'God the Father-of heaven.' While we here speak to the Son in these words, Christ have mercy upon us,' in the Litany we address him as 'God the Son, Redeemer of the world:' and while, in this part of the Service, we only repeat the same words in calling on the Holy Spirit as we used in praying to the Father, we address the Blessed Spirit, in the Litany, as God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son."

The SHORT SENTENCES which immediately follow the Lord's Prayer, and begin, 'O Lord, shew thy mercy upon us,' are remarkable, not only for their scriptural words-not only for the comprehensiveness of their meaning and the many subjects of prayer they contain, but for being a perfect analysis or short summary of the remaining Prayers of the Public Service. We pointed out to you, in the Exhortation, a like short summary of the different parts of our public worship:-let us now observe the way in which the remaining Prayers (both of Morning and Evening Service) are, as it were, contained in these short verses-so that, in the same way as the heading of each chapter in our Bible gives us (and generally in a wonderfully clear and short manner) the chief subjects of the chapter, so these short sentences will be found, on examination, to contain the subject of each of the remaining Prayers.

The first two Sentences, O Lord, shew thy mercy upon us, and grant us thy salvation,' are the sum and substance of the Collects for the different Sundays;-for if those Collects should be, as it were, taken to pieces, and those things, which are common to them all, put together, it would be found that in every one of them mercy is asked, and salvation prayed for, though in different words.

The next two, O Lord, save the Queen, and mercifully hear us when we call upon Thee,' plainly direct us to the Prayers for the Sovereign and the Royal Family.

The next four, Endue thy Ministers with righteousness-and make thy chosen people joyful; O Lord, save thy people, and bless thine inheritance,' point to the Prayer for the Clergy and People.

The next two, 'Give peace in our time, O Lord, because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O Lord,' contain the substance of the Collects for Peace in the Morning and Evening Prayers.

The last two Sentences, O God, make clean our hearts within us, and take not thy Holy Spirit from us,' answer to the Morning and Evening Collects for Grace,-the great work of grace (that is, the influence of the Holy Spirit) being to purify and cleanse the heart by faith and repent

ance.

Thus these Sentences are the cream, as it were, of the remaining Prayers of our Church Service, (for the Litany is a separate Service, and used only on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.) We are in them taught the different subjects, for which we are to ask, in the Prayers that follow; and from the Minister and people having each a part to bear in these short but powerful and comprehensive Prayers, the people answering their Minister, and the Minister rousing and stirring up the people, unless each bears the part belonging to them, the sense of these short Prayers is broken :-the people must follow in their heart

that part of the Prayer which the minister prays aloud, and he must accompany in his spirit, what they, with united voice,are uttering before the Lord.

Let us now briefly draw your attention to THE COLLECTS.

The short Prayers, which we call Collects, have (it is most likely) received that name, because in them are collected (or brought together into a small space) the chief subjects contained in the Epistle and Gospel of the day. And this is done in them in a very remarkable manner, as you would find, on carefully comparing the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel together, and reading them with a view to discover the connection between them. And let no one say that such an exercise as this is merely the reading a 'Service Book,' as men of bitter spirit used to call the Prayer Book: -the arrangement of those portions of Scripture, which are read as the Epistle and Gospel of the day, is indeed man's arrangement; the judgment which led them to make choice of these passages was indeed man's judgment;-but it was that of men, whose holy lives-whose meekness of wisdom —whose zeal for the glory of God-whose boldness in preaching the word-whose patient suffering for the truth's sake-whose cruel death, willingly, cheerfully, and often triumphantly undergoneproved to all, but their blinded persecutors and bigotted adversaries, that they were indeed taught of God to live, and, strengthened by Him, to die. Let no one therefore say that the arrangement, which thus enables every member of the Church "to compare Scripture with Scripture, and spiritual things with spiritual," is not a profitable and edifying one. While we stedfastly maintain that God is His own interpreter, and that the Eternal

needs no help from such earth-worms as we are, to explain His Word, but both can and does "reveal it even to babes" by His Spirit, let us beware of running into the opposite error, and make it seem as if God never taught any but ourselves-which those persons appear to affirm, who set no value at all on the opinions of the wise and holy, and pay no respect to the united agreement of believers, from the beginning of Christianity.

The Collects are a part of our Church Service, which has been chiefly objected to by those, who say that our worship is Popish,' and who, in their hatred of Popery, have been led to dislike our Prayers, because of their supposed likeness to Popery.

Now, in answer to this objection, we have to observe, that the greater part of our Collects were brought into England in the time of that Pope who converted to Christianity those of our AngloSaxon forefathers, who had not become Christians before; and they were old at that time, having been used in the Church of Rome before that Church had fallen into its grievous errors of doctrine and practice. And we must bear in mind that the Church of Rome was once a pure Church, and then taught "the truth as it is in Jesus ;". and if the doctrines put forth in those Collects, (which are objected to) are drawn from and may be proved by Scripture, we are surely not to reject the scriptural truths, because the channel through which they have come to us is defiled. The man who should throw away a bank-note, because the cover in which it came had been soiled in passing through the hands of different careless messengers, would be condemned by all, and justly.

Again-these Collects were carefully and most

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scrupulously examined by our Reformers, and every word-even the slightest expression that was unscriptural,—was taken away. They did with these ancient Prayers as men do with that earth which contains the gold ore-they break it upthey sift it-they wash it-they melt it-they make it pass often through the fire, that what is earthy may be removed, and the pure gold left behind. So did our Reformers break up and sift these Collects, so that the earth and rubbish of man's invention have been taken away, and that only left which is purely scriptural. If clumsy builders had faced a beautiful stone church with common bricks-hid its chaste and noble pillars with a case of plaster-and painted with glaring white its black oak panelings and rafters-would it be wisdom to pull that church down?—or would it not be both prudent as to expense, and in good taste also, to restore that beautiful church, by taking away the bricks, cutting down the plaster, and removing, by the knife and some chemical liquid, the paint that has been daubed upon its walls and beams of oak?-Now this is what our Reformers did :-they left all that was scriptural and catholic-all that was venerable by its age, and useful either for ornament or for beauty ;they would not pull down the church because those, who boasted themselves to be builders, had defaced it, and hidden the beauty of its simple and scriptural Services with the burnt bricks of their own earthly traditions, and daubed its Creeds (those pillars of the truth) with the sand, and gravel, and untempered mortar of their own commandments; and had hidden the solid oak of its walls, and the rafters of its roof, with the paint of their own interpretations—which hid what they pretended to improve.

If the Collects of our Church, then, (as well as