scussions was followed by a proposed book of worship. In 1857 was
published by Mr. Baird "A Book of Public Prayer, Compiled from the
Authorized Formularies of Worship of the Presbyterian Church, as
Prepared by the Reformers, Calvin, Knox, Bucer, and others"; and in 1858
was set forth by a committee of the German Reformed Church "A Liturgy,
or Order of Christian Worship." In 1855 St. Peter's Presbyterian Church
of Rochester published its "Church-book," prepared by Mr. L. W. Bacon,
then acting as pastor, which was principally notable for introducing the
use of the Psalms in parallelisms for responsive reading--a use which at
once found acceptance in many churches, and has become general in all
parts of the country. Sporadic experiments followed in various
individual congregations, looking toward greater variety or greater
dignity or greater musical attractiveness in the services of public
worship, or toward more active participation therein on the part of the
people. But these experiments, conducted without concert or mutual
counsel, often without serious study of the subject, and with a feebly
esthetic purpose, were representative of individual notions, and had in
them no promise of stability or of fruit after their kind. Only, by the
increasing number of them, they have given proof of an unrest on this
subject which at last is beginning to embody itself in organization and
concerted study and enterprise. A fifty years of mere tentative groping
is likely to be followed by another fifty years of substantial progress.

The influence of the Protestant Episcopal Church upon this growing
tendency has been sometimes favorable, sometimes unfavorable, but always
important. To begin with, it has held up before the whole church an
example of prescribed forms for divine worship, on the whole, the best
in all history. On the other hand, it has drawn to itself those in
other sects whose tastes and tendencies would make them leaders in the
study of liturgics, and thus while reinforcing itself has hindered the
general advance of improvement in the methods of worship. Withal, its
influence has tended to narrow the discussion to the consideration of a
single provincial and sectarian tradition, as if the usage of a part of
the Christians of the southern end of one of the islands of the British
archipelago had a sort of binding authority over the whole western
continent. But again, on the other hand, the broadening of its own views
to the e