of St. Peter, it is generally believed that, whilst he appears to be in a kneeling attitude, the cushions and furniture of the palanquin are so arranged as to enable him to bear the fatigue of the ceremony by sitting, whilst to the spectators he appears to be kneeling.1 Another parallel is to be found from another point of view, in one of the few other instances in which the posture of sitting has been retained, or rather adopted, namely in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. There the attitude of sitting was rigidly prescribed. But, if we may trust an account of the Scottish Sacrament, believed to be as accurate as it is poetic, the posture of the devout Presbyterian peasant as nearly as possible corresponds to that which Rocca, Gerbet, and Benedict XIV. give of the Pope's present attitude "innixus," "incurvus inclinato corpore," "à demi assis," une profonde inclination de corps:

"There they sit

99 66

In reverence meet

Many an eye to heaven is lifted,
Meek and very lowly.

Souls bowed down with reverent fear,

Hoary-headed elders moving,

Bear the hallowed bread and wine,
While devoutly still the people

Low in prayer bow the head." 2

It is interesting to observe this ancient usage becoming small by degrees and beautifully less, yet still not entirely extinguished: reduced from recumbency to sitting, from the sitting of all to the sitting of a single person, from the sitting of a single person to the doubtful reminiscence of his sitting, by a posture half-sitting, half-standing.

The compromise of the Pope's actual posture is a characteristic specimen of that "singular dexterity" which Benedict XIV. attributes to his Master of the Ceremonies, and which has so often marked the proceedings of the Roman court. To have devised a posture by which, as on the festival of Corpus Christi, the Pope can at once sit and kneel; or as in the cases

1 See the minute account of an eye-witness in 1830 in Crabbe Robinson's Diary, ii. 469.

2 Kilmahoe; and other Poems. By J. C. Shairp.

mentioned by Pope Benedict XIV. an arrangement by which the Pope, whilst sitting, can "stretch his legs in the vacant space under the altar"; or, as in the case we have been considering, a position of standing so as to give the appearance of sitting, and sitting so as to give the appearance of standing — is a minute example of the subtle genius of the institution of the Papacy. As the practice itself is a straw, indicating the movement of primitive antiquity, so the modern compromise is a straw, indicating the movement of the Roman Church in later times.

CHAPTER XII.

THE LITANY.

THE Litany is one of the most popular parts of the English Prayer Book. It is not one of the most ancient parts, but it is sufficiently ancient to demand an inquiry into its peculiarities, and its peculiarities are sufficiently marked to demand a statement.

I. First, as to its origin. It is one of the parts of the Prayer Book which has its origin in a time neither primitive nor reformed. For four hundred years there were no prayers of this special kind in the Christian Church; nor, again, in the Reformed Church were any prayers like it introduced afresh. It sprang from an age gloomy with disaster and superstition, when heathenism was still struggling with Christianity; when Christianity was disfigured by fierce conflicts within the Church; when the Roman Empire was tottering to its ruin; when the last great luminary of the Church-Augustine had just passed away, amidst the forebodings of universal destruction. It was occasioned also by a combination of circumstances of the most peculiar character. The general disorder of the time was aggravated by an unusual train of calamities. Besides the ruin of society, attendant on the invasion of the barbarians, there came a succession of droughts, pestilences, and earthquakes, which seemed to keep pace with the throes of the moral world. Of all these horrors, France was the centre. On one of these occasions, when the people had been hoping that, with the Easter festival, some respite would come, a sud

den earthquake shook the church at Vienne, on the Rhone. It was on Easter eve; the congregation rushed out; the bishop of the city (Mamertus) was left alone before the altar. On that terrible night he formed a resolution of inventing a new form, as he hoped, of drawing down the mercy of God. He determined that in the three days before Ascension day there should be a long procession to the nearest churches in the neighborhood. From Vienne the custom spread. Amongst the vine-clad mountains, the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne, the practice was taken up with renewed fervor. From town to town it ran through France; it seemed to be a new vent for a hitherto pent-up devotion new spell for chasing away the evils of mankind. Such was the first Litanya popular supplication, sung or shouted, not within the walls of any consecrated building, but by wild, excited multitudes, following each other in long files, through street and field, over hill and valley, as if to bid nature join in the depth of their contrition. It was, in short, what we should call a revival.1

a

It is only by an effort that we can trace the identity of a modern Litany with those strange and moving scenes. Our attention may, however, be well called to the contrast, for various reasons.

1. We do well to remember that a good custom does not lose its goodness, because it arose in a bad time, in a corrupt age, in a barbarous country. Out of such Its origin. dark beginnings have sprung some of our best

1 Sidonius Apollinaris, i. 7; Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc. ii. 6. 34), a. D. 447. There were some earlier and some later developments of this practice, but this seems the most authentic statement of their first beginning. The brief form of "Kyrie Eleeson " had existed before. It first occurs in the heathen worship. "When we call upon God, we say of him Kúpte édeýσov." (Arrian, Comment. de Epist. Disput. ii. c. 7.) The Litany for St. Mark's Day was instituted A. D. 590 by Gregory the Great, partly to avert a pestilence, partly as a substitute for a procession which was held by the ancient Romans to propitiate the goddess Robigo, or Mildew.

institutions. In order for a practice or a doctrine to bear good Christian fruit, we need not demand that its first origin should be primitive, or Protestant, or civilized; 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 ex