dare the Litany be forgotten, that gem which Luther says is the best after the Lord's Prayer, that has come upon earth, or that may be thought out by man. Before the closing hymn the material offerings are placed upon the altar, denoting the consecration of the least as well as the greatest. All thought of merit, of atoning efficacy is absent from the sacrifices thus offered, and the Service has been restored to its original purity. All in all, the Service shines out in the beauty of holiness, radiant in all its many jewels of praise, whether of intonation or responsory, from the Adjutorium to the Nunc Dimittis, so suggestive of the sacrifices of the Church on high.

Principal Source:-KLIEFOTH, Liturgische Abhandlungen.

G. F. SPIEKER.

Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Pa.

THE PLACE OF LITURGY

IN THE CHURCH'S THOUGHT, LIFE AND ART.

It is of no small importance to attempt an outline of the place of liturgy in the whole sphere of the thought, life and art of the Church. Such an attempt will indicate the wide relationship, the far-reaching dependence, and the deep and necessary influence of liturgy. Perhaps it may serve to impress some, to whom liturgics appears as one of the appendices of practical theology appealing to certain æsthetic souls but of very minor value to the whole Church, with the error of their position. Others, in becoming more fully conscious of the dependence of liturgics and seeing it in the whole organism of Christian theology and life, may be prevented from an enthusiastic overestimation and an excessive emphasis of liturgy in practise.

If liturgy is considered in its place in the Church, it is with no necessary theory of the Church as a presupposition, but simply for the reason that in the Church liturgy has its place. This is to be marked in the thought of the Church, i. e., its theology; in the life of the Church, which theology comprehends in its intellectual unfolding and which it influences through its divine content; and in the art of the Church, which, in the beautiful, gives expression of the truth of thought and life.

The thought of the Church arises from the interpretation and understanding of the message given her by her Founder and Corner-stone, and His Apostles, guided and led by His Spirit. Whatever preparatory and prophetic message the whole and the parts of the Old Testament contain, is normative only in the light of the fulfillment of the New Testament. The shadows of the old covenant are determined by the substance of the new, but the new covenant is not to be interpreted by the forms of the old. But the New Testament contains the germs of new fixed forms.

Christ, Who fulfilled the law and the prophets, not only reveres the Old Testament forms and the Old Testament Temple-service, but He also indicates that the new wine of the Kingdom is not to be without vessels, but is to be found in new skins.

(Matt. 9: 17; Mark 2: 21; Luke 5: 37). The new spirit of the Kingdom is not to be formless, but to have new, adequate forms. Jesus looks forward to the worship in spirit and truth (John 4: 23), and yet He teaches His disciples upon their request, not simply a model but also a form of prayer. (Luke 11: 1 ff. cf. Matt. 6: 9 ff.). And the very "Abba" of the Spirit in the heart of believers (Rom. 8: 15; Gal. 4: 6) is the echo not only of the Lord's own prayer (Mark 14: 36), but of the Lord's Prayer given the disciples. The Spirit takes Christ's form of "Our Father" and uses it to move the heart to cry out in childlike confidence. And is it not an indisputable fact, that the most anti-liturgic churches have kept the very words of this form of prayer, and contend for the words "debts" and "debtors" as against "trespasses' used by liturgic churches. This simply proves that the Lord's Prayer is universally accepted as a form. In baptism the command "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28: 19) has been and is generally received as a formula. The free homiletic utterance of Peter, "in the name of Christ" (Acts 2: 38) is neither the starting point of Matt. 28: 19, which is textually so well established, nor its abrogation. The other institution of Christ, His Supper, to be held in remembrance of Him (Luke 22: 19; 1 Cor. 11: 24), is the nucleus for a form, and the prayers and celebration which grew out of it are indicated in the word "testament" and furthered by the command "this do."

If we enter the assemblies of the early Apostolic Church, we find the disciples met for "the prayers" (Greek text, Acts 2: 42), which seem to be not Jewish prayers, though these and their hours were still observed (Acts 3: 1), but the new Christian prayers, connected with "the fellowship" and "the breaking of bread," i. e., the Communion. The more certain are we of this as the congregation at Jerusalem "with one accord lifted up their voice" to what is the earliest known psalm of Christian thanksgiving, kindling the new praise by the old promise as they said: "Lord, Thou art God, Which hast made Heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is; Who by the mouth of Thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people

imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against His Christ. For of a truth against Thy holy child Jesus, Whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done. And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto Thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak Thy Word, by stretching forth Thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the Name of Thy holy child Jesus." (Acts 4: 24-30.) Could this beautiful psalm have been prayed in common, unless it had been a form commonly known and prayed by the body of believers? Did the Holy Spirit ever produce psalms and hymns and prayers through the voice of a multitude, or not always through the individual? The further development of the liturgy of the Apostolic Church is not merely indicated by "psalms, hymns, spiritual songs" (Eph. 5: 19; Col. 3: 16), pointing to the retention of Jewish psalmody and the beginning of Christian hymnody, but there is evidently in the announcement of the mystery of godliness (1 Tim. 3: 16) the rhythm of an early hymn to Christ, (cf. Pliny's letter: a hymn to Christ as God). There is in this hymn the ring of confession. The confession at baptism is beginning to grow into a creed. And it is highly probable, as Theodore Zahn contends, that in the light of subsequent history we may conclude from the comparison of 1 Tim. 6: 12, 13; 2 Tim. 2: 8; Rom. 1: 3; 2 Tim. 4: 1; Acts 10: 42; 1 Pet. 4: 5; 2 Tim. 2: 2; 3: 10; 1: 13, 14, that Timothy confessed Christ is a creed, which contained according to clear evidence "of the seed of David," standing "before Pontius Pilate," and to come "to judge the quick and the dead," and probably it contained more, if we give due consideration to the researches of Kunze. At this same time of Paul's late labor we can also note the growth of the general prayer as seen in 1 Tim.

2: I.

All these exegetic facts placed in the light of New Testament freedom furnish the foundation as well as the norm for liturgy.

But not only does the whole liturgy rest on such proofs, but individual parts are exegetically defensible. If we take "The Kyrie" of the Morning Service and the common objection to its place, we shall find upon examination, that the liturgy has kept

the primary meaning of "Kyrie eleison," as a cry for mercy in bodily misery. (Matt. 9: 27; 15: 22; 17: 15; 20: 30; Mark 10: 47; Luke 17: 13; 18: 38). Though other individual features may not show such literal usage, yet in the freest sacrificial echo of the Word there is an aptness and correctness, which often has not at all, or at least very slightly, been touched by exegetic aberrations. The truth is kept much more correctly than in the freedom of homiletical employment. There is a large opportunity for minute investigation and proof of this fact in showing the correct transmission of much Bible truth embedded in the liturgy, which was kept during the darkest period of the Church's deformation. Therefore the Reformers, despite their fundamental change of attitude, could use so much of the liturgic material of the Roman Church.

It has become evident, that the interpretative thought of the Church, showing the inception of development, leads into history. The Church's thought was unfolded in time. Liturgics cannot be understood unless we trace its growth; how it developed to the third century as a Service of the congregation, prayers and hymns. first clustering about the Lord's Supper, and how, soon after, the degeneration begins with the growth of the hierarchic idea, the change of the sacrament into a sacrifice, the introduction of heathen ideas of mysteries, and how, later, the written fixation takes place in the fourth century, and the priestly cultus is gradually developed into the rich symbolism of the Eastern and the present Russian Church, for which liturgy is a constituent exponent of its elemental ceremonialism, or how it degenerated in the West where the idea of sacrifice gains even larger practical import, and where the Service must also lend itself to express the Latin rule of the Latin priest. In this history it is of interest to note the influence of Gregory I. in wedding most closely the growing liturgy to the growing Church Year. Both belong together, both co-work. The truth and justification of one implies that of the other. Gregory with all his errors has in this helped to shape a true union and given a proper impulse. But the Church Year and the liturgy in their interrelation of development and character have not yet been adequately described. The coming back of the old Gospel necessitated the removal of many unevangelical barnacles in liturgy, but it as such was not repudiated at Wittenberg or Geneva. Later, radicalism from Zwinglian impulses,