[Footnote 92:  I believe the method best calculated to supply us with the very truth is, as I have before observed, to trace the conduct of Christians at the shrines of the martyrs, and follow them in their successive departures further and further from primitive purity and simplicity, on the anniversaries of those servants of God.  What was hailed there first in the full warmth of admiration and zeal for the honour and glory of a national or favourite martyr, crept stealthily, and step by step, into the regular and stated services of the Church.]

I. In the original form of those prayers in which mention was made of the saints departed, Christians addressed the Supreme Being alone, either in praise for the mercies shown to the saints themselves, and to the Church through their means; or else in supplication, that the worshippers might have grace to follow their example, and profit by their instruction.  Such, for instance, is the prayer in the Roman ritual[93] on St. {246} John’s day[94] which is evidently the foundation of the beautiful Collect now used in the Anglican Church,—­“Merciful Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy Apostle and Evangelist St. John, may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life, through Jesus our Lord.  Amen.”  Such too is the close of the Prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church militant here on earth, offered in our Anglican service,—­“We bless thy holy name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear, beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom.  Grant this, O Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ our only Mediator and Advocate.  Amen.”

[Footnote 93:  The references will generally be given to the Roman Breviary as edited by F.C.  Husenbeth, Norwich, 1830.  That work consists of four volumes, corresponding with the four quarters of the ecclesiastical year—­Winter, Hiem.; Spring, Vern.; Summer, AEstiv.; Autumn, Aut.; and the volumes will be designated by the corresponding initials, H. V. AE.  A.]

    [Footnote 94:  “Ecclesiam, tuam, Domine, benignus illustra, ut
    beati Johannis Apostoli tui et evangelistae illuminata doctrinis,
    ad dona perveniat sempiterna.  Per Dominum.”—­Husen.  H. p. 243.]

II.  The second stage supplies examples of a kind of rhetorical apostrophe; the speaker addressing one who was departed as though he had ears to hear.  Were not this the foundation stone on which the rest of the edifice seems to have been built, we might have passed it by unnoticed.  Of this we have an instance in the address to the Shepherds on Christmas-day.  “Whom have ye seen, ye shepherds?  Say ye, tell ye, who hath appeared on the earth?  Say ye, what saw ye?  Announce to us the nativity of Christ[95].”