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ing of each person of the ever-blessed Trinity :-the fatherly love of God; the favour of our Redeemer Christ; and the comforting help of the Holy Spirit, to conduct us through life, and continue with us for evermore.

The Evening Service is nearly the same as that appointed for the Morning, which goes before. I shall notice such parts of it as are different. Instead of the hymn "Te Deum," which divides the morning lessons, we read for the Evening the Thanksgiving of the Virgin Mary on the occasion of her being saluted as the future parent of our blessed Saviour, by Elizabeth her kinswoman, the mother of St. John the Baptist. You will find it in the first chapter of St. Luke's Gospel. At the end of the Second Lesson, instead of the 100th Psalm we read the Thanksgiving of the venerable Simeon, an inspired person, who, when the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple, offered up his devout thanks to God for having been permitted to live to see the holy child, prophecying that he would be a light to lighten the Gentiles, (which signifies all the rest of the world distinguished from the Jews), and would be the glory of all those of that nation who believed on him. The minister, according to his own choice, reads this or the 67th Psalm of thanksgiving, which stands next to it in the Evening Service, but the first is most commonly chosen.

After the Collect of the day follow two others; the one for peace, the other for Almighty protection. The first of these, as well as that which holds the same place in the Morning Service, was composed in the early ages of the Christian Church, by St. Gregory. As in the morning we pray for peace against our outward enemies, so in the evening we pray for internal peace; that peace which the world cannot give, that which arises from a sense of obedience to the will of God, earnestly entreating his assistance to obtain it. In the third Collect we pray that God will guard us during the approaching night from all perils and dangers to which we are exposed, and bless us through the mercies of Jesus Christ.

The remaining prayers are the same as those of the Morning Service.

The Creed of St. Athanasius, which follows in the order of the Prayer-Book, will be considered with the two others in a separate Lecture.

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The Litany then succeeds. This word signifies supplication; earnest prayer for mercy. In the early times of Christianity, litanies were employed by the Church only upon great occasions, accompanied by fasting, and other tokens of humiliation, for the purpose of public intercession, to obtain God's pardon for some national crime, or to avert some general misfortune. In process of time it became a custom for the people to walk barefoot in procession, solemnly repeating the Litanies aloud as they passed along; and this practice is still used, as we have seen in Roman Catholic countries. Afterwards the Church directed the Litany to be performed at stated seasons; and at length it was fixed for the Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays of each week,

as a separate service between Morning and Evening Prayer; till at the last review of our Liturgy it was added to the morning service of the Sabbath.

It opens in a very solemn manner, calling upon the three Persons of the Holy Trinity, separately, in the three first sentences; and then invokes them, as three Persons and one God, to have mercy upon us miserable sinners; the people repeating the same words after the minister. Nothing can be more affecting and impressive. There is no part of our Service which excels the Litany in dignity and earnest piety. A Christian can ask few things which he will not find expressed in this Service. It is impossible to repeat these impressive sentences with indifference, if we reflect upon their meaning. We implore our blessed Saviour not to remember our numberless sins, but to spare us through the shedding of his precious blood. We pray to be protected from the temptations of the evil Spirit; from our own bad passions and desires; from worldly ills; and from the dreadful consequence of continuing to neglect his commands. We ask all this, calling to mind every thing that he has done for our sakes. We conjure him by all he suffered for us; by the solemn pledge he has given in our favour, that he will have mercy on us, and so affect our hearts with true penitence, that we may henceforward serve him faithfully. At every sentence the people, who silently pray along with the minister, add the expression of their humble entreaties, that God will hear and deliver them. The sentences which follow each convey a prayer for the various classes and conditions among us; for those who are in authority; for those who are in need, or who in any way are more particularly objects of God's mercy and protection. We pray for our enemies; we pray for all men; and, in the concluding sentence, we pray for a sincere conversion from all our sins, and for divine grace to help us in future. The Service then rises in a fervent strain of prayer to our blessed Saviour. It repeats the earnest call upon each Person of the Trinity for mercy, and then continues with the Lord's Prayer; after which the priest and people join in prayer, that the Lord will not deal with us after (that is, according to,) our sins, but give us that pardon which we so earnestly demand. A very touching prayer then follows, entreating the assistance of the Holy Spirit to strengthen our devotions, to guard us from temptation, and to enable us to maintain our good resolves. The congregation, when it is ended, entreat to be heard for the sake of God's great name and honour, calling to mind the mercies which he has shown to others in old time, guilty, like ourselves, of disobedience and ingratitude. The short sentences which follow unite the minister and people again in prayer, repeating each a verse by turns, still imploring favour through a devout dependence upon Christ alone, as our Mediator and Redeemer. Then follows another prayer for God's indulgence towards our infirmities, and to give us confidence in his mercies and goodness, that we may amend our lives, and serve him in future with purity and fidelity. The Litany concludes with the Prayer of St. Chrysostom,

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and the general blessing already noticed, used at Morning and Evening Prayer.

The Prayers and Thanksgivings which succeed the Litany are appointed to be read on special occasions, chiefly for public blessings, or for divine assistance in times of national danger and distress. There are distinct addresses for rain, or fair weather; for times of scarcity and famine, war, plague, or sickness. To the prayers is added one for God's blessing on persons receiving holy orders; another for the aid of divine wisdom in the proceedings of the Parliament; and a third for all sorts and conditions of men ;-which, with the short prayer that follows, is excellently suited to daily use. The General Thanksgiving which follows is a most beautiful composition; expressing our gratitude for the loving-kindness and mercy of God, through Christ, in such terms of fervent piety as must move the heart of any one who repeats it in earnest. We pray that the Lord will give us a due sense of all his mercies, that we may show our gratitude not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to his service.

Having so far completed our examination of the service in general use on the Sabbath day, I shall in my next Lecture proceed to explain the remainder of the Book of Common Prayer, and give you some account of the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, as they follow in the order of our inquiry.

EDITOR-L. i.

PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF CONTRIVANCE AND DESIGN IN THE WORKS OF NATURE.

(Abridged from Archdeacon Paley's Natural Theology.)

1

IN crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? why is it not as admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its' several parts are framed and put together for a purpose; that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would

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have answered the use that is now served by it. This mechanism being observed, the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.

Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never seen a watch made; that we had never known an artist capable of making one; that we were altogether incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding in what manner it was performed;-all this being no more than what is true of some exquisite remains of ancient art, of some lost arts, and, to the generality of mankind, of the more curious productions of modern manufacture.

Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design, and the designer, might be evident, and in the case supposed would be evident, in whatever way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we could account for it or not.

Nor, thirdly, would it bring any uncertainty into the argument, if there were a few parts of the watch, concerning which we could not discover, or had not yet discovered, in what manner they conduced to the general effect; or even some parts, concerning which we could not ascertain whether they conduced to that effect in any manner whatever.

Nor, fourthly, would any man in his senses think the existence of the watch, with its various machinery, accounted for, by being told that it was one out of possible combinations of material forms; that whatever he had found in the place where he found the watch, must have contained some internal configuration or other; and that this configuration might be the structure now exhibited, viz. of the works of a watch, as well as a different structure.

Suppose, in the next place, that the person who found the watch, should, after some time, discover that, in addition to all the properties which he had hitherto observed in it, it possessed the unexpected property of producing, in the course of its movement, another watch like itself (the thing is conceivable); that it contained within it a mechanism, a system of parts, a mould for instance, or a complex adjustment of lathes, files, and other tools, evidently and separately calculated for this purpose;-let us inquire, what effect ought such a discovery to have upon his former conclusion.

The first effect would be to increase his admiration of the contrivance, and his conviction of the consummate skill of the contriver. Whether he regarded the object of the contrivance, the distinct apparatus, the intricate, yet in many parts intelligible mechanism, by which it was carried on, he would perceive, in this new observation, nothing but an additional reason for doing what he had already done, for referring the construction of the watch to design, and to supreme

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art. If that construction without this property, or which is the same thing, before this property had been noticed, proved intention and art to have been employed about it; still more strong would the proof appear, when he came to the knowledge of this further property, the • crown and perfection of all the rest.

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He would reflect, that though the watch before him were, in some sense, the maker of the watch, which was fabricated in the course of its movements, yet it was in a very different sense from that, in which a carpenter, for instance, is the maker of a chair; the author of its contrivance, the cause of the relation of its parts to their use. With respect to these, the first watch was no cause at all to the second: in no such sense as this was it the author of the constitution and order, either of the parts which the new watch contained, or of the parts by the aid and instrumentality of which it was produced.

Though it be now no longer probable, that the individual watch, which our observer had found, was made immediately by the hand of an artificer, yet doth not this alteration in anywise affect the inference, that an artificer had been originally employed and concerned in the production. The argument from design remains as it was. Marks of design and contrivance are no more accounted for now than they were before. There cannot be a design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement, without any thing capable of arranging; subserviency and relation to a purpose, without that which could intend a purpose; means suitable to an end, and executing their office, in accomplishing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated, or the means accommodated to it.

Nor is any thing gained by running the difficulty farther back, i. e. by supposing the watch before us to have been produced from another watch, that from a former, and so on indefinitely. Our going back ever so far, brings us no nearer to the least degree of satisfaction upon the subject. Contrivance is still unaccounted for. We still want a contriver. A designing mind is neither supplied by this supposition, nor dispensed with.

Our observer would further also reflect, that the maker of the watch before him was, in truth and reality, the maker of every watch produced from it; there being no difference (except that the latter manifests a more exquisite skill) between the making of another watch with his own hands, by the mediation of files, lathes, chissels, &c. and the disposing, bet fixing, and inserting of these instruments, or of others equivalent to them, in the body of the watch already made, in such a manner as to ด้ไ form a new watch in the course of the movements which he had given to the old one. It is only working by one set of tools instead of 237: another.

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The conclusion of which the first examination of the watch, of its works, construction, and movement, suggested, was, that it must have had, for the cause and author of that construction, an artificer, who understood its mechanism, and designed its use. This conclusion is invincible. A second examination presents us with a new discovery. The watch is found, in the course of its movement, to produce another

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