On Sunday, being Advent Sunday, the use of the revised
tables of lessons recently sanctioned by the National Assembly and by Parliament will become optional in any church, in lieu of the tables in the Prayer Book. We have received from- the Oxford Press a neatly-printed copy of the new lessons for Matins and Evensong throughout the year. Many will be glad to have the daily portions thus given in full for private reading. The first lessons for the first three Advent Sundays remain the same, though shortened in two cases. Those wonderful passages from Isaiah will not now be superseded. For the fourth Sunday in Advent part of the thirty-second chapter of Isaiah is given instead of part of the thirtieth. The Christmas lessons are substan- tially the same. So, too, are the lessons for the Sundays in Lent. But the reader will soon discover that the lectionary, as a whole, has been thoroughly revised, as it needed to be. In many cases alternative lessons are offered. The compilers have evidently aimed both at a systematic reading of the bDoks and at a judicious selection of the great passages appropriate to special occasions. Our first impressions of the new lectionary are entirely favourable.
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