e for speculation to maintain the
level of the Fourth Gospel, nothing of that would have happened; but
where were there theologians capable of this?]

APPENDIX II.

_Liturgy and the Origin of Dogma._

The reader has perhaps wondered why I have made so little reference to
Liturgy in my description of the origin of dogma. For according to the
most modern ideas about the history of religion and the origin of
theology, the development of both may be traced in the ritual. Without
any desire to criticise these notions, I think I am justified in
asserting that this is another instance of the exceptional nature of
Christianity. For a considerable period it possessed no ritual at all,
and the process of development in this direction had been going on, or
been completed, a long time before ritual came to furnish material for
dogmatic discussion.

The worship in Christian Churches grew out of that in the synagogues,
whereas there is no trace of its being influenced by the Jewish Temple
service (Duchesne, Origines du Culte Chretien, p. 45 ff.). Its oldest
constituents are accordingly prayer, reading of the scriptures,
application of scripture texts, and sacred song. In addition to these we
have, as specifically Christian elements, the celebration of the Lord's
Supper, and the utterances of persons inspired by the Spirit. The latter
manifestations, however, ceased in the course of the second century, and
to some extent as early as its first half. The religious services in
which a ritual became developed were prayer, the Lord's Supper and
sacred song. The Didache had already prescribed stated formulae for
prayer. The ritual of the Lord's Supper was determined in its main
features by the memory of its institution. The sphere of sacred song
remained the most unfettered, though here also, even at an early
period--no later in fact than the end of the first and beginning of the
second century--a fixed and a variable element were distinguished; for
responsory hymns, as is testified by the Epistle of Pliny and the still
earlier Book of Revelation, require to follow a definite arrangement.
But the whole, though perhaps already fixed during the course of the
second century, still bore the stamp of spirituality and freedom. It was
really worship in spirit and in truth, and this and no other was the
light in which the Apologists, for instance, regarded it. Ritualism did
not begin to be a power in the Church till the end of the secon