( B) THE LESSONS PROPER FOR HOLY DAYS.

The principle of selection is clearly SPECIALITY, the endea­vour being to select lessons ap­propriate for each Holy day in particular, without reference to those which precede and follow it.

or in which he speaks to us, and in others to fall back on those of more general reference to the call and character of the Saints. But for the First Lessons there is often great difficulty in finding chapters which are in any way appropriate. This difficulty, how­ever, is not felt on such days as St. Michael and All Angels, All Saints' Day, St. John Baptist's Day, or the Conversion of St. Paul.

( a) Of the Holy days those, which we may call" Dominical," as associated with the various acts of the manifestation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, form a series, in which, for the sake of com­pleteness, Easter- Day, Palm­Sunday, and Whitsunday have to be included. For these ( Christmas- Day, Circumcision, Epiphany, Purification, Annun­ciation, Ash- Wednesday, Holy­Week, Good- Friday, Easter- Eve, the Monday and Tuesday in Easter Week and Whitsun­Week, and Ascension- Day) it is easy to find Second Lessons appropriate to the occasion, and not difficult to select First Lessons, especially from the Prophetic books, bearing more or less clearly upon it.

( b) For the other class of Holy days, the Saints' Days properly so called, selection is more diffi­cult and less successful. When Second Lessons are appointed it is, indeed, comparatively easy in some cases to select chapters in which the Saint is mentioned,

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In the Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552, the number of Proper Lessons was comparatively small.

From 1561 the selection re­mained unchanged till 1871, when the New Lectionary intro­duced changes amounting al­most to a reconstruction of the whole. In the" Dominical" Festivals, indeed, most of the old Lessons remain; but in the other class of Festivals the change is almost complete, the new Lessons from the Old Tes­tament being more carefully se­lected, taken exclusively from the Canonical books( except the Evening Lesson for Holy Inno­cents' Day), and several Lessons from the New Testament being added. Proper Lessons were, for the first time, appointed for Ash- Wednesday and Monday and Tuesday before Easter.