present day they continue to use liturgical forms in the administration of the sacraments, and in some sections continue a moderate observance of the chief festivals of the church year, and in some congregations the (Ger.) Reformed Church uses some liturgical forms in the regular Lord's-Day service. After a spirited discussion of the subject in connection with a revision of its liturgy throughout a series of years, this latter Church has finally become harmonised in the adoption of a Directory of Worship, which gives option to use a liturgical, a free service, or a combination of the two.

If we go back to the Apostolic Church we find that in this, as in the matter of church government, no fixed binding form was adopted, because both were as yet in an undeveloped, rudimentary state, and also, doubtless, because it was designed that freedom should be allowed for the church within certain limits to develop and organise its forms of worship according to its necessities and preferences. We have given in the New Testament the different parts of worship, consisting of the reading of Scripture, the preaching of the Gospel, prayer, praise, almsgiving, and the administration of the sacraments, to which we may add the rudiments of a Christian church year, in the observance of Easter and Pentecost. So far as the public common prayer was concerned, there is authority, we think, both for precomposed and extempore forms. Precomposed forms were doubtless used from the worship of the synagogue for a time, to which our Saviour added the Lord's Prayer, and others, no doubt, were added afterwards. For extempore prayer we have some examples, like that in Acts iv. 24-30, which, in my judgment, however, were not extempore in the sense in which that word is now used, but the composition of which belongs rather to the charisms, or extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit, vouchsafed to the Apostolic Church, and which disappeared soon after the Apostolic age. Considering that the custom in the synagogue-worship was to use precomposed forms of prayer, and that the first elders in the Christian Church were, as a rule, uneducated men, it is not to be supposed, it seems to me, that they would introduce improvised forms of public prayer, except as they might be prepared by special inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As to the part the people took in the public common prayer, we have an instance of their response (1 Cor. xiv. 16) in the Amen at the end of the Thanksgiving. If we add to all this the completed liturgies in the early church, the substance of which, like the Apostles' Creed, must have existed and developed still earlier, and the description of worship given by Justin Martyr and Tertullian, we are led to conclude, I think, that a prepared or precomposed form of public worship, including precomposed prayers, was the custom in the Apostolic

and early, certainly in the early, Church. But the exceptions in the charisms, and the general spirit of freedom in the worship of the Apostolic Church, are sufficient to justify extemporised public prayer. These gifts, like the temporary communism at Jerusalem in the infant church, may be regarded as prophetic of the coming in of free prayer in the later times in the Protestant Church, a privilege and a right which the Reformed Churches of Protestantism, at least, will probably never forsake.

With this brief reference to the example and authority of the Apostolic and early Reformed Church, I propose now, as far as my time allows, to present a plea for the free and moderate use of liturgical forms in the worship of our Reformed Churches, in combination with free prayer, as giving us properly the merits and advantages of both.

1. And first I present the advantage to be derived from a moderated use of a Christian church year in our cultus, in the religious observance of the leading festivals, such as Christmas, Easter, Pentecost.

A sacred year is just as natural and necessary in the ongoing of our Christian life, as is the natural year with its seasons for our natural life, and a political year in the life of the state. It holds up before us the objective facts of Christianity, in a way that fixes upon them the attention and faith of the church during the cycle of the year, and in the pericopes gives us a course of reading in connection with other Scripture, more varied and comprehensive than is likely to be the case where some subjective standard determines the reading of Scripture, whilst in a second Sunday service, or in the week-day service, portions of Scripture may be read in course if desired.

I know it is objected that the observance of such days as Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost detracts from the regular, divinely appointed day of rest, the Christian Sabbath; but this effect is rather caused I think, by an undue multiplication of sacred days, and along with this, by that view of the Sabbath which regards it as merely a church festival. The abuse of a church year is no argument against its proper

use.

An eminent member of this Alliance, who has since gone to join in the worship of the upper sanctuary, Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, then professor and afterwards President of the Union Seminary, New York, said, as if prophetically, eight years ago, at the meeting in Philadelphia, "I anticipate a revival of the old church year" (i.e. in the Reformed Churches). "Christmas is leading this new procession. . . . Good Friday, Easter, and Whitsuntide are not far behind. These, at least, can do us no harm. They emphasise the three grand facts and features of our religion-Incarnation, Atonement, and Regeneration."

...

I cannot speak of the trend on this subject on this side of the Atlantic, but in America, Christmas is fast becoming a national festival, and Easter is almost as widely observed. Good Friday is made a legal holiday in the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and this year, in Philadelphia, no less than eight or ten Protestant denominations were represented on that day in a meeting to pray for the union of the churches, and in a city in Puritan New England Congregationalists and Episcopalians on that day joined in a common service also.

May we not regard this tendency as an expression of a felt want of yearly holy seasons; and if the number be thus limited, might not our Reformed Churches be benefited by falling in with this rapidly extending custom?

2. For a moderate and optional use of some liturgical forms in the regular Lord's-Day service, I urge the propriety and advantage of the people taking more part externally and orally in worship. The only provision for this in our churches usually is their joining in the singing, and even that, for one reason or another, is largely relegated to the choir. Could our English churches have such congregational singing as one is accustomed to hear in German churches, it would, perhaps, leave less to be desired on the part of the people in this direction. But more is needed, and it is worthy of consideration whether it would not strengthen them to join audibly at times, if not statedly, in the repetition of the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer, and in the hearty responsive Amen in the regular prayer. I will not dwell upon the question of the constant use of prescribed forms of prayer, because the chief matter here is, of course, that the prayer, whether precomposed or carefully meditated upon, should be a true expression from the heart; but I urge that we lose, by excluding certain forms of worship, such as the Gloria, the Litany, the Ambrosian hymn, etc., that certainly have held their place as classic sacred forms, consecrated by the universal church of all the ages.

I am unwilling to admit that there is no common meeting-ground here as between liturgical and free worship, or that it must be inevitably one or the other, exclusively and uniformly. I believe that the Episcopal Church suffers from a want of elasticity in its forms of worship, and its scrupulous requirement of uniformity, which latter in the earlier time, as we know, drove out Presbyterian and Puritan. But we may at least ask whether we, in the Reformed Churches, do not suffer as well by an exclusive spirit of uniformity in the disuse of all forms of liturgical service. There may be unity without strict uniformity.

I will not speak of the legitimate consecration of the highest and purest art in worship, but I wish to say a word in conclusion of the form of worship as itself a heavenly art, in which the parts blend in

harmony from beginning to end as a help to the spirit in its comIt is idle to object that God looks at the heart

munion with God. and not to the lips. If the sermon, as to its form as well as its spirit, requires the best we can give to edify and profit the people, it is no less true that the other parts of worship require fully as much careful attention, if the congregation is to be upborne in it as upon wings in rising to communion with God. Worship should not be conducted as though the minister, in leading it, were for the first time instructing the people in regard to the succession of the parts, interpolating directions as to what is to be done, but it should move forward from beginning to end as one familiar, spontaneous utterance of the highest feelings of reverence, adoration, and praise of which the human spirit is capable. And this is true, whether some of the parts are extemporised or precomposed. A bungling, interrupted movement may quench the glow of enraptured devotion in the one as well as in the other. Hence the importance of the transitions and the and the common utterances where they are made.

responses,

I do not unduly emphasise or elevate the emotional in worship, but I would give it a proper place, and to aid in this the form is essential for the expression of the spirit. I plead, not for literary or artistic forms, merely to please and gratify the natural mind and heart, apart from true devotion, but I plead for worship as requiring the intense activity of all in a living, spirited manner, to which, I believe, the people will respond with quite as much attention and interest, as they will to living, telling sermons. Such worship

is indeed a tax upon the spiritual energies, and, as in the Transfiguration on the Mount,it cannot continue too long at one time, but while it lasts, the people as well as the minister, should feel themselves lifted up and borne away, as upon angels' wings, to the very throne of

God.

Worship, in its other parts, should attract, should engage the attention, should satisfy the soul, should fill our churches, just as much, to say the least, as the sermon. And so it will, if, along with the spirit of true devotion, the form of worship is such as to give the best expression to this devotion. And where can we find better forms for such service than in language which has become consecrated by the highest and purest devotion of the ages?

But if it be urged that such a combination of liturgical forms, and what is called free worship, is not practicable, that the tendency will be to result in the one or the other exclusively, a position we do not believe to be correct, then let me urge in conclusion one other view of our subject, viz. the advantage of having liturgical worship in some churches, and free worship in others, in the Reformed family. We can

not escape the conclusion that there is a strong and growing tendency in portions of the Reformed Churches to introduce certain liturgical forms, and to observe the great festivals of the church year. There is evidence of this fact in some sections at least on this side of the ocean, and facts abundantly prove that such a tendency prevails in some portions of the Reformed Churches in American Sunday-schools. To crush out this tendency would inevitably issue in driving many of our young people into the Episcopal Church.

The existence of both forms may exert a healthful influence of the one upon the other, and prevent that one-sidedness of fixedness in uniformity, against which the Presbyterians and Puritans of England formally protested.

In reaching this conclusion I have avoided, I hope, introducing a question of strife into this body. Rather have I sought to plead for a position in practice which has been theoretically granted from the beginning in this Alliance, and that a spirit of freedom may prevail on this subject throughout the Reformed Churches of the world.

OUR DEVOTIONAL USAGES.

Rev. DONALD FRASER, D.D. (London), read the next paper. On the principles which underlie the whole function of Christian Worship we are probably agreed. There is no need to argue here against sacerdotal and superstitious rites, or to expound the New Testament liberty of access to God. It is of the united expression of devotion-the Christian Cultus-that something needs to be said. And the time is favourable for saying something. The controversial mood is softened, extreme positions are losing influence, and a candid reconsideration of our devotional usages may be attempted without exciting alarm. Indeed there are very few subjects before this Council which possess so much interest as this for our intelligent laity, or affect more powerfully the life and progress of our Church.

It is to me plain and axiomatic that a Presbyterian Church can never abrogate its right and duty to regulate the public service as well as the public teaching. The one, quite as much as the other, must be under supervision in order to exclude confusion and error, and promote the edification of the Body of Christ.

Now this regulation of worship may be, and has been, in one or other of these methods:

(1) By the more or less strict prescription of a Liturgy, which liturgy may be either complete or partial, allowing and requiring additional prayers free, i.e. unprescribed.

(2) By a Directory, to be more or less closely followed.