Up! O sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ shall shine on thee! Westcott and Hort print in metrical form not only these passages, but St. Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, which thus takes its place among the earliest Christian hymns. Πάτερ ἡµῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς· Ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνοµά σου, ἐλθάτω ἡ βασιλεία σου, γενηθήτω τὸ θέληµά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς· Τὸν ἄρτὸν ἡµῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡµῖν σήµερον· καὶ ἄφες ἡµῖν τὰ ὀφειλήµατα ἡµῶν, ὡς καὶ ἡµεῖς ἀφήκαµεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡµῶν· καὶ µὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡµᾶς εἰς πειρασµόν, ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡµᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.[43] Our Father which art in heaven; Hallowed Thy name, Come Thy kingdom, Be done Thy will Alike in heaven and on earth; The bread we need Give us to-day; And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. It is very possible that the metrical structure of St. Matthew’s version may to some extent explain its variations from St. Luke. ‘The hymns of the Apocalypse show, strange to say, no metrical arrangement of diction,’[44] but their influence upon Christian song has been great. Thus the New Testament makes a most important, though chiefly indirect, contribution to the hymnal of the Church. St. Paul’s division of religious poetry into ‘psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs’ indicates the character and variety of the songs of the apostolic Church, but gives little information concerning its hymnals. We may assume, however, that whilst the Hebrew Psalter formed the first and greatest section of the songs of the Church, there were also a number of recognized ‘hymns’ and ‘odes,’ to which additions might at any time be made. By the law of spiritual selection these ancient hymns have passed out of the literature of the Church; they perished in the using, and having served their own generation according to the will of God fell on sleep. The Church universal is indebted to the liturgical Churches for the inclusion in their Books of Common Prayer of the psalms which heralded the dawn of the day of the Son of Man. It is surely a narrow and superficial notion of divine worship which would exclude such canticles from our services as archaic or artificial. How beautiful, for example, is the ‘Nunc Dimittis’ whether sung daily at eventide, or when the day of life is ended and the Lord now letteth His servant depart in peace! It is in Christian usage what the sounding of ‘The Last Post’ is to the British soldier, marking the close of the common day or sounding the last farewell to a comrade whose warfare is accomplished. A petty and prosaic criticism may regard as unreal such adaptations of ancient hymns, though consecrated by many centuries’ use, but there is as legitimate a poet’s licence in devotion as in literature.