BOOK OF CHURCH SERVICES

WITH

Selections for Responsive Reading

AND

FULL ORDERS OF SERVICE FOR THE CELEBRATION
OF MATRIMONY, FOR FUNERALS, AND OTHER
OCCASIONAL MINISTRATIONS

ALSO AN AMPLE LIST OF

Selections of Sacred Busic

WITH REFERENCES FOR THE GUIDANCE OF PASTORS
AND CHORISTERS

ARRANGED BY

EDWARD HUNGERFORD

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1889

The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

Preface.

HE Church Services which prevail most widely in

THE

this country have been developed out of the extremely simple worship first introduced by the Pilgrims and other early settlers of New England. The process of development is still in progress. In their present somewhat complex form they are indigenous to our soil, and, contrasted with those orders of worship which, imported from the old countries, have not been materially changed, they may be characterized as American.

The Pilgrims accompanied their preaching with extemporaneous prayers and the singing of psalms. Cotton Mather* gives the morning order as practised in New England in the first quarter of the last century. It consists of (1) The Long Prayer, (2) A Psalm sung, (3) The Sermon, (4) The Short Prayer, (5) The Benediction. He says that in the afternoon a second psalm was sometimes sung after the short prayer. The reading of the Scriptures as an act of worship had no place. Its introduction was a later innovation.

With choirs came a broader use of sacred music. The gradual expansion of the primitive method re

*Ratio Disciplinæ, etc., Boston, 1726.