has never broken with the past. It has ever been mindful of the days that are gone. It was because our forefathers realized in the great days of the Reformation that they were not to tear down, but to build, because they did not disdain what the past had contributed of real worth, because they realized that they were building not a new house, but the same that their fathers had builded many years ago, that the English Church came out of the throes of the Reformation purified and unfettered, adapted to be the home of men whom the truth had made free, but the same Church which had been planted in the apostolic centuries in the land of Britain. It gave to the people the open Bible and a worship purged from superstitious accretions, but it preserved for them all that was sacred and venerable in the past. The old Catholic order, the ministry received from the Apostle, the round of feasts and fasts; these she retained, testing all things by the Word of God, sifting the good from the evil, casting away that which was corrupt, but holding on to that which was pure, counting it all the more precious, because it was the heritage of the ages.
It is essentially true of the Liturgy of our Church. It was not made in a day, but, like the stately cathedrals of Europe, it is the growth of ages, and the work of many generations. They come, these many prayers and songs, from many sources and many times. The music which David learned as he watched his father's sheep, the strains of the Magnificat in which the Virgin Mother of our Lord gave thanks for the Incarnation, the songs of welcome to the new-*born Saviour of Zacharias, the Nunc Dimittis of the aged Simeon, the prayer that comes to us from the golden mouth of Chrysostom, the lofty Te Deum of Ambrose, the stately rythm of the words of the Martyr Cramner, and collects and prayers which unknown worshippers contributed, the Litany voicing the many wants of body and soul, the last prayer for the spread of the Gospel added in our day: these are some of the sources from which we draw the forms in which we worship God. The Prayer Book is not the book of our generation,
