PRAYER 



PRAYER-BOOK 



379 



to be the spontaneous utterance of the heart. And 

 ultimately it became usual to regard liturgical 

 forms as essentially Episcopalian and un-Presby- 

 terian, though the forms of church government are 

 irrelevant to the question as to the best mode of 

 guiding congregational prayer. Since 1857 a section 

 of the Church of Scotland has made tentative efforts 

 towards securing the use of printed forms of public 

 prayer, without wholly excluding extempore prayer 

 (see LEE, ROBERT). In 1888 the Assembly sanc- 

 tioned a book of prayer for the use of soldiers, 

 sailors, and others ; and the Euchologion, prepared 

 by the Church Service Society, has passed through 

 several editions. In the United States liturgical 

 forms of prayer have been almost wholly disused 

 by all the churches save the Episcopal, Lutheran, 

 German and Dutch Reformed, and Moravian 

 churches. But since the middle of the 19th century 

 there has been a manifest tendency to aim at 

 increased dignity in Presbyterian prayer, and to 

 bridge over the gulf that used to separate Presby- 

 terians from the ancient church in the forms of 

 public approach to the mercy-seat of God. Professor 

 Shields or Princeton's Presbyterian Book of Common 

 Prayer is simply the Anglican prayer-book with the 

 alterations proposed by the Presbyterians at the 

 Savoy Conference (q.v.). 



PRAYER FOR THE DEAD, in the Roman Catholic, 

 Greek, and other oriental churches, is offered with 

 the intention and expectation of obtaining for the 

 souls of the deceased an alleviation of their 

 supposed sufferings after death on account of venial 

 sins, or of the penalty of mortal sins, remitted but 

 not fully atoned for during life. The practice of 

 praying for the dead is usually associated with 

 the doctrine of Purgatory (q.v.) or with the belief 

 in a progressive intermediate state (see HELL). 

 It being once supposed that relations subsist 

 between the two worlds, that their members may 

 mutually assist each other, it is almost a neces- 

 sary consequence of the doctrine of purgatory that 

 the living ought to pray for the relief of their 

 suffering, brethren beyond the grave. It seems 

 certain that some such doctrine existed in most 

 of the ancient religions. Its existence among 

 the Jews is attested by the well-known assurance 

 in 2 Maccabees, chap, xii., that 'it is a holy and 

 wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they 

 may be loosed from their sins.' Catholics contend 

 that the doctrine as well as the practice is equally 

 recognisable in the early Christian church. They 

 rely on the parable of Lazarus and the rich man 

 {Luke, xvi. 19-31), as establishing the intercom- 

 munion of this earth with the world beyond the 

 crave ; and on Matt. xii. 32, as proving the remissi- 

 bility of sin or of punishment after death ; as well 

 as on 1 Cor. xv. 29, as attesting the actual 

 practice among the first Christians of performing 

 or undergoing certain ministrations in behalf of the 

 dead. The Fathers of the 2d, 3d, and still more of 

 the 4th and following centuries frequently allude 

 to such prayers, as Clement of Alexandria, 

 Tertullian, St Cyprian, and especially St John 

 Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and St Augustine. 

 The liturgies, too, of all the rites without exception 

 contain prayers for the dead ; and the sepulchral 

 inscriptions from the catacombs, which reach in 

 their range from the 1st to the 5th century, contain 

 frequent prayers in even greater variety. In the 

 services of the mediieval and later church prayers 

 for the dead form aprominent and striking element 

 (see REQUIEM). The Protestant churches with- 

 out exception repudiated the practice. In the 

 burial service of Edward VI. s First Common 

 Prayer-book some prayers for the deceased were 

 retained ; but they were expunged from the 

 Second Book ; and no trace is to be found in that 

 sanctioned under Elizabeth. Still it IK not expressly 



prohibited, and it is cherished as a private and pious 

 aspiration by not a few within the modern Church 

 of England, as, in Coleridge's phrase, 'something 

 between prayer and wish an act of natural piety 

 sublimed by Christian hope.' 



On the doctrine of prayer, see Bickersteth, Treatise on 

 Prayer ( 1856 ) ; Canon Liddon, Some Elements of Religion 

 (1872); Newman Hall, Prayer : its Reasonableness and 

 Efficacy ( 1875 ) ; Jellett, The Efficacy of Prayer ( Donellan 

 Lecture, 1877) ; the treatises on Apologetics, and manuals 

 of Theology. On prayer for the dead, see Plumptre, The 

 Spirits in Prison (1884); Luckock, After Death (1879), 

 and The Intermediate Utate ( 1890 ). For modern scientific 

 objections, see Romanes, Christian Prayer and General 

 Laics ( 1874 ) ; Tyndall's British Association lecture ( repub. 

 1874 ) ; and a series of articles in connection with Tyndall's 

 ' Prayer Test ' in Contemp. Rev., vols. xx.-xxii., by Tyndall, 

 Galton, and others, with answers by M'Cosh, the Duke of 

 Argyll, and others. For other questions connected with 

 prayer, see the articles AVE, PATERNOSTEB, KNEELING, 

 KOSAKY, SAINTS, FAITH-HEALING. 



Prayer, BOOK OF COMMON. By this name 

 are known the service-book of the Church of 

 England and the corresponding formularies of 

 other Episcopal churches which nave either been 

 derived from the Church of England or largely 

 influenced by it, such as the Episcopal Church of 

 the United States of America, the Church of Ire- 

 land, and the Episcopal Church in Scotland. The 

 full title of the English Book of Common Prayer 

 ( viz. ' The Book of Common Prayer, and Adminis- 

 tration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and 

 Ceremonies of the Church, according to the use of 

 the Church of England : together with the Psalter, 

 or Psalms of David, pointed as they are to be sung 

 or said in Churches ; and the Form or Manner or 

 Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, 

 Priests, and Deacons ' ) declares the varied character 

 of its contents, and indicates that the volume 

 includes many services besides those (viz. Morning 

 and Evening Prayer) to which the term 'Common 

 Prayer' is strictly applied in the technical lan- 

 guage of liturgiologists. Thus it will be seen that 

 this compendious service-book embraces elements 

 corresponding to parts not only of the Breviary 

 (q.v.), but also of the Missal (q.v.), the Pontifical 

 ( ii. v.), ami the Manual of the mediaeval English 

 Church, from which they were chiefly derived. 



It is not onr province here to consider generally 

 the influences which operated to bring about the 

 Reformation in England. It must suffice to 

 observe that in regard to liturgical changes the 

 main objects aimed at by the English Reformers 

 were ( 1 ) to rid the services of features which were 

 regarded as the outcome of superstition and ignor- 

 ance (e.g. the invocation of saints, unhistorical 

 and absurd legends read among the ' lessons,' &c. ) ; 

 (2) to introduce a more continuous and more ex- 

 tensive reading of Holy Scripture in the public 

 services ; and (3) to present all the services of the 

 church in a language ' understanded of the people." 

 The publication in 1890 ( from a MS. in the British 

 Museum) of the draft, revised by Cranmer, of a 

 reformed Latin breviary shows us how much the 

 mind of the most influential of the English reformers 

 had been influenced by the corresponding labours of 

 Cardinal Quignon (see BREVIARY). The first and 

 second of the objects above referred to were aimed 

 at in this projected work of Cranmer, which was 

 probably abandoned because the bolder design of 

 giving the people all the services of the church in 

 their native tongue had begun to be contemplated. 

 Parts of the preface of Quignon 's breviary were 

 transferred, with some modifications, to the preface 

 of the First Prayer-book, and still appear in the 

 prefatory remarks entitled, in the present prayer- 

 book, ' Concerning the Service of the Church." 



The first vernacular service put forth by author- 

 ity for public use was the Litany (1544), differing 



