ow so ashamed that it no more dares
compel its youths so much as to hear, much less to utter it, I got
necessarily into the habit of always looking to the original forms of
the prayers of the fully developed Christian Church. Nor did I think it
a mere chance which placed in my own possession a manuscript of the
perfect Church service of the thirteenth century, written by the monks
of the Sainte Chapelle for St. Louis; together with one of the same
date, written in England, probably for the Diocese of Lincoln; adding
some of the Collects, in which it corresponds with St. Louis's, and the
Latin hymns so much beloved by Dante, with the appointed music for them.

253. And my wonder has been greater every hour, since I examined closely
the text of these and other early books, that in any state of declining,
or captive, energy, the Church of England should have contented itself
with a service which cast out, from beginning to end, all these
intensely spiritual and passionate utterances of chanted prayer (the
whole body, that is to say, of the authentic _Christian_ Psalms), and in
adopting what it timidly preserved of the Collects, mangled or blunted
them down to the exact degree which would make them either
unintelligible or inoffensive--so vague that everybody might use them,
or so pointless that nobody could be offended by them. For a special
instance: The prayer for "our bishops and curates, and all congregations
committed to their charge," is, in the Lincoln Service-book, "for our
bishop, and all congregations committed to _his_ charge." The change
from singular to plural seems a slight one. But it suffices to take the
eyes of the people off their own bishop into infinite space; to change a
prayer which was intended to be uttered in personal anxiety and
affection, into one for the general good of the Church, of which nobody
could judge, and for which nobody would particularly care; and, finally,
to change a prayer to which the answer, if given, would be visible, into
one of which nobody could tell whether it were answered or not.

254. In the Collects, the change, though verbally slight, is thus
tremendous in issue. But in the Litany--word and thought go all wild
together. The first prayer of the Litany in the Lincoln Service-book is
for the Pope and all ranks beneath him, implying a very noteworthy piece
of theology--that the Pope might err in religious matters, and that the
prayer of the humblest servant of God would be