LECTURE I.

OF THE COLLECTS.

"Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.”-ECCLES, v. 2.

WE have already sketched out the divisions of the Communion Service, according to the order in which it stands, and shown the relation to one another of its consecutive parts. But the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, to which we now come, suggest to us a division on another principle. There is, then, a part of the Communion Service, which is constant-used under all circumstances, whatever be the season of the year, and never subject to change. And, on the other hand, there is a variable element in the Service,—a part which alters every week, or on certain high and solemn occasions. This part is composed of the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, and the proper preface.

A distinction of a similar kind runs through the daily Morning and Evening Prayer. The Psalms and Lessons vary every day; the Sunday Morning Lessons not only vary, but are a departure from the orderly course of reading the Old Testament through annually; the Collect, as in the Communion Service, varies every week;

but all these variable elements are inserted into a framework which is constant and fixed.

Before we go further, may we not learn a lesson from what has been already said? Our Liturgy may be regarded as an extended comment on the Lord's Prayer; it is the voice of the Church, subordinately to Christ, teaching us to pray. In the Public Service of the Church, if we will only acquaint ourselves with it thoroughly by study and thought, we shall find hints, many and edifying, for the conduct of Private Prayer. All devout persons have at times felt that the outline and general scheme of our prayers cannot vary much. It is not desirable that it should. Every morning we have much the same mercies to acknowledge, and much the same graces to supplicate; every night we have much the same sins to deplore. We say, much the same; not entirely. Even in the most regular and uneventful life one day's course does not quite tally with another's. The day is occasionally signalized by special mercies, special answers to prayer, special temptations, special falls, — all which it is the part of Self-examination to bring to light. When brought to light, how shall we deal with them? The answer is, "Weave into the framework of your ordinary prayers some brief notice of these special occasions." The bulk of your prayer will still be-must be-more or less of a form, by which I mean that it will always run in the same or nearly the same words, or, if not this, will always express the same sentiments; but under the different heads of confession, thanksgiving, intercession, and so forth, you can profitably diverge from the beaten track to notice any particular circumstance, whether of humiliation, gratitude, or special suit for others. The profitable method

of prayer must, after all, be a matter of personal experience; and we confidently appeal to those who cultivate habits of prayer, to tell us whether its spirit is not best caught by this method,—variations upon an ordinary framework, by following out in the midst of it any particular leadings of the mind. If so, this is the very lesson which the variable Collects and Psalms of our Liturgy, inserted into its fixed outline, teach us.

But this is by no means the only (or the main) lesson regarding Prayer, which we learn from our Collects.

The passage, which stands at the head of this Lecture, warns the worshipper against two great faults, which vitiate the sacrifice of fools, inconsiderateness and diffuseness. Both faults are traced up by the inspired writer to one root-irreverence. A petitioner coming to sue an earthly sovereign, draws up his petition beforehand, and carefully considers the terms of it. And, moreover, in presenting it, he does not allow himself to be tedious to the monarch; his interview would be cut short if he showed a disposition to protract it beyond the natural limits of the occasion. In our petitions to the King of kings, as He sits upon the Throne of Grace, surrounded by all the host of Heaven on His right hand and on His left, we must observe a reverence similar in kind, though proportionably intensified in degree. What we propose to lay before Him must be considered and weighed beforehand; it must not be a hasty wish, or a foolish, ill- . considered aspiration; we must be sure so to guard it, if it be a petition for earthly blessings, that the granting it on the part of God may not turn out to us rather a bane than a boon. And, secondly, in stating our desires, we must not be diffuse or rambling. As the Supper of the Lord must not be allowed to degenerate into a common

meal, so Prayer must not be allowed to slip into a familiar colloquy with GOD, “as a man talketh with his friend." The mind should be braced up to the great exercise, and its tension not relaxed until the exercise is over, and we have quitted the Throne of Grace.

Such seems to be the meaning of Solomon in this most weighty verse; and the sentiment is echoed very distinctly by a greater than Solomon, when announcing His new Law in the Sermon on the Mount. "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them; for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.”

He who in the Agony of the Garden prayed three times, saying the same words, does not for a moment censure as vain such repetitions in prayer as flow from fervour of spirit. What He forbids is, that the thought or feeling should be allowed to evaporate and run to waste (as it is the nature of thought to do) in the diffuseness of the language in which it is expressed. He forbids such dilution of the sentiment by multitude of words, as would weaken the sentiment. The value of the Prayer is not to be measured at all by the amount of language employed, but by the fervour of the desire, the solemnity and urgency of the spirit within. And, in expanding this prohibition, our Blessed Lord assigns a reason for it, which draws a distinction between petitions to an earthly Sovereign and those which are addressed to the Majesty of Heaven. The earthly Sovereign might need to be informed of our wants; or at least he might need to have them impressed upon him. But our (Heavenly) Father "knoweth what things we have need of, before we ask Him." He knows our wants in such a manner that they

are ever present to Him, full in the review and contemplation of His infinite mind; He understands at a glance their urgency and their imminency. Prayer is not for His information at all; nor can His attention (like that of a finite mind) be distracted by other objects, so as to require to be drawn by vehement and repeated cries to our affairs. He is never "talking," nor is He "pursuing," nor is He "in a journey," nor doth he ever sleep, and need to be awaked. Prolixity, therefore, avails nothing towards the answer of prayer. GoD is a Spirit. Let thy spirit touch His by faith in His love, and wisdom and fatherly care, by the simple affiance which a child has in his parent, and thou shalt draw forth from Him by a few brief words all that thou needest. This saying of Our Lord is the more remarkable, because, as it stands in the Sermon on the Mount, it forms the point of transition to the Lord's Prayer. The connexion in which that Prayer is introduced seems to point out that it is designed as a protest against diffuseness and verbiage in prayer: "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all things." "After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven," &c., &c. And what a protest! How much more emphatic and significant, than if our LORD had devoted an entire discourse to expose the futility and irreverence of vain repetitions in Prayer! We defy you to point out a single word in this Divine Prayer, even down to a particle, a pronoun, or a conjunction, which could be struck out without the forfeiture of an idea and consequent detriment to the sense. The petitions of the latter section are connected by the conjunction and, which is not the case with those in the former part. In this slight circumstance there is a great significance, inasmuch as the petitions of the latter sec