The New International Encyclopædia/Lesson

LESSON (OF., Fr. leçon, It. lezione, from Lat. lectio, reading, lesson, from legere, to read, Gk. λέγειν, legein, to say). In the liturgical sense, a portion of the Church service appointed to be read, chiefly with a view to instruction and exhortation, as distinguished from prayer and praise addressed to God. In this sense it includes the epistle and gospel (qq.v.), but the term is more commonly applied to the selections read in the ancient breviary office of matins and in the morning and evening prayer of the Anglican churches. The earliest notices we have of services of the first Christians describe them as maintaining a practice which had been traditional for centuries in the Jewish synagogues. Besides what we now know as the Old and New Testaments, the letters of various bishops, especially those of Saint Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, and other edifying writings were read. When the canon of Scripture came to be definitely fixed, the reading during divine service was usually restricted to it. At first books were read continuously from beginning to end; but with the gradual development of the liturgical year selections were made in order to have the reading appropriate to the mystery or event commemorated. The arrangement of this order is commonly attributed to Saint Jerome.

The lessons in the breviary (q.v.) for matins on Sundays and greater festivals are nine—the first three from Scripture, the next three usually from the lives of the saints or some historical matter, and the last from a homily of one of the fathers on the gospel for the day. On smaller festivals and ordinary week-days only three are read. Some monastic rites have four lessons in each nocturne. In the Anglican Prayer-Book two lessons, much longer than those in the breviary, and of course in English, are appointed for morning and for evening prayer on each Sunday, festival, or week-day; the first is always taken from the Old Testament, and the second from the New.