he Seceders."

The period of the disruption in Scotland was one of such struggle
concerning great and fundamental principles of Church government, that
the Free Church, during the first quarter of a century of its existence
as a separate communion, had little time to devote to a consideration
of the subject of worship; with the work of organization at home, and
afterwards in seeking to carry forward evangelization abroad it was
fully occupied. It was for the Free Church, as also for the
Established Church, a period of revival and of new life, and at such a
time men think but little of form and method, finding spiritual
satisfaction in the voluntary and spontaneous worship which such an
occasion develops. The practice, however, of the Free Church in
worship, and its uniform tendency, was decidedly un-liturgical; freedom
from prescribed forms in prayer and an absence of ritual marked its
services during the half-century of its existence as a separate
communion. So emphatic was its devotion to absolute liberty on the
part of the worshippers that it was the last of the great Presbyterian
bodies in Scotland to take any steps towards a further control of
public worship other than that which is provided in the Directory.

About the year 1885 the Presbyterian Churches of England and of
Australia appointed committees to consider the matter of a uniform
order and method of public worship, and these in each case devoted
their efforts to the revision of the Westminster Directory, and in
neither has anything more liturgical been suggested than the repetition
of the Creed and the Lord's Prayer by the people. The orders of
service recommended are more lengthy than that of the Westminster
Directory, but are similar in their general character. The hesitation
shown in accepting even such slight changes as were suggested and the
vigorous debates which resulted, furnish abundant evidence that the
spirit of both of these Churches is still strong in favor of voluntary
and untrammeled worship.

It is but right that in reviewing public worship outside of the
Established Church, reference should be made to the practice of those
large sections of the Presbyterian Church which, originating in
Scotland, have grown strong in other lands.

The Presbyterian Church of the United States of America has exhibited
in the main the same spirit that has characterized Presbyterian bodies
across the sea. In 1788 the Synod of New York and Philadelphia