And they said among themselves, As it was in the beginning, Who shall roll us away is now, and ever shall be, the stone, and when they looked, world without end. Amen. they saw that it was rolled away. We have now given examples of Anthems, which show that they have their name from the responding of two choirs to one another[1]. But Anthems were not of necessity hymns of Praise. The place provided at Morning and Evening Prayer, for the singing of an Anthem, is singularly ill-suited to the singing of a Praise-Anthem: for it is the place also of the Litany. It is sometimes pleaded that people grow tired of prayer, by the end of the 3rd Collect, and need a change: hence, after praying for three or four minutes, they rise up and sing praise for ten minutes, before kneeling again for seven or eight minutes. If we have grasped the reverent orderliness of the Services, we shall not easily be persuaded that this was the design of the order at this place. We have elsewhere shown that an Anthem here unites the Collects which precede it, to those which follow. {152} We must believe that there was an intention to provide an Anthem Book. Until this is done by authority, it would be well to distinguish, in Hymn Books, between those Hymns which are suitable in the midst of the Prayers, and those which are appropriate as Hymns of Praise. The same might also be done in the Anthem Books, so that a Praise-Anthem, or Hymn, might be sung at the close of the whole Service. A Prayer-Anthem, or Hymn, or one upon the Redeemer's Love, and His Work as Mediator, suits well as a modulation to the Prayers after the 3rd Collect. And it might be sung Antiphonally. [1] Rabanus, _De Inst. Cler._ Mart. IV. iv. 1. {153} CHAPTER XV. THE SERVICE OF PRAYER. III. The Litany. Origin of Litanies. Some of the Offices of Holy Communion--especially in the East--have had a portion after the Gospel very similar to what we call a Litany. Thus in the Liturgy (i.e. Holy Communion Office) of S. James, the Deacon says _The Universal Collect_, consisting of fifteen suffrages (see Appendix F), each ending with, _Let us beseech the Lord_: and the Response of the people is, _Lord have mercy_, which is said thrice at the end of the petitions. Similar to this is _the Prayer of Intense Supplication_, in the Liturgy of S. Chrysostom. Cf. also the modern Liturgy of Constantinople. We should expect to find the further development of Litanies, in Churches where the Eastern influence was felt; it is therefore no surprise to us, that the history of them next takes us to the Churches of Southern France. "The South of Gaul had been colonized originally from the Eastern shores of the Aegaean. Its Christianity came from the same regions as its colonization. The Church of Gaul was the {154} spiritual daughter of the Church of proconsular Asia[1]."