CHAPTER II. THE MISSAL. The fragmentary character of the devotions.-Enumeration of minute prayers in one mass. Better specimens of devotion.-The hymns of the Missal.-The amount of Scripture lessons.-Fragmentary character.-Difference between citations of the Gospels and Epistles.-Amount of Scripture mutilations.Mis-renderings. The creed.-Spiritual provision in Rome. THE first thing that strikes one in the devotional services of the Missal is their extremely broken and fragmentary character. This is probably little perceived by those who read Scripture only through the Missal, for custom, like the falling snow, gradually assimilates all things, and imparts the feeling without the reality of continuity. But the mere statement of the number of parts in a single mass will show, that in avoiding long prayers they have distracted and dispersed devotional feeling by the multiplicity of short ones, and by repetitions of the same prayers, and endless directions for their right use. Devotional feeling is hardly awakened before it is abruptly broken in upon, and the mind carried off in some new direction. Most of the prayers in the Missal do not exceed two or three sentences, except in the canon of the mass, and the deeper spirit of devotion in the prayers set down, for the private preparation of the priest, are a perfect contrast to the hurried succession of brief prayers and versicles that are kept up throughout the public mass. This fragmentary character of the Missal is, no doubt, due in part to the manner in which the present liturgy of Rome has grown up-the work of so many ages and so many minds, each anxious to add his prayer, alleluia, or Kyrie eleison, or the repetition of something going before. This character will be sufficiently seen by the bare enumeration of FRAGMENTARY DEVOTIONS. 29 the various parts of the mass. Let us take the mass of the first Sunday of advent: 1. The Introit- -verses of a Psalm-so called because at the opening of the mass. 2. The hymn called "Glory in the Highest," said or sung. 3. Prayer of the Virgin. 4. Prayer for the Church. 5. Prayer for the Pope. 6. The Epistle of the day-read. 7. The Gradual-a verse or two of Scripture. 8. The Gospel of the day-read. 9. The Apostles' Creed. 10. Secret—a prayer of one or two sentences, so called from being said secretly, not aloud. 11. Secret of the Virgin. 12. Secret for the Church. 13. Secret for the Pope. 14. Communion-a single verse. 15. Post-communion-a prayer. 18. Do. for the Pope.1 Yet these eighteen portions are only the parts of the mass of the day that are proper to the occasion. There still remain the fixed and invariable parts of every mass. 1. The confession of the Priest. 2. The blessing of the Incense, if it fall to be blessed. 3. The Kyrie eleison-a repetition a certain number of times of "Lord, have mercy." 4. The Nicene Creed. 5. Prayer at uncovering the Chalice. 6. Prayer at putting wine and water into the Chalice. 7 Prayer at offering up the Chalice. 8. Prayer at bowing down before the Altar. 9. Prayer at incensing the Bread and Wine. 10. Prayer at incensing the Altar. 1 Thrice the prayers to the Virgin and for the Pope and Church are offered up. This is like the vain repetition four times of the Lord's Prayer in the English Liturgy, acknowledged to have been introduced, at first by a blunder, but a blunder still uncorrected. 11. Prayer at receiving the Censor from the Deacon. 12. Prayer at Washing of hands. 13. Prayer at offering the Host to the Trinity. 14. The Preface. 15. Prayer within the action of Consecration. 16. Commemoration of the Living. 17. Prayer on spreading his hands over the Oblation. 18. The Lord's Prayer. 19. The words of Consecration. 20. The Commemoration of the Dead. 21. Words on receiving the Chalice. 22. Words on receiving the Bread. 23. Words on the elevation of the Sacrament. 24. Words on administering it to the people. 25. Words at Dismissal and Benediction. Thus making forty-three separate portions in a service that does not usually occupy one hour's duration, not allowing much more than one minute to each portion, much less in practice, if we take account of all the directions for change of posture, pauses, crossing, bowing, kneeling, folding of hands, kissings of the altar, and prostrations required. When the service was in a known tongue, such a dispersion and division of parts would have been offensive to the people, and very likely many of these prayers were then united into one. But that which would once have been felt as an evil, may now be necessary to sustain the interest of a service no longer addressed to the understanding. The people seeing nothing going forward, and hearing only an unintelligible voice, easily grow impatient, and this frequent change of posture and of voice are doubtless felt as a relief. Yet the pious priest must feel them unfavourable to the spirit of devotion which does not easily gather itself up after interruptions and diversions, and must be severely tempted to practise shorthand ways of satisfying the requirements of his church, when it can be done without scandal. This general defect is, however, quite consistent with the existence, in a book of devotion, of prayers to which a heart kindled from above will betake itself as the meet expression of its inmost feelings and aspirations. We find nowhere, indeed, in the devotions of the Missal, the utterance of those lofty views of the Great Supreme, and that soul-swelling adoration PREPARATORY PRAYERS OF THE PRIEST. 31 which so marvellously distinguishes the Old Testament writers, and gives to their pages the stamp of inspiration. Yet, in the confession of sin, in the expression of the feelings of a contrite heart, and in all the utterances of penitential devotion, the Missal excels. We have already referred to those prayers, called preparatory prayers, for the private use of the priest before and after mass, as amongst the purest expressions of genuine devotion, humble yet confiding, conscious of weakness, yet conscious also where strength is laid up for the believer. For a tone of devotion superior or like to these, the Christian must go to the Songs of Sion-that inspired liturgy of all ages; or to the Wesleyan Hymn Book-the liturgy of Methodism; or to some of those compilations which breathe in verse the piety and the sanctified genius of past generations. It had been strange, indeed, if the Missal, the formation of so many ages, had not presented specimens both in matter and in manner of the best, as well as of the worst styles of liturgical services. Piety survives in the liturgy of a church like truth in its creed, long after its spirit has departed, and it is well that it should be So. It is all the more ready to receive new life, and to express the new feelings of revived faith and love to the Saviour. Overspreading, indeed, is the Romish taint on the prayers of the Missal, so that we can hardly select more than a very few, as they stand, fit for the use of a Bible Christian; yet these few are such that any Christian or church, that uses or permits the use of liturgical services, along with that freedom which should be reserved to all churches and all Christians, might gladly avail itself of as the common inheritance of the Christian Church. The Church of England has so used "The Litany," a devotional service which Rome had largely encrusted with her superstitions. Intelligible to the simplest worshipper, the Litany is yet adapted to the highest minds. Nothing can be simpler in its conception, no prayers in the Missal are briefer, yet there is nothing abrupt or fragmentary in their brevity. Each intercession carries forward the worshipper in his devotional feelings, and the whole forms a natural and very noble devotional climax. The copious use of the Book of Psalms, that first and best Liturgy of the Christian Church, has secured to those within the pale of Rome, the elements, in all time, of a life of devotion. It is in passing from those prayers that are wholly in the language of Scripture that our feelings are jarred by the juxtaposition of piety and superstition-almost in the same breath we hear the worshipper renouncing all trust in man, and yet appealing to heaven for the protection of the merits and mediation of a fallen creature like himself. All the brief prayers attached to the masses of the saints so mingle piety and superstition as to be self-destructive. The prayers connected with the great festivals of the church are longer, set forth more fully the great objects of faith, and, by those characters, reveal their higher antiquity. In the abundant use of the Psalms, Rome has preserved the elements of that devotional life which she is most careful to cultivate. The Songs of Sion have been ofttimes a preserving salt sown in her own bosom, from which she has been saved from putridity, and being cast out even by that world that has hitherto sustained her. Men, like the Port-Royalists, whose devotional life threatened to develope into a love of truth, she will not indeed bear, for rebellion against herself is "as the sin of witchcraft." Yet when the spirit of devotion is united to the spirit of church obedience, Rome cherishes such spirits as her strength in weakness and life in times of death; and the reflecting mind, while wondering at the alternate wisdom and wiles by which she has sustained herself, will acknowledge the hand of that overruling providence by which God has made her to minister to his own children, while serving her own church ends, and secured influences for good in Europe from the ecclesiastical system of the middle ages. are The hymns of the Missal are not numerous. The titles |