ous and persevering attention has been given to the praise
service, and no less than three Hymnals have received and now enjoy the
Church's _imprimatur_. Public worship in Divine service has retained a
much greater uniformity among the Presbyterians of the Southern States
than among their brethren in the North, and there has been less
yielding to the popular demand for those features in worship that
appeal to the imagination, and which so often serve to entertain rather
than to edify.

The Presbyterian Church in Canada, owing to the ties that bind it to
the Churches of the Old Land, has closely followed their practice, and
its method in worship has been characterized by a similar spirit. No
authoritative or mandatory formulas have been imposed upon it, nor does
it seem likely that such would be received should they be proposed.
Reverence and dignity have in general characterized its public
services, and yet in recent years those changes which have gradually
been introduced into the worship of the Church in that part of the
American Republic lying contiguous to the Dominion have made their
appearance in Presbyterian worship in Canada. The chief result has
been, as in that Church also, an unfortunate want of uniformity in this
part of divine service. There has always been a constant and due
regard paid to all parts of worship provided for in the Directory, and
the neglect of any of these parts cannot be seriously charged against
any considerable part of the Church, but congregations have frequently
considered themselves at liberty to change their order and to vary them
as circumstances seem to demand. It is this feature as much as any
that has in recent years led to an agitation for the improvement of
public worship, and that is calling the earnest attention of the Church
to a matter of supreme importance.

Until very recently then, all branches of the Presbyterian Church in
the British Empire and those bodies in the United States whose
standards have been those of Westminster, have refused to recognize the
need for any other formula of worship than that, or such as that,
provided in the Directory. And where any considerable desire for
change and improvement has been found, it has expressed itself usually
as favorable to a revised Directory rather than as desirous of the
adoption by the Church of a liturgy, however simple.

Those great sections of the Church which have been most active in the
work of Home and For