Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/70

Rh Host, being acquainted with those hours, took that time to join their prayers and praises with those of the Church." The Hymns and Psalms appropriated to these hours were in the first instance intended only for private meditation; but afterwards, when religious societies were formed, and persons, who had withdrawn from secular business, lived together for purposes of devotion, chanting was introduced, and they were arranged for congregational worship. Throughout the Churches which used the Latin tongue, the same Services were adopted with very little variation; and in Roman Catholic countries they continue in use, with only a few modern interpolations, even to this day.

The length of these Services will be in some degree understood from the fact, that in the course of every week they go through the whole book of Psalms. The writer has been told by a distinguished person, who was once a Roman Catholic Priest, that the time required for their performance averages three hours a day throughout the year.

The process of transition from this primitive mode of worship to that now used in the Church of England, was gradual. Long before the abolition of the Latin Service, the ancient hours of worship had fallen into disuse; in religious Societies the daily and nightly Services had been arranged in groups under the names of Matins and Vespers; and those who prayed in private were allowed to suit their hours of prayer to their convenience, provided only that they went through the whole Services each day. Neither is it to be supposed that this modified demand was at all generally complied with. Thus in the course of time, the views and feelings, with which prayer had been regarded by the early Christians, became antiquated; the forms remained, but stripped of their original meaning; Services were compressed into one, which had been originally distinct; the idea of united worship, with a view to which identity of time and language had been maintained in different nations, was forgotten; the identity of time had been abandoned, and the identity of language was not thought worth preserving. Conscious of the incongruity of primitive forms and modern feelings, our Reformers undertook to construct a Service more in accordance with the spirit of their age. They adopted the English language; they curtailed the already compressed ritual of the early Christians, so arranging it that the Psalms should be gone through monthly, instead of