at liberty whether they would observe it or not. It was not universally received, because it assumed the truth of a dogma warmly contested in the Roman Church, the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, which was first started by Peter Lombard in about the year 1160, and which within the last few years has been affirmed by a papal rescript.

December 12. Lucy, virgin and martyr, was a young lady of Syracuse, who preferred. a religious single life to a married one, and upon being courted by a gentleman, in order to escape from his solicitations, persuaded her mother to give all her fortune to the poor. The young man, enraged at this, accused her to Paschasius, the heathen judge, for professing Christianity; and she was condemned to an infamous punishment, and after a great deal of barbarous usage, put to death, A.D. 303.

December 16. O Sapientia. These words are the beginning of an anthem in the Latin service, which used to be sung in the church at vespers from this day to Christmas-eve. Eight other hymns were sung at the end of Advent, which began O Adonai, O Radix Jesse, O clavis David, O oriens splendor, O Rex gentium, O Emmanuel, O Virgo Virginum, and, O Thoma Didyme.

Tables for

finding Easter.

December 31. Sylvester, bishop of Rome, succeeded Miltiades in the see of Rome, A.D. 314. He is said to have been the author of several rites and ceremonies of the Roman Church, as of asylums, unctions, palls, corporals, mitres, &c. He died in 334.

The tables for finding Easter are founded on the Metonic cycle, so called from the Athenian astronomer, Meto, who lived B.C. 433. The number of a year in this cycle is called the golden number, from its being marked in letters of gold in the ancient calendars. The lunar month being 29 days, twelve lunations are only 354 days, and fall short of the lunar year by 11 days. Meto observed that at the end of every nineteen years the two periods coincided very nearly; that is to say, if the new moon fell at noon on the 25th of March, it would do so again (within an hour and a half) nineteen years afterwards. And assuming the year of the Nativity to be the year in which the cycle commenced again, the golden number of any subsequent year, (i. e. its position in the cycle), is found by adding one to the year of our Lord, and dividing the sum by 19; the quotient gives the number of cycles of the moon which have elapsed

since the birth of Christ, and the remainder is the golden number; if there be no remainder, the cycle is complete, and 19 is the golden number.

It was thought that by the use of this cycle the time of the new moons might be found each year, without the help of astronomical tables, viz. by observing on what day of each calendar month the full moon fell in each year of the cycle, and by putting against that day the number of the year; and as Easter is kept on the Lord's day next following the first full moon after the vernal equinox, this mode was applied for finding the time of Easter. And the numbers are still prefixed in the calendar to the days between the 21st of March and the 18th of April, denoting the days upon which those full moons fall, in the years of which they are respectively the golden numbers. But inasmuch as the Metonic cycle of 218 lunations differs from the solar cycle of 19 years by about 1 hours, this mode of finding Easter requires the correction of one day in about 300 years, and this correction. will have to be made after the year 1899.

The first rubric.

CHAPTER V.

The Order for Morning and Evening Prayer.

A

T the time of the Reformation much dis

cussion was raised by the extreme reformers, as to the place where morning and evening prayer should be said. It had been customary to use for this purpose the chancel, so called from its being divided by cancelli, or lattice-work, from the body of the church; in ancient times called the sacrarium, from its being the place in which the holy rites were celebrated. Partly from the wish that the service should be better heard by the congregation, and partly with the intention of departing as far as possible from the practice of the unreformed Church, the Puritans demanded that the service should be said in the body of the church, and that the minister should turn towards the people, and not, as in former times, towards the East. They also cavilled against some ornaments of the church and minister, especially against the surplice.

To set this controversy at rest, the rubric which precedes the Order for Morning Prayer was framed in 1559. In consequence of the discretion which it gives to the bishop, the

reading-desk was very generally erected in the body of the church. In conformity with a rubric which appeared only in the Prayer Book of 1552, the custom of turning to the East was discontinued, and it became the practice to turn so that the people might best hear;' and as the same rubric forbade the use of the alb, the cope, and the tunicle, which had previously been worn by the priest administering the holy Communion, those vestments have become obsolete, though, strictly speaking, they are legal, inasmuch as they were prescribed by a rubric in the Prayer Book of 1549, and therefore were in the Church, by the authority of parliament,' in the second year of King Edward VI.

The bishop is called in this rubric the ordinary (a term borrowed from the civil law), because he exercises the regular and ordinary, as distinguished from the extraordinary jurisdiction in causes ecclesiastical.

duction.

It becomes us well to enter the house of The IntroGod with a sense of our sinfulness, and of our unworthiness to appear in his presence. And it is proper that we should have an opportunity of giving utterance to this feeling in words of humiliation, and that we should