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great information in these studies,-" It is so admirably composed, that it is fit to be said by all men who would give God thanks for common blessings, and yet peculiarly provided with a proper clause for those who, having received some personal mercy, desire to offer up their public praise; a duty which none that have had the Prayers of the Church should ever omit after their recovery, lest they incur the reprehension given by our Saviour to the ungrateful leper recorded in the gospel,- Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?""

The ordinary service for Morning and Evening Prayer is concluded in this manner:-First, by a Prayer of St. John, who had the name given him of Chrysostom, or the golden-mouthed, on account of his eloquence; and who died a natural death, indeed, but with attendant circum

stances of persecution, which gave him the honour of martyrdom, in the year of our Lord 407. This Prayer most aptly is inserted at the close of our devotions. We may have urged improper petitions, as did the fond mother of Zebedee's children; we may have asked what we were better without, what may be a snare to ús, and may prove a curse rather than a blessing. The Church has selected and framed most excellent prayers; but who knows in what senses her sons have put them up?-and, therefore, behold the modest piety of Chrysostom; behold the wisdom of the Church in appropriating it : we ask, in this Prayer, that God will be pleased to "fulfil the desires and petitions" of his servants, not merely as we have asked, but as he shall judge "most expedient for us;'-granting us, what we can never err in asking explicitly, in this

world knowledge of his truth, and in the world to come, life everlasting. — And, secondly, there is subjoined to the whole a text of Scripture, in which we pray for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the love of God, and the communion or fellowship of the Holy Ghost; a text which mentions all the Persons of the blessed Trinity, and involves petitions ensuring us comfort on earth, and happiness everlasting.

Thus endeth the service for Morning and Evening Prayer, for Wednesdays and Fridays, throughout the year. What follows on Sundays and Holidays, will employ us in my concluding discourse on Sunday next.

SERMON XXVI.

GEN. ii. 3.

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work, which God created and made.

HAVING finished a series of observations upon the order of Morning and Evening Prayer on Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year, I proceed now to comment upon those parts of divine service which are peculiar to Sundays and Holidays; and these are found in the office provided for the due celebration of the Holy Communion; forming that portion with which it commences, and which (inasmuch as we call the concluding portion the Post-Com

munion) we may call the Pre-Communion Service. How it happened that part of the office of administration of the Lord's Supper should be recited by the Church on Sundays and Holidays, and, as it were, superadded to the usual course of the Prayers-although it be very humiliating to these latter ages, it becomes me honestly to tell you. The celebration of the Lord's Supper made a part of the daily service of the Church with the primitive Christians; never did they assemble to join in social worship without solemnly “breaking of bread;" without doing that in remembrance of their Lord which constituted his dying injunction. Afterwards, the daily celebration of the Holy Communion declined into a celebration on Sundays and Holidays. And later still, this lukewarmness degenerated into coldness; and in most of our Churches the Lord's Supper

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