied as ever
of the great utility of a Liturgy, I have become equally convinced that
original, spontaneous prayer is likely to open the preacher's heart,
or to stir up the gift in him in a way very important to his own
ministration and to the edification of his people. The best service, I
think, should consist of both.

And I cannot help believing that a church service will yet be arranged
which will be an improvement upon all existing ones, Roman Catholic,
Church of England, or any other. If in the highest ranges of human
attainment there is to be an advancement of age beyond age, surely there
is to be a progress in the spirit and language of prayer. From some
forming hand and heart, by the united aid of consecrated genius, wisdom,
and piety, something is to come greater than we have yet seen. No
Homeric poem or vision of Dante is so grand as that will be. What is the
highest idea of God, excluding superstition, anthropomorphism, and vague
impersonality alike, what is the fit and true utterance of the deepest
and divinest heart to God, this, I must think, may well occupy the
sublimest meditations of human intellect and devotion. Not that the
entire Liturgy, however, should be the product of any one man's thought.
I would have in a Liturgy some of the time-hallowed prayers, some of
the Litanies [82] that have echoed in the ear of all the ages from the
early Christian time. The churches of Rome and England and Germany have
some of these; and in a service-book, supposed to be compiled by the
Chevalier Bunsen, there are others, prayers of Basil and of Jerome and
Augustine, and of the old German time. There are beautiful things in
them, especially in the old German prayers there is something very
filial, free, and touching; but they would want a great deal of
expurgation, and I believe that better prayers are uttered today than
were ever heard before; and it is from uttered, not written prayers, if
I could do so by the aid of a stenographer or of a perfect memory, that
I would draw contributions to a book of devotion. What would I not give
for some prayers of Channing or of Henry Ware! some that I have heard
by their own firesides, or of Dr. Gardiner Spring, or of Dr. Payson of
Portland, that I heard in church many years ago, for the very words that
fell from their lips! I do not believe that the right prayers were ever