Evensong.1 Nor was this any great departure from what by sheer necessity had become already a well established custom, namely to abbreviate and unite the several offices which, even for ecclesiastics, had become so cumbersome as to be impossible.2

It must not be overlooked that Matins and Evensong, as in our present book, are formed upon a definite plan, and follow the lines and order of the earlier services of the Breviary. They have three distinct divisions: (1) the penitential introduction, consisting of Sentences from Holy Scripture, an Exhortation to repentance, a General Confession, and Absolution, ending with the Lord's Prayer; (2) acts of Praise and Thanksgiving, beginning with the versicles, "O Lord, open Thou our lips" etc., and the Invitatory Psalm, or Venite, followed by the Psalter for the day, Lessons from the Old and New Testaments, each followed by other acts of praise, Te Deum or Benedicite, Benedictus, or Psalm; and (3) Prayers and Intercessions.

The first Revised Book began the service with the Lord's Prayer. THE SENTENCES, EXHORTATION, etc. were added in the second Book (1552), and have been retained ever since. These additions, however, were not without their examples in the earlier daily offices of the English Church. The Capitula, or verses from Holy Scripture in the old Lent

1 See Freeman I, 288-9.

* Clement VII. entrusted the Spanish Cardinal Quignon with the reforming of the Breviary about 1529, and his work was published in 1535. His introduction of so much of Holy Scripture, and omission of doubtful legends, however, caused the Pope to prohibit the book in 1558. An attempted reform of other offices in German was published by Hermann, Prince Bishop of Cologne, in 1542, which was also prohibited and its author excommunicated in 1546.

The American Church in 1892 added other Sentences appropriate to the Church seasons.

1

services gave the revisers their model here, while "an Exhortation preparatory to Absolution was a regular part of the office for the Visitation of the Sick. Also a public Exbortation in English was sometimes used preparatory to Communion, followed by a Confession also in English, and an Absolution in Latin." It was thus evidently intended that this public CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION, both here and in the Eucharistic Office, should ordinarily take the place of the private or auricular Confession and Absolution that had been the rule of England and the Western Church during the Middle Ages.2 It did not indeed prohibit such private and particular Confession and Absolution, "if there be any who" by other means "cannot quiet his own conscience." It only provided a service by which all who are not so burdened may receive the benefit of Absolution in accordance with Christ's command.'

1 Procter, 205, 206. In the revision of the American Prayer Book in 1892 the use of the Exhortation was only made obligatory at Matins on Sunday. At all other times a substitute was allowed, namely, "Let us humbly confess our sins unto Almighty God." In the earlier services of the English Breviary there was a Confession (Confiteor) and Absolution, but it was confined to the Priest and Choir, and was almost wholly precatory. Now the Confession is to be said by "the whole Congregation kneeling," and the Absolution "by the Priest alone standing." The Absolution also is given a more authoritative character. While it still prays for forgiveness and perseverance in repentance, it not only asserts God's readiness to "pardon and absolve," but, through the "power and commandment given to His ministers," it "declares and pronounces to His people, being penitent, the Absolution and Remission of their sins."

* See S. John xx, 22, 23; S. Matt. xvi, 19; xix, 18; and see the words spoken to the Priest in Ordination. The American Prayer Book allows here as an alternative the Absolution in the Communion Office.

• First Exhortation "when the Minister giveth warning, etc." in the Communion Office.

♦ Writing concerning The Testament of Our Lord, one of the most Recent Discoveries Illustrating Early Christian Life and Worship, p. 84, Bishop

This penitential and preparatory portion of the service is fitly closed with the Lord's Prayer, which sums up all the needs of God's penitent children, and without which no service can be complete.1

Maclean says, "Late comers had to wait till they were brought in by the Deacon, who offered a special petition on their behalf in the Litany. 'For this brother who is late, let us beseech that the Lord give him earnestness and labor, and turn away from him every bond of the world,' and so forth. 'In this way,' the Testament naively remarks, ‘earnestness is strengthened... and the despiser and the slothful is disciplined.' This curious feature remains to the present day in the Abyssinian Litany. Perhaps if we adopted this habit of praying for late comers the present unseemly rush during the General Confession and Absolution at Matins might be obviated, and people would be more punctual."

1 It may be noted here that there is one striking feature of the ancient Choir Offices absent from the revised Prayer Book, namely, the Office Hymns, of which there were 130 in the Portuary alone. Only one, the Veni Creator Spiritus, "Come, Holy Ghost," was taken from the other parts of the Service. Judging by the two translations of this medieval Hymn, it may be considered fortunate that no attempt was made on any considerable scale until the 19th century to translate these Hymns for the use of the Church. Though Cranmer was a master of prose, neither he nor his associates seem to have had the gift of poetry.

CHAPTER XXII

THE PSALTER

Jesus said, "All things must be fulfilled which were written... in the Psalms concerning Me."

“What the heart is in man, that the Psalter is in the Bible.” — JOH. ARND.

"Ob in what accents spake I unto Thee, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those faithful songs, and sounds of devotion, which allow of no swelling spirit."-S. AUGUSTINE.

HOUGH many of THE PSALMS are of a penitential

THE

character, and express the heart's thought of the "afflicted," yet the great majority are either acts of praise and worship, or else of trust, joy, hope, and final victory. It is this dominant note of the Psalter that has made it so dear to the heart of Christians of every age. It is the note struck in the Venite, or 95th Psalm, which has been the Invitatory Psalm for Matins in the Western Church from the very earliest days. "It is possible, indeed," writes Archdeacon Freeman, "that this Psalm prefaced the entire Temple service. . . . In the East, the Psalm itself is not used, but only a threefold invitation to praise, or 'invitatory,' based upon the first, third, and sixth verses of it." 1

One other note of the Psalter is that, unlike all mere poetry of the imagination, it is always the voice of real life

1 Prin. Div. Ser., I, 75, 402. In the American Prayer Book the Venite consists of the first seven verses of the 95th Psalm, and the 9th and 13th of the 96th. The same Book has a similar combination of parts of Psalms in the service for Thanksgiving Day. These composite Psalms are found also in English State Services, and there are several in the Mozarabic Offices. See Neale and Littledale, Commentary on the Psalms. Vol. I, Dissertation I, 69.

and real men. For though inspired by God there is nothing in the entire Bible more thoroughly human than the book of Psalms. It is not God speaking to man, as in the Law and the Prophets, the Gospels and the Epistles, but man speaking to God-man in despair, man in doubt, man in sorrow, man in penitence, crying "out of the deep," and from the midst of "the great waterfloods." Or again, it is man in praise and thankfulness, rejoicing in God's glory in earth and sky, in star and flower, or adoring His manifestations of mercy in His Church by the forgiveness of sins and the blotting out of iniquities. The fingers of the inspired musicians have touched all the keys of the human heart. All that men may feel finds in the Psalter a responsive chord in all that man bas felt.

This is why, with an instinct that is unerring, the Church from the first found in the Hymnal of the earlier dispensation the full expression of her soul's deepest longings, and loftiest desires "the whole music of the human heart swept by the hand of its Maker."1 The ancient Psalmists had sounded all the depths, and soared to all the heights of the soul's experience, and the Christian Church found here a vehicle of worship prepared by the wisdom of God, ready for her use. Even our Lord upon the Cross found in its very words the full expression of His utmost needs; and not He alone, but myriads of others also have found there "prayers which, like some mysterious vestment fit every human soul in the attitude of supplication; prayers for every time, place, circumstance; for the bridal and the grave, the storm and the battle, the king and the peasant, the harlot sobbing on her knees on the penitentiary floor, and the saint looking through the lifted portals into the city of God. . . prayers for the

1 Gladstone.