ful suppression of the great slaveholders' rebellion, and vindication of the integrity of the nation; our manifested ability to discharge our pecuniary obligations, and wipe out an unprecedented war debt; and our exhibition of recuperative energy; have established the wisdom and excellence of republican institutions; while Prussia in her conflict with Austria and France has shown that strength lies not in mere wealth, numbers, or weapons of war, but in the force of an educated and intelligent people. And may we not add that Germany shows in these struggles the superiority of a nation trained under Protestantism to those under the sway of Romanism? China, Japan, Burmah and Hindostan can not long remain in their present social and religious condition, while Turkey is "sick" nigh unto death, waiting for the cross to supplant the crescent in the ancient city of the first Christian emperor, and a regenerated and Christianized people to occupy the chief seat of Moslem power. Mohammedanism is waning, and every great system of heathenism is tottering to its fall. Popery has lost ground amazingly during this century; its prestige is gone, and its power will disappear amid advancing light and human progress. Republican ideas are gaining new foothold throughout Europe, and never more rapidly than since the triumphant close of our civil war. Old and hoary relics of the feudal ages are one by one disappearing, and the people are gaining their rights more and more. Christians are feeling more deeply their obligation to give the gospel to every creature, and to bring its principles to bear upon all classes of men and in all the various conditions in which they are placed. The principle of Christian unity among all the true followers of Christ, which has been so remarkably manifested during the past decade, is one of the most encouraging of the "signs of the times," and a sure precursor of the triumph of the Gospel. The spirit of brotherly love and of hearty co-operation among Christians to elevate, improve and save mankind and to establish Christ's kingdom, has been recently and rapidly 'spreading, and will soon become universal. Thus the forces that have been silently gathering their energies are bursting forth. The moral gains of centuries are coming to light. And wherever great moral evils exist, wherever there are social systems that are inconsistent with the spirit of the gospel, and inimical to the rights of man, and at war with "the counsels of God," which He declares shall stand, they are giving way and will yield peaceably or be swept away amid convulsions and struggles, like our system of slavery, into the vast ocean where are engulphed the errors and iniquities of the past. What advancement may we not look for, religiously and socially and materially in our own land in the next ten years. We shall have in that period not less than three, and perhaps more, railroads in operation across the entire continent. Every territory will be erected into a sovereign State, so that every foot of our vast national domain will be under the system of local self-government, and every citizen of the republic have a vote and share in the management of national and state affairs. Our population in 1881 will be not less than fifty millions, and perhaps more, and by the close of the century, in 1900, will round out a century of millions, while our wealth and resources will be proportionately augmented. A system of universal education will be established, and every child in the land will have the opportunity of acquiring the knowledge necessary to fit him to discharge his duties as one of the sovereign people. Meantime we may hope that our churches will be multiplied to keep pace with our increased population and the expanded area of our settlements; the Bible be freely circulated and maintain its supremacy over the conscience, and Christianity still be the religion of the people, and permeate more completely the nation. Thus favored and blessed, we shall occupy a still higher and prouder position than we now do, and become "the joy of the whole earth, and as Mount Zion," so that men shall say, as they look upon the spectacle this country will present, "Happy is that people that is in such a case; yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord." It is cheering to think how rapid is the progress of human improvement in this age, and to believe, as we may, that the great consummation is hastening, when this earth shall be emancipated from the bonds of darkness and ignorance, and from the power of the God of this world, and when "Jesus shall reign where'er the sun Doth his successive journeys run." It is a privilege to live amid such remarkable events as are now occurring, and to do anything to hasten the coming of Christ's kingdom. We have just entered upon a new decade of years of which we may not live to see the close, but somewhere we shall be cognizant of the developments of God's plan, and if in sympathy with Him and His saints and angels, we shall join the anthem by and by, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ." Never did we feel more deeply than during the preparation of this review of the decade just closed the applicability of the noble lines of Bishop Coxe to the men of our day: "We are living, we are dwelling In a grand and awful time, Gog and Magog to the fray. Worlds are charging-heaven beholding; For the truth's sake go abroad! ARTICLE IV. LITURGIES. The word Liturgy is of Greek origin, from the compound λειτουργία, signifying a public service, λεῖτον public, and ἔργον work. The Astrovproi of Athens were a kind of bankers to the commonwealth, appointed to furnish supplies in cases of emergency, and to perform 'the work, generally, of a committee on exigencies, in place of a more complete political organization which afterwards came in. Hence the English word Liturgy; the sense having been taken from a secular usage, and applied to the ceremonies of religious worship. Among pagans worship is always liturgical. Such was the character, also, of the Jewish service. The genius of these religions require this form. Whether the same be true of the Christian, is the question. At any rate, a natural development, or a scion from a foreign stock, the liturgy as a fact, we find in the Christian service; and it is confined to no small extent in time or space. The liturgical always means a precomposed form of worship, as distinct from a free, spontaneous, optional order. The whole liturgical service would seem to include whatever is said and done on the occasion: Reading, singing, preaching, praying, salutations, responses, sacraments, oblations, lustrations, gyrations, perambulations, genuflections, and bodily exercises in general, varying in extent and character, of course, according to the circumstances of the worshipers. These remarks apply to Christian rituals as well as to pagan and Jewish. Although in our day, the popular association perhaps is, that the liturgic is more especially confined to prayers, praises, responses and sacraments. It is a special characteristic of all liturgical worship, that it be pre-composed, that it be stereotyped a rule not to be departed from by the introduction of any new matter-that this prescript shall be repeated at every service. We have not had access to all the literature of the subject. Much learning and historical research have been enlisted in an attempt to trace back the use of liturgy to the earliest age of the Christian church, and even to implicate the usage and authority of the apostles themselves in an argument for prescribed forms of prayer in worship. And yet, as the result of all, this view seems to be sustained by no reliable evidence. There is no proof that any form of prayer, liturgy, or ritual, was recorded or preserved by the apostles, or by any of their cotemporaries, inspired or uninspired, as emanating from the writers or worshipers of the New Testament themselves. Says Kinnel, a British ecclesiologist: "It is certain that in the apostolic age, Christians were not restrained to any particular mode of worship. The liturgies ascribed to Mark and James, and others, are unquestionably fabrications of a later time. Had any of the inspired teachers of the gospel composed a set form of prayer, it would have been incorporated into the canon of the New Testament. Our Lord, in a beautiful example, taught his disciples the scope and spirit of prayer, but there is no evidence whatever that, in their stated services, they invariably employed that divine model. The very idea of a liturgy was altogether alien to the spirit of primitive believers," being distinctively pagan and Jewish. The most ancient liturgy extant is that of the "Apostolic Constitutions." Palmer, and other standard writers on this subject, himself an Oxonian, thinks that this may have originated with the apostles; but concedes that he can not trace it beyond the writings of Justin Martyr (164). The liturgy of Basil (379), says Biddle, in his "Christian Antiquities," can be traced, with some degree of certainty, to the fourth century; but we have no proof of the existence of any of these ancient liturgies earlier than the fifth century. This also is an Oxford writer. Archbishop Whateley is philosophic as well as Christian. He regards the omission of all liturgical forms in the Scrip |