Thoughts On the Services

tions, at Oxford. Encouraged by such tokens of approbation, the author has laboured to make this third edition more worthy of general adoption as an auxiliary to Christian education. Its object is to beget habits of close attention to the Psalms and Lessons, and to their bearing on the subject of each particular service. The young, more especially, need to learn that the Church's arrangement of the I essons and other portions of Scripture is a commentary of itself, and that the Word, thus fitly spoken, is, indeed, " like apples of gold in pictures of silver." The Clergy, by giving emphasis to the characteristic portions of the Lessons and Gospels, often preach Christ most powerfully even when there is no Sermon. But nothing can make up for the lack, in the people's hearts, of a genuine relish for each "portion of meat in its season." The variety with uniformity, which our Church permits, is sometimes illustrated in this book by suggestions as to the public celebration of worship. It is important, the writer supposes, that every Churchman, however strongly he may prefer the precise way they do things in his own parish church, should know of the other ways, and should feel the most liberal spirit of satisfaction with those who do somewhat differently, provided always it be only in the use of that large liberty with which the Church has so wisely chartered her children; and provided nothing more than that, whether on the one side or the other, be sought after, ...