should be primitive, or Protestant, or civilised; it is enough that it should be good in itself and productive of good effects.

2. Again, it is well to remember that the goodness of a thing depends not on its outward form, but on its inward spirit. The very word 'Litany,' in its first origin, included long processions, marches to and fro, cries and screams, which have now disappeared almost everywhere from public devotions, even in the Roman Catholic Church. Those who established it would not have imagined that a Litany without these accompaniments could have any efficacy whatever. We know now that the accompaniments were mere accidents, and that the substance has continued. What has happened in the Litany has occurred again and again with every part of our ecclesiastical system. Always the form and the letter are perishing; always there will be some who think that the form and the letter are the thing itself; generally in the Christian Church there is enough vitality to keep the spirit, though the form is changed; generally, we trust, as in the Litany, so elsewhere, there will be found men wise enough and bold enough to retain the good and throw off the bad in all the various forms of our religious and ecclesiastical life.

3. Again, there is a peculiar charm and interest in knowing the accidental historical origin of this service. To any one who has a heart to feel and an imagination to carry him backwards and forwards along the fields of time, there is a pleasure, an edification in the reflection that the prayers which we use were not composed in the dreamy solitude of the closet or the convent, but were wrung out of the necessities of human sufferers like ourselves. If, here and there, we catch a note of some expression not wholly suitable to our own age, there is yet something at once grand and comforting in the recollection that we hear in those responses the echoes of the thunders and earthquakes. of central France, of the irruption of wild barbarian hordes, of the ruin of the falling empire; that the Litany which we use for our homelier sorrows was, as Hooker says, 'the very

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strength and comfort of the Church' in that awful distress of nations. The offences of our forefathers,' the vengeance on our sins,' the 'lightning and tempest,' the 'plague, pestilence, and famine,' the battle and murder, and sudden death,' the prisoners and captives,' the 'desolate and oppressed,' the troubles and adversities,' the 'hurt of persecutions, all these phrases receive a double force if they recall to us the terrors of that dark disastrous time, when the old world was hastening to its end, and the new was hardly struggling into existence.

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4. Further, it was under a like pressure of calamities that the Litany first became part of our services. It is the earliest portion of the English Prayer Book that appeared in its present English form. It was translated from Latin into English either by Archbishop Cranmer or by King Henry VIII. himself. These are the words with which, on the eve of his expedition to France in 1544, he sent this first instalment of the Prayer Book to Cranmer: Calling to our remembrance the miserable state of all Christendom, being at this present time plagued, besides all other troubles, with most cruel wars, hatreds, and disunions, . . . . the help and remedy hereof being far exceeding the power of any man, must be called for of Him who only is able to grant our petitions, and never forsaketh or repelleth any that firmly believe and faithfully call upon Him; unto whom also the examples of Scripture encourage us in all these and others our troubles and perplexities to flee. Being therefore resolved to have continually from henceforth general processions in all cities, towns, and churches or parishes of this our realm, forasmuch as heretofore the people, partly for lack of good instruction, partly that they understood no part of such prayers and suffrages as were used to be said and sung, have used to come very slackly, we have set forth certain goodly prayers and suffrages in our native English tongue, which we send you herewith.'2

Thus it is that whilst the Litany at its first beginning 2 Froude's History of England, iv. 482.

expressed the distress of the first great convulsion of Europe in the fall of the Roman empire, the Litany in its present form expressed the cry of distress in that second great convulsion which accompanied the Reformation. It is the first utterance of the English nation in its own native English tongue, calling for divine help, in that extremity of perplexity, when men's hearts were divided between hope and despair for the fear of those things that were coming on the earth.

5. In like manner many a time have those expressions of awe and fear struck some chord in the hearts of individuals, far more deeply than had they been more calmly and deliberately composed at first.

How affecting is that account of Samuel Johnson, whom, in the church of St. Clement Danes, his biographer overheard repeating in a voice, that trembled with emotion, the petition which touched the only sensitive chord in his strong mind, In the hour of death and in the day of judgment, good Lord deliver us!' How striking was the use made by a great orator of the words of another clause, when, on the occasion of the omission of the name of an unfortunate princess from the Liturgy, he said that there was at least one passage in the Litany where all might think of her and pray for her amongst those who were 'desolate and oppressed.' II. Secondly, it is instructive to notice how, in succeeding ages, the particular grievance or want of the time, sometimes well, sometimes ill, has laboured to express itself amongst these petitions.

Its contents.

1. It was natural that, in the reign of Edward VI., when the burdensome yoke of the see of Rome had only just been shaken off, a prayer should have been added—' From the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome, and from all his detestable enormities, good Lord deliver us.' This was perhaps excusable under the circumstances; but it is a matter of rejoicing that, by the wisdom of Elizabeth, this fierce expression should have been struck out.

2. Again, amidst the general unsettlement of civil and

religious society in the time of Henry VIII., and of Charles II., it was no wonder that the petitions should have been crowded with alarms, in the first instance, of sedition, privy conspiracy, false doctrine, and heresy,' or 'hardness of heart and contempt of God's commandments;' in the second instance of rebellion and schism.'

These expressions dwell too exclusively on the dangers of disorder and anarchy, and too little on the dangers of despotism and arbitrary power. Yet there is one petition, which first came in with the dawn of the Reformation, which no ancient Litany seems to have contained, and yet which attacks the chief sin that called down the displeasure of Christ-the prayer against hypocrisy. It is not unimportant to remember that in the prayer against that sin, in its full extent-the sin of acting a part-the sin of disregarding truth-the sin of regarding the outward more than the inward-in that one prayer is summed up the whole spirit of the Reformation.

3. Again, the present Litany stands alone in the prominence which it gives, and the emphasis which it imparts, to the prayer for the sovereign. It was no doubt intended to be the expression of the great principle vindicated in Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity,' that the sovereign, as representative of the law, controls and guides the whole concerns both of Church and State. It was the expression of the wish to secure for the interest of the State no less than for the interest of the clergy, not merely as in the old Litanies, victory abroad, and peace at home, but righteousness and holiness of life, the faith, the fear, and the love of God.

4. Again, as we read some of the petitions we cannot but call to mind the wishes of good men that something might have been added or explained. The prayer against sudden death.-Earnestly did the Puritan divines in the time of Charles II. intreat that this might be expanded into what was probably intended, and what in fact existed in the older forms-From dying suddenly and unprepared.' It was a natural scruple. Many a one has felt that sudden death'

would be a blessing and not a curse-and that to those who are prepared, no death can be sudden. The hard, uncompromising rulers of that age refused to listen to the remonstrance; and we, as we utter the prayer in its unaltered form, may justly feel a momentary pang at the thought of the good men on whose consciences they thus needlessly trampled.

Again, let any reflect on the changes meditated by the good men who made the last attempt of revision in 1689:'From all rash censure and contention;' and again, from drunkenness and gluttony,' 'from sloth and misspending of our time,' from lying and slandering, from vain swearing, cursing and perjury, from covetousness, oppression, and all injustice, good Lord deliver us;' let it please Thee to endue us with the graces of humility and meekness, of contentedness and patience, of true justice, of temperance and purity, of peaceableness and charity,'' and have pity upon all that are persecuted for truth and righteousness' sake.' In these intended additions of Tillotson, Burnet, and Patrick, we see at once the keen sense of the evils, some of them peculiar to that age-of the higher virtues, also peculiar to that age no less.

Again, in our own times it has been recorded of Archbishop Whately, that when he came to the prayer that we might not be hurt by persecutions,' he always added internally a prayer,' that we may not be persecutors.' This was a holy and a noble thought, much needed, well supplied, which perhaps before our age it would hardly have occurred to any ecclesiastic to utter.

In this way the Litany has grown with the growth of Christendom; and may, without any direct change, suggest even more than it says to those who use it rightly.

III. We turn from the occasion and the growth of the Litany to the form in which it is expressed. That form is very peculiar, and its explanation is to be sought in the occasion of its first introduction. The usual mode of addressing our prayers, both in the Scriptures and in the

Its form.