should not be sufficiently appreciated and admired by her children, if presented to their adoration once only on every day, has appointed for the use of the faithful an office of Evening Prayer, which, in its main features, is identical with that which is to be "said or sung" each morning. Sentences, address, confession, absolution, Lord's Prayer, and versicles, are all exactly reproduced, and Psalms and Lessons follow in due course, varying from day to day. To take the whole Psalter, and analyse it, would be a task too-long for our own patience, or for that of our readers, so we only pick out a few salient absurdities, and ask why English men and women should be found singing sentences which have no beauty to recommend them, and no meaning to dignify them. We will not lay stress on the quaintness of a congregation standing up and gravely singing: "Or ever your pots be made hot with thorns, so let indignation vex him, even as a thing that is raw" (Ps. lviii.); we will not ask what the clergyman means when he reads out to his congregation: "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove." (Ps. lxviii.) These are isolated passages, which a pen might erase, retaining the major part of the Psalter: we go further, and challenge it as a whole, asserting that it is ludicrously inappropriate as a song-book for sensible people, even although those people may be desirous of praying to, or praising God. Our strictures are here levelled, not at prayer as prayer, but simply at this particular form of prayer. In the first place the Psalter is written only for a single nation; it is full of local allusions, and of references of Israelitish history, which are only reasonable in the mouth of a Jew. With what amount of sense can an English congregation every 15th evening of the month sing such a Psalm as the lxxviii., recounting all the marvels of the plagues and of the exodus, or on the following day plead with God to help them, because "the heathen are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem an heap of stones?" (Ps. lxxix.) Is there any respect to God in telling him that "we are become an open shame to our enemies; a very scorn and derision unto them that are round about us" (v. 4), when, as a matter of simple fact, the speakers are become nothing of the kind? Can it be thought to be consistent with reverence to God to make these extraordinary assertions in praying to Him, and then to base upon them the most urgent pleas for His immediate aid? for we find the congregation proceeding: "Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy Name; O deliver us and be merciful unto our sins for Thy Name's sake.... O let the vengeance of Thy servant's blood which is shed be openly shewed upon the heathen in our sight. O let the sorrowful sighing of the prisoners come before Thee; according to the greatness of Thy power, preserve Thou those that are appointed to die" (w. 9, 10, 11).