he felt unity and continuity of the two
Covenants. No book of the Old Testament, with the exception of Isaiah,
is so frequently quoted in the New as the book of Psalms.

But still more remarkable is the influence of the Psalter on Christian
_worship_. The Church {3} exists in the world not only as the
teaching, but also as the worshipping community. As the ages pass she
ceases not to bear the witness of her praise and thanksgiving to the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. From the beginning she showed a
tendency to do this in ordered and liturgical forms. The Apostolic
Church continued steadfast in "the prayers" (Acts ii. 42, R.V.). The
expression implies not merely a daily gathering for worship, but the
offering of that worship in a fixed and orderly manner, suggested, no
doubt, by the existing Jewish services. Whatever may have been the
actual form of "the prayers" in the first age of the Church, or
whatever stages they may have passed through, there can be no doubt
that they are the germ of all the rich later developments of the
liturgy of the Church, such as are represented in the Middle Ages by
the Missal and the Breviary, and to-day by our own Book of Common
Prayer.

The regular services of the Church fall naturally into two classes.
The Eucharist, the service of the Altar, took the place of the
sacrificial worship of the Temple. The Divine Office, the service of
the Choir, may have been suggested by the services of the Synagogue.
But if so, there is one most significant difference. {4} The Christian
Church made a much fuller public use of the Psalms than the Synagogue
ever seems to have done.[1] The Psalms in the Jewish Church seem to
have been adjuncts or embellishments of the service, rather than its
central feature. The Divine Office of the Christian Church practically
is the Psalter. The readings from other parts of Scripture, so
prominent in the Synagogue service, fall now into a secondary place.
The recitation of the Psalms, which appears from very early times as
the characteristic Christian devotion, became the very centre and core
of the sevenfold daily Choir Office of the mediaeval Church. The whole
Psalter in theory was said through once a week, mainly at Mattins (the
midnight office), while selected Psalms formed the chief part of the
subsequent services of the day.[2] The English Reformers, however
hastily and trenchantly they may have cut down and simplified these
services of the Br