first thought in the minds of the men who gave us our Prayer
Book in English was to let "_the Word of God_ have free course and be
glorified" in all the worship of the people. [2 Thess. iii. 1.] Those
men were learned in the past, and they reverenced history and
continuity. But they reverenced still more the heavenly Word, and where
they found the ample reading and hearing of it impeded by even
immemorial usage, the usage had to give way, without reserve, to the
Bible.

[26] I do not forget that some modifications in detail, as to the
Lectionary, are quite recent.

Yes, the Prayer Book is, whatever else it is, searchingly, overflowingly
Scriptural; full of the Bible, full of Christ. Let us drink its
principles and its manner in, that they may come out in our life and our
preaching.

And now for a few simple practical suggestions on our ministerial use of
the Book.

USE THE BOOK WITH DILIGENCE.

i. First, I would entreat my younger Brother to resolve in the Lord's
name that his own use of the Prayer Book in his ministration be to him a
thing of sacred importance and personal reality. We _need_ to form such
a resolve deliberately, and to watch and pray over it. Do we not know
what strong temptations lie in the other direction? We have to use these
forms over and over again; before many years are over perhaps we could
"take" a whole service, except the appointed Scriptures, without looking
at the book: is it not too easy under such conditions to read as those
who read not, and to pray as those who pray not? And all too often the
Clergyman, younger or older, allows himself almost consciously, almost
on principle, to form an inadequate estimate of his Prayer-Book work.
Perhaps he regards the prayers as in such a sense "the voice of the
Church" that he is willing to be little more than a machine through
which the Church offers them. Or perhaps on the other hand he lets
himself forget their immense importance, under a strong, and just, sense
of the sacred importance of the Sermon. He is alive and awake in the
pulpit, and seeks his Lord's presence there, and realizes it as sought;
but in the desk--he goes by himself, and much of his precious time there
is spent in thought which wanders to the ends of the earth while his
voice does its decent but somnambulatory part alone.

*USE IT WITH LIVING REALITY.

I can only appeal with all my heart to my younger Brother not to let it
be thus with him. And the only effective recip