R. In His day Judah shall be saved, and Israel_shall dwell safely. And this is His Name wherby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHEOUSNESS. Glory, etc.

Responsory after the Third Lesson of the First Sunday in Lent.

V. With fasting and weeping let the priests pray, saying: Spare, O LORD, spare Thy people, and give not Thine heritage to destruction.

R. Let the priests weep between the porch and the altar, saying: Spare, O LORD, spare Thy people and give not Thine heritage to destruction. Glory, etc.

After the Fourth Lesson of the First Sunday in Lent.

V. Let us amend those things wherein we have ignorantly sinned; lest, suddenly prevented by death, we should seek a place of repentance and find it not. Hear, LORD, and have mercy, for we have sinned against Thee.

R. Help us, O GOD of our Salvation, and for the glory of Thy name, O LORD, deliver us. Hear, LORD, and have mercy; for we have sinned against Thee.

Glory, etc.

After the Eighth Lesson of the same Sunday.

V. Deal Thy bread to the hungry, and bring the poor and the wanderer to thine house. Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy righteousness shall go before thy face.

R. When Thou seest the naked cover him, and hide not thyself from thine own flesh. Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy righteousness shall go before thy face.

Glory, etc.

But not to dwell longer on details, considering the work of the Committee generally, in our view of the matter, it comes very far short of meeting what a majority of Churchmen, as we believe, desire, and what the interests of the Church now absolutely require. They seem to have been afraid to do what they evidently had a mind to, and from apprehensions of startling the Church by going too far, did only in part.

In the matter of provision for shorter services, for instance, their recommendations, if adopted, will afford a much-needed relief to those Parishes which have Daily Prayers and Weekly Communion; but beyond this, excepting their valuable recommendations for restoring our PrayerBook back nearer to its original form, they will hardly be felt at all. For though it is allowed in Week-day services to begin at the Lord's Prayer, or in Lent, at the Bidding to Prayer, followed by the Confession, yet on Sunday mornings the "Dearly beloved brethren" must be said. So of the provision recommended for curtailing the length of Morning and Evening Prayer, concluding with the third Collect; this may be done on Week-days but not on Sundays. Likewise in the Communion Office, the recitation of the Decalogue may be omitted at the second celebration on the same day in those few churches that have it, but in all other cases it must be

said. So the exhortation at the time of celebration "may be omitted if it hath been already said once in that same wonth." But in Churches which have Morning and Evening Prayer only on Sundays and the Communion only once a month, none of these provisions are of any avail at all. They must continue on using the full services provided in the Prayer Book, precisely as all have done heretofore. And such Churches are the great majority of our land, who need and demand relief in the matter of the length of services as well as the Churches in cities and towns. Indeed they need it a great deal more; for a considerable proportion of their Congregations, and especially of the Congregations that attend upon the ministrations of the Church throughout our vast Missionary field, extending as it does, from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, consists of persons not raised in the Church, and not accustomed, therefore, to any liturgical forms; who, while appreciating to some extent the beauties of our Services, usually object to them as too formal and intolerably long. This is a great obstacle to the acceptance of our services and the growth of the Church in those places where she is not established throughout the land; and there was far greater need for the Committee to address themselves to giving relief in this direction than to provide it for the small fraction of the Church to which only their provisions can apply.

There is a way, as we conceive, and a very simple and comprehensive one, by which can be attained all that can be desired by Urbane, or Rural, or Missionary Parishes or Congregations in the matter of shorter services and greater flexibility in the use of the Prayer Book; and that is by making discretionary the use of all the additions that were made to the Prayer Book Offices after they were first formulated from their Original Sources by our Martyred Reformers under the reign of Edward the VI. These additions, as all Churchmen know, were made in great part at the sugges tions and under the heavy and persistent pressure of the Continental Divines, who, for ages, hovered about the English Reformers, and left no efforts untried to eliminate from the Liturgical Offices of the English Church, every Catholic feature, and reduce her ritual, as well as her doctrines, to the low level of Calvanistic, fanatical Protestantism. Many of the additions then made were useful at the time, which, under the changed circumstances of the present, are so only in exceptional cases. The Exhortations, for instance, which were inserted in the Morning and Evening Offices, were effective Sermonettes, as they now are, when

addressed to those who are uninstructed in the nature of Christian worship and the conditions of its acceptableness with GOD, but to old Congregations which have been instructed in these things from infancy, the repetition of these addresses is jejune and wearisome, and a dead weight upon the elasticity and glow of our habitual worship. And so of other particulars under this head, as the repetition of the Decalogue every Sunday, which we have not space here to dwell upon.

No attempt seems to have been made by the Committee to provide, what is a great desideratum in many City Parishes throughout the land, a second Evening Service for the Lord's day.

Why, everybody is asking, have the Committee changed the time for celebrating the Feast of our Lord's Transfiguration, for which they have wisely provided a Collect, Epistle and Gospel, from August 6th to January 18th? It is true that the observance of this Festival was not authoritatively established in the Church of Rome until 1445, under the Pontificate of Calixtus III.; so that if the time of its observance had no other authority than a late Papal one, the precedent might not be regarded as of much obligatory force; but it has been fixed and celebrated by the Greek Church at this dateAugust 6th-for over twelve hundred years. To set aside a precedent of such long standing in the most Orthodox branch of the ancient Catholic Church is unwarrantable, except for good reasons, of which, if they exist, the Committee have given no intimation.

But we forbear. We had in mind several other particulars of the Report to remark upon, but the length to which this notice has run precludes it. A good beginning, and some progress, has been made, and mainly in the right direction. But the adoption of this Report as a finality, would by no means provide for the wants of all departments of the Church's worship and work. Let the Convention accept and recommend to the Dioceses for adoption, the recommendations of the Committee which meet with general acceptance, but let the Committee be continued, or another be appointed to continue their work, as the publication of this Report, and the discussions which it will call forth, will awaken great interest, and if the Committee is continued, and the matter left open for its better perfecting and fuller development, an impetus will be given to liturgical study and research during the next three years, which cannot be without important results in the attainment of what will generally satisfy, and contribute greatly to the edification of, the whole Church.