and majesty which makes the crowning excellence in forms of public worship. Various passages in these early liturgies exhibit this needful combination. They must accordingly be ever valued as models, though it is but a blind worship of antiquity which prohibits the hope that taste and devotion may still produce equally fitting and beautiful forms of religious expression.

As illustrating the requisites of liturgical excellence, the prayer of oblation from the liturgy of Saint Chrysostom may be cited:

"Lord, God Almighty, Only Holy, Who receivest the sacrifice of praise from them that call upon Thee with their whole heart, receive also the supplication of us sinners, and cause it to approach to Thy holy altar, and enable us to present gifts to Thee, and spiritual sacrifices for our sins, and for the errors of the people: and cause us to find grace in Thy sight, that this our sacrifice may be acceptable unto Thee, and that the good Spirit of Thy grace may tabernacle upon us, and upon these gifts presented unto Thee, and upon all Thy people."

The following from the liturgy of Saint Mark is not so near the ideal of simplicity, but is nevertheless very beautiful:

"God of light, Father of life, Author of grace, Framer of the worlds, Founder of knowledge, Giver of wisdom, Treasure of holiness, Teacher of pure prayers, Benefactor of the soul, Who givest to the weak-hearted who trust in Thee those things into which the angels desire to look: Who hast raised us from the abyss to light, hast given us life from death, hast granted us freedom from slavery, hast dissolved

in us the darkness of sin by the coming of Thine OnlyBegotten Son; now also, O Lord, illuminate the eyes of our understanding by the visitation of Thy Holy Spirit, that we may without condemnation partake of this immortal and heavenly food; and sanctify us wholly, soul, body, and spirit, that with Thy holy disciples and apostles we may say to Thee this prayer, Our Father.. And make us worthy, O Lord and Lover of men, with boldness, without condemnation, with a pure heart, with an enlightened soul, with a countenance that needeth not to be ashamed, with hallowed lips, to dare to call upon Thee our holy God and Father, Which art in heaven." 1

Alongside the elaboration of liturgical forms proceeded the enrichment of liturgical vestments. The white garments which constituted the sacerdotal garb for several centuries were gradually supplemented, until place was given to the five ecclesiastical colors. "In every-day life, for the first five or six centuries, the clergy universally wore the ordinary citizens' dress; then gradually, after the precedent of Jewish priests and Christian monks, exchanged it for a suitable official costume, to make manifest their elevation above the laity."2

Religion has always been the patron of architecture. Wherever civilized skill has been found it has been present to claim the noblest employment of the high gift for its own purposes. The heathen nations

1 Neale's translation.

2 Schaff, Church History, Vol. III.

have felt its mighty and creative impulse. Imbued with the feeling that they should build more grandly for their gods than for themselves, they have made the most lavish expenditures upon sacred edifices.

Christianity, with her powerful sway over the minds and hearts of men, was naturally quite the equal of preceding systems in subsidizing skill and treasure for religious buildings. No sooner were the needful resources at her command than she began to employ them with Solomonic munificence. A large proportion of the wealth of society flowed to the sanctuary. Europe had scarcely been evangelized before it was dotted with costly and stately structures. A town might be destitute of every other token of elegance, its inhabitants might be compelled to live in wooden buildings of the most humble description; but it was almost certain to have its church built of stone, generously adorned, and towering in grandeur far above all surrounding

structures.

In the history of Christian architecture, we may note several eras, or the successive appearance of several different types, each of which has been dominant for a time. It should be understood, however, that in no case have the earlier styles been wholly displaced by the later. Different types have co-existed, and in many cases have worked upon and modified each other. Still there are lines of demarkation which may be traced with sufficient definiteness. Most writers, while perhaps they indulge some difference in terminology, distinguish five styles as successively appearing before the Reformation. In a not unusual classification these are specified as fol

lows: the Basilica, the Byzantine, the Romanesque, the Gothic, and the Renaissance.1

For about two centuries the Christians probably accomplished very little in the way of church building. The private dwelling oftentimes served as the sanctuary. For regular houses of worship there was no adequate security during the era of persecutions. Still the Christians by no means waited for heathen fury to deal its final blows before providing themselves with edifices devoted specially to religious services. Whatever may have been the number of such edifices at an earlier date, it is certain that many were built in the last half of the third century.

The opinion has been very generally entertained that the Roman basilica, or hall of justice, was the model which the Christians followed in their early architectural efforts; but recently opposing theories have been broached. Reference has been made to the influence of the Jewish synagogue. Some writers have contended that the banqueting hall of the private dwelling, which among the wealthy was spacious and elegant, afforded the main features of the plan adopted. Some have regarded the schola, or hall of a fraternity, used mainly if not exclusively for funeral rites, as the most effective model in the first stages of Christian architecture. Such elements as these in the building art of the time were doubtless objects of continued observation. There is no good reason, therefore, why any one of them may not be supposed to have exerted a measure of in

1 Fergusson uses a different terminology, giving the name of Romanesque to the first style, and calling the third Early or Round-arch Gothic. Lord Lindsay describes the third under the title Lombard style.

fluence.1 Still, it is proper to consider the basilica a very influential factor, as being the most conspicuous example at hand of a spacious columned hall. It was an oblong building with a gallery on either side supported by a row of columns. The galleries were roofed over. The middle space in some instances was open to the sky, but in others it was roofed. In the latter case it readily supplied the plan of a building suited to the uses of a Christian assembly.

On appropriating the basilican type the Christians divided and arranged the interior space according to the demands of their liturgical and ecclesiastical system. The apse and the adjoining portion were separated from the rest of the church and raised somewhat above the general level. This section, which was the place of ecclesiastics, was called the sanctuarium or presbyterium. The raised seat of the bishop was at the centre of the apse; the higher clergy were ranged on either side near the wall. The altar was placed to the front of the apse. Originally it was uncovered, but afterwards was surmounted by a tabernacle resting on pillars, the so-called ciborium. The lower clergy, who took part in the choir-singing, occupied a space which was railed off in the body of the house in front of the

1 Prof. C. W. Bennett, after a careful survey of the subject, fixes upon an eclectic theory in these terms: "The ordinary private dwelling-house, the triclinia of the more elegant houses of the nobler families that had embraced Christianity, the lodge-rooms, the cellæ of the burial chapels, and the imposing interior arrangement of colonnades in the heathen lawbasilicas, are the sources whence are derived the germs which under the fostering and inspiring spirit of the new religion during periods of toleration and peace were developed into a distinctively Christian architecture whose chief characteristics continued for a thousand years." (Christian Archaeology, pp. 183, 184.)