It is scarcely necessary to speak of the fact that the worship in which the Apostles and the first Christians engaged, and the worship of the first centuries of the Christian Church, as it grew and was enriched with legitimate enrichment, was not in any sense that barren, extemporaneous, and largely homiletical exercise which in some parts of Protestantism it had become, and which Dr. Lee found universally prevalent in Scotland. To set him right, and those Presbyterians who are with him in this matter, it is more to the point to recall the fact that the worship of the first Presbyterians in Scotland was, like the worship of all the early Protestants, liturgical; that John Knox was in this also, the disciple of John Calvin; that John Calvin had prepared certainly two liturgies, one for the church at Strasburg, another for his own church at Geneva, and that after this latter John Knox patterned his Book of Common Order, which was ratified by successive General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland.

But how came Scotland to lose her Book of Common Order, and after a time to forget that she had ever had it? That would be a long story to narrate; it will suffice us for our present purpose to recall the tyranny of Laud and his ill-timed attempts to impose Episcopacy on Scotland, the monumental folly of thinking to force the Prayer Book (and in a most objectionable edition) upon an unwilling people, provoking thereby the memorable tumult in St. Giles', Edinburgh; and how, not long after this there came the great Revolution; with it the Westminster Assembly. The Presbyterians of Scotland were willing to co-operate with their Puritan brethren in England, though in not a few things they differed with them, certainly with the Independents. The Westminster Assembly formulated new standards of doctrine, discipline and worship, which the Scottish brethren were ready to accept, with the understanding that their own should not thereby be abrogated. Yet what more natural than that, just as the Confession of Westminster came to be the doctrinal standard, so also the Westminster Directory should take the place of the old Common Order as the rule of

worship? And with the perfidious Charles Restoration to refresh their recollections of Charles I before the Revolution, gradually and ciating with Liturgy Prelacy, and with Prela what wonder that in the popular mind the char nent of Scottish views on Liturgy should be the Geddes and her stool? Yet it is a singular thing way, that Scottish Episcopalians for a considerab prayer book and surplice as little as did their brethren, officiating in black robes like the Calvinis using free prayers.

We have spoken of Dr. Robert Lee as if he very first in the Church of Scotland in this latter liturgical worship. That is not exactly true. Th two other eminent divines in that church, Dr. 1 Glasgow Cathedral, and Dr. Crawford, Professor o Edinburgh, who had made a beginning in that di for some reason did not accomplish much. Dr. I in his Church of Greyfriars, Edinburgh, had introd prayers and other liturgical forms, and though a these practices in his Presbytery in 1859, he ma position, advanced still further, and drew some dis him. In short, he made a place for this moveme great keenness and power maintained its right to he died in 1868, not having seen as yet much ch Church at large.

At this point we may as well pause a moment characteristics which marked Dr. Lee's production pilations in the liturgical field. It is but just to sa present writer has never seen the Greyfriars' Prayerthat his statements are based upon the representation worthy and friendly witnesses. Keenness of int already intimated) more than fervor of devotion peculiar gift of this remarkable man. It seems als lacked poetic feeling, the sense of rhythm, the correct taste, without which it is impossible to compose pra

The Liturgical Movement in the Scottish Church. 495 other forms that shall be otherwise than dry, unsatisfactory and ephemeral. "Reading out of a newspaper" was suggested to the genial "Country Parson" who listened once upon a time to Greyfriars' prayers; and he is himself of the liturgical wing. In reading of Dr. Lee and his work we cannot escape the rising suspicion that he had reached liturgical views by processes of study and then set himself to putting them in practice by processes not less purely intellectual; that moreover, being opposed, he performed his liturgy not only to worship Almighty God, but to shock and to defy his opponents. We say, we have a feeling that way. Probably the good Doctor was not himself conscious of such an animus. But he was unmistakably a polemic, fitted for controversy, delighting to bring his adversaries to confusion of face.

But let that pass. The movement itself, ably served by Dr. Lee, was passing beyond him, as needs it must. It took organized form when on January 31, 1865, the "Church Service Society" was formed. Dr. Lee joined it; but, probably expecting that his own prayer-book would be adopted by the Society to be propagated throughout the Kirk, and certainly disappointed in that expectation if he had entertained it, he seems to have rather lost interest in it.

The Society set itself a task more needful there and anywhere when improvement of worship is contemplated. It set itself, not to making new orders of service, but rather to the study of the services of the past, and especially of the primitive liturgies. Out of such study came in 1867 the first Book of Common Order, a sort of manual for the help of ministers, affording them materials for selection and combination, but prescribing no entire service. The second edition followed in 1869, still only a treasury of liturgical forms, with no complete order. The third book took a step in advance, in providing a complete service, together with liturgical selections. The fourth, fifth and sixth have come; the fifth and sixth lie before us at this writing, substantial 12mo. volumes of some four hundred pages each, containing lectionaries for regular Sundays, daily and fes

tival Scripture lessons through the year, prov services for every Sunday morning and evening five Sundays in a month, complete orders for th nion, for Baptism, for the Burial of the Dead, e more valuable still, a very rich collection of Sente Collects, Prayers for various occasions.

Let us now look at the new Book of Common more in detail. The ordinary morning service r

3. Invocation; Confession; Prayer & The Benedictu fur Pardon and Peace; Supplications; the Lord's Prayer, the Congregation joining.

4. The Psalter, said or sung, pre

faced with Responsive Versi-
cles, and closed with Gloris
Patri

5. The First Scripture Lesson,
from the Old Testament; after
each Lesson & Sentence of
Praise.

or Psalm. 9. The Apostles' 10. Salutation; In Thanksgiving brief Versicles 11. Psalm or Hym 12. Brief Prayer fo 13. Sermon, closing cription of Pra

14. The Offering. 15. Psalm or Hymn

6. The Te Deum or other Hymn 16. Benediction. or Psalm.

As we compare this Order with that of the fifth note slight but significant changes. The parts of and their arrangement, show an ever closer appr the Common Prayer Book type. The fifth edition ilarity; the sixth, almost identity, certainly structu

Whether this gradual approximation is due to the of the Prayer Book structure, which grows more a those who study it; or whether it evidences a wi adopt whatever may without sacrifice of principle over from Anglicanism, for the sake of greater ha agreement in non-essentials; we are unable to Something might be said for either view. Certainly nificant fact, interpret it as we may.

The Communion Service shows the results of wide liturgical study. We find here what one naturally looks for in a complete form for the Eucharist. The Nicene Creed (or Apostles', in the fifth edition as alternative), Prayer of Access, Sursum Corda, Ter Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Church Militant Prayer. One might have preferences for a different arrangement of parts; but in this service there is certainly nothing mean, trivial, or bald. It is solemn, catholic, sacramental, evangelical.

The Book of Common Order is not laid out for the Church Year, but it makes room for the keeping of sacred seasons and festival days, by providing, in the general collections of forms, collects and other forms suitable for the chief of them, Nor is the book one for the congregation, properly speaking; it is a minister's book still, as were the first editions, and by the minister to be used as in his judgment he sees fit.

Much more should we be glad to say of this important publication, and still more important movement of which it is an exponent. We cannot do less than commend it most warmly to the attention of our readers as a volume which will repay study, and which one should have always near at hand. The Common Prayer itself is, in our estimation, inferior to it in one respect the Treasury of Collects and Prayers seems to us far to surpass the Anglican. We cannot close without referring the reader also to a most attractive and valuable article on the subject in the November, 1890, number of Blackwood's Magazine, written by A. K. H. B, the famous "Country Parson," who has been many years a member of the Church Service Society, and hence knows its history from the inside.

: