ashion, these four
books, or, to speak more accurately, the first three of them,
Breviary, Missal, and Ritual, into one. The Pontifical, or
Ordinal, they continued as a separate book, although it soon for
the sake of convenience became customary in England, as it has
always been customary here, for Prayer Book and Ordinal to be
stitched together by the binders into a single volume. Popularly
speaking the Prayer Book is the entire volume one purchases under
that name from the bookseller, but accurately speaking the Book
of Common Prayer ends where _The Form and Manner of Making,
Ordaining, and Consecrating Bishops, Priests, and Deacons_
begins. "Finis" should be written after the Psalter, as indeed
from the Prayer Book's Table of Contents plainly appears.

Setting aside now, for the present, that portion of the formularies
which corresponds to the Ritual and Pontifical of the mediaeval
Church, I proceed to speak rapidly of the antecedents of Breviary
and Missal. Whence came they? And how are we to account for
their being sundered so distinctly as they are?

They came, so some of the most thoughtful of liturgical students
are agreed, from a source no less remote than the Temple of
Solomon, and they are severed, to speak figuratively, by a valley
not unlike that which in our thoughts divides the Mount of
Beatitudes from the Hill of Calvary.

In that memorable building to which reference was just made,
influential over the destinies of our race as no other house of
man's making ever was, there went on from day to day these two
things, psalmody and sacrifice. Peace-offering, burnt-offering,
sin-offering, the morning oblation, and the evening oblation--these
with other ceremonies of a like character went to make what we
know as the sacrificial ritual of the temple.

But this was not all. It would appear that there were other
services in the temple over and above those that could strictly
be called sacrificial. The Hebrew Psalter, the hymn-book of that
early day, contains much that was evidently intended by the
writers for temple use, and even more that could be easily
adapted to such use. And although there is no direct evidence
that in Solomon's time forms of prayer other than those associated
with sacrificial rites were in use, yet when we find mention in
the New Testament of people going up to the temple of those later
days "at the hour of prayer," it seems reasonable to infer that
the custom was an ancient one, and