very imperfectly recognized even by Augustine. The fish itself, if as we may suppose it formed part of the original and primitive ordinance, is one of those particulars of sacred antiquity which are gone beyond recall. Not a trace of it exists in the New Testament. It is gone from all celebrations of the Eucharist, as the water from the wine in Protestant celebrations, as the wine from the bread in Roman administrations.

V. One more trace of the social festive character of the original ordinance was the table. To the question whether it was ever called an altar in those

The table.

ages we will return presently. But there is no doubt that it was always of wood, and that the mensa or Tрámečα was its ordinary name. In the representaτράπεζα tions in the catacombs, it is as if a circular table.1 In the earliest forms of churches, whether as in the small chapels in the catacombs, or as in the great basilicas of Rome, or in the Eastern churches, it stood and stands in front of the apse. This in Western churches was superseded in later times by stone structures fastened to the east end of the church. But in the Protestant churches, both Reformed and Lutheran, the wooden structure and the detached position were retained, and in the English and Scottish churches, both Episcopal and Presbyterian, wooden tables were brought at the time of the Holy Communion into the middle of the church. There was only this difference in their position from that in the primitive Church, that in the English Church they were placed lengthwise, the officiating minister standing in the middle of the side facing the people. On this arrangement all the rubrics are founded, and, curiously enough, were not altered, when, after Laud's time, the position of the table was again brought back to what it had been before the Reformation. Deerhurst church in

1 See the various authorities quoted in Kenan's St. Paul, 266.

Gloucestershire alone retains for it the position which was given in the time of Edward VI. Thus while the position of the Holy Table in England is now conformable to the mediaval practice of the Latin Church, the rubric which speaks of "the north side," which is no longer capable of being observed, remains the sole relic in our service of the conformity with which it was intended to be brought with the primitive usage.

The posture

of the min

VI. We have now reached the last trace of the social, and, as it may be called, secular character of the primitive Eucharist. We pass to the forms by and position which, no doubt from the first, but increasing as ister. time rolled on, the religious or sacred character with which it had been invested was brought out into words, and in doing so we are at once brought into the presence of all that we know of the early Christian worship. The Liturgy, properly speaking, was the celebration of the Holy Communion. The worship of the early Christians gathered round this as the nucleus. We must picture to ourselves the scene according to the arrangement which has been clearly described. The Bishop, or Presiding Minister, as he is called by Justin Martyr, is on his lofty seat behind the table, overlooking it, facing the congregation who stood on the other side of it in front of him. The other ministers, if there were any -probably Deacons - sat or stood in a semicircle immediately beneath and around him. This position is now almost entirely lost. The Pope to a certain degree keeps it up, as he always, in celebrating mass, stands behind the altar, facing the people. The arrangements of ancient churches, like that of Torcello at Venice, though long disused, are proofs of the ancient custom. The nearest likeness is to be seen in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, where the minister, from his lofty pulpit behind the table, addresses the congregation, with his

elders beneath him on the pulpit stairs, or round its base. The dress of the bishop and clergy who are to officiate, except by mere accident, in no way distinguishes them from the congregation in front of them. The prayers are uttered throughout standing, and with outstretched hands. The posture of devotion was standing, as is the universal practice in the East. The outstretched hands. are open in Mussulman devotions, as also in the catacombs. They express the hope of receiving into them the blessings from above. Of the outstretched hands a reminiscence was very long present in the benediction — manibus extensis 2 of the priest. As in other cases, so here, when the original meaning was lost, this simple posture was mystically explained as the extension of the hands of Christ on the cross.3

Of this standing posture of the congregation which still prevails throughout the East, all traces have disappeared in the Western Church, except in the attitude of the officiating minister at the Eucharist, and in the worship of the Presbyterian Churches always. Its extinction is the more remarkable, because it was enjoined by the only canon of the Council of Nicæa, which related to public worship, and which ordered that on every Sunday (whatever license might be permitted on other days) and on every day between Easter and Pentecost, kneeling should be forbidden and standing enjoined. In the controversy between the Church and the Puritans in the seventeenth century, there was a vehement contention whether kneeling at the Sacrament should be permitted. It was the point on which the Church most passionately insisted, and which the Puritans most passionately re

1 See the case, as discussed y Cardinal Bona, and the futility of the arguments by which he endeavors to refute the mass of authority on the other side. 2 Maskell, p. 79. The last trace of it in England is in the Life of St. Dun

stan.

8 Ibid.

sisted. The Church party in this were resisting the usage of ancient Catholic Christendom, and disobeying the Canon of the First Ecumenical Council, to which they professed the most complete adhesion. The Puritans, who rejected the authority of either, were in the most entire conformity with both.

Reading of the Script

ures.

VII. Another element of the worship was the reading of the Scriptures. This has continued in most Christian Churches, but in none can it be said to occupy the same solemn prominence as in early times, when it was a continuation of the tradition of reading the Law and the Prophets in the Jewish synagogues. A trace of this is visible in the ambones 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,1 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.

1 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.

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 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 1 on the south, and it was a fine idea that in a manly religion like Christianity the Gospel belonged especially

to them.

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" The 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

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