- manded to pray five times a day, turning their faces towards
Mecca (Sale, prel. discourse, pp. 76, 77).
Ritual, however, is not always of this purely personal nature, but is generally performed by a congregation to whose needs it refers, or by priests on their behalf. And in this case, again, a longer or shorter interval may elapse between the recurrence of the rites. In the Mexican temples, for instance, the ministering priests were in the habit of performing a service before their idols four times a day (H. I., b. v. ch. p. 14). "The perpetual exercise of the priests," says Acosta, speaking of these temples, "is to offer incense to the idols." The ritual of the Catholic Church, like that of the ancient Mexicans, is repeated every day. The morning and evening services of the Church of England were framed with the same intention; and the Ritualistic clergy, rightly conceiving the teaching of their Church, have introduced the practice of so employing them. Weekly or bi-monthly observances prevail among Hindus, Singhalese, Jews, and Christians. With the Hindus, the seventh lunar day, both during the fortnight of the moon's waxing and during that of her waning, is a festival, the first seventh day in the month being peculiarly holy, and observed with very special rites. More than this, the weekly period is known to them; for, according to Wilson, "a sort of sanctity is, or was, attached even to Sunday, and fasting on it was considered obligatory or meritorious" (W. W., vol. ii. p. 199). In Ceylon the people attend divine service twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays; besides which, there are in each month four days devoted to religious acts—the 8th, 15th, 23d, and 30th (A. I. C., pp. 222, 223; H. R. C., p. 76). The Jewish ritual differs on the Sabbath-*day from that used on week-days; and such is the solemnity attached to this festival, that a quasi-personality is attributed to the day itself, which is exalted in the service for Friday evening as the bride of God, and which the congregation is invited to go in quest of, and to meet (Rel. of Jews, p. 128). A similar sanctity is considered by many Christians to pertain to the Sunday, while all of them observe it as an important festival, and mark it by peculiar rites. Friday, too, is regarded by the majority of Christians as a day to be observed with distinctive rites, of which fasting is the principal.
