nd to the volume a Comparative
Table detailing the additions of liturgical matter made to the
Common Prayer at the successive revisions.

W. R. H. New York, Christmas, 1892.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.

I. ORIGINS.

Liturgical worship, understood in the largest sense the phrase can
bear, means divine service rendered in accordance with an established
form. Of late years there has been an attempt made among purists to
confine the word "liturgy" to the office entitled in the Prayer
Book, _The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper or
Holy Communion_.

This restricted and specialized interpretation of a familiar word
may serve the purposes of technical scholarship, for undoubtedly
there is much to be said in favor of the narrowed signification as
we shall see; but unless English literature can be rewritten, plain
people who draw their vocabulary from standard authors will go on
calling service-books "liturgies" regardless of the fact that they
contain many things other than that one office which is entitled
to be named by eminence _the_ Liturgy. "This Convention," write the
fathers of the American Episcopal Church in the Ratification printed
on the fourth page of the Prayer Book, "having in their present
session set forth a Book of Common Prayer and other rites and
ceremonies of the Church, do hereby establish the said book; and
they declare it to be the _Liturgy_ of this Church."

For the origin of liturgy thus broadly defined we have to go a long
way back; beyond the Prayer Book, beyond the Mass-book, beyond the
ancient Sacramentaries, yes, beyond the synagogue worship, beyond
the temple worship, beyond the tabernacle worship; in fact I am
disposed to think that, logically, we should be unable to stop
short until we had reached the very heart of man itself, that
dimly discerned groundwork we call human nature, and had discovered
there those two instincts, the one of worship and the other of
gregariousness, from whence all forms of common prayer have sprung.
Where three or two assemble for the purposes of supplication, some
form must necessarily be accepted if they are to pray in unison.
When the disciples came to Jesus begging him that he would teach
them how to pray, he gave them, not twelve several forms, though
doubtless James's special needs differed from John's and Simon's
from Jude's--he gave them, not twelve, but o