which began to end at the "Reformation," and this is their glory. 1 [F. G. P.] LORD'S DAY, THE.-The first day of the week, Sunday. The name was given to the day on account of our Lord's Resurrection from the dead upon it, and was in use in Apostolic days (Rev. i. 10). One of the greatest blessings enjoyed by the people of Great Britain and other Protestant countries, is the due observance of the Lord's Day, with the benefit of rest which such proper observance procures. The "Continental Sunday," prevalent in Roman Catholic countries, must ever be a cause of offence and grief to a religious mind. Business and amusements pursued much as on any other day of the week, cannot but desecrate the Sabbath. The Sunday opening of museums and picture galleries entails much work, together with the enforced presence of attendants, &c. The liberty, rest, and facilities for worship secured by the English Sunday, should be jealously guarded. The law at present is strict in this direction. No persons (except innkeepers and milkmen in certain cases) may work at their daily calling on any part of the Lord's Day, unless in works of charity and necessity. No child, young person, or woman may be employed on this day in a factory or workshop, except in the case of Jews employed by a Jew, and then only if the workshop or factory is closed on Saturday, and not open for traffic on Sunday. Sunday entertainments, open to the public for money, are forbidden, though the Crown may remit the penalties. Any place duly and honestly registered as a place of public worship, where nothing hostile to religion is advanced, is not within the Act. Public or

1 "In process of time the power of truth in the Lollard teaching would have brought about a national Reformation, but it was hastened by the influence of the Lutheran Reformation and by political events in England. Unquestionably the suppressed, but by no means extinguished Lollards, prepared the way in thousands of homes for the great religious reforms of the sixteenth century. In the darkest night of religious superstitions the "Lollard Bible - men" were witnesses to the truths dear to all Protestants. Brave, heroic men and women they were, for the most part of the middle classes, of the traders in the towns, of the farmers in the country, who in their travails, their earnest seekings, their burning zeal, their readings, their watchings, their sweet assemblies, their love and concord, their godly living, laid the spiritual foundations of the great Reformation, and prepared the public mind to eagerly welcome Tindale's Testament, and the rapid succession of versions of the Scriptures that followed" (W. H. Beckett's English Reformation, p. 96).

secular business (such as vestry meetings), which fall due to be performed on any Lord's Day, must be transacted on the preceding Saturday, or the following Monday, and terms of office expire in like manner. In computing time, Sunday is considered as no day. LORD'S PRAYER, THE.-The Lord's Prayer was not given as the only prayer to be made use of by Christians, but as a pattern or model of what true prayer should comprise. It was given, firstly, publicly in His great inaugural Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vi. 9-13); and afterwards privately to His disciples in response to a request of theirs that He would teach them how to pray (Luke xi. 1–4). The prayer itself consists of an opening address, three petitions regarding God's glory, four petitions concerning man's needs, concluding with a Doxology, or ascription of praise. The last, which is found only in St. Matthew, is omitted by the R.V., because that Doxology is wanting in the best MSS. of the Gospel. But The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (see APOSTOLIC FATHERS), a small book ascribed to the first century, discovered in recent years, gives the Lord's Prayer with a similar Doxology. It is also given in Tatian's Diatessaron. See T. & T. Clark's edit., p. 58.

Although given to us by Christ Himself, some Christians have objected to the use of the prayer for various reasons. (1) It is said that the Lord's Prayer is a 66 form." But surely a "form" of the Lord's might pass without this objection being raised to it, more especially as it is admitted that it was not set forth as the only prayer for Christians to use. (2) The frequent use of the prayer is often objected to. Our Lord warned us "when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking" (Matt. vi. 7). But the repetitions spoken of are such as are "vain," or empty. Our Lord Himself used repetition in prayer in the most agonising moments of His life, in Gethsemane (Matt. xxvi. 44). There is, indeed, a repetition of the Lord's Prayer which is vain, namely, the utterance of a number of "Paternosters," as the Lord's Prayer is called (from its two first words) in the Latin Version, by Roman Catholics, who fancy that by repeating the Prayer (though never so thoughtlessly) a certain number of times, they perform a meritorious act. (3) It is objected that the Lord's Prayer, having been given to the disciples before the gift of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, is not fully appropriate to the use of the Church since Pentecost. But although the Prayer was given before Pentecost, it was put on record after that day by the Evangelists as of permanent value to believers. LORD'S SUPPER, THE.-See ADORATION

OF THE EUCHARIST; AGNUS DEI; ALTAR; BLACK RUBRIC; BODY OF CHRIST; BREAD;

CELEBRANT; CHASUBLE; COMMUNION, EVENING; COMMUNION, FASTING; FREQUENCY OF COMMUNION; COMMUNION IN ONE KIND; COMMUNION OF SICK; CONCOMITANCE; CONSUBSTANTIATION; "DO THIS"; EASTWARD POSITION; ELEVATION; EUCHARIST; EXPOSITION OF SACRAMENT; HOST; INFANT COMMUNION; LAUDIAN THEOLOGY; LINCOLN JUDGMENT; LORD'S TABLE; MASS; MISSA AND MISSE; MIXED CHALICE; NONCOMMUNICATING ATTENDANCE; ONE KIND; REMEMBRANCE; RIDLEY'S THEOLOGY; SPECIES; SPIRITUAL PRESENCE AND FEEDING; TRANSUBSTANTIATION; VESTMENTS; VIATICUM.

LORD'S TABLE, THE.—It is expressly stated in the New Testament that the Lord's Supper was instituted at a table (Luke xxii. 21, 30). The use of such a table was for the partaking of a meal in common, as is shown in Acts xvi. 34, where the Greek "prepare a table" is idiomatically rendered "set meat before them." Nor did it lose this meaning when the meal happened to include a partaking of the sacrificial victim, the " fire-portion" of which had been previously "offered" on an altar. Neither heathens nor Jews ever used their altars to cook food for the worshippers; nor did they dare to eat anything which had once been laid on the altar, and had thus been presented to the Deity, who consumed the whole of it by fire as His own portion before any worshipper could presume to think of sharing the remaining portions of the victim which were left. Hence St. Paul, in comparing the idol feast with the Lord's Supper, in 1 Cor. x. 21, was most careful to avoid using the name "altar," as in verses 18, 19, which he could not have helped doing had the Lord's Table been regarded as the analogue of the Temple altar. It has been well said that the Lord's Supper was not instituted at a time of sacrifice, nor in a place of sacrifice, nor was the President at the Paschal Supper anything more than the lay head of a family distributing a domestic meal to the "household of faith." Long after the sacrificial slaughter in the Temple, the body of the paschal lamb was removed to a private dwelling, far from the sacred precincts, and there cooked like an ordinary meal. The Paschal Supper did not represent either the blood-shedding or the sprinkling with the blood, but only the commemorative festivity in which redeemed Israel rejoiced to hold communion with its reconciled God, in the safety and happiness of a Godprotected home. Hence the Supper-table of the New Testament was called the "Lord's Table" in a sense widely different from that in which the "altar" had in the Old Testament

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been called "the Table of the Lord." The latter was regarded as the table from which and off which God Himself accepted what was offered to Him as "the bread of God" (Lev. iii. 11, 16; xxi. 6, 8, 17; Num. xxviii. 2). But no worshipper ever ate off that table. On the other hand, the "Lord's Table" of the New Covenant was instituted and ordained by the Incarnate Son of God exclusively for man's benefit. The guests thereat were to eat and "drink" every one of them (Matt. xxvi. 27), and by these sacramental acts were to keep "in remembrance" the dying of their Lord and their fellowship with Him, and thereby with His "members." This sacred meal, which was to commemorate "the sacrifice of the death of Christ,' 99 was itself in no sense a "sacrifice," and therefore the table at which it was celebrated could be in no sense an "altar." Bishop Fitzgerald warns us against loose thinking in this matter, by saying, "The altar might be thought of as God's table; but not conversely, a table as God's altar." When the One sacrifice for sin had been once offered," all offering for sin was "finished" for evermore (Heb. ix. 28; x. 2).

But other offerings still remained to be offered, viz., the spiritual self-surrender of the worshipper's own heart and will, embodied vocally in confession, thanksgiving, praise, and prayer, with the "free-will offerings" of his substance for the support of divine worship and the charitable works of the Church. Such "gifts" in kind were wont to be presented in the sight of the congregation, until by their mere bulk the inconvenience rendered it necessary to pass canons (like the 5th of the so-called "Apostolic Canons") to limit the ritual "offerings" and the "gifts" to corn, and wine, with "oil for the lamps," as being things directly employed in the service of the Sanctuary. Still these were held to represent the remaining "gifts" which were not formally presented during the service, and in some sort were held to symbolise the heartfelt devotion to their Lord of the "offerers." Hence it was that the pure "offering" of Malachi i. 11 was held to be fulfilled in the Thanksgiving Service (Eucharist) of the Christian Church. "The sacrifices, offerings, and gifts therefore are the prayers and thanksgivings, the alms, the contributions to the Agape, and so forth," says Bishop Lightfoot when commenting on St. Clement's language (in Ep. ad Cor., xliv.) as to the Christian clergy "offering the gifts." The bread and wine selected from the choicest of these "offerings " (which were then commonly made "in kind ") were regarded as first-fruits of God's providential gifts in "Nature to mankind for the nourishment and support of

man's natural life, and a disproportionately long prayer was devoted in all the early liturgies to this feature of what might be called "natural religion." One reason for laying such stress on what we should now term the "Offertory," was that no endowments then existed, and no public charities or hospitals were then known, while the Christians were at first mainly poor people. Hence the duty and importance of the "Offering" were magnified and dwelt upon, and the "Great entrance" of the unconsecrated elements was (and still is by the Greeks, Copts, Syrian, and Ethiopian Christians) marked by the utmost pomp; and thus sacrificial language, such as adult converts had all their lives been familiar with, came to be freely used with a view to stimulating their charitable zeal. But in the earliest liturgies this phraseology about "oblations," and "offerings," and "gifts" preceded the "consecration," and was listened to and shared by catechumens and others who were not permitted to remain for the Holy Communion itself. In a well-known rhetorical passage, Hippolytus (A.D. 230) speaks of "His precious and undefiled body and blood which are consecrated on each mystical and divine Table, as being slain for a remembering of that first and ever-memorable Table of the mystic divine Supper" (Migne, p. 265). "Mystical" is used in the sense of figurative or symbolic (see Bishop Fitzgerald's Lectures on Eccl. Hist., i. 183). So late as A. D. 1222, we find Germanus explaining the meaning of this metaphorical language" the awful altar: that is to say, the sacred Table" (Scudamore, Not. Euch., p. 111). It is easy to understand how confusion would arise in men's minds between the sacrificial aspect of the elements regarded as man's self-chosen "offering" to God (in the sense above explained), and the sacrificial terms used to designate those same elements after their consecration, when they had become in symbol, what our Lord called them, the Body and Blood as in the very act of being "given to God," and as being "poured out" in sacrificial slaughter. The "thing signified" was a veritable "sin-offering" of blood "shed unto a remission of sins." And hence, by little and little, the rite unhappily came to be regarded as the sacrificial presentation of a sin-offering-thus supplanting the unique sacrifice of Calvary, the offering of which could neither be continued nor repeated.

In Western Christendom the very name "table" had ceased to be used in popular language, just as the prescribed "eating" and "drinking" had given place to the solitary "communions" (?) of the priest. Naturally, therefore, the wooden and movable tables of the Primitive Church began to be supplanted

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by fixed stone altars, just as the very notion of a sacrament had been ousted by belief in the pretended "sacrifice" of the mass. When this last had been fully established, it expressed itself everywhere by the priest interposing his body between the people and the "altar," to express the thought that no man cometh unto the Father but by the priest. The stone altar became a fixture against the wall, because, of course, no congregation could thrust itself beyond the mediating priest. Jewish and heathen altars needed to be of stone in order to resist the action of fire; so, to resemble these, the "altars" must be similarly indestructible by fire, and "fire" must be lighted in the daytime on the sham "altars." Lastly, the worshippers must be taught to grovel and prostrate themselves in front of the "hidden deity." Thus the transformation of "the Supper of the Lord and the Holy Communion" into the Mass became complete. It was a veritable apostasy, and neither "primitive" nor "catholic." A mosaic still remaining on the choir wall of St. Apollinaris' at Ravenna, dating from A.D. 549, shows the celebrant facing the people at a wooden table draped table-wise. It shows also the curtain or "veil" by which the Lord's Table was hidden out of sight of the non-communicants, at whose departure the "mysteries," i.e. symbols, were for the first time displayed to the "faithful." The side figures represent the sacrifice of Abel, and that of Abraham, whose son points to the Christian Supper-table as representing in symbol what his own vicarious offering had foreshadowed in type.

The illustration on p. 373 is from the Church of Nekresi, founded A.D. 393–405 (?) by King Tirdat-Chosroides, who is depicted in one of the frescoes as holding in his hand a model of the church. Plate 258, in M. de Fleury's La Messe, Études Archeologiques, is taken from Pitsounda, a Basilican cathedral on the Caucasian shore of the Black Sea, built by Justinian, A.D. 558, and gives a similar representation; but our Lord is there standing behind the table, and giving with His right hand a fragment broken off from the loaf in His left hand to a standing communicant who approaches the table on (what we should call) the south side.

In the illustration on p. 374, the left hand group at the top is from a psalter of the ninth century, preserved at Mount Athos: the group on the right being copied from the apse of the Cathedral of St. Sophia at Kief, A.D. 1037,

1 Neale (Hist. Eastern Church, i. 270) call these "the only ancient frescoes in Russia." The vessels hanging overhead in the picture on p. 374 are probably chalices. See Smith's Dict. Christian Antiq., i. 341.