Still more absurd would it be to adopt a blind self-confidence in refusing to look upon the fact that about one-half of our worshipping population do not find in our present Liturgical forms that which appeals to and cherishes their own religious feeling, but deliberately seek other methods of devotion.

Perhaps few have given this phenomenon the attention it deserves. Those who will do so candidly and experimentally will find the impression forced upon them that the Church of England may well look around, on the right hand and on the left, and apply herself with all seriousness to the use of fresh means of retaining and of directing the devotional affections of our people.

Let me be forgiven if I speak somewhat confidently in a matter in which I have been led to observe attentively, and to experiment rather extensively. May God grant that what I have to say may in some degree meet a demand so long forced on the Church, and never so plainly as at the Church Congress two years ago.

Now the desiderata respecting our Church services are—

I. Those which are connected with our regular Sunday and weekday devotions.

II. Those which arise from special occasions.

III. Those which are connected with special groups of persons.

With respect to the first division, nothing is more obvious than the want of a third Sunday service, excepting, perhaps the fact that no rigid and immovable form of prayer will be felt the means of actually drawing near to God by those whose characters are not very contemplative nor very devout.

Such may perhaps to them a religion.

come to church," but the church will not be

Such persons can be led to prayer and praise, but they do not enter the Church in accordance with the theory of our Prayer Book-namely, that they are prepared by their ordinary habit of religious thought for this holy exercise.

Much as I admire the old conventual idea of our Church worship, that it is a presentation in stately and sacred language of the homage of our constant thoughts and feelings, it is impossible to persuade ourselves that this is felt and understood by the greater number of people, or that they are sufficiently thoughtful and collected to associate much meaning with words which they hear without change and without explanation from childhood to old age.

Mission services ought to have taught us how many, especially the very ignorant, can join in worship, and very earnestly, where worship is conducted, and in such a manner that the faith and feeling of the one who leads can impart itself to the many who listen, and who are quite prepared to follow.

Is not such a power to lead and stimulate allied to the ancient Christian gift of prophesying? It means deep fervour and penetrating sympathy. This is the power always assumed, and sometimes clearly reached, in the services that attract to other places than churches. plead, then, for one Sunday service of this kind, and for the same as occasion requires on the week-day.

I

By all means let us have forms, with responses which will preserve reverence and order; but here will be the difference; there must be

frequent opportunities of free exhortation throughout, and let those forms be in varied sets, so that that the words of prayer selected may accord with the subject of the preacher, and the entire service be a simple and united act. Then can the ignorant be assisted, the minds of the wandering can be fixed, the cold-hearted can be touched, and prayer and praise thus led will become a reality.

Connected with this more free system of conducted worship, I would mention the immense value of brief forms to precede and to follow sermons; many people would attend gladly to instruction on special points of faith and duty.

Why should not such be instituted in our cathedral and large town churches without requiring people to remain through a service for which, on a weekday at least, they may have no time, and in many cases no fitness?

The impossibility, as it has seemed, of sermons without regular Morning or Evening Prayers has done much to stiffen preachers as well as to discourage listeners. How far wiser and more effectual is the Continental plan.

Equally plain and imperative is the need of services of the type I have described for the holy seasons of the Church, though these would chiefly apply to persons of more advanced religious character. Who has not felt the scantiness of holy association in our Sunday and weekday worship, especially when the Collect and the special Preface at Holy Communion cease after one brief week? Much I know has been supplied by our hymnology, which has progressed nobly in proportion as the meagreness of our Liturgical provision has been realised.

But beyond hymns we need actual forms of service, which shall strike the ear and touch the heart by fresh and vivid adaptation of God's Word in relation to the great mysteries of the Gospel faith.

Both kinds of service here described it is within our power to originate and to use with the approval of the bishop of the diocese. Such liberty has been freely accorded to me for some years. I have used it with such complete assurance of the success of the plan, that to lay it aside would be to cripple to a great extent the work done in my church. I may add that I have been obliged to frame and to publish my own forms of service; I have got as far as ten or twelve out of about thirty which, I think, are required. Some one in a matter of this kind must go first. These services are entirely new in structure and, to a great extent, new in substance; they are all within the limits of the law, being taken as regards their language from the Bible or the Prayer Book.

After-services on Sunday evenings have of late grown common: for these we need also the aid of regular but elastic forms. They should embrace thanksgiving for Christian privilege, prayer for acceptance, meditation upon the teaching of the day, thanksgiving for Holy Communion, self-oblation as to the duties of the coming week, special acts of faith and devotion, special intercession, etc.

Those who have tried such services will know that half a congregation will often remain and join in them; the fact is that many who attend at evening have not been at church before in the day, and so are not by any means wearied, and very many others are glad to end the day with an act of special worship.

It is by some erroneously thought that as a people we have no strong devotional sentiment; it were better to say that little has been done to guide and develop it. I have looked in foreign countries for devotional manifestations. None are more impressive, deep, and pure than may be realised in England.

Next as regards special occasions. For Rogation Day services, Harvest thanksgiving, and Ember days, we need something that will be felt to be directly to the point from beginning to end, and not a service commencing with the accustomed warning to repent, and relieved of its sameness only by a few strange Collects and special Psalms.

Most deplorably have we felt the need of intercessory services for home and foreign Missions, and though there are beautiful metrical Litanies which bear directly on these and other objects, yet these are not sufficient, and of course are limited to times when a good and strong choir can be secured. Again, there are parochial occasions of special prayer, such as the visitation of some general and dangerous form of sickness. There are times, too, and they should not be infrequent, when lay workers should be invited to pray together; when communicants should be gathered to commemorate the mercy of the Saviour and the blessings of His nearness, and by fresh acts of love to offer themselves to Him, as well as to unite with one another.

Again, intercessions should take place for the work of the Church in the parish, the city, and diocese.

Also a service for the last hour of the old year should be drawn up, and so arranged as that portions of it might be available for use on the occasion of any unexpected or remarkable death in the parish, or might be said with respect to the shortness of life at stated intervals, as I have heard in a foreign country done with most impressive effect on a Saturday night. A special service for mourners I have also witnessed bearing on the certainty of the resurrection of the good to life eternal ; such might be used with great power and great comfort.

I have now to venture on the subject of distinct interpolation, and in the first place would advise what long custom has rendered unobjectionable-namely, the use of special prayers before and after the Sermon, not merely some Collect whose meaning is remote from the occasion, but prayers in Bible language bearing on the subject in hand, or for the hearers, or if at the close of the day, for the acceptance of worship, of alms, and of all kind of service done for God.

But a far more serious blank has to be filled up. I allude to the very slight connection between the Communion Office and its ancient purpose of intercession. That this connection does appear in the Church Militant Prayer is of course conceded, but it greatly needs to be made more emphatic when compared with the teaching of the primitive Liturgies. Can the want be met? If so, it would instantly impart a striking reality to our special celebrations of Holy Communion.

Now, we have, of course, the liberty of disconnecting the Communion Office from Morning Prayer, and authority to give a sermon after the Nicene Creed. To a brief address (it might be but of five or ten minutes) we may add a special prayer. Why not attach some such intercessory form as I have supposed should be available for any special objects or some convenient portion of it?

I am confident that a short devout address, followed by prayer

particularly selected for the occasion, would aid in giving to the communion of many present a feeling of pointedness and reality, and make their appeal to the one Great Sacrifice more direct.

With respect to particular classes of persons, we need services for children which could be of great use also in Sunday and day schools, and also services for the maintenance of holy living amongst the young of both sexes.

And, further, we want very simple forms of prayer to accompany addresses given in houses and Mission rooms.

Other needs might be mentioned, but I wish rather to make suggestions than attempt to exhaust the subject.

As to these and all new forms of worship, what is wanted is not the exercise of authority to impose, but originality and patience to invent and to experiment. Under the Amended Act of Uniformity, and with the permission of our bishops, the matter is in our own hands. It will be a culpable loss of opportunity if we do not largely use it.

I would only add here that whoever is to do anything of real service to the Church must be one not only acquainted with the spirit of ancient Liturgies, but he must be in living religious contact with many persons of all classes, and be a thorough watchful observer of what is really needed and really of use. This is not a work for the learned only.

I have now to anticipate some objections. It may be asked, will not these extra services and interpolations be likely so far to overlie the ordinary and fixed forms of worship as to throw them into the shade? I answer that the actual experience teaches quite the contrary.

If greater devotion is often manifested in special services than in the stated ones, this may surely be expected to react with good effect upon those which some regard with little interest, and use in only a formal way. People are often helped to be really prayerful by being occasionally stirred by what is unusual.

Again, it should be remembered that the changes and additions I have mentioned as desirable can only be carried out with the approval of the Bishop of the diocese, and they would have to commend themselves likewise to the congregation. These conditions would act as effectual restraints.

At present we are indeed at a great distance from an undesirable influx of such attempts; for though the cry has for some years been raised on behalf of some additions to our methods of worship, and the way has been opened by the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act, there has been an astonishing reluctance to make any real move.

It has been objected that if such additions are to take place at all, it should be by authority, and not through the adventure of individuals, but the bishop's sanction is authority, and if any wider authority is to be wished (which I must doubt, for general authorisation would quench originality and progress), there must be first a considerable period of experiment. This period we have only just entered upon.

Lastly, it may be justly observed that "conducted services" require very great care, readiness, and devotional sympathy on the part of the conductor.

In this point of view they do contrast with services which are simply read through.

The services which I have suggested cannot possibly be mechanical. The whole spirit of the leader must go with them.

If this somewhat new element in our public worship appears objectionable, I believe the objection can neither be drawn from the Word of God nor from those brief notices which have come down to us respecting the earliest forms of Christian worship.

I am not advocating either extemporary prayer or irregular response, but only such a method of stimulating and conducting devotional feeling as has been used, though in a far less guarded way, in churches during Missions.

If any one doubt whether such changes are needful at all let him not confine himself to observing our crowded church congregations, but let him go about the great thoroughfares upon a Sunday as I have myself done, and see what is going on inside chapels and music halls, and then calmly ask himself why have these thousands of wandering sheep gone from us? He will not, he dare not account for all this by the charge of wilful and wicked schisms. He has only to confess that at least to a large extent it is because the Church has not studied how to feed them within her own fold. In conclusion, I have to implore my hearers to reflect that we live in times characterised on the one hand by much indifference as to worship in any form, and on the other by reactionary wild efforts to bring home to conscience and to feeling the realities of the soul's relation to God. Both of these signs seem to beckon us onward in the pathway of earnest experiment. But let those who think they can do anything to make our churches the loved homes of a devotion more varied and more intense, rise quickly to their work, ere our people become more scattered and divided, and the faithful followers of the Church become more discouraged, and the sentiment of worship become further chilled and alienated by our neglect.

The Rev. GEORGE VENABLES, Vicar of Great Yarmouth, Rural Dean of Flegg, and Honorary Canon of Norwich.

Is the Church of England the one branch of the Catholic Church of God here in England, or is she only a portion of that one branch? In my view all turns upon this question. If she be but a portion only of the whole branch here in this land, let her say so, and let others be welcomed in the name of God, who shall complete the work which the Church of England does but in part only fulfil.

But if she be, what I suppose most of us conscientiously believe her to be, the only corporate body which has the right to be regarded as the true, Scriptural, historical, and complete branch of the Church of God in England, then I submit that one thing must flow out of this truth, viz., that she has the right, the power, and the resources for supplying to all the people in England and Wales whatever may be seen to be needful for the promotion of their spiritual benefit, or for the rescue of the thousands amongst them who are living far otherwise than they ought. Ay! she has the right, and the power, and the resources. But above all these impends upon her the tremendous responsibility of duty to grant this supply. I declare it as my conviction, after many years of (I hope) a not indolent ministry, and of many opportunities for observation and experiment, that the Church stands in pressing and immediate need