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118 as that of St. James and indeed all Eastern uses. But the actual prayers are different. One of the petitions in its Supplication is: "Draw up the waters of the river to their proper measure; gladden and renew the face of the earth in their rising." This is, of course, the yearly rising of the Nile. At first Greek or Coptic were used indiscriminately; then the Melkites kept to Greek and the Copts to their own language. The Copts evolved a number of liturgies out of the old one. Since the 12th century the Melkites use the Byzantine Liturgy.

The Church of Constantinople had a liturgy of her own attributed to St. Basil († 379). It seems to be a modification of the Syrian rite. Later it was much shortened by St. John Chrysostom († 407), and this shorter form was the one commonly used, though on a few days in the year that of St. Basil was kept; for the Mass of the Presanctified, which we have only on Good Friday, but which they celebrate every day in Lent, except Saturdays and Sundays, they use the Liturgy of St. Gregory Dialogos (our St. Gregory the Great, to whom they attribute it). These three liturgies make up the use of Constantinople, which spread throughout the Orthodox East as the Church for which it was composed became the head of all the others. It is now celebrated almost exclusively in a number of languages throughout the Orthodox Churches, and is, after our Roman Liturgy, by far the most widely spread of all (p. 397). The Armenian Liturgy is modified from that of Constantinople. Lastly, ever since the Nestorian schism there has been a group of Nestorian Liturgies in Syriac, used by that Church. In the Byzantine Church, then, the three liturgies it used were to the people as obvious and necessary a way of celebrating the Holy Mysteries as at the same time the Roman Mass was at Rome. The rite they saw most often was that of St. John Chrysostom. It was accompanied by a great deal of ritual, and said in gorgeous vestments, but in great part