ne. "When ye pray,"
was his answer, "say Our Father." That was the beginning of
Christian Common Prayer. Because we are men we worship, because
we are fellow-men our worship must have form.

But waiving this last analysis of all which carries us across the
whole field of history at a leap, it becomes necessary to seek
for liturgical beginnings by a more plodding process.

If we take that manual of worship with which as English-speaking
Christians we are ourselves the most familiar, the Book of Common
Prayer, and allow it to fall naturally apart, as a bunch of
flowers would do if the string were cut, we discover that in
point of fact we have, as in the case of the Bible, many books
in one. We have scarcely turned the title-page, for instance,
before we come upon a ritual of daily worship, an order for
Morning Prayer and an order for Evening Prayer, consisting in
the main of Psalms, Scripture Lessons, Antiphonal Versicles,
and Collects. Appended to this we find a Litany or General
Supplication and a collection of special prayers.

Mark an interval here, and note that we have completed the first
volume of our liturgical library. Next, we have a sacramental
ritual, entitled, _The Order for the Administration of the Lord's
Supper or Holy Communion_, ingeniously interwoven by a system of
appropriate prayers and New Testament readings with the Sundays
and holydays of the year. This gives us our second volume.
Then follow numerous offices which we shall find it convenient
to classify under two heads, namely: those which may be said by
a bishop or by a presbyter, and those that may be said by a
bishop only. Under the former head come the baptismal offices,
the Order for the Burial of the Dead, and the like; under the
latter, the services of Ordination and Confirmation and the Form
of Consecration of a Church or Chapel.

In the Church of England as it existed before the Reformation,
these four volumes, as I have called them, were distinct and
recognized realities. Each had its title and each its separate
use. The name of the book of daily services was _The Breviary_.
The name of the book used in the celebration of the Holy Communion
was _The Missal_. The name of the book of Special Offices was
_The Ritual_. The name of the book of such offices as could be
used by a bishop only was _The Pontifical_. It was one of the
greatest of the achievements of the English reformers that they
succeeded in condensing, after a practical f