sion of the removal of the Congregation to a new place of worship, in Upper Brook Street in the same town, 1839.

The theory of a religious service, in accordance with which these Liturgies have been framed, is this: that it should commence with the most general forms of adoration, thanksgiving, confession and intercession, adapted as nearly as possible to the wants of all human hearts when they enter into the presence of God, and expressed in language so consecrated by long and venerable usage, that it shall seem rather the breathing of our common humanity than the utterance of an individual mind; and that then, when the feelings of the congregation have been raised by these ordinary and familiar influences to a certain pitch of religious sensibility, they should be drawn on by the devotional offices of the Minister himself to a more direct sympathy with the particular train of reflection and sentiment

to which it is his present intention to invite them the prayer before the sermon, as well as that which succeeds it, alike having reference to its distinguishing topics and tendency, and conspiring to fix and deepen its general impression. By such an arrangement, each part of the service may be made to harmonise with the rest, and help to produce an entire and consistent effect:the individuality of the Minister's own mind, as it glows and kindles with the progress of the service, gradually, as it were, emerging from, and prevailing over, the social character of the introductory offices, and finally pressing home to the heart in one direction and with concentrated force, the religious convictions which it has been the tendency of the whole previous service to awaken.

Relieved from the necessity of continually preparing the offices of general devotion, the Minister is enabled to adapt his own prayers more completely to the subject of the ser

mon, and, by thus infusing into them a greater variety of topic and freshness of feeling, to avoid that mechanical formalism, which is too apt to creep over what is called the Long Prayer in Dissenting modes of worship: while the very stability and fixedness of the liturgical forms acquire from usage a certain sanctity of character, and seem fitly to represent those sentiments which are as unchanging and universal as human nature itself. The two elements of permanence and progression are thus pleasingly and beneficially combined in one form of Christian worship; the Liturgy connecting the mind, through the venerable phraseology of the past, with whatever is most holy, solemn and beautiful in the convictions and remembrances of our common faith, and the free prayer of the Minister, as it issues fresh from the same effort of mind which has produced the sermon, carrying out the sympathics of his audience into the living influ

ences of the present, and the glowing inspirations of the future.

From a regard to the feelings here expressed, the materials of the four new services have been chiefly taken from the Scriptures, the collects and different offices of the Book of Common Prayer, and the devotional writings of Bishop Jeremy Taylor. A few prayers of more recent date and of a more philosophical character have been occasionally introduced for the sake of variety. Considerable assistance has been derived from the Forms of Prayer compiled for the use of the congregation assembling in George's Meeting-house, Exeter, for which this public acknowledgment is due. A similarity has arisen, in some cases, between that compilation and the present, in consequence of both having drawn their materials from a common source. Use also has been made of a collection of Liturgies prepared, in the course of the last century, for a

Society of Protestant Dissenters at Salisbury, and of one more recent, drawn up by the late Rev. B. Carpenter, of Stourbridge.

A Form for the Solemnization of Matrimony is added to these Services: and though it is customary among Protestant Dissenters for the Minister to use his own compositions in administering the Lord's Supper and the rite of Baptism or Dedication, and in performing the Burial Service, yet, as, in case of the absence of the regular Minister, it is often found convenient to have a printed form at hand,-for these occasions also, forms have been appended, borrowed immediately from the Exeter Liturgy.

In the third Service, the Ten Commandments and our Lord's summary of true religion are introduced in immediate sequence, to mark the historical relation of Judaism to Christianity, and not as implying that the Mosaic law is any longer binding on Christians, excepting so far as it coincides