A PLAIN HELP

ΤΟ

PUBLIC WORSHIP:

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

ON THE ORDER

FOR

MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER.

BY

THE REV. FRANCIS EXTON, M. A.

CURATE OF FILBY, NORFOLK ;

LATE SCHOLAR OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

LONDON:

J. AND C. MOZLEY, 6, PATERNOSTER ROW.

NORWICH: CUNDALL AND MILLER.

1863.

100.1.97.

TO THE AUTHOR

OF

"THE PRINCIPLES OF DIVINE SERVICE,"

WHO HAS DONE SO MUCH TO HELP THE MEMBERS

OF

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

TO A FULLER AND DEEPER UNDERSTANDING

OF THEIR

Book of Common Prayer,

AND

BY WHOSE KIND AND CAREFUL REVISION

THE FOLLOWING PAGES

HAVE BEEN SAVED FROM MANY IMPERFECTIONS,

THIS HUMBLE ATTEMPT

TO FOLLOW IN HIS FOOTSTEPS,

AND IN SOME MEASURE TO MAKE HIS LABOURS AVAILABLE

TO THE POOR OF THE FLOCK,

IS

WITH THE DEEPEST GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM

INSCRIBED BY

THE AUTHOR.

ADVERTISEMENT.

To train up the children of his flock, more especially the children of the poor, in such a way that their Father's house may be to them a House of Prayer, must be the earnest desire of every faithful Pastor: to give them such instruction in the meaning of the Book of Common Prayer, that they may be able to pray with the understanding, and take an intelligent part in Public Worship, must always be one of his plainest and most necessary duties. Without such instruction and training, they will, as they grow up, either swell the number of those who forsake the assembling of themselves together—or, if they continue to go to Church, show most painfully by the posture of their bodies when there, that they know not in what posture to put their souls at the several parts of the Services. And the Author earnestly calls upon the Clergy to consider whether the silence and listlessness, and even apparent apathy, which sometimes dishonour the House of God, may not be traced, in no few cases, to ignorance of what we are called upon to do in “the prayers," arising from want of instruction in the Prayer Book in youth.

The Author has not been able to find any work, which can be put into the hands of the children in our Parochial Schools for the purpose of giving them such instruction, and has drawn up the following pages in order to supply this deficiency. When indeed he began them, he had primarily in view the children of the parish in which he is now labouring; but he is not without hope that they may prove useful to his fellow-labourers in the Ministry, who have no doubt many of them, like himself, felt the need of some such book.

It only remains to state in what way the Author designs his