II. Early Christian Lititrfjies. — 1. Their Origin. — So far as regards the primitive or apostolic age, the only trace of anything of that kind is the Lord's Prayer, and the Amen alluded to in 1 Cor. xiv, IG ; this latter an un- doubted importation from the synagogue. As, more- over, \\Q tiud the Master, with the twelve, singing a hymn, one of the psalms probably, on the night of the last sup- per, it is not improbable that such portions of Old-Testa- ment Scripture, with which the early believers had been already familiar in the synagogue, should have still found favor in the Church. Even in free prayer fragments and sentences of old devotional forms, almost spontaneous through earUer use and sacred association, would natu- rally tind utterance. This, however, would be the ex- ception. Christian prayer, for its own full and peculiar utterance, must find its own peculiar modes of expres- sion; and it would baptize into a new life and meaning any of those familiar expressions, tl;e fragments of an earlier devotion. That men, however, who had been accustomed to liturgical worship under the old system should gradually go into it under the new, is not at all surprising ; and to this special inducements before very long were presented. The demand for some form of pro- fession of faith, of a definition of the faith, as dissensions and heresies arose, would be one of these occasions. The form of prayer given by the Master, in its present usage, would become the nucleus of others. The fact, again, that the most solemn act of Christian communion, the Lord's Supper, involved in the distribution of the ele- ments a form of action, and that this action, in its origi- nal institution, had been accompanied by words, would have a like influence. That every thing in this respect, if not pureh' extemporaneous, was exceedingly simple in the time of Justin Mart}T, is very manifest from his own writings. The same remark is applical)le to the state- ment (if Pliny {Kp. ad Traj. in Ep. x, 97).
2. Primitive Type. — The earUest form in which litur- gical arrangement, to any extent, is found, is that which presents itself in the Apostolical Constitutions. The fol- lowing is the order of daily service, as given in these Constitutions : After the morning psalm (the sixty-third of our enumeration), prayers were offered for the several classes of catechumens, of persons possessed by evil spir- its, and candidates for bajitism, for penitents, and for the faithful or communicants, fur the i)eace of the world, and for tlie wIkjIc state of Christ's Church. Tliis was follow- ed by a short bidding ])rayer for {(reservation in the en- suing day, and by the bishop's commendation or thanks- giving, and by his imposition of hands or benediction. The morning sen'ice was much frequented by people of all sorts. The evening service was much the same with that of the mornmg, excML-pt that Psahn cxl (Psalm cxli of the present enumeration) introduced the ser- vice, and that a special collect seems to have been used sometimes at the setting up of the lights. See Seiivice. This work, a fabrication by an unknown author, and tak-
ing its present form about the close of the third century^ contains internal evidence (see Schaif, C'/(U/t/( IHstoi-y,i, 441) that much of its material belongs to an earlier date. It may be regarded as affording a type of the liturgi- cal worship in use during the latter part of the ante- Nicene period. Bunsen (^Christianity and ManMnd, vol. ii) has attempted to construct, out of fragments of this and other liturgies, the probable form of worship then prevailing. Krabbe, in his prize essay on this suliject, regards the eighth book as of later date than the oth- ers. Kurtz, agreeing with Bunsen, substantially finds in this work the earliest extant form of liturgical ar- rangement, and the type of those of a later jioriod. While, therefore, apocryphal as to its name and claims, yet in the character of its material, in its peculiarity of structiu-e, in the estimation which it enjoyed, and in its influence upon later forms of devotion, it is of great his- torical significance. Taking it as it comes to our day, the eighth book contains an order of prayer, praise, read- ing, and sermon, followed by the dismissal successivelj'' of the catechumens, the penitents, and the possessed. After this comes the order of the Lord's Supper for the faithful, beginning with intercessory prayer, this follow- ed by collects and responses, the fraternal kiss, warnings against unworthy reception of communion, with suita- ble hymns, pra3-ers, and doxologies. jNIuch of this ma- terial, as already hinted, is probably of a much earlier date than that of its unknown last compiler. The hymn Gloria in Excelsis may have been the same of which Justin and Pliny speak, or an enlargement of it. This liturgy is remarkable, as contrasted with subsequent lit- urgies, in that it wants the Lord's Prayer. The gen- eral spirit and tone pervading all its forms afford grate- ful indication of the interior Christian life of that jieriod. 3. Class! jication. — This brings us to the particular lit- urgies which found acceptance and usage in particular communities. One remark in connection with these needs to be made. Whatever may have been the litur- gical influences of the synagogue in shaping the wor- ship of the early Church, they had, b}' this time, been superseded by another of a much more objectionable character, that of the Temple. In other words, the sac- erdotal idea of the Christian mmistrj', and the sacrificial idea of the Lord's Supper, were makmg themselves felt, not only in the substance, but in the minutiae of form which the liturgies were assuming. Of these liturgies there is to be made the general division of Eastern and W^estern,