I've been reading some of the very beautiful prayers in my mother's
English Prayer Book to make up for not having prayed in church today.
Its margins are thickly covered with pencilled comments. In parts like
the Psalms and Canticles they overflow into the spaces between the
verses. They are chiefly notes on the beauties of thought and language,
and comparisons with similar passages in the Bible. Here and there
between the pages are gummed little pictures of Madonnas and 'piteous
Christs.' But when the Athanasian Creed is reached the tone of the
comment changes. Over the top of it is written 'Some one has said there
is a vein of dry humor running through this Creed that is very
remarkable.' And at the end of each of those involved clauses that try
quite vainly, yet with an air of defying criticism, to describe the
undescribable, my mother has written with admirable caution 'Perhaps.'