Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE DAILY OFFICE Daily Prayer.—The custom of daily public prayer has held so conspicuous a place in the history of the Church that it has sometimes been supposed that it must date from the very earliest times. No doubt the Christians of the first age were instant in prayer; and it may be taken for granted that they often united, as occasion might arise, in acts of common worship. But the only regular and public meetings of the earliest days of which we have any information were those connected with the celebration of the Eucharist . These meetings took place at least on the first day of every week. They were preceded from very early times by a long vigil service, which originally perhaps lasted through the whole night, as it did when S. Paul was at Troas (Acts xx. 7-11). The Vigils.—The origin of the vigil has been traced with much probability to the belief current in the Early Church that the second coming of our Lord would take place in the night before Easter Day. Hence it was regarded as the duty of the faithful to watch through the whole of that night; and it is thought that the custom was extended to the eves of all the Sundays in the year. In the case of the ordinary Sundays, however, the vigil soon assumed the form of a service beginning at cockcrow. Thus in Pliny's letter the Christians are said to meet before dawn on a stated day, and to sing alternately a hymn to Christ as God. Perhaps it was to preserve the primitive idea of a service lasting all night that the faithful met on the evening before at the hour of the lighting of the lamps. After their devotions theyseparated, and met again at cockcrow. In Syria, at the beginning of the fourth century, a further division of the morning service took place, certain fixed psalms and hymns being recited at... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.