Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/69

 Any one is at liberty to reprint these Tracts, with such alterations as approve themselves to his judgment.

is a growing feeling that the Services of the Church are too long; and many persons think it a sound feeling, merely because it is a growing one. Let such as have not made up their minds on the subject, suffer themselves, before going into the arguments against our Services, to be arrested by the following consideration.

The Services of our Church, as they now stand, are but a very small part of the ancient Christian worship; and, though people now-a-days think them too long, there can be no doubt that the primitive believers would have thought them too short. Now I am far from considering this as a conclusive argument in the question; as if the primitive believers were right, and people now-a-days wrong; but surely others may fairly be called upon, not to assume the reverse. On such points it is safest to assume nothing, but to take facts as we find them; and the facts are these.

In ancient times Christians understood very literally all that the Bible says about prayer. David had said, "seven times a day do I praise Thee;" and St. Paul had said, "pray always." These texts they did not feel at liberty to explain away, but complying with them to the letter, praised God seven times a day, besides their morning and evening prayer. Their hours of devotion were, in the day time, 6, 9, 12, and 3, which were called the Horæ Canonicæ; in the night, 9, 12, and 3, which were called the Nocturns; and besides these the hour of daybreak and of retiring to bed;—not that they set apart these hours in the first instance for public worship, this was impossible; but they seem to have aimed at praying with one accord, and and at one time, even where they could not do so in one place. "The Universal Church," says Bishop Patrick, "anciently observed certain set hours of prayer, that all Christians throughout the world might at the same time join together to glorify God; and some of them were of opinion, that the Angelical