gin of the word 'Collect.'

It is impossible to speak with confidence about the origin of the word
Collect. We find in old Services both Collecta and Collectio. It
might be conjectured that these were references to Books of Collects
bearing those names as their titles. But the explanations which have
been offered for a thousand years, though very various, do not include
that as a possibility. Some derive it from people,

(1) collected for worship:
(2) collected in the unity of the Church:
(3) having collectedness of mind.

Others from:

(4) the sense collected from Scripture:
(5) the desires collected from the congregation.

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Canon Bright[1] decides in favour of (1) as the explanation of
_Collecta_, and (5) as that of _Collectio_, preferring the former as
the source of our English word _Collect_.

Canon Bright quotes Alcuin the Northumbrian boy, the York Scholar
(735-804), who became the most learned man in Europe, and the friend,
adviser, and teacher, of the great Emperor Charlemagne. Alcuin derived
the word from _Collecta_, an assembly for worship.

The Morning and Evening Collects.

The First Collect is the Collect of the Day. The Preface (last rubric
before the Table of Lessons) orders that the Collect "appointed for the
Sunday shall serve all the week after, where it is not in this Book
otherwise ordered." The Book 'orders otherwise' for Saints' Days, and
at such special times as Christmas, Ash-Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter
Even, but has omitted, by some accident, to provide for the two days
after Ascension Day, for the week days between The Epiphany and the
First Sunday after, and for the three days after Ash-Wednesday.

A rubric at the beginning of the _Collects, Epistles, and Gospels_
provides that the Collect for a Sunday, or for a Holy Day having a
Vigil or Eve, shall be said at the Evening Service next before.

We have said something of the source of these Collects: their detailed
consideration belongs to a {141} book on the Communion Service, or on
the Epistles and Gospels.

The Second Collect, both at Mattins and Evensong, is a Collect for
Peace. Both are taken from the same chapter of Prayers for Peace in
the Gelasian Sacramentary.

The Morning Collect, desiring that our trust in God, and our
fearlessness, may be strengthened by continual knowledge of God's
protection, addresses Him as the author and lover of peace, and also as
the One whom we know and serve, an