Certain of the necromancers of the far East are said to have the
power of causing a tree to spring up, spread its branches, blossom,
and bear fruit before the eyes of the lookers-on within the space
of a few moments.
Modern liturgies have sometimes been brought into being by a process
as extemporaneous as this, but not such was the genesis of the
Book of Common Prayer.
There are at least eight forms under which the Prayer Book has
been from time to time authoritatively set forth--five English,
one Scottish, one Irish, and one American; so that, if we would
be accurate, we are bound to specify, when we speak of "The Prayer
Book," which of several Prayer Books we have in mind.
The truth is, there exists in connection with everything that grows,
whether it be plant, animal, or building, a certain mystery like
that which attaches to what, in the case of a man, we call personal
identity. Which is the true, the actual Napoleon? Is it the
Napoleon of the Directory, or the Napoleon of the Consulate, or the
Napoleon of the Empire? At each epoch we discern a different phase
of the man's character, and yet we are compelled to acknowledge,
in the face of all the variations, that we have to do with one and
the same man.
But just as a ship acquires, as we may say, her personal identity
when she is launched and named, even though there may be a great
deal yet to be done in the way of finishing and furnishing before
she can be pronounced seaworthy, so it is with a book that is
destined to undergo repeated revision and reconstruction, it does
acquire, on the day when it is first published, and first given a
distinctive title, a certain character the losing of which would be
the loss of personal identity. There is many an old cathedral that
might properly enough be called a re-edited book in stone. Norman
architecture, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular, all are
there, and yet one dominant thought pervades the building.
Notwithstanding the many times it has been retouched, the fabric
still expresses to the eye the original creative purpose of the
designer; there is no possibility of our mistaking Salisbury for
York or Peterborough for London.
The first Book of Common Prayer was built up of blocks that for the
most part had been previously used in other buildings, but the
resulting structure exhibited, from the very moment it received a
name, such distinct and unmistakable characteristics as have
guaranteed it personal identity through more than three hundred
years. Hence, while it is in one sense true that there are no
fewer than eight Books of Common Prayer, it is in another sense
equally true that the Book of Common Prayer is one.
An identity of purpose, of scope, and of spirit shows itself
in all its various forms under which the book exists, so that
whether we are speaking of the First Prayer Book of King Edward
the Sixth, or of the book adopted by the Church of Ireland after
its disestablishment, or of the American Book of Common Prayer,
what we have in mind is, in a very real and deep sense, one and
the same thing.
Let us proceed now to a rapid survey of the facts connected with
the first issue of the Common Prayer.
For a period long anterior to the Reformation there had been in
use among the English brief books of devotion known as "primers,"
written in the language of the people. The fact that the public
services of the Church were invariably conducted in the Latin
tongue made a resort to such expedients as this necessary, unless
religion was to be reserved as the private property of ecclesiastics.
By a curious process of evolution the primer, from having been
in mediaeval times a book wholly religious and devotional, has
come to be in our day a book wholly secular and educational. We
associate it with Noah Webster and the Harper Brothers. The New
England Primer of the Puritans, with its odd jumble of piety and
the three R's, marks a point of transition from the ancient to the
modern type.
But this by the way. The primer we are now concerned with is the
devotional primer of the times just previous to the Reformation.
This, as a rule, contained prayers, the Belief, the Ave Maria, a
litany of some sort, the Ten Commandments, and whatever else there
might be that in the mind of the compiler came under the head of
"things which a Christian ought to know." There were three of
these primers set forth during the reign of Henry the Eighth, one
in 1535, one in 1539, and one in 1545. During the space that
intervened between the publication of the second and that of the
third of these primers, appeared "The Litany and Suffrages," a
formulary compiled, as is generally believed, by Cranmer, the then
Archbishop of Canterbury, and in substance identical with the Litany
we use to-day. This Litany of 1544 has been properly described as
"the precursor and first instalment of the English Book of Common
Prayer." It was the nucleus or centre of crystallization about
which the other constituent portions of our manual of worship
were destined to be grouped. A quaint exhortation was prefixed to
this Litany, in which it was said to have been set forth "because
the not understanding the prayers and suffrages formerly used
caused that the people came but slackly to the processions."
Besides the primers and the Litany, there were printed in Henry's
reign various editions of a book of Epistles and Gospels in English.
There was also published a Psalter in Latin and English.
All this looked rather to the edification of individual Christians
in their private devotional life than to the public worship of the
Church, but we are not to suppose that meanwhile the larger
interests of the whole body were forgotten. So early as in the
year 1542, Convocation, which according to the Anglican theory
stands toward the Church in the same attitude that Parliament holds
to the State, appointed a Committee of Eight to review and correct
the existing service-books. We know very little as to the proceedings
of this committee, but that something was done, and a real impulse
given to liturgical revision, is evidenced by the fact that at a
meeting of Convocation held soon after King Henry's death a
resolution prevailed "That the books of the Bishops and others who
by the command of the Convocation have labored in examining,
reforming, and publishing the divine service, may be produced
and laid before the examination of this house."
The next important step in the process we are studying was the
publication by authority in the early spring of 1548, of an Order
of the Communion, as it was called, a formulary prepared by Cranmer
to enable the priest, after having consecrated the elements in
the usual manner, to distribute them to the people with the
sentences of delivery spoken in English. The priest, that is to
say, was to proceed with the service of the Mass as usual in the
Latin tongue, but after he had himself received the bread and
the wine, he was to proceed to a service of Communion for the
people in a speech they could understand.
Almost everything in this tentative document, as we may call it,
was subsequently incorporated in the Office of the Holy Communion
as we are using it to-day.
We have, then, as an abiding result of the liturgical experiments
made in anticipation of the actual setting forth of an authoritative
Prayer Book, the Litany and this Order of the Communion.
The time was now ripe for something better and more complete; a
new king was upon the throne, and one whose counsellors were
better disposed toward change than ever Henry had been. The great
movement we know under the name of the Reformation touched the
life of the Christian Church in every one of its three great
departments--doctrine, discipline, and worship. In Henry's mind,
however, the question appears to have been almost exclusively one
of discipline or polity. His quarrel was not with the accepted
theological errors of his day, for as Defender of the Faith he
covered some of the worst of them with his shield. Neither was
he ill-disposed toward the methods and usages of public worship
so far as we can judge. His quarrel first, last, and always was
with a certain rival claimant of power, whose pretended authority
he was determined to drive out of the realm, to wit, the Pope.
But while it was thus with Henry, it was far otherwise with many
of the more thoughtful and devout among his theologians, and
when the restraint that had been laid on them was removed by
the king's death, they welcomed the opportunity to apply to
doctrine and worship the same reforming touch that had already
remoulded polity.
An enlarged Committee of Convocation sat at Windsor in the summer
of 1548, and as a result there was finally set forth, and ordered
to be put into use on Whitsunday, 1549, what has become known in
history as the "First Prayer Book of Edward VI."
To dwell on those features of the First Book that have remained
unaltered to the present day would be superfluous; I shall
therefore, in speaking of it, confine myself to the distinctive
and characteristic points in which it differs from the Prayer
Books that have succeeded it.
It is worthy of note that in the title page of the First Book
there is a clear distinction drawn between the Church Universal,
or what we call in the _Te Deum_ "the holy Church throughout all
the world," and that particular Church to which King Edward's
subjects, in virtue of their being Englishmen, belonged. The book
is said to be "the Book of the Common Prayer and administration of
the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of _The Church_,
after the use of the Church of England." "_The Church_" is
recognized as being a larger and, perhaps, older thing than the
_Church of England_, while at the same time it is intimated that
only through such use of these same prayers and sacraments as the
English Church ordains and authorizes can English folk come into
communion with the great family of believers spread over the whole
earth.
The Preface is a singularly racy piece of English, in which with
the utmost plainness of speech the compilers give their reasons
for having dealt with the old services as they have done. This
reappears in the English Prayer Book of the present day under the
title "Concerning the Service of The Church," and so described is
placed after the Preface written in 1662 by the Revisers of the
Restoration.
The Order for Daily Morning Prayer, as we name it, is called in
Edward's First Book "An Order for Matins daily through the year."
Similarly, what we call the Order for Daily Evening Prayer was
styled "An Order for Evensong." These beautiful names, "Matins"
and "Evensong," which it is a great pity to have lost, for surely
there is nothing superstitious about them, disappeared from the
book as subsequently revised, and save in the Lectionary of the
Church of England have no present recognition. One of them,
however, Evensong, seems to be coming very generally into colloquial
use. The Order for Matins began with the Lord's Prayer. Then, after
the familiar versicles still in use, including two that have no
place in our American book, "O God, make speed to save me. O Lord,
make haste to help me," there followed in full the 95th Psalm, a
portion of which is known to us as the _Venite_. From this point
the service proceeded, as in the English Prayer Book of to-day,
through the Collect for Grace, where it came to an end. The
structure of Evensong was similar, beginning with the Lord's
Prayer and ending, as our shortened Evening Prayer now does, with
the Collect for Aid against Perils. Then followed the Athanasian
Creed, and immediately afterward came the Introits, Collects,
Epistles, and Gospels.
These Introits, so-called, were psalms appointed to be sung when
the priest was about to begin the Holy Communion. They had been
an ancient feature of divine service, but were dropped from the
subsequent books as a required feature of the Church's worship.
The title of the Communion Service in Edward's First Book is as
follows: "The Supper of the Lord and the Holy Communion commonly
called the Mass." Immediately after the Prayer for Purity--_i_.
_e_., in the place where we have the Ten Commandments, comes the
_Gloria in Excelsis_. The service then proceeds very much as with
us, except that the Prayer for the Church Militant and the
Consecration Prayer are welded into one, and the Prayer of Humble
Access given a place immediately before the reception of the
elements. I note, in passing, certain phrases and sentences that
are peculiar to the Communion Office of the First Book, as, for
instance, this from the Prayer for the whole state of Christ's
Church: "And here we do give unto thee most high praise and hearty
thanks for the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all thy
saints from the beginning of the world, and chiefly in the most
glorious and blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of thy Son Jesus Christ
our Lord and God, and in the holy patriarchs, prophets, apostles,
and martyrs, whose examples, O Lord, and steadfastness in thy
faith and keeping thy holy commandments grant us to follow. We
commend unto thy mercy, O Lord, all other thy servants which are
departed hence from us with the sign of faith and do now rest in
the sleep of peace. Grant unto them, we beseech thee, thy mercy and
everlasting peace, and that at the day of the general resurrection
we and all they which be of the mystical body of thy Son may
altogether be set on his right hand."
And this from the closing portion of the Consecration: "Yet we
beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service, and
command these our prayers and supplications by the ministry of thy
holy angels to be brought up into thy holy tabernacle before the
sight of thy divine majesty."
Following close upon the Communion Service came the Litany, differing
very little from what we have to-day, save in the memorable petition,
"From the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable
enormities, good Lord deliver us."
The Baptismal Offices of the First Book contain certain unique
features. The sign of the cross is ordered to be made on the child's
breast as well as on his forehead. There is a form of exorcism said
over the infant in which the unclean spirit is commanded to come
out and to depart. There is also the giving of the "Crisome" or
white vesture as a symbol of innocence. "Take this white vesture
for a token of the innocency which by God's grace in this holy
sacrament of Baptism is given unto thee, and for a sign whereby
thou art admonished, so long as thou livest, to give thyself to
innocency of living, that after this transitory life thou mayest
be partaker of the life everlasting."
The Catechism in Edward VI. First Book, as in the subsequent books
down to 1662, is made a part of the Confirmation Office, although
it does not clearly appear that the children were expected to say
it as a preliminary to the service.
The Office for the Visitation of the Sick contains provision for
private confession and absolution, and also directs that the priest
shall anoint the sick man with oil if he be desired to do so.
The Office for the Communion of the Sick allows the practice of what
is called the reservation of the elements, but contains also, be it
observed, that rubric which has held its place through all the
changes the Prayer Book has undergone, where we are taught that if
the sick man by any "just impediment fail to receive the sacrament
of Christ's body and blood, the curate shall instruct him that if
he do truly repent him of his sins and steadfastly believe that
Jesus Christ hath suffered death upon the cross for him . . . he
doth eat and drink the body and blood of our Saviour Christ,
profitably to his soul's health although he do not receive the
sacrament with his mouth."
The Burial Office contains a recognition of prayer for the dead,
but except in the matter of the arrangement of the parts differs
but little from the service still in use. A special Introit,
Collect, Epistle, and Gospel are appointed "for the Celebration of
the Holy Communion when there is a Burial of the Dead."
A Commination Office for Ash-Wednesday, substantially identical
with that still in use in the Church of England, concludes the book.
The First Prayer Book of King Edward the Sixth, memorable as it was
destined to become, proved, so far as actual use was concerned, but
short-lived. It became operative, as we have seen, on Whitsunday,
1549, but it was soon evident that while the new services went too
far in the direction of reform to please the friends of the ancient
order of things, they did not go far enough to meet the wishes of
the reforming party.
Before the year was out no fewer than three translations of the
Liturgy into Latin had been undertaken with a view to informing
the Protestant divines of the Continent as to what their English
colleagues were doing. "There was already within the Church" (of
England), writes Cardwell, in his comparison of Edward's two books,
"a party, though probably not numerous, which espoused the peculiar
sentiments of Calvin; there were others, and Cranmer, it appears,
had recently been one of them, adhering strictly to the opinions
of Luther; there were many, and those among the most active and the
most learned, who adopted the views of Bullinger and the theologians
of Zurich; there was a still larger body anxious to combine all
classes of Protestants under one general confession, and all these,
though with distinct objects and different degrees of impatience,
looked forward to a revision of the Liturgy, to bring it more
completely into accordance with their own sentiments."
As a result of the agitation thus vividly pictured by Cardwell,
there came forth in 1552 the book known as the Second Prayer Book
of King Edward VI., a work of the very greatest interest, for the
reason that it was destined to become the basis of all future
revisions. Whitsunday, 1549, was the day when the First Book began
to be used. The Feast of All Saints, 1552, was the date officially
appointed for the introduction of the Second Book. Presently King
Edward died, and by an act of Mary passed in October, 1553, the use
of his Book became illegal on and after December 20th of that year.
It thus appears that the First Book was in use for two years and
about four months, and the Second Book one year and about two
months. A memorable three years and a half for the English-speaking
peoples of all time to come, for it is not too much to say that
while the language of Tyndale and of Cranmer continues to be heard
on earth, the devotions then put into form will keep on moulding
the religious thought and firing the spiritual imagination of this
race.
The points in which the second of King Edward's two books differs
from the first are of such serious moment and the general complexion
of the later work has in it such an access of Protestant coloring,
that high Anglican writers have been in the habit of attributing the
main features of the revision to the interference of the Continental
Reformers. "If it had not been for the impertinent meddling," they
have been accustomed to say, "of such foreigners as Bucer, Peter
Martyr, and John a-Lasco, we might have been enjoying at the present
day the admirable and truly Catholic devotions set forth in the
fresh morning of the Reformation, before the earth-born vapors of
theological controversy and ecclesiastical partisanship had
beclouded an otherwise fair sky." But it does not appear that there
is any solid foundation in fact for these complaints.
The natural spread of the spirit of reform among the people of the
realm, taken in connection with the changes of opinion which the
swift movement of the times necessarily engendered in the minds of
the leading divines, are of themselves quite sufficient to account
for what took place. Certainly, if the English of that day were at
all like their descendants in our time, it is in the highest degree
unlikely that they would have allowed a handful of learned refugees
to force upon them changes which their own sober judgment did not
approve.
The truth is, very little is certainly known as to the details of
what was done in the making of Edward's Second Book. Even the names
of the members of the committee intrusted with the revision are
matter of conjecture, and of the proceedings of that body no
authentic record survives. What we do possess and are in a position
to criticise is the book itself, and to a brief review of the
points in which it differs from its predecessor we will now pass.
Upon taking up the Second Book after laying down the First, one is
struck immediately with the changed look of Morning Prayer. This
is no longer called Matins, and no longer begins as before with the
Lord's Prayer. An Introduction has been prefixed to the office
consisting of a collection of sentences from Holy Scripture, all of
them of a penitential character, and besides these of an Exhortation,
a Confession, and an Absolution. There can be little doubt that this
opportunity for making public acknowledgment of sin and hearing
the declaration of God's willingness to forgive, was meant to
counterbalance the removal from the book of all reference, save
in one instance, to private confession and absolution. The Church
of England has always retained in her Visitation Office a permission
to the priest to pronounce absolution privately to the sick man.
This was a feature of the First Book that was not disturbed in the
Second. But wherever else they found anything that seemed to look
toward the continuance of the system familiarly known to us under
the name of "the Confessional," they expunged it. Between the
Exhortation and the Confession there is, in point of literary merit,
a noticeable contrast, and it is scarcely to be believed that both
formularies can have proceeded from one and the same pen. Another
step in the Protestant direction was the prohibition of certain
vestments that in the First Book had been allowed, as the alb and
cope. The Introit Psalms were taken away. The word "table" was
everywhere substituted for the word "altar." The changes in the
Office of the Holy Communion were numerous and significant. The
Ten Commandments, for instance, were inserted in the place where
we now have them. The _Gloria in Excelsis_ was transferred from
the beginning of the service to the end. The Exhortations were
re-written. The supplication for the dead was taken out of the
Prayer for the whole state of Christ's Church, and the words
"militant here on earth" were added to the title with a view to
confining the scope of the intercession to the circle of people
still alive. The Confession, Absolution, Comfortable Words, and
Prayer of Humble Access were placed before the Consecration instead
of after it. Most important of all was the change of the words
appointed to be said in delivering the elements to the communicants.
In the First Book these had been, "The body of our Lord Jesus Christ
which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting
life," and in the case of the cup, "The blood of our Lord Jesus
Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto
everlasting life." For these were now substituted in the one
instance the words, "Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ
died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with
thanksgiving," and in the other, "Drink this in remembrance that
Christ's blood was shed for thee, and be thankful."
From the Office for the Communion of the Sick the direction to
reserve the elements was omitted, as was also the permission to
anoint the sick man with oil. The Service of Baptism was no longer
suffered to retain the exorcism of the evil spirit, or the white
vesture, or the unction; and there were other items of less
important change. Those mentioned reveal plainly enough what was
the animus of the revisers. Most evidently the intention was to
produce a liturgy more thoroughly reformed, more in harmony with
the new tone and temper which the religious thought of the times
was taking on.
We come to the Third Book of Common Prayer. Bloody Mary was dead,
and Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne.
During the Roman reaction proclamation had been made that all the
Reformed service-books should be given up to the ecclesiastical
authorities within fifteen days to be burned. This is doubtless
the reason why copies of the liturgical books of Edward's reign
are now so exceedingly rare. Reprints of them abound, but the
originals exist only as costly curiosities.
Soon after Elizabeth's accession a committee of divines assembled
under her authority for the purpose of again revising the
formularies.
The queen was personally a High-Churchwoman, and her own judgment
is said to have been favorable to taking the first of Edward's two
books as the basis of the revision, but a contrary preference
swayed the committee, and the lines followed were those of 1552
and not those of 1549.
The new features distinctive of the Prayer Book of Elizabeth,
otherwise known as the Prayer Book of 1559, are not numerous.
A table of Proper Lessons for Sundays was introduced. The old
vestments recognized in the earlier part of King Edward's reign
were again legalized. The petition for deliverance from the tyranny
of the Pope was struck out of the Litany, and by a compromise
peculiarly English in its character, and, as experience has shown,
exceedingly well judged, the two forms of words that had been used
in the delivery of the elements in the Holy Communion were welded
together into the shape in which we have them still.
Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book continued in use for five-and-forty
years. Nothing was more natural than that when she died there should
come with the accession of a new dynasty a demand for fresh revision.
King James, who was not afflicted with any want of confidence in
his own judgment, invited certain representatives of the disaffected
party to meet, under his presidency, the Churchmen in council with
a view to the settlement of differences. The Puritans had been
gaining in strength during Elizabeth's reign, and they felt that
they were now in position to demand a larger measure of liturgical
reform than that monarch and her advisers had been willing to
concede to them.
King James convened his conference at Hampton Court, near London,
and he himself was good enough to preside. Very little came of the
debate. The Puritans had demanded the discontinuance of the sign of
the cross in Baptism, of bowing at the name of Jesus, of the ring
in marriage, and of the rite of confirmation. The words "priest"
and "absolution" they sought to have expunged from the Prayer Book,
and they desired that the wearing of the surplice should be made
optional.
Almost nothing was conceded to them. The words "or Remission of
Sins" were added to the title of the Absolution, certain Prayers
and Thanksgivings were introduced, and that portion of the Catechism
which deals with the Sacraments was for the first time set forth.
And thus the English Prayer Book started out upon its fourth lease
of life destined in this form to endure unchanged, though by no
means unassailed, for more than half a century.
A stirring half century it was. The Puritan defeat at Hampton Court
was redressed at Naseby. With the coming in of the Long Parliament
the Book of Common Prayer went out, and to all appearances the
triumph of the Commonwealth meant the final extinction of the usage
of liturgical worship on English soil. The book, under its various
forms, had lasted just a hundred years when he who
Nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene
suffered at Whitehall.
They buried him in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and no single word
of the Prayer Book he had loved and for which he had fought was
said over his grave.
On January 3, 1645, Parliament repealed the statutes of Edward VI.
and of Elizabeth that had enjoined the use of the Book of Common
Prayer, and took order that thereafter only such divine service
should be lawful as accorded with what was called the _Directory_,
a manual of suggestions with respect to public worship adopted by
the Presbyterian party as a substitute for the ancient liturgy.
With the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 came naturally the
restoration of the Prayer Book, and with equal naturalness a
revision of it. But of what sort should the revision be, and under
whose auspices conducted? This was an anxious question for the
advisers, civil and ecclesiastical, of the restored king. Should
the second Charles take up the book just as it had fallen from the
hands of the first Charles, unchanged in line or letter, or should
he seek by judicious alterations and timely concessions to win
back for the national Church the good-will and loyalty of those
who, eighteen years before, had broken down her hedge? The situation
may be described as triangular.
The king's secret and personal sympathies were probably all along
with the Roman Church; his official allegiance was plainly due to
the Church of England; and yet, at the same time, he owed much
to the forbearance of the men who had been dominant under the
Commonwealth. The mind of the nation had, indeed, reacted toward
monarchy, but not with such an absolute and hardy renunciation of
the doctrines of popular sovereignty as to make it safe for the
returning king to do precisely as he chose. The glorious Revolution
that was destined so soon to follow upon the heels of the gracious
Restoration gave evidence, when it came, that there were some
things the people of England prized even more highly than an
hereditary throne. Misgivings as to the amount there might still
be of this sort of electricity in the atmosphere suggested to the
king and his counsellors the expediency of holding a conference,
at which the leaders on either side might bring forward their strong
reasons in favor of this or that method of dealing with the
ecclesiastical question in general, and more especially with the
vexed problem of worship.
Accordingly, early in the spring of 1661 the King issued a
royal warrant summoning to meet at the Savoy Palace in the
Strand an equal number of representatives of both parties--namely,
one-and-twenty Churchmen and one-and-twenty Presbyterians.
The Episcopal deputation consisted of twelve bishops and nine other
divines called coadjutors. The Presbyterians had also their twelve
principal men and their nine coadjutors.
Conspicuous among the Episcopalians for weight of learning were
Bishops Sanderson, Cosin, and Walton, and Doctors Pearson, Sparrow,
and Heylin. Baxter, Reynolds, Calamy, and Lightfoot were the most
notable of the Presbyterians.
The conference, which has ever since been known from its place of
meeting (an old palace of the Piedmontese Ambassadors) as the Savoy
Conference, convened on April 15, 1661. For various reasons, it
was evident from the outset that the Churchmen were in a position
of great advantage. In the first place, signs and tokens of a
renewed confidence in monarchy and of a revived attachment to the
reigning House were becoming daily more numerous.
Before he had had a chance to test the strength of the existing
political parties and to know how things really stood, Charles had
borne himself very discreetly toward the Presbyterians, and had
held out hopes to them which, as the event proved, were destined
never to be realized. In a declaration put forth in the autumn of
1660, after he had been for some months on English soil, he had even
gone so far as to say: "When we were in Holland we were attended
by many grave and learned ministers from hence, who were looked
upon as the most able and principal asserters of the Presbyterian
opinions; with whom we had as much conference as the multitude of
affairs which were then upon us would permit us to have, and to
our great satisfaction and comfort found them persons full of
affection to us, of zeal for the peace of the Church and State, and
neither enemies, as they have been given out to be, to episcopacy
or liturgy, but modestly to desire such alterations in either,
as without shaking foundations might best allay the present
distempers."
By the time the conference met it had become evident, from votes
taken in Parliament and otherwise, that the Churchmen could sustain
toward their opponents a somewhat stiffer attitude than this without
imperilling their cause. Another great advantage enjoyed by the
Episcopalians grew out of the fact that they were the party in
possession. They had only to profess themselves satisfied with the
Prayer Book as it stood, in order to throw the Presbyterians into
the position of assailants, and defense is always easier than
attack. Sheldon, the Bishop of London, was not slow to perceive
this. At the very first meeting of the conference, he is reported
to have said that "as the Non-conformists, and not the bishops, had
sought for the conference, nothing could be done till the former
had delivered their exceptions in writing, together with the
additional forms and alterations which they desired." Upon which
Bishop Burnet in his _History of his own Times_ remarks: "Sheldon
saw well what the effect would be of putting them to make all their
demands at once. The number of them raised a mighty outcry against
them, as people that could never be satisfied."
The Presbyterians, however, took up the challenge, set to work at
formulating their objections, and appointed Richard Baxter, the most
famous of their number, to show what could be done in the way of
making a better manual of worship than the Book of Common Prayer.
Baxter, a truly great man and wise in a way, though scarcely in the
liturgical way, was guilty of the incredible folly of undertaking
to construct a Prayer Book within a fortnight.
Of this liturgy it is probably safe to say that no denomination of
Christians, however anti-prelatical or eccentric, would for a
moment dream of adopting it, if, indeed, there be a single local
congregation anywhere that could be persuaded to employ it. The
characteristic of the devotions is lengthiness. The opening sentence
of the prayer with which the book begins contains by actual count
eighty-three words. It is probable that Baxter by his rash act did
more to injure the cause of intelligent and reverential liturgical
revision than any ten men have done before or since. In every
discussion of the subject he is almost sure to be brought forward
as "the awful example."
A document much more to the point than Baxter's Liturgy was the
formal catalogue of faults and blemishes alleged against the Prayer
Book, which the Puritan members of the conference in due time
brought in. This indictment, for it may fairly be called such,
since it was drawn up in separate counts, is very interesting
reading. Of the "exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer,"
as the Puritans named their list of liturgical grievances, some
must strike almost any reader of the present day as trivial and
unworthy. Others again there are that draw a sympathetic Amen from
many quarters to-day. To an American Episcopalian the catalogue
is chiefly interesting as showing how ready and even eager were
our colonial ancestors of a hundred years ago to remove out of the
way such known rocks of offence as they could. An attentive student
of the American Prayer Book cannot fail to be struck with the number
of instances in which the text gives evidence of the influence
exerted over the minds of our revisers by what had been urged, more
than a hundred years before, by the Puritan members of the Savoy
Conference. The defeat of 1661 was, in a measure at least, avenged
in 1789. It is encouraging to those who cast their bread upon
liturgical waters to notice after how many days the return may come.
But the conference, to all outward seeming, was a failure. Baxter's
unhappy Prayer Book was its own sufficient refutation, and as for
the list of special grievances it was met by the bishops with an
"Answer" that was full of hard raps and conceded almost nothing.
A few detached paragraphs may serve to illustrate the general tone
of this reply. Here, for instance, is the comment of the bishops
upon the request of the Puritans to be allowed occasionally to
substitute extemporaneous for liturgical devotions. "The gift or
rather spirit of prayer consists in the inward graces of the spirit,
not in extempore expressions which any man of natural parts having
a voluble tongue and audacity may attain to without any special
gift." Nothing very conciliatory in that. To the complaint that
the Collects are too short, the bishops reply that they cannot
for that reason be accounted faulty, being like those "short but
prevalent prayers in Scripture, Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.
Lord, increase our faith." The Puritans had objected to the
antiphonal element in the Prayer-Book services, and desired to
have nothing of a responsive character allowed beyond the single
word Amen. "But," rejoin the bishops, "they directly practise the
contrary in one of their principal parts of worship, singing of
psalms, where the people bear as great a part as the minister. If
this way be done in Hopkin's why not in David's Psalms; if in metre,
why not in prose; if in a psalm, why not in a litany?" Sharp, but
not winning.
The Puritans had objected to the people's kneeling while the
Commandments were read on the score that ignorant worshippers
might mistake the Decalogue for a form of prayer. With some asperity
the bishops reply that "why Christian people should not upon their
knees ask their pardon for their life forfeited for the breach of
every commandment and pray for grace to keep them for the time to
come they must be more than 'ignorant' that can scruple."
The time during which the conference at the Savoy should continue
its sessions had been limited to four months. This period expired
on July 24, 1661, and the apparently fruitless disputation was at
an end. Meanwhile, however, Convocation, the recognized legislature
of the Church of England, had begun to sit, and the bishops had
undertaken a revision of the Prayer Book after their own mind, and
with slight regard to what they had been hearing from their critics
at the Savoy. The bulk of their work, which included, it is said,
more than six hundred alterations, most of them of a verbal
character and of no great importance, was accomplished within the
compass of a single month. It is consoling to those who within our
own memory have been charged with indecent haste for seeking to
effect a revision of the American Book of Common Prayer within a
period of nine years, to find this precedent in ecclesiastical
history for their so great rashness.
Since Charles the Second's day there has been no formal revision of
the Prayer Book of the Church of England by the Church of England.
Some slight relaxations of liturgical use on Sundays have been made
legal by Act of Parliament, but in all important respects the Prayer
Book of Victoria is identical with the book set forth by Convocation
and sanctioned by Parliament shortly after the collapse of the Savoy
Conference. Under no previous lease of life did the book enjoy
anything like so long a period of continued existence. Elizabeth's
book was the longest lived of all that preceded the Restoration,
but that only continued in use five-and-forty years. But the Prayer
Book of 1661 has now held its own in England for two centuries and
a quarter. When, therefore, we are asked to accept the first
Edwardian Book as the only just exponent of the religious mind of
England, it is open to us to reply, "Why should we, seeing that
the Caroline Book has served as the vehicle of English devotion for
a period seventy-five times as long?" The most voluminous of the
additions made to the Prayer Book, in 1661, were the Office for the
Baptism of Adults and the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea. The
wide diffusion, under the Commonwealth, of what were then called
Anabaptist opinions, had brought it to pass that throughout the
kingdom there were thousands of men and women who had grown up
unbaptized. At the time of the Reformation such a thing as an
unchristened Christendom seems not to have been thought possible.
At any rate no provision was made for the contingency. But upon
the spread of liberty of religious thought there followed, logically
enough, the spread of liberty of religious action, and it was not
strange that after a whole generation had spent its life in
controversy of the warmest sort over this very point of Baptism,
there were found to be in England multitudes of the unbaptized.
Another reason assigned in the Preface of the English Prayer Book
for the addition of this office was that it might be used for the
baptizing of "natives in the plantations and other converts." This
is the first hint of any awakening of the conscience of the English
Church to a sense of duty toward those strangers and foreigners who
in the "Greater Britain" of these later days fill so large a place.
The composition of the office, which differs very little, perhaps
scarcely enough, from that appointed for the Baptism of Infants, is
attributed to Griffith, the Bishop of St. Asaph. The compiler of
the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea was Bishop Sanderson, famous
among English theologians as an authority on casuistry. He must have
found it rather a nice case of conscience to decide whether a Stuart
divine in preparing forms of prayer for a navy that had been the
creation of Oliver Cromwell ought wholly to omit an acknowledgment
of the nation's obligation to that stout-hearted, if non-Episcopal
Christian. Other additions of importance made at this revision were
the General Thanksgiving, in all probability the work of Reynolds,
a conforming Presbyterian divine, the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel
for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, the Prayer for Parliament,
upon the lines of which our own Prayer for Congress was afterward
modelled, and the Prayer for All Sorts and Conditions of Men. In
the Litany the words "rebellion" and "schism" were introduced into
one of the suffrages, becoming tide-marks of the havoc wrought in
Church and State by what the revisers, doubtless, looked back upon
as "the flood of the ungodly." The words "Bishops, Priests, and
Deacons" were substituted for "Bishops, Pastors, and Ministers of
the Church." New Collects were appointed for the Third Sunday in
Advent and for St. Stephen's Day. Both of these are distinct gains,
albeit had the opinion then prevailed that to introduce into the
Prayer Book anything from the pen of a living writer is an impiety,
we should have gained neither of them.
Another important change made in 1662 was the adoption for the
Sentences, Epistles and Gospels of the language of King James's
Bible in place of that of earlier versions. This principle was not
applied to the Psalter, to the Decalogue, or, in fact, to any of
the portions of Scripture contained in the Communion Service.
It is also interesting to note that the Confession in the Holy
Communion, which the earlier rubric had directed should be said
by one of the congregation, or else by one of the ministers, or
by the priest himself, "was now made general and enjoined upon all
the worshippers."
Most suggestive of all, however, was the reinsertion at the end of
the Communion Service of a certain Declaration about the significance
of the act of kneeling at the reception of the elements, which had,
as some say, irregularly and without proper authority, found its way
into the Second Book of Edward VI., but had been omitted from all
subsequent books till now. This Declaration, which from its not
being printed in red ink is known to those who dislike it under the
name of "the black rubric," was undoubtedly intended to ease the
consciences of those who scrupled to kneel at the altar-rail for
fear of seeming to countenance that superstitious adoration of the
elements known to and stigmatized by the Reformers as "host-worship."
The language of the black rubric as it stood in Edward's Second
Book was as follows: "Although no order can be so perfectly devised
but it may be of some, either for their ignorance and infirmity,
or else of malice and obstinacy, misconstrued, depraved, and
interpreted in a wrong part; and yet because brotherly charity
willeth that so much as conveniently may be offences should be
taken away; therefore we willing to do the same: whereas, it is
ordained in the Book of Common Prayer, in the Administration of
the Lord's Supper, that the communicants kneeling should receive the
Holy Communion, which thing being well meant for a signification
of the humble and grateful acknowledging of the benefits of Christ
given unto the worthy receiver, and to avoid the profanation and
disorder, which about the Holy Communion might else ensue, lest
yet the same kneeling might be thought or taken otherwise; we do
declare that it is not meant thereby, that any adoration is done
or ought to be done, either unto the sacramental bread or wine
there bodily received or unto any real and essential presence there
being of Christ's natural flesh and blood. For as concerning the
sacramental bread and wine they remain still in their very natural
substances, and therefore may not be adored, for that were idolatry
to be abhorred of all faithful Christians: and as concerning the
natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ, they are in heaven
and not here, for it is against the truth of Christ's true natural
body to be in more places than in one at one time."
In restoring this significant Declaration, the revisers of 1662
substituted the words "corporal presence" for the words "real and
substantial presence," but probably with no intention other than
that of making the original meaning more plain. The fact that in
the teeth and eyes of the black rubric the practice known as
Eucharistical adoration has become widely prevalent in the Church
of England, only shows how little dependence can be placed on forms
of words to keep even excellent and religious people from doing
the things they have a mind to do.
In taking leave of the Caroline revision, it may be permitted to
dwell for a moment upon the serious character of the conclusion
reached by the ecclesiastical leaders of that day. An opportunity
was given them to conciliate dissent. Without going all lengths,
without in any measure imperilling the great foundation principles
of Anglican religion, they might, it would seem, have won back to
the national church thousands of those whom their sternness not
only repelled but permanently embittered. But it was the hour of
victory with the Churchmen, and "Woe to the conquered" seems to
have been their cry. They set their faces as a flint against
concession; they passed their iron-clad act of uniformity, and
now for more than two hundred years religion in Great Britain has
been a household divided against itself. Perhaps nothing that the
men of the Restoration could have done would have made it otherwise.
Perhaps the familiar question of the cynical Dean of St. Patrick's,
"What imports it how large a gate you open, if there be always left
a number who place a pride and a merit in refusing to enter?" was
a fair question, and fatal to any dream of unity. And yet one may
be pardoned for believing that had a little of the oil of brotherly
kindness been poured upon those troubled waters we whom the waves
still buffet might to-day be sailing a smoother sea.
As stated above, the Convocation of 1662 gave to the Prayer Book of
the Church of England the form it has ever since retained. But it
must not be supposed that no efforts have been made meanwhile to
bring changes to pass. The books written upon the subject form a
literature by themselves.
The one really serious attempt to reconstruct the Liturgy in
post-Caroline times was that which grew naturally enough out of the
Revolution of 1688. In every previous crisis of political change,
the Prayer Book had felt the tremor along with the statute-book.
Church and State, like heart and brain, are sympathetically
responsive to one another; revisions of rubrics go naturally
along with revisions of codes. It was only what might have been
anticipated, therefore, that when William and Mary came to the
throne a Commission should issue for a new review. If Elizabeth
had found it necessary to revise the book, if James had found it
necessary, if Charles had found it necessary, why should not the
strong hand of William of Orange be laid upon the pages? But this
time the rule was destined to find its exception. The work of review
was, indeed, undertaken by a Royal Commission, including among its
members the great names of Stillingfleet, Tillotson, and Beveridge,
but nothing came of their work. Convocation again showed itself
unfriendly to anything like concessive measures, and so complete
was the obscurity into which the doings of the Commission fell,
that even as late as 1849, Cardwell, in the third edition of
his _History of Conferences_, speaks as if he knew nothing of
the whereabouts of the record. In 1854 the manuscript minutes
of the Commission's proceedings were discovered in the Library
of Lambeth Palace, and by order of Parliament printed as a
Blue-book. The same document has also been published in a more
readable form by Bagster. One rises from the perusal of this Broad
Church Prayer Book--for such, perhaps, Tillotson's attempt may not
unfairly be called--profoundly thankful that the promoters of it
were not suffered to succeed. The Preface to our American Book of
Common Prayer refers to this attempted review of 1689 "as a great
and good work." But the greatness and the goodness must have lain
in the motive, for one fails to discern them either in the matter
or in the manner of what was recommended.
Even Macaulay, Whig that he is, fails not to put on record his
condemnation of the literary violence which the Prayer Book so
narrowly escaped at the hands of the Royal Commission of 1689.
Terseness was not the special excellency of Macaulay's own style,
yet even he resented Bishop Patrick's notion that the Collects
could be improved by amplification. One of the few really good
suggestions made by the Commissioners was that of using the
Beatitudes in the Office of the Holy Communion as an alternate
for the Decalogue. There are certain festivals of the Christian
year when such a substitution would be most timely and refreshing.
We make a leap now of just a hundred years. From 1689 we pass to
1789, and find ourselves in the city of Philadelphia, at a
convention assembled for the purpose of framing a constitution
and setting forth a liturgy for a body of Christians destined to
be known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States
of America. During the interval between the issue of the Declaration
of Independence and the Ratification of the Constitution of the
United States, the people in this country who had been brought
up in the communion of the Church of England found themselves
ecclesiastically in a very delicate position indeed. As colonists
they had been canonically under the spiritual jurisdiction of the
Bishop of London, a somewhat remote diocesan. But with this
Episcopal bond broken and no new one formed, they seemed to be
in a peculiar sense adrift. It does not fall to me to narrate
the steps that led to the final establishment of the episcopacy
upon a sure foundation, nor yet to trace the process through which
the Church's legislative system came gradually to its completion.
Our interest is a liturgical one, and our subject matter the
evolution of the Prayer Book. I say nothing, therefore, of other
matters that were debated in the Convention of 1789, but shall
propose instead that we confine ourselves to what was said and
done about the Prayer Book. In order, however, fully to appreciate
the situation we must go back a little. In a half-formal and
half-informal fashion there had come into existence, four years
before this Convention of 1789 assembled, an American Liturgy now
known by the name of _The Proposed Book_. It had been compiled on
the basis of the English Prayer Book by a Committee of three
eminent clergymen, Dr. White of Pennsylvania, Dr. William Smith
of Maryland, and Dr. Wharton of Delaware. Precisely what measure
of acceptance this book enjoyed, or to what extent it came actually
into use, are difficult, perhaps hopeless questions.
What we know for certain is that the public opinion of the greater
number of Churchmen rejected it as inadequate and unsatisfactory.
In the Convention of 1789 The Proposed Book does not seem to have
been seriously considered in open debate at all, though doubtless
there was much talk about it, much controversy over its merits and
demerits at Philadelphia dinner-tables and elsewhere while the
session was in progress.
The truth is, the changes set forth in _The Proposed Book_ were
too sweeping to commend themselves to the sober second-thought of
men whose blood still showed the tincture of English conservatism.
Possibly also some old flames of Tory resentment were rekindled,
here and there, by the prominence given in the book to a form of
public thanksgiving for the Fourth of July. There were Churchmen
doubtless at that day who failed duly to appreciate what were called
in the title of the office, "the inestimable blessings of Religious
and Civil Liberty." Others again may have been offended by the
treatment measured out to the Psalter, which was portioned into
thirty selections of two parts each, with the _Benedicite_ added
at the end, to be used, if desired, on the thirty-first day of any
month. Another somewhat crude and unliturgical device was the
running together without break of the Morning Prayer and the
Litany.
I speak of blemishes, but _The Proposed Book_ had its excellences
also. Just at present it is the fashion in Anglican circles to heap
ridicule and contempt on _The Proposed Book_ out of all proportion
to its real demerits. Somehow it is thought to compromise us with
the English by showing up our ecclesiastical ancestors in an
unfavorable light as unlearned and ignorant men. It is treated
as people will sometimes treat an old family portrait of a forebear,
who in his day was under a cloud, mismanaged trust funds, or made
money in the slave trade. Thus a grave historiographer by way of
speaking comfortably on this score, assures us that the volume
"speedily sunk into obscurity," becoming one of the rarest of the
books illustrative of our ecclesiastical annals.
And yet, curiously enough, _The Proposed Book_ was in some points
more "churchly," using the word in a sense expressive of liturgical
accuracy, than the book finally adopted. In the Morning Prayer it
has the _Venite_ in full and not abridged. The _Benedictus_ it also
gives entire. A single form of Absolution is supplied. The versicles
following upon the Creed are more numerous than ours. In the Evening
Prayer the great Gospel Hymns, _the Magnificat_ and the _Nunc
dimittis_, stand in the places to which we with tardy justice have
only just restored them.
Again, if we consider those features of _The Proposed Book_ that
were retained and made part of the Liturgy in 1789, we shall have
further reason to refrain from wholesale condemnation of this
tentative work. For example, we owe the two opening sentences of
Morning Prayer, "The Lord is in his holy temple" and "From the
rising of the sun," to _The Proposed Book_, and also the special
form for Thanksgiving Day. And yet, on the whole, the Convention
of 1789 acted most wisely in determining that it would make the
Prayer Book of the Church of England, rather than _The Proposed
Book_, the real basis of revision. It did so, and as a result we
have what has served us so well during the first century of our
national life--the _Book of Common Prayer and Administration of
the Sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the Church
according to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the
United States of America_. The points wherein the American Prayer
Book differs from the Prayer Book of the Church of England are too
numerous to be catalogued in full. "They will appear," says the
Preface (a composition borrowed, by the way, almost wholly from
_The Proposed Book_), "and, it is to be hoped, the reasons of them
also, upon a comparison of this with the Book of Common Prayer of
the Church of England."
The most important differences are the following: The permissive
use of "Selections of Psalms in place of the Psalms appointed for
the day of the month." This was doubtless suggested by the wholesale
transformation of the Psalter in _The Proposed Book_ into a series
of selections.
The permitted shortening of the Litany is an American feature.
A number of the special prayers, as, for example, the prayer for a
sick person, that for persons going to sea, the thanksgivings for a
recovery and for a safe return, all these are peculiar to the
American use. Extensive alterations were made in the Marriage
Service and certain greatly needed ones in the Burial Office.
The two most noteworthy differences, however, are the omission
from our Prayer Book of the so-called Athanasian Creed, and the
insertion in it of that part of the Consecration Prayer in the
Communion Office known as the Invocation. The engrafting of this
latter feature we owe to the influence of Bishop Seabury, who by
this addition not only assimilated the language of our liturgy more
closely to that of the ancient formularies of the Oriental Church,
but also insured our being kept reminded of the truly spiritual
character of Holy Communion. "It is the spirit that quickeneth,"
this Invocation seems to say; "the flesh profiteth nothing." Quite
in line with this was the alteration made at the same time in the
language of the Catechism. "The Body and Blood of Christ," says the
English Book, "which are verily and indeed taken and received by
the faithful in the Lord's Supper."
"The Body and Blood of Christ," says the American Book, "which are
spiritually taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's
Supper."
Many verbal changes are to be found scattered here and there
through the book, some of them for the better, some, perhaps,
for the worse. The prevailing purpose seems to have been to
expunge all obsolete words and phrases while dealing tenderly
with obsolescent ones. In this course, however, the revisers
were by no means always and everywhere consistent.
"Prevent," in the sense of "anticipate," is altered in some places
but left unchanged in others. In the _Visitation of Prisoners_, an
office borrowed from the Irish Prayer Book, the thoroughly obsolete
expression, "As you tender," in the sense of "as you value," the
salvation of your soul, is retained.
From the Psalter has disappeared in the American Book "Thou tellest
my Sittings," although why this particular archaism should have
been selected for banishment and a hundred others spared, it is
not easy to understand.
Perhaps some sudden impatience seized the reviser, like that which
moved Bishop Wren, while annotating his Prayer Book, to write on
the margin of the calendar for August, "Out with 'dog days' from
among the saints."
Considering what a bond of unity the Lord's Prayer appears to be
becoming among all English-speaking worshippers, it is, perhaps,
to be regretted that our revisers changed the wording of it in two
or three places. The excision of "Lighten our darkness" must
probably be attributed to the prosaic matter-of-fact temper which
had possession of everybody and everything during the last quarter
of the eighteenth century.
The Ordinal, the Articles, the Consecration of Churches, and the
Institution of Ministers made no part of the Prayer Book as it was
set forth in 1789; nor do they, even now, strictly speaking, make
a part of it, although in the matter of binding force and legal
authority they are on the same footing.
The Ordinal and Articles are substantially identical with the
English Ordinal and Articles, save in the matter of a reference
to the Athanasian Creed and several references to the connection of
Church and State. The Consecration of Churches and the Institution
of Ministers are offices distinctively American. If I add that the
American Book drops out of the Visitation of the Sick a form
of private absolution, and greatly modifies the service for
Ash-Wednesday, we shall have made our survey of differences
tolerably, though by no means exhaustively complete.
And now what is the lesson taught us by the history of the Prayer
Book? Homiletical as the question sounds, it is worth asking.
We have reviewed rapidly, but not carelessly, the vicissitudes of
the book's wonderful career, and we ought to be in a position to
draw some sort of instructive inference from it all. Well, one
thing taught us is this, the singular power of survival that lives
in gracious words. They wondered at the "gracious words which
proceeded out of His mouth," and because they wondered at them
they treasured them up.
Kind words, says the child's hymn, can never die; neither can
kindly words, and kindly in the deepest sense are many, many of
the words of the Common Prayer; they touch that which is most
catholic in us, that which strongly links us to our kind. There
is that in some of the Collects which as it has lasted since the
days when Roman emperors were sitting on their thrones, so will
it last while man continues what he is, a praying creature.
Another thing taught us by the Prayer Book's history is the duty
of being forever on our guard in the religious life against "the
falsehood of extremes."
The emancipated thinkers who account all standards of belief to
be no better than dungeon walls, scoff at this feature of the
Anglican character with much bitterness. "Your Church is a Church
of compromises," they say, "and your boasted _Via media_ only a
coward's path, the poor refuge of the man who dares not walk in
the open." But when we see this Prayer Book condemned for being
what it is by Bloody Mary, and then again condemned for being what
it is by the Long Parliament, the thought occurs to us that
possibly there is enshrined in this much-persecuted volume a truth
larger than the Romanist is willing to tolerate, or the Puritan
generous enough to apprehend.
A third important lesson is that we are not to confound revision
with ruin, or to suppose that because a book is marvellously good
it cannot conceivably be bettered. Each accomplished revision of
the Book of Common Prayer has been a distinct step in advance. If
God in his wise providence suffered an excellent growth of devotion
to spring up out of the soil of England in the days of Edward
the Sixth, and, after many years, determined that like a vine
out of Egypt it should be brought across the sea and given root
on these shores, we need not fear that we are about to lose
utterly our pleasant plant if we notice that the twigs and leaves
are adapting themselves to the climate and the atmosphere of the
new dwelling-place. The life within the vine remains what it always
was. The growth means health. The power of adaptation is the
guarantee of a perpetual youth.