And can we be too thankful
to the sturdy champions of the Reformation, who in the face of no
little opposition and by efforts scarcely appreciated to-day, cut
us loose from all responsibility for such solemn nonsense?

There are some who feel aggrieved that chapters from the Apocrypha
should have found admission to our new lectionary, and there are
even those who think that of the canonical Scriptures, passages
more edifying than certain of those appointed to be read might
have been chosen, but what would they think if they were compelled
to hear the minister at the lecturn say: "Here beginneth the first
chapter of the Adventures of Philip the Fair"?

But the reformers, happily, were not discouraged by the portentous
front of wood, hay, and stubble which the liturgical edifice of
their day presented to the eye. They felt convinced that there
were also to be found mixed in with the building material gold,
silver, and precious stones, and for these they determined to make
diligent search, resolved most of all that the foundation laid
should be Jesus Christ. This system of canonical hours, they
argued, this seven-fold office of daily prayer is all very
beautiful in theory, but it never can be made what in fact it
never in the past has been, a practicable thing. Let us be content
if we can do so much as win people to their devotions at morning
and at night. With this object in view Cranmer and his associates
subjected the services of the hours to a process of combination
and condensation. The Offices for the first three hours they
compressed into _An Order for Daily Morning Prayer_, or, as it was
called in Edward's first Book, _An Order for Matins_, and the
Offices for the last two hours, namely, Vespers and Complene,
they made over into _An Order for Daily Evening Prayer_, or, as
it was named in Edward's first Book, _An Order for Evensong_.

These two formularies, the _Order for Matins_ and the _Order for
Evensong_, make the core and substance of our present daily
offices. But the tradition of daily prayer is only one of the
two great devotional heritages of the Church. With the destruction
of the temple by the Roman soldiery, the sacrificial ritual of
the Jewish Church came to a sudden end; but it was not God's
purpose that the memory of sacrifice should fade out of men's
minds or that the thought of sacrifice should be banished from
the field of worship. Years before the day when the legionaries
of Titus marched am