Nothing scarcely is more forcibly impressed upon us in the course of the present inquiry than the fact, that documents alone are wanting to make _that_ altogether demonstrable which, in default of such evidence, must remain a matter of inevitable inference only. The forms we are pursuing at last disappear from our sight: but it is only the mist of the early morning which shrouds them. We still hear their voices: still track their footsteps: know that others still see them, although we ourselves see them no longer. We are sure that _there they still are_. Moreover they may yet reappear at any moment. Thus, there exist Syriac MSS. of the Gospels of the viith and even of the vith century, in which the Lessons are rubricated in the text or on the margin. A Syriac MS. (of part of the Old T.) is actually _dated_ A.D. 464.(392) Should an Evangelium of similar date ever come to light of which the rubrication was evidently by the original Scribe, the evidence of the Lectionaries would at once be carried back full three hundred years. But in fact we stand in need of no such testimony. Acceptable as it would be, it is plain that it would add no strength to the argument whatever. We are already able to plant our footsteps securely in the ivth and even in the iiird century. It is not enough to insist that inasmuch as the Liturgical method of Christendom was at least fully established in the East and in the West at the close of the ivth century, it therefore must have had its beginning at a far remoter period. Our two oldest Codices (B and א) bear witness throughout to the corrupting influence of a system which was evidently in full operation before the time of Eusebius. And even this is not all. The readings in Origen, and of the earliest versions of the Gospel, (the old Latin, the Syriac, the Egyptian versions,) carry back our evidence on this subject unmistakably to _the age immediately succeeding that of the Apostles_. This will be found established in the course of the ensuing Chapter. Beginning our survey of the problem at the opposite end, we arrive at the same result; with even a deepened conviction that in its essential structure, the Lectionary of the Eastern Church must be of truly primitive antiquity: indeed that many of its leading provisions must date back almost,—nay _quite_,—to the Apostolic age. From whichever side we approach this question,—whatever test we are able to apply to our premisses,—our conclusion remains still the very same. (3.) Into this Lectionary then,—so universal in its extent, so consistent in its witness, so Apostolic in its antiquity,—“_the_ LAST TWELVE VERSES _of the Gospel according to S. Mark_” from the very first are found to have won for themselves not only an entrance, a lodgment, an established place; but, _the place of highest honour_,—an audience on two of the Church’s chiefest Festivals. The circumstance is far too important, far too significant to be passed by without a few words of comment.