"That it may please Thee to protect from danger all that travel by land or by water."

"That it may please Thee to show Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives."

The ancient Litanies gained much by allowing the mind to dwell on the several distinct thoughts presented. I am not so unpractical as to think lightly of the gain of greater expedition, effected by grouping the petitions together; but for all ordinary occasions the saving of time might be secured more satisfactorily by allowing, or enjoining, the omission of certain of the preces and collects in the second part of the Litany which commences with the Lord's Prayer, and which is more especially suited for penitential seasons or times of great calamity. By this suggested abbreviation of the second part of the Litany on ordinary occasions we should also attain something of that wise economy of emotional utterance which characterised the use of Litanies by our forefathers.

In the recent revision of the Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, before the words "O Christ, hear us" there has been inserted the rubric, "The Minister may, at his discretion, omit all that followeth to the Prayer, We

translation of the English Litany. "Babe" is a good classic word. See Luke ii. 12, 16; 1 Peter ii. 2 ("new born babe "). If we had had originally here "all nurseling babes," how attached we should have grown to the phrase. "Women with child" suggests for us a different notion from "labouring of child"; but the extension of thought to a time accompanied by anxiety, and often by suffering, would by many be thought a gain. Hermann reads "pregnant women," and the Latin Orarium (1546) of Henry VIII. reads "feminas gravidas.”

humbly beseech Thee, O Father, etc." Though one may perhaps be disposed to doubt whether the rubric has been inserted in exactly the right place, yet the advantage of some such permission would, I am sure, soon commend itself. Here the Church of England has something to learn from the daughter Church.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE LITANY-CRANMER'S WORKMANSHIP.

HE Litany is based largely on the pre-Reformation Litanies of the Church of England; but other sources were consulted, and there is some original and, apparently, independent work. On the whole our English Litany must be judged one of the noblest works in the whole range of liturgical literature.

But we must not allow natural affection for this beautiful form of prayer to blind our eyes to the blots which occasionally mar its excellence. On some particulars about to be commented upon there will be, doubtless, divergence of sentiment and opinion. The prescription of long usage and old associations makes it very hard to form an unprejudiced judgment in matters of this kind; and, besides, there are in some cases reasonable grounds for difference.

1. The old Litanies of England in the entreaties addressed severally to the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, and to the Three in One, used simply the words "have mercy upon us" (miserere nobis). I can imagine how easily one might argue that Cranmer's addition of the words "miserable sinners" is the suitable expression of a profound

penitence, and always befitting the true Christian. Yet, for myself, I feel that the large simplicity of the original is preferable. We must remember that Cranmer undertook the work of preparing other litanies for festival days, and actually accomplished some of them. Unfortunately these Litanies have disappeared; and it must be feared that they are irrecoverably lost. We cannot say, then, with any confidence that he would have made any difference here on festal days. But a litany especially prepared for a time of profound anxiety may not be exactly, and in every particular, the most suited for ordinary use. A liturgist dealing with a whole service-book will, I repeat, be wise if he exercises a certain emotional economy. There is such a thing in prayer as over-emphasis, and to make everything emphatic is to make nothing emphatic. But I say no more on this.

2. "O God, the Father of heaven" (Pater de coelis Deus) is in English, as is well known, a puzzle to the young and uninstructed. There is no authority

either in the Sealed Books or in the MS. attached to the Caroline Act of Uniformity for the device of some modern printers, who put a comma after the word "Father." Nor, even if it possessed authority, would it really help the sense. Nor, again, can I commend the practice followed by some of the clergy of emphasising the word "of," which is wholly unilluminative, and suggests perhaps no other thought to the worshipper than that the parson is a funny fellow.

But first of all, what is the meaning of the original ?

There seem to be two alternatives: (a) The liturgical language of the Western Church is dominated by the usage of the Latin Bible. In the Latin Vulgate de coelo (more rarely de coelis) occurs scores of times in connexion with the notion of movement from (literal or tropical), as, for example, an angel from heaven, a voice from heaven, fire from heaven, light from heaven, bread from heaven; or, again, God is said to thunder from heaven, to hear from heaven, to look down from heaven; and just as we speak of God hearing from heaven, so here we pray that He would manifest forth His mercy from heaven. In thought, de coelis would, on this theory, be connected with miserere, and not with Pater. (b) The position of the word "Deus" in the expression Pater de coelis Deus miserere nobis would seem to suggest the connexion of de coelis with the preceding word Pater.* The preference must, I think, be given to the second of these interpretations. But how are we to give the same in English, so that it may be understood of the people? "O God, heavenly Father" would tend to obscure the vivid distinction in the first three petitions-of "God, the Father," "God, the Son," and "God, the Holy Ghost." Making bold (but not more bold than Cranmer and his colleagues in a hundred places), we might, I fancy, best meet the requirements of the case by a paraphrase (and the cramped Latin almost demands it) like the following, which expresses the

* As in the phrase in the Greek of Luke xi. 13, where the Vulgate reads "Pater vester de cœlo dabit spiritum bonum," and the Vetus, "Pater vester cœlestis."