Chapter II: Revision of the American Common Prayer.1 (3)

The question was distinctly asked by a clerical deputy from the diocese of Maryland,[37] Do you desire to modify the Office of the Holy Communion? and it was as distinctly answered by the mover of the resolution under which the Joint Committee was finally appointed, No, we do not. It is true that such a pledge, made by a single member of one House, could only measurably control the action of a Joint Committee in which both Houses were to be represented; but it is equally plain that the maker of the pledge was in honor bound to do all in his power to secure the observance of its terms.

Let this historical fact be noted by those who are disposed to complain that the Joint Committee did not pull to pieces and entirely rearrange the Anglo-Scoto-American Office, which now for a long time, and until quite recently, we have been taught to esteem the nearest possible approach to liturgical perfection.

Under this same head of "limitations" must be set down the following resolutions passed by the Joint Committee itself, at its first regular meeting:

_Resolved_, That this Committee asserts, at the outset, its conviction that no alteration should be made touching either statements or standards of doctrine in the Book of Common Prayer.

_Resolved_, That this Committee, in all its suggestions and acts, be guided by those principles of liturgical construction and ritual use which have guided the compilation and amendments of the Book of Common Prayer, and have made it what it is.

It was manifestly impossible, under resolutions like these, to depart very widely from established precedent, or in any serious measure to disturb the foundations of things.

The first of them shut out wholly the consideration of such questions as the reinstatement of the Athanasian Creed or the proposal to make optional the use of the word "regenerate" in the Baptismal Offices; while the other forbade the introduction of such sentimental and grotesque conceits as "An Office for the Blessing of Candles," "An Office for the Benediction of a Lifeboat," and "An Office for the Reconciliation of a Lapsed Cleric."[38]

Still another very serious limitation, and one especially unfriendly to that perfectness of contour which we naturally look to see in a liturgical formulary, grew out of the tender solicitude of the Committee for what may be called the vested rights of congregations. There was a strong reluctance to the cutting away even of what might seem to be dead wood, lest there should ensue, or be thought to ensue, the loss of something really valuable.

It was only as the result of much painstaking effort, and only at some sacrifice of literary fastidiousness, that the Committee was enabled to report a book of which it could be said that, while it added much of possible enrichment, it took away almost nothing that had been in actual possession.[39] There could be no better illustration of this point than is afforded by certain of the alterations proposed to be made in the Order for Evening Prayer.

The Committee felt assured that upon no point was the judgment of the Church likely to be more unanimous than in approving the restoration to their time-honored home in the Evening Office of _Magnificat_ and _Nunc dimittis_, and yet so unwilling were they to displace _Bonum est confiteri_ and _Benedic anima mea_ from positions they have only occupied since 1789 that they authorized the unquestionably clumsy expedient of printing three responds to each Lesson.

Probably a large majority of the Committee would have preferred to drop _Bonum est confiteri_ and _Benedic anima mea_ altogether, retaining _Cantate Domino_ and _Deus miser eatur_ as the sole alternates to the two Gospel canticles, as in the English Book, but rather than have a thousand voices cry out, as it was believed they would cry out, "You have robbed us," the device of a second alternate was adopted, to the sad defacement of the printed page. In may be charged that, in thus choosing, the Committee betrayed timidity, and that a wise boldness would have been the better course; but if account be taken of the attitude consistently maintained by General Convention towards any proposition for the change of so much as a comma in the Prayer Book, during a period of fifty years prior to the introduction of _The Book Annexed_, it will perhaps be concluded that for the characterization of the Committee's policy timidity is scarcely so proper a word as caution.

SPECIAL CRITICISMS.

(_a_) _Foreign_.

As there is reason to believe that opinion at home has been very considerably affected by foreign criticism of _The Book Annexed_, it will be well at this point to give some attention to what has been said in English journals in review of the work thus far accomplished. The more noteworthy of the foreign criticisms are those contained in _The Church Quarterly Review_, _The Church Times_, and _The Guardian_.[40]

The Church Quarterly reviewer opens with an expression of deep regret at "the failure to take advantage of the opportunity for reinstating the Athanasian Creed." As already observed, no such opportunity existed. By formal vote the Joint Committee debarred itself from any proceeding of this sort, and the Convention, which sat in judgment on its work, was manifestly of opinion that in so acting the Committee had rightly interpreted its charter.

The reviewer, who is in full sympathy with the movement for enrichment as such, goes on to recommend, as a more excellent way than that followed in _The Book Annexed_, the compilation of

An Appendix to the Book of Common Prayer to contain the much
needed _Additional Services_ for both Sunday and other use in
churches, in mission chapels, and in religious communities, as
well as a full supply of _Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings_
for objects and purposes, missionary and otherwise, which are as
yet entirely unrepresented in our Offices.

There are obvious reasons why this device should commend itself to an English Churchman, for it is unlikely that anything better than this, or, indeed, anything one half so satisfactory, could be secured by Act of Parliament.

For something very much better than this, however, a self-governed Church, like our own, has a right to look, and, in all probability, will continue to look until the thing is found. _An Appendix_ to a manual of worship, whether the manual be Prayer Book or Hymnal,[41] is and cannot but be, from the very nature of things, a blemish to the eye, an embarrassment to the hand, and a vexation to the spirit. Such _addenda_ carry on their face the suggestion that they are makeshifts, postscripts, after-thoughts; and in their lack of dignity, as well as of convenience, pronounce their own condemnation.

Moreover, in our particular case, no "Appendix," "Prymer," or "Authorized Vade-mecum" could accomplish the ends that are most of all desired. Fancy putting the _Magnificat_, the _Nunc dimittis_, the Versicles that follow the Creed, and the "Lighten our darkness" into an "Appendix." It would be the defeat of our main object.

Then, too, this is to be remembered, that in order to secure a "fully authorized Appendix," we, in this country, should be obliged to follow precisely the same legal process we follow in altering the Prayer Book. If an Occasional Office cannot pass the ordeal of the criticism of two successive Conventions, it ought not to be set forth at all; if it can and does stand that test, then it ought to be inserted in the Prayer Book in the particular place where it most appropriately belongs and may most readily be found.

Moreover, it should be remembered that one, and by no means the least efficient, of the causes that brought the Common Prayer into existence in the sixteenth century was disgust at the multiplication of service-books. We American Churchmen have two already; let us beware of adding a third.

The critic of _The Quarterly_ was probably unacquainted with the fact that in the American Episcopal Church the experimental setting forth of Offices "for optional and discretional use" is not possible under the terms of the Constitution. We either must adopt outright and for permanent use, or else peremptorily reject whatever is urged upon us in the name of liturgical improvement.

Entering next upon a detailed criticism of the contents of The _Book Annexed_ the writer proceeds to offer a number of suggestions, some of them of great value. He pleads earnestly and with real force for the restoration of the Lord's Prayer to its "place of honor" between the Creed and the Preces, showing, in a passage of singular beauty, how the whole daily office "may be said to have grown out of, or radiated from, or been crystallized round the central _Pater noster_" even as "from the Words of Institution has grown the Christian Liturgy."

The critic has only praise for the amendments in the Office for Thanksgiving Day; approves the selection of Proper Sentences for the opening of Morning and Evening Prayer; avers, certainly with truth, that the Office of the Beatitudes might be improved; welcomes "the very full repertory of special prayers"; thinks that the _Short Office of Prayer for Sundry Occasions_ "certainly supplies a want"; rejoices in the recognition of the Feast of the Transfiguration; and closes what is by far the most considerable, and, both as respects praise and blame, the most valuable of all the reviews that have been made of _The Book Annexed_ whether at home or abroad, with these words:

On the whole, we very heartily congratulate our Transatlantic brothers on the labors of their Joint Committee. We hope their recommendations may be adopted, and more in the same direction; and that the two or three serious blemishes which we have felt constrained to point out and to lament may be removed from the book in the form finally adopted.

And further, we very earnestly trust that this work, which has been very evidently so carefully and conscientiously done, may speedily, by way of example and precedent, bear fruit in a like process of enrichment among ourselves.

Commending these last words to the consideration of those who take alarm at the suggestion of touching the Prayer Book lest we may hurt the susceptibilities of our "kin beyond sea," and unduly anticipate that "joint action of both Churches," which, at least until disestablishment comes, must always remain a sheer impossibility, we pass to a consideration of the six articles contributed to the _Church Times_ in July and August last, under the title, _The Revised American Prayer Book_. Here we come upon a writer who, if not always edifying, has the undoubted merit of being never dull. In fact, so deliciously are logical inconsequence and accidental humor mingled throughout his fifteen columns of discursive criticism that a suspicion arises as to the writer's nationality. It is doubtful whether anyone born on the English side of the Irish Sea could possibly have suggested the establishment of a Saint's Day in honor of the late respected Warden of Racine College, or seriously have proposed that Messrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Russell Lowell, Henry James, and W. D. Howells be appointed a jury of "literary arbitrament" to sit in judgment on the liturgical language of _The Book Annexed_; and this out of respect to our proper national pride. Doubtless it would add perceptibly to the amused sense of the unfitness of things with which these eminent liberals must have seen themselves thus named, if permission could be given to the jury, when empanelled, to "co-opt" into its number Mr. Samuel Clemens and Mr. Dudley Warner.[42]

The general tenor of the writer in _The Church Times_ may fairly be inferred from the following extract from the first article of the series:

The judgment that must be pronounced on the work as a whole is precisely that which has been passed on the Revised New Testament, that there are doubtless some few changes for the better, so obvious and so demanded beforehand by all educated opinion that to have neglected them would at once have stamped the revisers as blockheads and dunces; but that the set-off in the way of petty and meddlesome changes for the worse, neglect of really desirable improvements, bad English, failure in the very matter of pure scholarship just where it was least to be expected, and general departure from the terms of the Commission assigned to them (notably by their introduction of confusion instead of flexibility into the services, so that the congregation can seldom know what is going to happen) has so entirely outweighed the merits of the work that it cannot possibly be adopted by the Church, and must be dismissed as a dismal fiasco, to be dealt with anew in some more adequate fashion.

This paragraph is not reproduced for the purpose of discrediting the writer of it as a judge of English prose, for there are various passages in the course of the six articles that would more readily lend themselves to such a use. The object in quoting it is simply to put the reader into possession, in a compact form, of the most angry, even if not the most formidable, of the various indictments yet brought against _The Book Annexed_.

Moreover, the last words of the extract supply a good text for certain didactic remarks that ought to be made, with respect to what is possible and what is not possible in the line of liturgical revision in America.

Worthless as the result of the Joint Committee's labors has turned out to be, their motive, we are assured, was a good one. The critic's contention is not that the work they undertook is a work that ought not to be done, but rather that when done it should be better done. The revision as presented must be "dismissed as a dismal fiasco," but only dismissed "in order to be dealt with anew in some more adequate fashion." But on what ground can we rest this sanguine expectation of better things to come? Whence is to originate and how is to be appointed the commission of "experts" which is to give us at last the "Ideal Liturgy"?

Cardinal Newman in one of his lesser controversial tracts remarks:

If the English people lodge power in the many, not in the few, what wonder that its operation is roundabout, clumsy, slow, intermittent, and disappointing? You cannot eat your cake and have it; you cannot be at once a self-governing nation and have a strong government.[43]

Similarly it may be said that, however great the difficulties that beset liturgical revision by legislative process at the hands of some five hundred men, nevertheless the fact remains that the body known in law as The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America has provided in its Constitution that change in its formularies shall be so effected and not otherwise. It may turn out that we must give up in despair the whole movement for a better adaptation of our manual of worship to the needs of our land and of our time; it may be found that the obstacles in the way are absolutely insuperable; but let us dream no dreams of seeing this thing handed over, "with power," to a "commission of experts," for that is something which will never come to pass.

Whether "experts" in liturgies are any more likely to furnish us with good prayers than "experts" in prosody are likely to give us the best poetry is a tempting question, but one that must be left, for the present, on one side. Perhaps, if the inquiry were to be pushed, we might find ourselves shut up to the curious conclusion that the framers of the very earliest liturgies, the authors of the old sacramentaries, were either verbally inspired or else were lacking in the qualifications which alone could fit them to do worthily the work they worthily did, for clearly "experts" they were not.

But the question that immediately concerns us is one of simple fact. Assuming the present laborious effort at betterment to have been proved a "fiasco," how is the General Convention to set in motion any more promising enginery of revision? "Summon in," say our English advisers, "competent scholars, and give them _carte blanche_ to do what they will." But the Convention, which is by law the final arbiter, has no power to invite to a share in its councils men who have no constitutional right to a seat upon its floor. How thankfully should we welcome as participants in our debates and as allies in our legislation the eminent liturgical scholars who give lustre to the clergy list of the Church of England; but we are as powerless to make them members of the General Convention as we should be to force them into the House of Commons. The same holds true at home. If the several dioceses fail to discover their own "inglorious Miltons," and will not send them up to General Convention, General Convention may, and doubtless does, lament the blindness of the constituencies, but it cannot correct their blunder. The dioceses in which the "experts" canonically reside had had full warning that important liturgical interests were to be discussed and acted upon in the General Convention of 1883; why were the "experts" left at home? And if they were not returned in 1883, is there sufficient reason to believe that they will ever be returned in any coming year of grace? It must be either that the American Church is bereft of "experts," or else that the constituencies, influenced possibly by the hard sense of the laity, have learned hopelessly to confound the "expert" with the doctrinaire.

Of "expert testimony," in the shape of the liturgical material gathered, mainly by English writers, during the last fifty years, the Joint Committee had no lack. That this material was carefully sifted and conscientiously used, _The Book Annexed_ will itself one day be acknowledged to be the sufficient evidence.

There is still another point that must be taken into account in this connection, to wit, the attitude which the Episcopate has a right to take with respect to any proposed work of liturgical revision. Bishops have probably become inured to the hard measure habitually dealt out to them in the columns of the _Church Times_, and are unlikely to allow charges of ignorance and incompetency so far to disturb their composure as to make them afraid to prosecute a work which, from time immemorial, has been held to lie peculiarly within their province. It may be affirmed, with some confidence, that no revision of the American Offices will ever be ratified, in the conduct of which the Bishops of the Church have not been allowed the leadership which belongs to them of right. Then it is for the General Convention carefully to consider whether any House of Bishops destined to be convened in our time is likely to have on its roll the names of any prelates more competent, whether on the score of learning or of practical experience, to deal with a work of liturgical revision than were the seven prelates elected by the free voice of their brethren to represent the Episcopal Order on the Joint Committee of Twenty-one.

Coming to details the reviewer of the _Church Times_ regrets, first of all, the failure of the Convention to change the name of the Church. He goes on to express a disapproval, more or less qualified, of the discretionary power given to bishops to set forth forms of prayer for special occasions, and of the continued permission to use Selections of Psalms instead of the psalms for the day. It is not quite clear whether he approves the expansion of the Table of Proper Psalms or not, though he thinks it "abstractedly desirable" that provision be made in this connection for "Corpus Christi and All Souls."

He condemns the latitude allowed in the choice of lessons under the rules of the new lectionary, fearing that a clergyman who happens to dislike any given chapter because of its contents may be tempted habitually to suppress it by substituting another, but in the very next paragraph he gravely questions the expediency of limiting congregations to such hymns as have been "duly set forth and allowed by authority." Yet most observers, at least on this side of the water, are of opinion that liberty of choice within the limits of the Bible is a far safer freedom, so far as the breeding of heresy goes, than liberty of choice beyond the limits of the Hymnal has proved itself to be. The reviewer is pleased with the addition of the Feast of the Transfiguration to the Calendar, but "desiderates more," and would gladly welcome the introduction into the Prayer Book of commemorations of eminent saints, from Ignatius down,[44] but of this, mention has already been made, and it is unnecessary to revert to it.

There follows next a protest against the selection of proper Sentences prefixed to Morning and Evening Prayer.

The revisers seem to have a glimmering of what was the right thing to do . . . but they should have swept away the undevotional and unliturgical plan of beginning with certain detached texts, which has no fitness whatever, and has never even seemed to answer any useful end.

This is stronger language than most of us are likely to approve. A Church that directly takes issue with Rome, as ours does, with respect to the true source of authority in religion has an excellent reason for letting the voice of Holy Scripture sound the key-note of her daily worship, whether there be ancient precedent for such a use or not. At the same time, the reviewer's averment that "the only proper opening is the Invocation of the Holy Trinity" is entitled to attention; and it is worth considering whether the latter portion of the nineteenth verse of the twenty-eighth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel might not be advantageously added to the list of opening Sentences, for optional use.

In speaking of the new alternate to the Declaration of Absolution, the reviewer suggests most happily that it would be well to revive the form of mutual confession of priest and people found in the old service-books.[45] This proposal would probably not be entertained in connection with the regular Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, but room for such a feature might perhaps be found in some optional office.

After a grudging commendation of the steps taken in _The Book Annexed_ to restore the Gospel Canticles, the reviewer next puts in a strong plea for a larger allowance of versicles and responses after the Creed, contending that this is "just one of the places where enrichment, much beyond that of replacing the English versicles and responses now missing, is feasible and easy," to which the answer is that we, who love these missing versicles, shall think ourselves fortunate if we succeed in regaining only so much as we have lost. Even this will be accomplished with difficulty. It is most interesting, however, to notice that this stout defender of all that is English acknowledges the coupling together of the versicle, "Give peace in our time, O Lord," and the response, "Because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God," to be "a very infelicitous _non-sequitur_." For correcting this palpable incongruity, the authors of _The Book Annexed_ have been sharply criticised here at home. What were they that they should have presumed to disturb ancient Anglican precedent in such a point? If we could not understand why the God of battles, as the God of battles, should be implored to "give peace in our time," so much the worse for our intelligence. But here comes the most acrid of all our critics, and shows how the collocation of sentences in the English Book has, from the beginning, been due to a palpable blunder in condensing an office of the Sarum Breviary. Of the American substitute for this "unhappy response" the best he can say, however, is that it is "well intentioned."

Of the "Office of the Beatitudes" the reviewer declares that it "needs thorough recasting before it can stand," and in this we agree with him, as will hereafter appear, though wholly unable to concur in his sweeping condemnation, in this connection, of one of the most beautiful of Canon Bright's liturgical compositions, the Collect beginning, "O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment and light riseth up in darkness for the godly." Of this exquisite piece of idiomatic English, the reviewer allows himself to speak as being "a very poor composition, defective in rhythm."

The criticism of the eucharistic portions of _The Book Annexed_ is mainly in the line of complaint that more has not been added in the way of new collects and proper prefaces, but upon this point it is unnecessary to dwell, the reasons having been already given why the Joint Committee and the Convention left the liturgy proper almost untouched. Neither is there anything that specially calls for notice or serious reply in what is said about the Occasional Offices.

The Office for the Burial of Children is acknowledged to be a needed addition, but as it stands "is pitched in an entirely wrong key. The cognate offices in the _Rituale Romanun_ and the _Priest's Prayer Book_ ought to have shown the Committee, were it not for their peculiar unteachableness, a better way." To one who can read between the lines, this arraignment of the Americans for their lack of docility to the teachings of the Priest's Prayer Book is not devoid of drollery.

It will happily illustrate the peculiar difficulties that beset liturgical revision to close this resume of the censures of _The Church Times_ by printing, side by side, the reviewer's estimate of the changes proposed in the Confirmation Office and the independent judgment of a learned evangelical divine of our own Church upon the same point.

The Confirmation Service, as one of the very poorest in the Anglican rites, stood particularly in need of amendment and enrichment, especially by the removal of the ambiguous word "confirm" applied to the acts of the candidates, whereby the erroneous opinion that they came merely to confirm and ratify their baptismal promises, and not to be confirmed and strengthened in virtue of something bestowed upon them, has gained currency.

Thus far the English Ritualist. Here follows the American Evangelical:

I still hope you will see your way clear to modify the present draft of the proposed Confirmation Office, as it gives a much higher Sacramentarian idea of it than the present, a concession which will greatly please the Sacerdotalists, to which they are by no means entitled.

The critic of _The Guardian_ is a writer of different make, and entitled every way to the most respectful attention. His fault-finding, which is invariably courteous, is mainly confined to the deficiencies of _The Book Annexed_.

He would have had more done rather than less; but at the same time clearly points out that under the restrictions which controlled the Committee more could not fairly have been expected. He regrets that in restoring the lost portions of _Venite_ and _Benedictus_ the Convention did not make the use of the complete form in every case obligatory; and of the eight concluding verses of the latter canticle, which under the rubric of _The Book Annexed_ are only obligatory during Advent, he says, "Imagine their omission on Christmas Day!"

To this criticism there are several answers, any one of which may be held to be sufficient. In the first place, it should be remembered that into the Committee's plan of enrichment there entered the element of differentiation. The closing portion of the _Venite_ has a special appropriateness to Lent; the closing portion of the _Benedictus_ a special appropriateness to Advent. Moreover, if any congregations desire the whole of these two canticles throughout the year, there is nothing in the rubrics of _The Book Annexed_ to forbid such an enjoyment of them. They may be sung in full always; but only in Lent in the one case, and in Advent in the other, mast they be so sung. The revision Committee was informed, on what was considered the highest authority, that in the Church of England the _Benedictus_, on account of its length, had been very generally disused. But, however this may be, there can be little doubt that the effort after restoration would have failed completely in the late Convention had the use of these two canticles in full been insisted upon by the promoters of revision.

There is less of verbal criticism in _The Guardian's_ review than could have been wished, for any suggestions with respect to inaccuracies of style or rhythmical shortcomings would have been most welcome from the pen of so competent a censor. Attention is called to the unmusical flow of language in the alternate Confession provided for the Evening Office; the figurative features of the proposed Collect for Maundy-Thursday are characterized as infelicitous; and the Collect provided for the Feast of the Transfiguration is declared to be inferior to the corresponding one in the Sarum Breviary.

Of this sort of criticism, at the hands of men who know their craft, _The Book Annexed_ cannot have too much. In fact, of such immeasurable importance is good English in this connection, that it would be no hardship were every separate clause of whatever formulary it may be proposed to engraft upon the Prayer Book to be subjected to the most searching tests.

Let an epoch be agreed upon, if necessary, that shall serve as the criterion of admissibility for words and phrases. Let it be decided, for instance, that no word that cannot prove an Elizabethan parentage, or, if this be too severe a standard, then no word of post-Caroline origin, shall be admitted within the sacred precincts. Probably there are words in _The Book Annexed_ which such a canon would eject; but let us have them pointed out, and their merits and demerits discussed. Such criticism would be of infinitely more value to the real interests of revision than those vague and general charges of "crudeness" and "want of finish" which it is always so easy to make and sometimes so difficult to illustrate.

The writer in _The Guardian_ closes an only too brief commentary upon what the Convention has laid before the Church with the following words:

Many of the proposals now in question are excellent; but others will be improved by reconsideration in the light of fuller ritual study, such as will be seen to produce a more exact and cultured ritual _aesthesis_, perhaps we may, without offence, add, a more delicate appreciation of rhythm. What _The Book Annexed_ presents to us in the way of emendation is, on the whole, good; but, if subjected to a deliberate recension, it would, we predict, become still better. If thus improved by the Convention of 1886, it might be finally adopted by the Convention of 1889.

This conspectus of English critical opinion would be incomplete were no account to be made of the utterances of the various writers and speakers who dealt with the general subject of liturgical revision at the recent Church Congress at Portsmouth.

_The Book Annexed_ could scarcely ask a more complete justification than is supplied by these testimonies of men who at least may be supposed to be acquainted with the needs of the Church of England.

The following catena, made up from three of the four Papers[46] read upon the Prayer Book, gives a fair notion of the general tone of the discussion. It will be worth anyone's while to collate it with the thirty Resolutions that make up the "Notification to the Dioceses."

Can it be seriously doubted that there are requirements of this age which are not satisfied by the provision for public worship made in the sixteenth century? Can any really suppose that the compilers of that brief manual, the Prayer Book, however proud we may rightly be of their work, were so gifted with inspired foresight as to save the Church of future ages the responsibilities of considering and supplying the devotional wants of successive generations?

Who has not felt the scantiness of holy association in our Sunday and week-day worship? . . . Much, I know, has been supplied by our hymnology, which has progressed nobly in proportion as the meagreness of our liturgical provision has been realized. But beyond hymns we need actual forms of service, which shall strike the ear and touch the heart by fresh and vivid adaptations of God's Word to the great mysteries of the Gospel faith . . . After-services on Sunday evenings have of late grown common; for them we need also the aid of regular and elastic forms.

Most deplorably have we felt the need of intercessory services for Home and Foreign Missions; and, though there are beautiful metrical litanies which bear directly on these and other objects, yet these are not sufficient, and of course are limited to times when a good and strong choir can be secured; . . . and further we want very simple forms of prayer to accompany addresses given in homes and mission rooms.[47]

I declare it as my conviction, after many years of (I hope) a not indolent ministry, and of many opportunities of observation and experiment, that the Church stands in pressing and immediate need of a few rearrangements and adaptations of some of her Offices; also of an enormous number of supplementary Offices or services--some for frequent use, others for occasional purposes within the consecrated buildings; and that besides these there is need of a supply of special Offices for the use of a recognized lay agency outside of the church edifices.

Why limit our introductory sentences to seven deprecatory texts? . . . Why can we not introduce the anthem used on Easter-day, instead of the _Venite_, throughout the Octave; or at least on Easter Monday and Tuesday? Would not spiritual life be deepened and intensified, and, best of all, be strengthened, by the use in the same manner of a suitable anthem instead of the _Venite_ on Advent Sundays, on Christmas-day, at Epiphany, on Ash-Wednesday, on Good Friday, during Rogation days, at Ascension-tide, and on harvest festivals and the special annual Church festival of the year?

I submit that an enrichment of the Book of Common Prayer is also required. For although, as already suggested, this may be provided to some extent by a Collect for occasional use before the final prayer of Morning Prayer or Evensong, the needs of the Church will not be fully supplied without some complete additional offices. Certainly an additional service for Sunday afternoon and evening . . . The times are very solemn, and we must wait no longer . . . We have talked for nearly twenty-five years--not vainly, I believe--but let us "go and do" not a little in the next five years . . . Prove yourself to be of the Church of God by doing all the work of the Church, and in the proper way. Proclaim before our God by your actions and your activities, and by providing all that is needed, not only for Churchmen, but for earnest Christians who are not Churchmen, and for the poor, weary sinners who are living as if there were neither Church nor Saviour, such services for the one, and such means for drawing the others to Christ, that they all may become one in him. And for all this you must have (as I think):

1. Possibly a small rearrangement of existing services.

2. Variety and additions in some of these services.

3. Enrichment by many services supplementary.

4. Services for use by laymen.

I wish to alarm none, but I wish we were all astir, for there is no time to wait.[48]

I should like to suggest, if it seems desirable, as it does to me, to make any further variation from the original arrangement of Morning Prayer, that on such days as Easter-day, Whitsunday, and Ascension-day we should begin in a little different fashion than we do now.

Is it always needful to begin on such great days of rejoicing for Christians with the same sentences and the _same_ Exhortation and Confession, and have to wait, so to speak, to give vent to our feelings till we reach the special psalms for the day? Might we not on such days accept the glorious facts, and begin with some special and appropriate psalm or anthem? . . . Thus we should at once get the great doctrine of the day, and be let to rejoice in it at the very outset, and then go on to the Lord's Prayer and the rest as we have it now. Confession of sin and absolution are not left out in the services of the day, as, of course, they occur in the Holy Communion; but leaving them out in the ordinary services, and beginning in the way suggested, would at one and the same time mark the day more clearly, and give opportunity for Christian gladness to show itself . . . Only one other alteration would, I think, be needed, namely, that a good selection of psalms be made, and used, as in the American Church, at the discretion of the minister. I think all must feel that for one reason or another all the psalms are not adapted for the ordinary worship of a mixed congregation; and this plan would ease the minds of many clergy and laity. Also copying the American Church, it would be well to omit the Litany on Christmas-day, Easter-day, and Whitsunday.[49]

In the light of this summary of Anglican desiderata, compiled by wholly friendly hands, it is plain that whatever we may do in this country in the line of liturgical revision, always supposing it to be gravely and carefully done, instead of harming, ought marvellously to help the real interests of the Church of England. Certain principles of polity adopted in our own Church a century ago, and notably among them those affecting the legislative rights of the laity in matters ecclesiastical, are beginning to find tardy recognition in the England of the present. Possibly a hundred years hence, or sooner, a like change of mind may bring English Churchmen to the approval of liturgical methods which, even if not wholly consonant to the temper of the Act of Uniformity, have nevertheless been found useful and effective in the work of bringing the truth and the power of God to bear upon the common life of a great nation. The Church of England is to-day moving on toward changes and chances of which she sees enough already to alarm and not yet enough to reassure her. The dimness of uncertainty covers what may yet turn out to be the Mount of her Transfiguration, and she fears as she enters into the cloud. How shall we best and most wisely show our sympathy? By passing resolutions of condolence? By childish commiseration, the utterance of feigned lips, upon the approaching sorrows of disestablishment? Not thus at all, but rather by a courageous and well-considered pioneering work, which shall have it for its purpose to feel the ground and blaze the path which presently she and we may find ourselves treading in company. Tied as she is, for her an undertaking of this sort is impossible. We can show her no greater kindness than by entering upon it of our own motion and alone.

(_b_) American.

Criticism at home has been abundant; much of it intelligent and helpful, and by no means so much of it as might have been expected captious. Of what may be called official reviews there have been three, one from the Diocese of Central New York, one from the Diocese of Wisconsin, and one from the Diocese of Easton. The subject has also been dealt with in carefully prepared essays published from time to time in _The Church Review_ and _The Church Eclectic_, while in the case of the weekly journals the treatment of the topic has been so frequent and so full that a mere catalogue of the editorial articles and contributed communications in Which, during the two years last past, liturgical revision has been discussed would overtax the limits of the present paper.

The only practicable means of dealing with this mass of criticism is to adopt the inductive method, and to seek to draw out from the utterances of these many voices the four or five distinct concepts that severally lie behind them.

_In limine_ however, let this be said, that the broadest generalization of all is one to which the very discordance of the critics bears the best possible witness. Of a scheme of re vision against which is pressed, in Virginia,[50] the charge of Mariolatry; in Ohio,[51] the charge of Latitudinarianism; and in Wisconsin[52] the charge of Puritanic pravity, this much may at least be said, that it possesses the note of fairness. From henceforth suggestions of partisan bias are clearly out of order.

The Anglo-Catholic censures of _The Book Annexed_ are substantially summed up in the assertion that due regard is not had, in the changes proposed, to the structural principles of liturgical science. In the exceedingly well written, if somewhat one-sided document, already referred to as the Wisconsin Report, this is, throughout, the burden of the complaint. The accomplished author of the Report, than whom no one of the critics at home or abroad has shown a keener or a better cultivated liturgical instinct, is afraid that a free use of all the liberties permitted by the new rubrics of the daily offices would so revolutionize Morning and Evening Prayer as practically to obliterate the line of their descent from the old monastic forms. If there were valid ground for such an expectation the alarm might be justifiable; but is there? The practical effect of the rubrics that make for abbreviation will be to give us back, on weekdays almost exactly, and with measurable precision on Sundays also, the Matins and Evensong of the First Book of Edward VI. Surely this is not the destruction of continuity with the pre-Reformation Church.

In his dislike of the provision for grafting the Beatitudes upon the Evening Prayer, the author of the Wisconsin Report will have many sympathizers, the present writer among them; but in his fear that in the introduction of the Proem to the Song of the Three Children, as a possible respond to the First Lesson,[53] there lurks a covert design to dethrone the _Te Deum_, he is likely to find few to agree with him.

But after all, may not this scrupulous regard for the precedents set us in the old service-books be carried too far? It is wholesome, but there is a limit to the wholesomeness of it. We remember who it was that made war for the sake of "a scientific frontier." Some of the scientific frontiers in the region of liturgies are as illusory as his was. For example, _The Book Annexed_ may be "unscientific" in drawing as largely as it does on the language of the Apocalypse for versicles and responses. There has certainly been a departure from Anglican precedent in this regard. And yet it would scarcely seem that we could go far astray in borrowing from the liturgy of heaven, whether there be earthly precedent or not.

Cranmer and his associates made a far bolder break with the old office-books than _The Book Annexed_ makes with the Standard Common Prayer. The statement of the Wisconsin Report, that "The Reformers of the English Church did not venture to write new Offices of Prayer," must be taken with qualifications. They did not make offices absolutely _de novo_, but they did condense and combine old offices in a manner that practically made a new thing of them. They took the monastic services and courageously remoulded them into a form suitable for the new era in which monasteries were to exist no longer.

Happily they were so thorough in their work that comparatively little change is called for in adapting what they fitted to the needs of the sixteenth century to the more varied requirements of the nineteenth. Still, when they are quoted as conservatives, and we are referred for evidence of their dislike of change to that particular paragraph of the Preface to the English Prayer Book entitled, _Concerning the Service of the Church_[54] it is worth our while to follow up the reference and see what is actually there said. The Wisconsin Committee use very soft words in speaking of the mediaeval perversions and corruptions of Divine Service. "It was in the monasteries chiefly," they tell us, "that these services received the embellishments and wonderful variety which we find in the later centuries." But the following is the cruel manner in which, in the English Preface cited as authority, the "embellishments" and "wonderful variety" are characterized:

But these many years past, this godly and ancient order of the ancient fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories and legends, with multitudes of responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals, that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, after three or four chapters were read out, all the rest were unread.

. . . And furthermore, notwithstanding that the ancient fathers have divided the Psalms into seven portions, whereof every one was called a Nocturn, now of late time a few of them have been daily said and the rest utterly omitted . . . So that here you have an Order for Prayer and for the Reading of the Holy Scripture much agreeable to the mind and purposes of the old fathers, and a great deal more profitable and commodious than that which of late was used.

This is conservatism in the very best sense, for the object aimed at is plainly the conservation of purity, simplicity, and truth, but surely it is not the conservatism of men with whom inaction is the only wisdom and immobility the sole beatitude.

We change our sky completely in passing from Anglo-Catholic to Broad Church criticism of _The Book Annexed_. This last has, in the main, addressed itself to the rubrical features of the proposed revision. "You promised us 'flexibility,'" the accusation runs, "but what you are really giving us is simply rigidity under a new form. Let things stay as they are, and we will undertake to find all the 'flexibility' we care to have, without help from legislation."

This criticism has at least the merit of intelligibility, for it directly antagonizes what was, without doubt, one main purpose with the revisers, namely, that of reviving respect for the rubrics by making compliance with their terms a more practicable thing.

Evidently what Broad Churchmen, or at least a section of them, would prefer is the prevalence of a general consent under which it shall be taken for granted that rubrics are not literally binding on the minister, but are to be stretched and adapted, at the discretion of the officiant, as the exigencies of times and seasons may suggest. It is urged that such a common understanding already in great measure exists; and that to enact new rubrics now, or to remodel old ones, would look like an attempt to revivify a principle of compliance which we have tacitly agreed to consider dead.

The answer to this argument is not far to seek. If the Church means to allow the Common Prayer, which hitherto has been regarded as a liturgy, to lapse into the status of a directory; if, in other words, she is content to see her manual of worship altered from a book of instructions as to how Divine Service _shall_ be performed into a book of suggestions as to how it _may_ be rendered, the change ought to be officially and definitely announced, and not left to individual inference or uncertain conjecture. We are rapidly slipping into a position scarcely consistent with either the dignity or the honor of a great Church--that of seeming to be what we are not. To give it out to the public that we are a law-respecting communion, and then to whisper it about among ourselves that our laws bind only those who choose to be bound by them, may serve as a convenient device for tiding over a present difficulty, but is, oh the whole, a course of procedure more likely to harden than to relieve tender consciences.

Take, by way of illustration, the case of a city clergyman who would gladly introduce into his parish the usage of daily service, but who is convinced, whether rightly or wrongly, that to secure even a fair attendance of worshippers he ought to have the liberty of so far condensing the Morning or the Evening Office as to bring it within the limits of a quarter of an hour. He seeks relief through the lawful channel of rubrical revision, and is only laughed at for his pains. In this busy nineteenth century it is nonsense, he is assured, to spend a dozen years in besieging so obdurate a fortress as the General Convention. The way to secure "shortened services" is to shorten services. This is easy logic, and applicable in more directions than one. Only see how smoothly it runs: If you want hymns that are not in the Hymnal, print them. If you want a confessional-box, set it up. If you want a "reserved sacrament," order the carpenter to make a tabernacle and the locksmith to provide a bolt.[55] This is a far less troublesome method of securing the ends desired than the tedious and roundabout process of proposing a change at one meeting of the General Convention, having your proposal knocked about among some forty or fifty dioceses, and brought up for final action three years later.

And yet, superior as the former method may be to the latter in point of celerity and directness, the latter has certain advantages over the former that ought to be evident to men who are not frightened by having their scrupulousness called scrupulosity.

Moreover, why should this whole matter be discussed, as so commonly it is discussed, wholly from the clerical side? Have the laity no rights in the liturgy which the clergy are bound to respect? When and where did the Protestant Episcopal Church confer on its ministers a general dispensing power over the ordinances of worship which it withheld from the body of the faithful?

Heretofore it has been held that when a layman went to church he had a right to expect certain things guaranteed him by the Church's law. If all this has been changed, then formal notice ought to be served upon us by the General Convention that such is the fact.

THE MOTIVE OF THE EFFORT AFTER REVISION.

It is asked, and with no little show of plausibility, Why--in the face of such manifold hostility and such persistent opposition, why press the movement for revision any further? Is it worth while to divide public sentiment in the Church upon a question that looks to many to be scarcely more than a literary one? Why not drop the whole thing, and let it fall into the limbo, where lie already the _Proposed Book_ and the _Memorial Papers_? For this reason, and it is sufficient: There has arisen in America a movement toward Christian unity, the like of which has not been seen since the country was settled. It is the confident belief of many that the key to the situation lies with that Church which more truly than any other may be said to represent the historical Christianity of the peoples of English stock. One of the elements in this larger movement is the question of the form of worship. The chief significance of _The Book Annexed_ lies in the claim made for it by its friends, that more adequately than the present Standard it supplies what may fairly be demanded as their manual of worship by a people circumstanced like ours. While, in one sense, more English than the present book in that it restores liturgical treasures lost at the Revolution, it is also more thoroughly American, in that it recognizes and allows for many needs which the newly enfranchised colonists of 1789 could not have been expected to foresee.

The question is, Shall we turn a cold shoulder on the movement churchward of our non-Anglican brethren of the reformed faith, doing our best to chill their approaches with a hard _Non possumus_, or shall we go out to meet them with words of welcome on our lips? Union under "the Latin obedience" is impossible. For us, in the face of the decrees of 1870, there can be "no peace with Rome." The Greeks are a good way off. Our true "solidarity," if "solidarity" is to be achieved at all, is not with Celts, but with our own kith and kin, the children of the Reformation. Is it wise of us to say to these fellow Christians of ours, adherents of the Catholic Faith as well as we, "Nay, but the nearer you draw to us the farther we mean to draw away from you; the more closely you approximate to Anglican religion, the more closely shall we, for the sake of differencing ourselves from you, approximate to Vatican religion?"

In better harmony with the apostolic temper, in truer continuity with the early churchmanship, should we be found, were we to join voices thus:

_V_. Come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.

_R_. And he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.

II.