--the magnificent reading-desks of the early Roman churches, from which the Gospel and Epistle were read. Long were these preserved in Italian churches after the use of them had been discontinued. Nothing can be more splendid than the ambones in the church at Ravello near Amalfi, which though long deserted remain a witness to the predominant importance attributed in ancient times to the reading of the Bible in the public service. In the French Church the very name of the lofty screens which parted the nave from the choir bears testimony to the same principle. They were called Jube, from the opening words of the introduction of the Gospel, Jube, Domine. Those that still exist, like that at Troyes, and also in the King's College Chapel at Aberdeen,' by their stately height and broad platforms, show how imposing must have been this part of the service, now so humiliated and neglected. Few such now remain. The passion for revolutionary equality on one side and ecclesiastical uniformity on the other have done their worst. They have now either disappeared altogether, or are never used for their original purpose.

In England the huge reading-desk or 'pew' long supplied the place of the old ambo, but that is now being gradually swept away, and there only remains the lectern, in modern times reduced to so small a dimension as to be almost invisible.

The Prophets of the Old Testament, the Epistles of the New-chiefly St. Paul-were read from the lower step of the staircase leading up to the ambo. In some churches the Gospel of Thomas and the first Epistle of Clement were added. The Gospel was from one of the four Gospels, and was read from the upper step, or sometimes from a separate ambo. Selections from the Scriptures were not fixed; each reader chose them at his discretion. There is an instance in France as late as the fifth century of their being chosen by opening the book at hazard. The reader was usually the deacon or subdeacon; not, as with us, the chief clergyman

▾ At Rheims, the Kings of France were crowned upon the screen, so to be visible at once to those in the choir and those in the nave,

present. Of this a trace remains in the English Church, especially in the Channel Islands, where laymen may read the lessons. The reader of the Gospel if possible faced, not as with us to the west, but to the south, because the men sate on the south, and it was a fine idea that in a manly religion like Christianity the Gospel belonged especially to them.

The Homily.

VIII. Then came the address, sometimes preached from one of the ambones, but more usually from the Bishop's seat behind the table. It was called a ' Homily' or 'Sermon-that is, a conversation; not a speech or set discourse, but a talk, a homely colloquial instruction. The idea is still kept up in the French word conférence. It is not possible that the sermon or homily should ever return to its original meaning. But it is well for us to remember what that meaning was. It was the talking, the conversation, of one Christian man with another: the practical address, as Justin Martyr says, exhorting the people to the imitation of the good things that they have just had read to them from the Bible; the mutual instruction which is implied in animated discussion. It is, in short, the very reverse of what is usually meant by a 'homily.'

Thus far any one might attend at the worship. In the Christian Church of the early times, before infant baptism had become common, a large part of the congregation consisted of unbaptised persons, and when the time for the more sacred part of the service came, they were warned off. There is a part of the service of the Eastern Church when the deacon comes forward and says, "The doors, the doors!' meaning that all who are not Christians are to go away and the doors are to be shut. But they do not go away, and the doors at least, the doors of the church-are not shut.

IX. The more solemn service opened with a practice which belongs to the childlike joyous innocence of the early ages, and which as such was upheld as absolutely essential to the Christian worship, but which now has, with one exception, disappeared from the West, and with two exceptions.

The kiss.

8 Ordo Rom. ii. 8 (see Dictionary of Antiquities).

from the East. It was the kiss of peace. Justin mentions it as the universal mode of opening the service. It came down direct from the apostolic time. Sometimes the men kissed the men, the women the women; sometimes it was without distinction. But it was thought so essential that to abstain from it was a mark of mourning or excessive austerity. In the West this primitive practice now exists only in the small Scottish sect of the Glassites or Sandemanians. In the Latin Church, it was continued till the end of the thirteenth century, and was then transferred to the close of the service. In its place was then substituted a piece of the altar furniture called a Pax, and this was given to the deacon with the words, Pax tibi et ecclesiae.' This is a singular instance of the introduction of a purely mechanical and mediæval contrivance instead of a living social observance.2 The only trace of it remaining in the English service is the final benediction, which begins with the words "The peace of God.' In the Eastern Church it still remains to some extent. In the Russian Church, perhaps in other Eastern Churches, the clergy kiss each other during the recital of the Nicene Creed, to show that charity and orthodoxy should always go together, not, as is too often the case, parted asunder. In the Coptic Church, the most primitive and conservative of all Christian Churches, it still continues in full force. Travellers now living have had their faces stroked, and been kissed, by the Coptic priest, in the cathedral at Cairo, whilst at the same moment everybody else was kissing everybody throughout the church. Had any primitive Christians been told that the time would come when this, the very sign of Christian brotherhood and sisterhood, would be absolutely proscribed in the Christian Church, they would have thought that this must be the result of unprecedented persecution or unprecedented unbelief. 9 1 Thess. v. 26; 1 Cor. xvi. 20; 2 Cor. xiii. 12; Rom. xvi. 16; 1 Pet. v. 14.

See Renan's St. Paul, 262.

2 Maskell, 116. The importance of the 'kiss' as a token of reconciliation is illustrated by the importance attached in the contention between Henry II. and Becket to the question whether 'the kiss' had fairly been given.

It is impossible to imagine the omission of any act more sacred, more significant, more necessary (according to the view which then prevailed) to the edification of the service.

X. Then came the offering of the bread and wine by the people. It was, as we have seen, the memorial of the ancient practice of the contribution of the Christian com

The Liturgy. munity towards a common meal. The prayer in

which this was offered was in fact the centre of the whole service. This is the point at which we first come into contact with the germ of a fixed Liturgy. It has been often maintained that there are still existing forms which have come down to us from the first century, and even that the Liturgies which go under the names of St. James, St. Clement, and St. Mark were written by them. There are two fatal objections to this hypothesis. The first is the positive statement of St. Basil that there was no written authority for any of the Liturgical forms of the Church in his time. The second is the fact that whilst there is a general resemblance in the ancient Liturgies to the forms known to exist in early times, there are such material variations from those forms as to render it impossible to suppose that the exact representatives of them anywhere exist. This will appear as we proceed, and therefore we shall only notice the details of the Liturgies so far as they contain the relics of the earlier state of things, or illustrate the changes which have brought us to the present state of Liturgical observances.

An argument often used to account for the absence of written liturgies is the doctrine of 'reserve,' an argument which has been even pushed to the extent of thus accounting for the absence of any detailed account of the Sacrament in the New Testament or in the early Creeds. (Maskell, Preface to the Ancient Liturgy, pp. xxviii.-xxxi.). It is evident that the same feeling, if it operated at all, would have prevented such descriptions as are given by Justin, in a work avowedly intended for the outside world.

De Spiritu Sancto, c. 27. The passage is quoted at length in Maskell (Pref. p. xxvi.) with the opinions strongly expressed to the same effect, of Renaudot and Lebrun, and the confirmatory argument that had written liturgies existed they would have been discoverable in the time of the Diocletian persecution. There are no Liturgies,' says Lebrun, earlier than the fifth century' (iii. 1-17).

5

The Prayer was spoken by the Bishop or Chief Presbyter, as best he could-that is, as it would seem, not written, but spoken. It is thus the first sanction of extempore prayer in the public service of the Church. But extempore prayer always tends to become fixed or liturgical. If we hear the usual Prayers in the Church of Scotland, they are sure to retain on the whole the same ideas, and often the very same words. Thus it was in the early Church, and thus a Liturgy

arose.

There was one long prayer, of which the likenesses are preserved in the long prayers before or after the sermon in Presbyterian or Nonconformist churches, the Bidding Prayer and the Prayer of Consecration in the Church of England. The main difference is that in the early Church this prayer was all on one occasion, namely, at the time of the consecration of the elements; in the Roman and in the English Prayer Book it is, as it were, scattered through the service.

In this prayer there are two peculiarities which belong to the ancient Church, and have since not been brought forward prominently in any Church. It is best seen in the Roman Missal, which incorporates here, as elsewhere, passages quite inconsistent with the later forms with which it has been incrusted.

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It is clear, from the Missal, that the priest officiates as one of the people, and as the representative of the people, seeing that throughout the Office of the Mass he associates the people with himself as concerned equally with himself in every prayer that he offers and every act that he performs. Just as he unites the people's prayers with his own by the use of the plural forms, We pray,' We beseech Thee,' instead of the singular, so in the most solemn acts of the Eucharist, after the consecration of the elements as well as before, he uses the plural form, We offer,' that is, we, priest and people, offer; thereby including the people with himself in the act of sacrificing. And this is made still more clear Justin, Apel. c. 67.