uplifting of the heart? Are not the ordinary graces (I only throw this out for consideration) somewhat too short to take hold of the mind? Is it not the case often with well-disposed persons that the grace is over before the attention can rally? Beautiful at all events are those longer graces once in popular use, but which have now retreated into the devout seclusion of the Academy, in which, according to the true old fashion, the form is interspersed with responds, simply said on common days, and on certain high festivals of the Church sweetly sung.

3. It is well by every means in our power to strive to sanctify common life, and ordinary engagements. It is not only well, it is necessary. No man is really religious at all who withdraws any part of his ordinary life from the influence and control of Religion, and confines his devotion to certain seasons and certain localities. And yet there is a wholesome warning for us all in the disentanglement of the Holy Communion from the social meal with which it had once been associated; and there is great truth and significance in the wise man's admonition, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." Among certain religionists, there may be observed a sort of interlacing of the secular with the spiritual; a parade of religious topics where they are sure to be unfavourably received; proposals for prayer where the occasion and circumstantials are unsuitable, and the minds of the persons to whom it is proposed are not in tune for it; an unreserved manner of throwing abroad Divine Truth in ordinary conversation; all which in theory is right, and in an ideal state of things would find place, but in the actual state of the Church and the world is likely only to shock the one, and to incur the ridicule of the other. That these considerations should have weight with us, we are taught by those words of Him who spake as never man spake : "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." There is a

great necessity for holy discrimination, and a greater still for a spirit of deep religious reverence, if we propose to introduce spiritual topics in general conversation. There is a feeling, innate in every human mind, of the distinctness between the sacred and the secular, which you will only do harm if you rudely violate. And it is a true and just feeling under the present economy of things, which is necessarily imperfect. That the Lord's Day should be esteemed above ordinary days; that the Church, or place of assembly for Christ's flock, should be esteemed above a common house (a sentiment, by the way, plainly in accordance with the mind of St. Paul in the passage before us: "What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the Church of God?"); that one class of men should be regarded as set apart for sacred functions, upon which functions ordinary men may not lawfully intrude, all these feelings and habits of thought are the very safeguards of Religion in the minds of mankind at large, and, as being so, must not be disregarded or dealt rudely with. Under the present Dispensation things sacred must of necessity be separate from common things; and God's Ordinance has made them so. Be it ours by faith and hope to anticipate, and by spiritual diligence to hasten on, that happier period, when every day shall be a Sabbath of rest, spent in the sunshine of Christ's countenance; when there shall be no more any temple, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple of the Heavenly City; when all shall be priests alike, and offer continually the sacrifice of Praise; when, finally, the Lord shall drink with us the new wine of spiritual joy at the marriage-supper of the Lamb; and the sacramental memorial of Him shall be superseded by His visible Presence in glory.

PART I

The Lych-Gate and the Precinct

CHAPTER I

OF THE LORD'S PRAYER AND THE COLLECT FOR

PURITY

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins.”—JER. xvii. 9, 10

IN

N the Cathedral, and often in the Parish Church of our country, there are several stages of approach to the immediate precinct, in which stands the Table of the Lord, the point of sight for all the worshippers. First, there is the Choir (or Chancel), which at its further end contains this precinct. Then there is the Transept, then the Nave, and then, at the door of the Nave, the Porch of entrance. But around the building itself often lies a considerable enclosure, once used for the purpose of interment, to which access is gained by a gate, sometimes arched over, and made into a porch, and called the lych-gate or corpse-gate, from the circumstance that the Priest in the Burial Office there meets the corpse.

The Office of the Holy Communion, on the consideration of which we now enter, has similarly several stages of approach into its inmost sanctuary. The culminating act of the whole Service is, of course, the consecration and participation of the Elements.

But towards this act there are several advances. There is the "Tersanctus," or Seraphic Hymn of Praise, with the Prayer of Access. There are the

Comfortable Words, by which we lift ourselves up to Praise, resembling the steps by which we pass up into the Choir. There is the Exhortation, Confession, and Absolution, the more immediate preparation, which may correspond with the Transept. Then comes that portion of the Office, at which non-communicants may be present, embracing the Collect, Epistle and Gospel, Creed, Sermon, Offertory, and Prayer for the Church Militant, and beginning with that which is the porch of the whole edifice, the Prayer for the Sovereign, or Chief Magistrate. What remains may be properly called the earlier preparation, corresponding to the precinct round the Church or Cathedral. It consists of the Ten Commandments, the Law, which in its condemning power is to real Christians dead and buried, and cannot harm them. And to this Burial-ground of the Decalogue, which solemnizes the mind by its grave and stern associations, we are admitted by a little gate or porch, consisting of two short Prayers. It is in this Porch that we shall now place ourselves, to survey its construction. The above illustration is, I readily grant, drawn from the fancy. Still it may be useful, if it serve to show the great care with which our Church seeks to prepare us for the highest Ordinance of Religion, and the gradual approaches, by which she leads the mind towards the inner sanctuary of these holy mysteries. Hence we have fence within fence, preparation within preparation. And the lesson is, of course, "If you desire to communicate worthily, see that you get your mind in order." These arrangements are the faithful echo made by our Church to that inspired warning: "Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup."

The Lord's Prayer, said without the Doxology or concluding clause (as will be found to be the case

throughout the Prayer Book, wherever the tone of the Service is rather that of Prayer than of Praise), opens the Office of the Communion. We shall not enter at all into the matter or substance of this Divine Prayer, as that would divert us at much too great length from our present purpose, but confine ourselves to a few remarks on the position which it holds. The Lord's Prayer may be regarded in two distinct lights, as a summary of Prayer, and as a model of Prayer. In the first of these lights it is the modern fashion to regard it, and under this view it is naturally introduced, not at the beginning, but at the end of Prayer. We feel (and the feeling is most just) that our Prayers are imperfect at best, and greatly need supplementing by some form in which there are no defects; that we omit oftentimes through haste, or ignorance, or superficiality of mind, to petition for some things which may be most desirable for us; and so at the end of our Private Prayers, or at the end of our Family Prayers, we recite the Lord's Prayer, as summing up all that we can want or wish for in a few pregnant words. A curious instance, by the way, of the different line in which modern and ancient thought travel, even where both are equally correct. The Prayer Book never introduces the Lord's Prayer at the close of any Service; it is always either at the opening, as here, or at the opening of a separate section of the office (like the Post-communion). Morning and Evening Prayer were formerly opened with the versicle and respond, "O Lord, open Thou my lips," "And my mouth shall show forth Thy praise," which was immediately followed by the Lord's Prayer; and it was the Reformers who thought it expedient to prefix a short introduction, consisting of the Sentences, Exhortation, Confession, and Absolution. If this introduction be regarded as only preparatory, our Morning and Evening Office may be said still to open with the Lord's Prayer, as does the Communion Office. Now this position of the Prayer shows that it is regarded as a model rather than as a summary. The

The