entences of our own Liturgy,
"When the wicked man turneth away from the wickedness that he hath
committed," &c., that their opening words startled us at first; but
their two or three initiatory sentences are well selected to begin the
service; the first being, "The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the
earth keep silence before him."

Some of the alterations are improvements rather than blemishes, for the
constant repetitions in our service are avoided. The Lord's prayer is
less frequently repeated, and the collect for the day, when it has to be
read in the Communion Service, is omitted where it first occurs with us.
A little more freedom of choice, too, is allowed to the minister in
several parts of the service. For example: the Apostle's Creed or the
Nicene Creed may be substituted for each other, as the latter is not
used in the office for the Communion; and instead of reading the Psalter
as divided into days in the daily service, some very good selections
from the Psalms are made, which may be substituted either on the week
days, or on Sundays. The daily Lessons are shortened, and yet all the
portions read by us, out of the Canonical Scriptures, are retained,
which is managed by omitting all the Lessons taken from the Apocrypha.

The second lessons on Sundays are specially appointed as well as the
first, and not made to depend, as with us, on the day of the month.

The Commination Service for Ash Wednesday is omitted, only the two
prayers at the end being retained; these are read after the Litany. The
Athanasian Creed is never used.

Some of the verbal alterations, however, grated harshly on our ears.
They are of course obliged to pray for the President, but instead of the
petition to "grant him in health and wealth long to live," they have
substituted the word "prosperity" for the good old Saxon "wealth," for
fear, apparently, of being misunderstood by it to mean dollars. They
seem too, to have a remarkable aversion to all _them thats_, always
substituting the words _those who_. But the peculiarity which pleased us
most in the American service, was that, instead of the few words of
intercession introduced into our Litany, "especially those for whom our
prayers are desired," there are distinct and very beautiful prayers for
the different circumstances under which the prayers of the congregation
may be asked; as for example in sickness, or affliction, or going to
sea, &c. There is, also, a special form of prayer