PREACHING 337 PREBLE usage, praise, adoration, confession of sin, and thankful acknowledgment of mercies received, which seems almost necessarily to follow from a belief in the existence of a god. We find it both where the object of worship is one Su- preme Being and in polytheism. Forms of prayer for public use grew up in the earliest times, naturally and inevitably: the Lord's Prayer being doubtless regarded as a warrant and a model. Prayer for the dead, in the Roman Catholic, Greek, and other Oriental churches, is offered with the intention and expectation of obtaining for the souls of the deceased an alleviation of their supposed sufferings after death on ac- count of venial sins, or of the penalty of mortal sins, remitted but not fully atoned for during life. The practice of pray- ing for the dead is usually associated with the doctrine of purgatory, or with the belief in a progressive intermediate state. It seems certain that some such doctrine existed in most of the ancient religions. Its existence among the Jews is attested by the well-known assurance in II Maccabees, chap, xii., that "it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the_ dead, that they may be loosed from their sins." Catholics contend that the doctrine as well as the practice is equally recognizable in the early Christian Church. They rely on the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke, xvi: 19-31), as establishing the intercommun- ion of this earth with the world beyond the grave. The liturgies, too, of all the rites without exception contain prayers for the dead; and the sepulchral inscrip- tions from the catacombs, which reach in their range from the 1st to the 5th century, contain frequent prayers in even greater variety. In the services of the mediaeval and later Church prayers for the dead form a prominent and striking element. The Protestant churches with- out exception repudiated the practice. In the burial service of Edward VI.'s "First Common Prayer Book" some prayers for the deceased were retained; but they were expunged from the "Sec- ond Book"; and no trace is to be found in that sanctioned under Elizabeth. Still it is not expressly prohibited. In the United States the sect called "Christian Scientists," founded by Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, believes in the ef- ficacy of prayer to heal disease. See Christian Science. PREACHING, the act of preaching; a public religious discourse. The modern system of preaching was unknown in the early Church. The general mode then was for the priest to read portions of the Old or New Testament, and explain or enforce the precepts which they con- tained. Generally, sermons were deliv- ered whenever the Scriptures were read, and sometimes several, by different per- sons at the same meeting. About the 13th century, the scholastic divines directed their chief attention to the study of the sacred Scriptures, and were hence called Bible divines. They introduced a new and artificial mode of preaching, called declaring. Before this time, the clergy generally adopted postu- lating, or expounding a large portion of Scripture, sentence by sentence. By the new method, the preacher read a text out of some book and chapter of the Old or New Testament, dividing it into sev- eral parts and expounding them. The opposition to this textual mode of preach- ing continued for upward of a century, but at length it came generally to pre- vail. The divisions or parts of a mod- ern sermon are usually the introduction, the proposition, the illustration, and the application. PREADAMITISM, the teaching of Isaac de la Peyrere (1592-1676), a French Calvinist, who asserted that Paul had revealed to him that Adam was not the first man created. Peyrere pub- lished a treatise in 1655, based on Ro- mans V : 12-14, but it was publicly burnt, and he was imprisoned at Brussels. His views, however, were espoused by many people. PREBEND, the stipend or mainte- nance granted to a canon of a cathedral or collegiate church out of its estate; a canonry in England. A simple prebend is one restricted to the revenue only; a dignitary prebend has jurisdiction an- nexed to it. PREBLE, EDWARD, an American naval officer; born in Portland, Me., Aug. 15, 1761; crossed the ocean to Europe in an American privateer in 1777; served as midshipman in the "Protector" in 1779; was captured and imprisoned for some time in the prison-ship "Jersey"; was promoted captain in 1799, in which year he commanded the "Essex" in the East Indies for the protection of Ameri- can interests. Early in 1803 he was made commander of the "Constitution"; and in June of that year was placed in command of a fleet sent against Tripoli. He greatly distinguished himself in caus- ing that country to sue for peace, a feat accomplished by a number of skillful bombardments. He returned to the United States and received through Con- gress the thanks of the nation and a gold medal. He died in Portland, Me., Aug. 25, 1807.
