_The Versicle_: Lord hear my prayer. _The Answer_: And let my cry come to thee. _Let us pray_. Lord Jesu Christ, whose property is to be merciful, which art alway pure and clean without spot of sin; Grant us the grace to follow thee in mercifulness toward our neighbors, and always to bear a pure heart and a clean conscience toward thee, that we may after this life see thee in thy everlasting glory, which livest and reignest God, world without end. _Amen_. [77] It is interesting and suggestive to observe with how much less frequency our attention is called to this paragraph of the Preface than to the later one which asserts historical continuity with the Church of England. [78] _Essays on Liturgiology_, p. 226. [79] The response proposed by the Commissioners ran, "Lord have mercy upon us, and make us partakers of this blessing," a prayer unobjectionable for substance, but painfully pedestrian in style. [80] Notably one in which the responses are all taken from Psalm li. [81] See Note at the end of this Paper. [82] _E_. _g_.: "That it may please thee to send forth laborers into thy harvest, and to have mercy upon all men." [83] See Report, pp. 6-9. [84] "Strike it out," said the literalist of a certain committee on hymnody, many years ago, as he and his colleagues were sitting in judgment on Watts's noble hymn, "There is a land of pure delight." "Either strike out the whole hymn or alter that word, 'living.' "'Bright fields, beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green.' What sense is there in '_living_' green? It is the grass that lives, not the green." Happily the suggestion failed to find a seconder. But revisers, whose work is to be passed upon by ballot, may well be shy of idiomatic English. Take such a phrase as, "Now for the comfortless trouble's sake of the needy"; Lindley Murray, were he consulted, would have no mercy on it: and yet a more beautiful and touching combination of words is not to be found anywhere in the Psalter. It is the utter lack of this idiomatic characteristic that makes "Lambeth prayers" proverbially so insipid. [85] See Report, p. 12. [86] Quoted in _The Church Eclectic_ for August, 1886. [87] Prof. Gold in _The Seminarian_, p. 34. [88] The Rev. Dr. Robert in _The Churchman_ for July 17, 1886, [89] Specious, because our continuity with the Church life of England is inestimably precious; impracticable, because there is no representative body of the English Church authorized to treat with us. [90] This Prayer has been gathered from the _Dirige_ in _The Primer set forth by the King's Majesty and his Clergy_, 1545; the same source (it is interesting to note) to which we trace the English form of the _Collect for Purity_ at the beginning of the office. [91] 1 Cor. iii. 9. [92] Born into life!--man grows Forth from his parents' stem, And blends their bloods, as those Of theirs are blent in them; So each new man strikes root into a far foretime. Born into life!--we bring