§ 90. PUBLIC WOKSHIP OF THE LORD's DAT. 469
Becrated by great men or great events, of all meritoriousness and superstitious accessories, and has reduced it to a matter of commendable gratitude and devout curiosity. Within these limits even the evangelical Christian cannot view without emotion and edification the sacred spots of Palestine, the catacombs of Rome, the simple slabs over Luther and Melanchthon in the castle-church of Wittenberg, the monuments of the Englisli martyrs in Oxford, or the rocky landing-place of the Puritanic pilgrim fathers in Massachusetts. He feels himself nearer to the spirit of the great dead ; but he knows that this spirit continues not in their dust, but lives immortally with God and the saints in heaven.
§ 90. Public Worship of the Lord's Day. Scrijpture- Reading and Preaching.
J. A. Schmidt: De primitivse ecclesite lectionibns. Helmst. 1697. E. Kanke: Das kirchliche Perikopensystem ans den altesten Urkunden der rom. Liturgie. Berlin, 1847. 11. T. Tzschirner: De claris eccles. vet. oratoribus Comment, i.-ix. Lips. 1817 sqq. K. W. F. Paniel: Pragmatische Geschiclite der christl. Beredtsamkeit. Leipz. 1839 ff.
The order and particular parts of the ordinary public worship of God remain the same as they were in the previous period. But the strict separation of the service of the Catechu mens,' consisting of prayer, scripture reading, and preaching, from the service of the faithful,'' consisting of the communion, lost its significance upon the universal prevalence of Christianity and the union of church and state. Since the fifth century tlie inhabitants of the Roman empire were now considered as Christians at least in name and confession, and could attend even those parts of the worship which were formerly guarded by Becrecy against the profanation of pagans. The Greek term liturgy, and the Latin term mass, which is derived fi-om the customary formula of dismission,' was applied, since the close
' Missa catechumenorum, Xeirovpyla rwv Karrixovfifvwv. ' Missa fidelium, XetTovpyia tSiv iriaTuv.
» llissa is equivalent to misdo, dismissio, and meant originally the disnJssion of the congregation after the service by the customary formula : Ite, missa est (eccl»
4:70 TIIIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
of the fourth century (398), to the communion service or the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice. This was the divine service in the proper sense of the term, to which all other parts were subordinate. We shall speak of it more fully hereafter.* We have to do at present with those parts which were inti'Oductory to tlie communion and belong to the service of the catechumens as well as to that of the communicants.
The reading of a portion of the Holy Scriptures continued to be an essential constituent of divine service. Upon the close of the church canon, after the Council of Carthage in 397, and other synods, the reading of uncanonical books (such as writings of the apostolic fathers) was forbidden, with the exception of the legends of the martyrs on their memoi-ial days.
There was as yet no obligatory system of pericopes, like that of the later Greek and Roman churches. The lectio continua, or the reading and exposition of whole books of the Bible, remained in practice till the fifth century, and the selection of books for the different parts and services of the church year was left to the judgment of the bishop. At high festivals, liowever, such portions were read as bore special reference to the subject of the celebration. By degrees, after the example of the Jewish synagogue,'' a more complete yearly course of selections from the New Testament for liturgical use was arranged, and the selections were called lessons or pericopes.'
sia). After the first part of the service the catechumens were thus dismissed by the deacon, after the second part the faithful. But with the fusion of the two parts in one, the formula of dismission was used only at the close, and then it came to signify also the sei-vice itself, more especially the eucharistic sacrifice. In the Greek church the corresponding formula of dismission was: awo\veade tv elp-hv-p, i. e., He in pace (Apost. Const. Ub. viii. c. 15). Ambrosius is the first who uses missa, mi«sam facere (Ep. 20), for the eucharistic sacrifice. Other derivations of the word, fiom the Greek fiuir^is or the Hebrew verb nil's , lo ad, etc., are too far fetched, and cut off by the fact that the word is used only in the Latin church. Comp. vol. i. § 101, p. 383 ff.
• Comp. below, §§ 96 and 97.
' The Jews, perhaps from the time of Ezra, divided the Old Testament into seotions larger or smaller, called ParasMoth (m"»ir"!S), to wit, the Pentateuch into 54 Farashioih, and the Prophets (i. e., t>ic later historical books and the prophets proper) into as many Haphtharoih ; and these sections were read in course on th» different Sabbaths. This division is much older than the division into verses.
' Lectixmeiy afayvclxrfxar a, ivayrwa ei s, ir tpi Kowai,