Holy Week at Jerusalem in the Fourth Century. (S.P.C.K. 4d.)—This
is a reprint from Duchesne's "Christian Worship" (second English edition). It contains the journal of a Spanish religious kept during a visit to Jerusalem in A.D. 385. It actually describes the order of worship on Sundays and at the seasons of Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Whitsuntide. The whole is very curious, and there are certainly some things hard of belief. " Some when they have eaten after the Dismissal (Missa) on the Lord's Day, that is about the fifth or sixth hour (11.30 a.m.), do not eat throughout the whole week until after the dismissal at the Anastasis." (This seems to have taken place early in the morning, the service beginning at cock-crow.) What is said about Baptism is noteworthy. "The competents are brought up,— coming, if they are men with their fathers, and if women with their mothers." Clearly they were grown people, as questions were asked about their conduct. Yet they could hardly have been converts. Elsewhere, however, we read : " Such of the children as have been baptised." The writer was, it appears, a lady of high rank, first-cousin to the Emperor Theodosius. One thing is abundantly plain, that the ritual of the time was highly ornate and elaborate.
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