adopted even longer cycles of seven weeks or two months. At Morning Prayer, the first psalm said every day is Venite, exultemus Domino, Psalm 95, either in its entirety or with a shortened or altered ending. During Easter, the Easter Anthems typically replace it; other recent prayer books, following the example of the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours as revised following the Vatican II council, allow other psalms such as Psalm 100 to be used instead of the classical Venite. After the Venite or its equivalent is completed, the rest of the psalms follow, but in some churches an office hymn is sung first. After each of the lessons from the Bible, a canticle or hymn is sung. At Morning Prayer, these are usually the hymn Te Deum laudamus, which was sung at the end of Matins on feast days before the Reformation, and the canticle Benedictus from the Gospel of Luke, which was sung every day at Lauds. As alternatives, the Benedicite from the Greek version of the Book of Daniel is provided instead of Te Deum, and Psalm 100 (under the title of its Latin incipit Jubilate Deo) instead of Benedictus. The combination of Te Deum and Jubilate has proven particularly popular for church music composers, having been set twice by Handel, as well as by Herbert Howells and Henry Purcell. At Evening Prayer, two other canticles from the Gospel of Luke are usually used: Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, coming respectively from the services of Vespers and Compline. Psalms 98 and 67 are appointed as alternatives, but they are rarely used in comparison to the alternatives provided for Morning Prayer. Bible readings The introduction to the first Book of Common Prayer explained that the purpose of the reformed office was to restore what it described as the practice of the Early Church of reading the whole Bible through once per year, a practice it praised as 'godly and decent' and criticized what it perceived as the corruption of this practice by the mediaeval breviaries in which only a small portion of the scripture was read each year, wherein most books of the Bible were only read in their first few chapters, and the rest omitted. While scholars now dispute that this was the practice or intention of the Early Church in praying their hours of prayer, the reading of the Bible remains an important part of the