The revision of long established formularies of public worship is,
as it ought to be, a matter compassed about with obstacles many and
great. A wise doubtfulness prompts conservative minds to throw every
mover for change upon the defensive, when liturgical interests
are at stake. So many men are born into the world with a native
disposition to tamper with and tinker all settled things, and so
many more become persuaded, as time goes on, of a personal "mission"
to pull down and remake whatever has been once built up, esteeming
life a failure unless they have contrived to build each his own
monument upon a clearing, that lovers of the old ways are sometimes
compelled in sheer self-defence to put on the appearance of being
more obstinately set against change than they really are. It ought
not to be absolutely impossible to alter a national hand-book of
worship (which is what any manual calling itself a Common Prayer
must aspire to become), but it is well that it should be all but
impossible to do so. Logically it might seem as if the possession
of a power to make involved a continuance of power to remake; and
so it does, to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent.
Living organisms cannot be remodelled with the same freedom as dead
matter. A solemnity hangs about the moment of birth that attaches
to no other crisis in a man's life until death comes. Similarly
there are certain features which the founders of institutions, the
first makers of organic law, imprint lastingly upon their work. We
may destroy the living thing so brought to birth; to kill is always
possible; but only by very gradual and plastic methods can we hope
in any measure to reconstruct the actual embodiment of life once
achieved. The men of 1789 had us in their power, even as the men
of 1549 had had both them and us. In every creative epoch many
things are settled by which unborn generations will be bound.[2]
It may be urged that this is an argument against adopting liturgies
in the first instance as vehicles of worship; and such undoubtedly
it is in so far forth as immobility ought in such matters to be
reckoned a disadvantage. But we are bound to take into account the
gain which comes with immobility as well as the drawbacks. We must
consider how large a proportion of the reverence which the great
institutes of human life exact from us is due to the fixity of the
things themselves. Mont Blanc loses nothing of its hold upon our
admiration because we always find it in the same place.
Men like to feel that there is something in the world stronger
than the individual will, stronger simply because it expresses
the settled common-sense of many as to what is fitting and right
in contrast with the whim of one. Lawyers, as a class, are almost
as conservative as ecclesiastics, and for the very reason that
they also are charged with the custody of established forms which
it is important that men should reverence. Laws affecting the tenure
of property, the binding force of contracts, the stability of the
marriage relation, not only cannot be lightly altered, the very
phraseology in which they are couched must be carefully handled,
for fear lest with the passing away of the form something of the
substance go also.
Moreover, the affections of men fasten themselves very tenaciously
to such a trellis as a liturgy affords. The love for "the old words
and the old tunes" against which all innovators in hymnody, however
deserving, have to do battle, asserts itself under the form of
love for the old prayers with ten-fold vehemence. An immense fund
of latent heat smoulders beneath the maxim, "Let the ancient customs
prevail"; and few of the victories achieved by the papacy are so
startling as those that have resulted in the displacement of the
liturgical uses of local Churches, that of Paris, for example, by
the Roman rite.
But true principles, as we are often reminded, become falsehoods
when shoved across the line of proper measure. The very cycles of
the astronomers have an end, and the clock-work of the most ancient
heavens, or at least our reading of it, calls, from time to time,
for readjustment. So long as man continues fallible his best
intended workmanship will occasionally demand such alteration for
the better as, within the limits already pointed out, may be
possible.
Many signs of the times suggest that the hour for a fresh review
of the Anglican formularies of worship is nigh at hand. Some of
these tokens are written on a sky broad enough to cover the whole
English-speaking race, others of them are visible chiefly within
our own national horizon. With respect to the English book, Cardwell
[3] writing in 1840 and Freeman[4] in 1855, considered revision,
however desirable in the abstract, to be a thing utterly out of
reach, not within the circle, as the parliamentary phrase now runs,
of "practical politics."
But it may be fairly questioned whether these high authorities,
were they living to-day, would not concur in the judgment of a more
recent writer when he says--in language which, _mutatis mutandis_,
applies to our own case: "The most weighty plea in favor of timely
inquiry into the subject is that the process of revision is actually
going on piecemeal, and with no very intelligent survey of the
bearings as a preliminary to any one instalment. The New Lectionary
of 1871, the Shortened Services Act, the debates in the Convocation
of Canterbury on rubrical amendments, none of them marked by any
sufficient care or knowledge, and all fraught with at least the
possibility of serious consequence, are examples of formal and
recognized inroads on the Act of Uniformity; while such practical
though unauthorized additions to the scanty group of Anglican
formularies as the Three Hours' Devotion, Harvest Thanksgivings,
Public Institution of Incumbents, Ordination of Readers and
Deaconesses, and Children's Services prove incontestably that
the narrow limits of the Common Prayer Book are no longer adequate
for the spiritual needs of the Church of England . . .
"It is evident, then, that contented acquiescence with the old state
of things already belongs to the past, and that a return to it is
impossible. We must perforce advance, for good or ill, in the path
of revision, and cannot even materially slacken the pace nor defer
the crisis. One choice, however, is left in our power, and that is
the most important of all, namely, the direction which revision
shall take--that of conservative and recuperative addition, or that
of further evisceration, ceremonial or devotional." [5]
A measure looking in the direction towards which this reviewer
points was actually passed by the General Convention of our own
Church at its late session in October, 1880.
The wording of the Resolution referred to was as follows:
"_Resolved_: That a Joint Committee, to consist of seven bishops,
seven presbyters, and seven laymen be appointed to consider and
report to the next General Convention whether, in view of the fact
that this Church is soon to enter upon the second century of its
organized existence in this country, the changed conditions of the
national life do not demand certain alterations in the Book of
Common Prayer in the direction of liturgical enrichment and
increased flexibility of use."[6]
In the present article the writer proposes to inquire, in connection
with this measure:
(1) What motives may fairly be supposed to have actuated the
Convention in allowing so important an initiatory step to be taken?
(2) What measure of authority was conferred on and what scope given
to the Joint Committee then constituted?
(3) What reasons exist for considering the present a happy moment
to attempt liturgical revision, within certain limits, should such
a thing be determined upon?
(4) What serious difficulties and obstacles are likely to be
encountered in Committee, in Convention, and in the Church at large?
(5) What particular improvements and adjustments of our existing
system would be, in point of fact, best worth the effort necessary
to secure them?
I. The interpretation of motives, difficult enough in the case of
individuals, becomes mere guess-work when the action under analysis
is that of a large body of men. Which one of many considerations
urged upon the Convention carried with it the supreme weight of
persuasion in this particular instance it is impossible to say.
Two or three arguments, however, from their frequent reappearance
in the debate may fairly be judged to have exercised a controlling
influence. One of these was hinted at in the language of the
resolution itself, namely, the call for revision that has grown
out of "the changed conditions of the national life." Shrewd and
far-seeing as were William White and his coadjutors in their
forecast of nineteenth century needs made from the standpoint of
the Peace of Versailles, they would have been more than human had
they succeeded in anticipating all the civil and ecclesiastical
consequences destined to flow from that memorable event. Certainly
it ought not to be held strange that this "new America" of ours,
with its enormously multiplied territory, its conglomerate of races,
its novel forms of association, its multiplicity of industries not
dreamed of a generation ago, should have demands to make in respect
to a better adaptation of ancient formularies to present wants, such
as thoughtful people count both reasonable and cogent. That a Prayer
Book revised primarily for the use of a half-proscribed Church
planted here and there along a sparsely inhabited sea-coast, should
serve as amply as it does the purposes of a population now swollen
from four millions to fifty, and covering the whole breadth of the
continent, is marvel enough; to assert for the book entire adequacy
to meet these altered circumstances is a mistake. "New time, new
favors, and new joys," so a familiar hymn affirms, "do a new song
require." We have conceded the principle so far as psalmody is
concerned, why not apply it to the service of prayer as well as
to that of praise, and in addition to our new hymns secure also such
new intercessions and new thanksgivings as the needs of to-day
suggest? The reference in the resolution to the approaching
completion of the century has since been playfully characterized
as a bit of "sentimentalism."[7] The criticism would be entirely
just if the mere recurrence of the centennial anniversary were the
point chiefly emphasized. But when a century closes as this one of
ours has done with a great social revolution whereby "all estates
of men" have been more or less affected, the proposal to signalize
entrance upon a fresh stretch of national life by making devotional
preparation for it is something better than a pretty conceit; there
is a serious reasonableness in it.[8]
Every revision of the Common Prayer of the Church of England, and
there have been four of them since Edward's First Book was put in
print, has taken place at some important era of transition in the
national life: and conversely it may be said that every civil
crisis, with a single exception, has left its mark upon the
formularies.
To one who argues that because we in this country are evidently
entering upon a new phase of the national life we ought similarly
to re-enforce and readjust our service-book, it is no sufficient
reply to urge the severance effected here between Church and State.
The fact that ours is a non-established Church does not make her
wholly unresponsive to the shocks of change that touch the civil
fabric. In so far as a political renewal alters the social grading
of society, bringing in education, for instance, where before it
was not, or suddenly developing new forms of industrial activity,
the Church, whether established or not, is in duty bound to take
cognizance of the fresh field of duty thus suddenly thrust upon her,
and to prepare herself accordingly.
In the Preface added to the English Prayer Book at the Restoration,
and commonly attributed to Sanderson, "that staid and well weighed
man," as Hammond called him, there occurs a sentence which, both
on account of its embodying in a few words the whole philosophy of
liturgical revision and because of a certain practical bearing
presently to be pointed out, it is worth while, in spite of its
familiarity, to quote:
"The particular forms of Divine worship, and the rites and ceremonies
appointed to be used therein, being things in their own nature
indifferent and alterable and so acknowledged, it is but reasonable,
that upon weighty and important considerations, according to the
various exigency of times and occasions, such changes and alterations
should be made therein, as to those that are in place of authority
should from time to time seem either necessary or expedient."
Contemporaneously with this utterance there came into the Prayer
Book, as a direct consequence of the enormous enlargement of the
naval and commercial marine that had taken place under the
Commonwealth, the "Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea." Here was a
wise and right-minded recognition of a new want that had sprung up
with a new time, a want which jealousy of the Puritans who had built
up the naval supremacy did not prevent the Caroline bishops from
meeting. But the change that passed on England during five years of
Cromwell was as nothing compared with the transformation of America
under ninety-five years of the federal constitution. Take a single
illustration. The year 1789, the date of the Ratification of the
American Prayer Book, saw sea-island cotton first planted in the
United States, and it was about that time that upland cotton also
began to be cultivated for home and foreign use. As the effect of
this scarcely noticed experiment there straightway sprang up an
industry, North and South, which has been to our country almost
what her shipping interest is to Great Britain. Bishop White and
his associates were not to blame for failure to provide bread that
all this unanticipated multitude of toilers should eat. And yet a
failure there has been. No one who has not labored at the task of
trying to commend the Church of the Prayer Book to the working
class, as it is represented in our large manufacturing towns, can
know how lamentable that failure is. We gather in the rich and the
poor, but the great middle class that makes the staple and the
strength of American society stands aloof.
Nowhere in this country, for instance, has the Church had a better
opportunity to show what it could do for American people than in
the city of Lowell, where cotton spinning had its first large
development. It was a virgin soil: the Episcopal Church, as rarely
happens, was earliest on the ground: and not only so, but it enjoyed
for some years the friendly protection of the proprietors of the
new settlement, almost a religious monopoly--was, in fact, an
ecclesiastical preserve. Moreover, this beginning antedated the
Irish occupation by many years, at least so far as skilled labor
was concerned, for during a considerable period the operatives in
the mills were of native New England stock, the best possible
material to be made over into churchmen and churchwomen. And yet
notwithstanding all this, and notwithstanding the patient and
unintermitted toil through more than fifty years of perhaps the
most laborious parish priest on the American clergy list, the
Episcopal Church has to-day but a comparatively slender hold upon
the affections and loyalty of the people of this largest of the
manufacturing cities of New England.
A similar failure to "reach the masses" betrays itself in Worcester
and Fall River, the two cities of like character that come next in
order of population, for in the former of these last named places
only about two per cent, of the inhabitants have affiliations of
any sort with the Episcopal Church.
It was considerations of this sort, backed perhaps by memories of
the ringing appeal sounded three years before at Boston by the
Bishop of Connecticut, that moved the Convention to interpret as
something better than a bit of sentimentalism the invitation to
look the times in the face, and give the new century its infant
baptism.
But besides all this there pressed upon the mind of bishops and
deputies a cumulative argument of a wholly different sort. The
demand for revision seemed to be closing in upon the Church on
converging lines. It was plain that, before long, hands of change
must necessarily be laid upon certain semi-detached portions of
the Prayer Book. There was the New Lectionary, for example, that
would presently be knocking for hospitable reception within the
covers, and the old Easter Tables, as they now stand, could not, it
was observed, last very much longer. A new book, in the publisher's
sense of that term, would soon have to be made. The sanctity of
stereotype plates must be disturbed. Moreover, here was an admirable
opportunity to settle the wrangle, now of nine years' standing, over
the best way of bringing to pass shortened services for week-day
use. Add to this the fact that the intrinsic weakness of the driblet
method of revision[9] had been made so abundantly plain that even
its former friends wisely refrained from all attempt to urge it,
and our summing up of probable motives becomes approximately
complete.
II. As to the measure of authority conferred on, and scope allowed
to the Committee of Twenty-one, it is possible to speak with more
definiteness.
A precisian might of course, were he so disposed, take up the ground
that the report of the Committee when made ought to be monosyllabic,
"Yes" or "No." The wording of the resolution admits of such a
construction beyond a doubt; the Joint Committee was requested to
consider and report whether, etc., etc. But no one who listened to
the debate on the resolution could have been left in uncertainty
as to the real _animus_ of the measure. The thing intended to be
authorized was an experimental review, with implied reference to a
limited revision at some time future, in case the fruits of the
review should commend themselves to the mind of the Church.
A distinction must be drawn between revision and review. Revision
implies review as an antecedent step, but review is by no means
necessarily followed by revision. The English book was reviewed and
revised in 1662; it was reviewed but not revised in 1689. Review is
tentative and advisory; revision is authoritative and final. In the
present instance not an atom of power to effect binding change has
been conveyed. No authority has been given to anybody to touch a
line or a letter of the Prayer Book save in the way of suggestion
and recommendation. Responsible action has been held wholly in
reserve.
Moreover, even the pathway of review was most scrupulously hedged.
Applying to the resolution the legal maxim, _expressio unius est
exclusio alterius_, one sees at a glance that doctrinal change is a
matter left wholly on one side. The two points to which the
Committee is instructed to bend all its studies are "liturgical
enrichment" and "increased flexibility of use." Whatsoever is
more than these is irrelevant. Accurate distinguishment between
such "enrichments" as have and such as have not a doctrinal bearing
is, no doubt, a delicate point, and must be set down among the
difficulties to be encountered. As such it will be considered
further on. For the present the fact to be noted is that the
authorized reviewers are both in honor and in duty bound to keep
themselves absolutely clear of controversial bias. The movement
is not a movement to alter in any slightest respect the dogmatic
teaching of the Church, not a movement to unsettle foundations,
not a movement toward disowning or repudiating our past, but simply
and only an endeavor to make the Common Prayer, if possible (and
we are far from being sure, as yet, that it is possible), a better
thing of its kind, more comprehensive, more elastic, more readily
responsive to the demands of all occasions and the needs of "all
sorts and conditions of men." Some who are deeply persuaded that
only by doctrinal revision in one direction or another can the
Prayer Book be made thoroughly to commend itself to the heart and
mind of the American people will esteem the measure of change
above indicated not worth the effort indispensable to the attainment
of it. Be it so; other some there are who do think the attempt
well advised and who are willing to waive their own pet notions
as to possible doctrinal improvements of the book for the sake of
securing a _consensus_ upon certain great practical improvements
which come within the range of things attainable.
Certain it is that any attempt of a body of reviewers like this to
disturb, even by "shadowed hint," the existing doctrinal settlement
under which we are living together, would be resented by the whole
Church.
There are divines among us who in the interest of a more sharply
defined orthodoxy are conscientiously bent upon securing the
reintroduction among our formularies of the so-called Athanasian
Creed.
There are others who consider that a more damaging blow at the
catholicity of our dogmatic position as a Church could scarcely
be dealt.
Again, there are theologians who account the Prayer Book to be
so thoroughly saturated in all its parts with the sacramental
idea, that they would account it not only a piece of far-seeing
statesmanship, but also a perfectly safe procedure to allow those
who chose to do so to thank God after a child's baptism for the
simple fact that he had thereby been "grafted into the body of
Christ's Church."
But over against these stand a much larger number who think
nothing of the sort, and who would put up with the liturgical
shortcomings of the Prayer Book, go without "enrichments" for
a thousand years, rather than see the single word "regenerate"
dropped out of the post-baptismal office.
Sensible men not a few are to be found who hold that the incoming
tide of host-worship with which, as they conceive, our reformed
Church is threatened can never be stayed unless some carefully
contrived definition inserted in the Prayer Book shall make
impossible this subtile and refined species of idolatry. But
men no whit less sensible laugh them in the face, pointing to
the "black rubric" and its history as evidence that between the
admitted doctrine of the real presence and the disallowed tenet
of transubstantiation no impervious barrier of words can possibly
be run.
These illustrations of probable divergence in opinion, in case
the field of doctrine were once entered, might be multiplied. The
retranslation of the Nicene Creed and the more accurate punctuation
of its sentences; the rendering of the word Sabbath in the Fourth
Commandment into its English equivalent of Rest; the abolition of
the curious misnomer under which we go on calling XXXVIII Articles
XXXIX; the removal from the Catechism, or else the conversion into
mother English of that sad _crux infantum_, the answer to the
question, "What desirest thou of God in this prayer?" are a few
examples of less importance than those previously cited; and yet,
in the case of the least of them, it is most unlikely that the
advocates of change would have the show of hands in their favor,
so sensitive is the mind of the Church to anything that looks in
the least degree like tampering with the standards of weight and
measure, the shekels of the sanctuary.
On the other hand, there are certain manifest and palpable instances
of inaccuracy and, more rarely, infelicity of diction which the
reviewers might very properly take occasion to amend even though
such alterations could not be classified by a strict constructionist
under either of the two heads "enrichment" and "flexibility." In the
masterly Report of the Rev. Dr. T. W. Coit to the Joint Committee
appointed by the Convention of 1841 to prepare a Standard Prayer
Book,[10] a document of classical rank, there is more than one
intimation of the hope that future reviewers would be given a larger
liberty in this direction than he had himself enjoyed. He chafed,
and naturally enough, under the necessity of reprinting in a
"standard" book, evident and acknowledged solecisms and blunders.
"We wanted," he says, "to correct one ungrammatical clause in the
Consecration Prayer of the Communion Service. It is in the last
sentence but one, at its close. It should be, not that he may dwell
in them and they in him; but, that he may dwell in us and we in him.
The prayer is made up out of two or three others; and anyone who
will examine the parts put together will easily see how the thing
was overlooked. A much greater error was overlooked elsewhere,
showing that our American compilers were not sufficiently aware of
the necessity which requires that the Prayer Book should always be
consistent with itself. I allude to something in the office for the
Private Baptism of Children. Suppose a clergyman to avail himself of
the license given in the Rubric after the certification. He will then
be made to talk thus: 'As the Holy Gospel doth witness to our
comfort, on this wise--Dost thou in the name of this child,'" etc.[11]
Other cases of evident inaccuracy, besides those referred to by
this eminent critic, might be cited, even from the latest Standard
Prayer Book, that of 1871. It is hard, for instance, to imagine even
the veriest martinet in such matters objecting to the redress of a
great wrong done on page 36 of the volume mentioned, where the
prayer "to be used at the meetings of Convention" is entered under
the general heading, "For malefactors after condemnation." Our
ecclesiastical legislators have doubtless, like the rest of us,
"erred and strayed" more than once, but to deal out to them such
harsh measure as this is cruel.
A strange uncertainty would seem from the Rubric to exist with
reference to the limits of the Litany. On page 554 of the Standard
Prayer Book, the words, "Here endeth the Litany," occur immediately
after the prayer, "We humbly beseech thee, O Father," while on page
31 the same statement is placed immediately after the minor
benediction.
These are not faults for which it could ever be worth while to
revise a Prayer Book, but they are blemishes of which the revisers
of a Prayer Book ought to take note.
It is a graver matter to speak of infelicities of diction in a book
so justly famous as the Prayer Book for its pure and wholesome
English. Wordsworth's curse on
One who would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave
seems, in the judgment of many, fairly earned by the critic, whoever
he may be, who ventures to suggest that in any slightest instance
the language of the formularies might have been more happily
phrased. But there are spots on the sun. In the prayer already
referred to, that for use "at the meetings of Convention," the
petition, "We beseech thee to be _present_ with the council of thy
Church here assembled in thy name and _presence_" does seem open
to the charge of tautology if nothing worse.
It would be well if wherever the word occurs in the Prayer Book
in connection with Deity the anthropomorphic plural "ears" could
be replaced by the symbolic singular "ear."
Considering also the great evil of having in a formulary of worship
too many things that have to be laboriously explained, it might be
well if in the Litany the adjective "sudden," which ever since
Hooker's day has given perpetual occasion for cavil, were to yield
to "untimely," or some like word more suggestive than "sudden" of
the thought clumsily expressed in the "Chapel Liturgy" by the
awkward phrase, "death unprepared for."[12]
It must be again remarked that these are not points for the sake
of which word-fanciers would be justified in disturbing an existing
order of things; they are simply instances of lesser improvements
that might very properly accompany larger ones, should larger ones
ever be seriously undertaken.
With so many pegs upon which controversies might be hung staring
us in the face, can we think of it as at all likely that any
considerable number of Churchmen assembled in committee (to say
nothing of Convention) will be able to agree upon a common line
of action with reference to an amendment of the formularies?
That is the very point at issue, and how it is to be decided only
the event can show. Certainly in the roll of the victories of
charity, a favorable result, were it achieved, would stand exceeding
high.
This reflection naturally leads up to the inquiry whether there is
any special reason to consider the present a happy moment to
attempt within the limits already defined a revision of the Prayer
Book.
III. The argument for timeliness has been, in part, already stated.
A revision will be timely, if the times imperatively demand it;
and the main reasons for thinking that they do are before the
reader. Something, however, is still left to be said in evidence
that the movement now begun is opportune--not rudely thrust upon
the Church. "To everything," saith the preacher, "there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under heaven," and among the categories
that follow this statement we find reckoned what answers to
liturgical enrichment, for "there is," he observes, "a time to
build up."
Fifty years ago a persuasive argument against attempting to amend
the Prayer Book, either in text or rubrics, might have been based
upon the lack of hands competent to undertake so delicate a task.
Raw material, well adapted to edification, was lying about in
blocks, but skilled workmen were scarce. This can hardly be said
to-day. Simultaneously with the beginning of the Oxford movement,
there naturally sprang up a fresh interest in liturgical studies,
an interest which has gone on deepening and widening until in volume
and momentum the stream has now probably reached its outer limit.
The convincing citation, "There were giants in those days," with
which a late bishop of one of the New England dioceses used to
enforce his major premise that wisdom died with Cranmer and his
colleagues, no longer satisfies. Probably no period of corresponding
length in the whole range of English Church history has shown itself
so rich in the fruits of liturgical study as the fifty years that
have elapsed since the introduction into the English Parliament of
the first Reform Bill.[13] This particular historical landmark is
mentioned on account of the close connection of cause and effect
between it and the remarkable movement set on foot by Newman, Pusey,
Keble, and Froude. To be sure, one of the earliest utterances in
the Tracts ran in these words: "Attempts are making to get the
Liturgy altered. My dear brethren, I beseech you consider with me
whether you ought not resist the alteration of even one jot or
tittle of it."[14]
And yet, notwithstanding this disclaimer, one of the main impulses
that lay behind the whole movement represented by the Tracts was an
earnest desire to quicken the life of the Church of England in the
region of worship. In the _Table of the Tracts, showing their
arrangement according to Subjects_, the "Liturgical" section comes
first.
The present writer acknowledges but a very limited sympathy with
the doctrinal motives and aims of either the earlier or the later
Tractarians. But let us, above all things, be fair. With whatever
prepossessions one looks back upon it, the ground traversed by the
Church of England during the past fifty years cannot be otherwise
regarded than as a field sown with mingled tares and wheat.
Individuals will differ in judgment as to the proportion in which
these two products of a common soil have coexisted, but even those
who have most stoutly opposed themselves to the Oxford movement,
as a whole, are fain to credit it with, at least, this one good
result, the rescue of the usages of worship from slovenliness and
torpor, and the establishment of a better standard of what is
seemly, reverent, and beautiful in the public service of Almighty
God. Not that there have not been, even in this respect, grave
errors in the direction of excess; the statement ventured is simply
this, that, up to a certain point, all Churchmen agree in admitting
a genuine and wholesome improvement in the popular estimate of what
public worship, as such, ought to be. An immense amount of devout
study has been given, during the period mentioned, by many able men
to liturgical subjects, and it would be strange indeed if fifty
years of searching criticism had not resulted in the detection of
some few points in which formularies originally compiled to meet
the needs of the sixteenth century might be better adapted to the
requirements of the twentieth. Or, to put the same point in another
way, has not all this searching into the mines of buried treasure,
all this getting together of quarried stone (with possibly a certain
surplusage of stubble) been so much labor lost, if there is never to
come the recognition of a ripe moment for the Church to avail itself
of the results achieved? Are the studious toils of a Palmer, a
Maskell, a Neale, a Scudamore, and a Bright to go for nothing
except in so far as they have been contributory to our fund of
ecclesiological lore? If so, the contempt often expressed for ritual
and liturgical studies by students busy with other lines of research
would seem to be not wholly undeserved.
A good opportunity is now before the Church to give answer as to
whether this form of investigation is or is not anything better
than a species of sacred antiquarianism. Liturgiology as an aspirant
for recognition among the useful sciences may be said at the present
moment to be waiting for the verdict. To be sure, it can be asserted
for liturgiology that to those who love it it is a study that proves
itself, like poetry, "its own exceeding great reward." It is not
worth while to dispute this point. Liturgiology pursued for its own
sake may not be the loftiest of studies, but this, at least, can be
said for it, that it is a not less respectable object of pursuit
than many another specialty the devotees of which look down upon the
liturgiologist with self-complacent scorn as a mere chiffonier. The
forms which Christian worship has taken on in successive generations
and among peoples of various blood are certainly as well worthy of
analysis and classification as are the flora and fauna of Patagonia
or New Zealand. But while the Patagonian naturalist secures
recognition and is decorated, every jaunty man of letters feels
at liberty to scoff at the liturgiologist as a laborious trifler.
Moreover, remembering that in favorite studies, as in crops, there
rules a principle of rotation, fashion affecting even staid divines
with its subtle influence, we may look to see presently a decline
of interest in this particular department of inquiry. Especially
may serious men be expected to turn their attention in other
directions, should it be found that a _Non possumus_ awaits every
effort to make the fruits of their labor available for the
nourishment of the Church's daily life. So then, instead of
deferring action until liturgical knowledge shall have become
more widely spread, and available liturgical material more abundant,
we shall, if we are wise, perceive that only by moving promptly
will it be possible in this case to take the tide at the full.
Never again will opportunity be more ripe.
Another evidence of timeliness is supplied by the present pacific
condition of the Church. Previous movements toward liturgical
revision have been of a more or less partisan and acrimonious
temper. Now for the first time we seem to be taking up this subject
without the expression of a fear from any quarter that if changes
are made this or that party will get the advantage of some other.
The peculiar conditions that ensure this unwonted truce of God are
not likely to last forever, nor is it perhaps wholly desirable that
they should do so; what is desirable, and very desirable, is that
we should avail ourselves of the lull to accomplish certain changes
for the better, which in ordinary times the prevalent heat of
friction makes impossible. The Joint Committee of Twenty-one is
confidently believed to contain within itself every shade of color
known to belong to the Anglican spectrum; if white light should be
found to emerge, three years hence, as a result of the Committee's
labors, it will be said, and truly, that never before in our history
could such a blending of the rays possibly have taken place.
Still another consideration properly included under the general
head of timeliness is said to have been urged with much force in
the House of Bishops when the "enrichment" resolution was under
discussion.
Up to the present time the Episcopal Church of this country has
stood easily at the head in the matter of providing for the people
a dignified and beautiful order of divine service. In fact, there
has been, until lately, no one to compete. But all this is changing.
Ours are no longer the only congregations in which common prayer is
to be found. It is true that thus far the attempts at imitation
have been rather grotesque than formidable, but such, until
recently, have also been, in the judgment of foreign critics,
all of our American endeavors after art. We are to consider what
apt learners our quick-witted countrymen have shown themselves to
be, in so much that even Christmas Day, once the _bete noire_ of
Puritan legislators, has come to be accounted almost a national
festival, and we shall be convinced that our primacy in the field
of liturgies is not an absolutely assured position. This argument
is open to the criticism that it seems to lower and cheapen the
whole subject by representing Anglican religion in a mendicant
attitude bidding for the favor of the great American public,
and vexed that others, fellow-suppliants, have stolen a good
formula of appeal. Nevertheless there is a certain amount of
reasonableness in this way of putting the thing. Certainly with
those who reckon the liturgical mode of worship among the notes
of the Church, the argument is one that ought to have marked
influence; while with those who, not so persuaded, nevertheless
view with pleased interest the general spread of a liturgical
taste among the people of this country, seeing in it a token
of better things to come, a harbinger of larger agreements
than we have yet attained to, and of an approaching "consolation
of Israel" once not thought possible--even with such the argument
ought not to be wholly powerless.[15]
The fact that the Convocations of Canterbury and York have taken
in hand and carried through a revision of the rubrics of the Prayer
Book will seem to those who hold that our Church ought to advance
_pari passu_ with the Church of England, and no faster, another
evidence of the timeliness of the American movement. Under the
title of _The Convocation Prayer Book_ there has lately appeared
in England an edition of the Prayer Book so printed as to show how
the book would read were the recommendations of York and Canterbury
to go into effect. It is true that the consent of Parliament must
be secured before the altered rubrics can have the force of law;
but whatever may come of the rubrics recommended, the existence of
the book containing them is evidence enough of a wide-spread
conviction among the English clergy that change is needed.
Indeed never has this point been more powerfully put in the fewest
possible words than by the brilliant, and no less logical than
brilliant Bishop of Peterborough in a recent speech in the Upper
House of Convocation.[16] "If the Church of England wants absolute
peace, she should have definite rubrics."
It is true he goes on to say that in his judgment the dangers of
carrying the question of rubrical revision into Parliament
are greater than the evil of letting it alone, but it is to be
remembered that we in this country are hampered with no Parliamentary
entanglements and are free to do of our own motion, and in a quiet,
orderly way, that which the Church of England can only do at the
risk of something very like revolution.
But this matter of the rubrics and their susceptibility of
improvement will come up later on. It seemed proper to refer
to it, if no more, under the head of timeliness. If nothing else
in the way of change be opportune at the present moment, it is an
easy task to show that the rubrics, as they stand, cry aloud for
a revision.
IV. The obstacles to be encountered by any Committee undertaking
so to carry forward a review of the Prayer Book that revision may
eventually result, are of two sorts; there are the inherent
difficulties of the work itself, such, for instance, as that of
matching the literary style of the sixteenth century writers, and
there is the wholesome dread of a change for the worse which
is sure to assert itself in many quarters the moment definite
propositions shall have reached a point at which the "yeas and
nays" are likely to be called.
Beginning, then, with the inherent difficulties, and taking them
in the inverse order of arduousness, we see at once how hard it
must be to secure unity and self-consistency in the revision of a
book so complicated as the Common Prayer. It is like remodelling
an old house. We think it a very easy matter, something that can
be done in one's head, but the mistake is discovered when the new
door designed to give symmetry to this room is found to have spoiled
the looks of that, when the enlargement of the library turns out
to have overtaxed the heating energy of the fireplace, and the
ingenious staircase, instead of ending where it was expected to
end, brings up against an intractable brick wall. Just such perils
as these will beset anybody who ventures to disturb the adjustments
of the "Prayer Book as it is" and to introduce desirable additions.
But domestic architecture is not given up on account of the patient
carefulness the practice of it demands, neither need Liturgical
Revision be despaired of because it requires of the men who
undertake it a like wisdom in looking before and after.
The really formidable barrier to revision, so far as what have been
called the "inherent difficulties" are concerned, is reached when
we touch style. How to handle without harming the sentences in which
English religion phrased itself when English language was fresher
and more fluent than it can ever be again is a serious question.
The hands that seek to "enrich" may well be cautioned to take heed
lest they despoil. It is to be remembered, however, in the way of
reassurance that the alterations most likely to find favor with the
reviewers are such as will enrich by restoring lost excellencies,
rather than by introducing forms fashioned on a modern anvil.
The most sensitive critic could not, on the score of taste, find
fault with the replacement in the Evening Prayer of the _Magnificat_
and the _Nunc dimittis_, nor of bringing back a few of the Versicles
that in the English book follow the Lord's Prayer, nor yet of our
being allowed to say, "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, Lord,"
rather than "O Lord, our Heavenly Father, by whose Almighty power
we have been preserved this day." Objections to these alterations
may be readily imagined, but it would be necessary to base them on
other grounds than those of literary fastidiousness. In the case of
enrichments like these no one could raise the cry that the faultless
English of the Prayer Book had been marred.
But what shall be said of the composition of entirely new services
and offices, if it should be judged expedient to give admission to
any such? How can we be sure that such modern additions to the
edifice would be sufficiently in keeping with the general tone of
the elder architecture? It might be held to be an adequate answer
to these questions to reply that if the living Church cannot now
trust herself to speak out through her formularies in her natural
voice as she did venture to do in the seventeenth century and the
eighteenth, it must be that she has fallen into that stage of
decrepitude where the natural voice is uncertain.
But, really, what ought to be said is this--that if the same canons
of style that ruled the sixteenth century writers are studied and
obeyed, there is no reason in the world why a result equally
satisfactory with the one then attained should not be reached now.
There is nothing supernatural about the English of the Prayer Book.
Cranmer and his associates were not inspired. The prose style of
the nineteenth century may not be as good as that of the sixteenth,
but, at its best, it is vastly superior to eighteenth century style,
and of this last there are already no inconsiderable specimens in
the American Book of Common Prayer. The Office for the Visitation of
Prisoners, for example, is so redolent of the times of the Georges,
when it was composed, that it might be appropriately enough
interleaved with prints out of Hogarth. A bit of Palladian
architecture in a Gothic church is not more easily recognized.
Many worse things might happen to the Prayer Book than that the
nineteenth century should leave its impress upon the pages.
In fact, it is just as possible, if men will only think so, to use
our language with effect for any good purpose to-day as it was
three hundred years ago. All that is necessary is a willingness
to submit to the same restrictions, and those mostly moral, that
controlled the old writers; and our work, though not identical
with theirs, will have the proper similarity. True, a modern author
may not be able to reproduce, without a palpable betrayal of
affectation and mannerism, the precise characteristics of a bygone
style. Chattertons are not numerous. It is easier to secure for
the brass andirons and mahogany dining chairs of our own manufacture
the look of those that belonged to our grandfathers than it is to
catch the tones of voices long dead; and just as good judgment
dictates the wisdom of repeating the honest and thorough workmanship
of the old cabinet-makers in place of slavishly imitating their
patterns, so it will be well if the compilers of devotional forms
for modern use seek to say what they have to say with sixteenth
century simplicity rather than in sixteenth century speech. In
letters, as in conduct, the supreme charm of style is the absence
of self-consciousness. "Say in plain words the thing you mean, and
say it as if you meant it," is good advice to any seeker after
rhetorical excellence, be he young or old. The Reformers, that is
to say, the men who Englished the Prayer Book, in seeking to meet
the devotional needs of the people of their own time do not seem
to have been at pains to tie themselves to the diction of a previous
generation. They dared to "call a spade a spade" whenever and
wherever the tool came into use, and they have their reward in the
permanence of their work. Sweetnesses and prettinesses they banished
altogether. Indeed, in those days it seems not to have occurred
to people that such things had anything to do with religion. It
was not that they did not know how to talk in the sweet way--never
has sentimentalism been more rife in general literature than then,
but they would not talk in that way; the stern traditions of Holy
Church throughout all the world forbade. Religion was a most
serious thing to their minds, and they would speak of it most
seriously or not at all.
Never since language began to be used have severity and tenderness
been more marvellously blended than in the older portions of the
English Prayer Book.
This effect is largely due to an almost entire abstention on the
part of the writers from figurative language, or at least from all
imagery that is not readily recognized as Scriptural. Bread and
beef are what men demand for a steady diet. Sweetmeats are well
enough, now and then, but only now and then.
It is the failure to observe this plain canon of style that has
made shipwreck of many an attempt to construct liturgies _de novo_.
Ambitious framers of forms of worship seem almost invariably to
forget that there may be such a thing as a too exquisite prayer,
an altogether too "eloquent address to the throne of grace." The
longest and fullest supplicatory portion of the Prayer Book, the
Litany, does not contain, from the first sentence to the last,[17]
one single figurative expression, it is literally plain English
from beginning to end; but could language be framed more intense,
more satisfying, more likely to endure?
Scriptural metaphor, whether because it comes to us with the stamp
of authority or on account of some subtle intrinsic excellence, it
may be difficult to say, does not pall upon the taste. And yet even
this is used sparingly in the Prayer Book, some of the most striking
exceptions to the general rule being afforded by the collects for
the first and third Sundays in Advent, the collects for the Epiphany
and Easter Even, and the opening prayer in the Baptismal Office. All
these are instances of strictly Scriptural metaphor, and moreover
it is to be kept in mind that they are designed for occasional, not
constant use. In the orders for daily Morning and Evening Prayer,
the "lost sheep" of the General Confession and the "dew" of God's
blessing in the Collect for Clergy and People are almost the sole,
if not the sole cases of evident metaphor, and these again are
Scriptural. When in Jeremy Taylor's prayer, introduced by the
American revisers into the Order for the Visitation of the Sick,
we come upon the comparison of human life to a "vale of misery" we
feel that somehow we have struck a new current in the atmosphere;
for the moment it is the rhetorician who speaks, and no longer the
earnest seeker after God.
Besides this freedom from figures of speech, we notice in the
style of Prayer Book English a careful avoidance of whatever looks
like a metaphysical abstraction. The aim is ever to present God
and divine things as realities rather than as mere concepts or
notions of the mind. So far as the writer remembers, not a single
prayer in the whole book begins with that formula so dear to the
makers of extemporary forms of devotion, "O Thou." On the contrary,
the approach to the Divine Majesty is almost always made with a
reference to some attribute or characteristic that links Deity to
man and man's affairs; it is "O God, the Protector of all that
trust in thee," or "Almighty and everlasting God who of thy tender
love toward mankind," or "Lord of all power and might who art the
author and giver of all good things."
Cardinal Newman in one of his theological works written before
his departure from the Church of England, has a powerful passage
bearing upon this point. He is criticising the evangelicals for
their one-sided way of setting forth what it must mean to "preach
the Gospel." No less a person than Legh Richmond is the object of
his strictures.
"A remarkable contrast between our Church's and this false view of
religion," he says, "is afforded in the respective modes of treating
a death-bed in the Visitation of the Sick, and a popular modern
work, the Dairyman's Daughter. The latter runs thus: My dear friend,
do you not FEEL _that you are supported_? The Lord deals very gently
with me, she replied. Are not his promises _very precious to you?_
They are all yea and amen in Christ Jesus.. . Do you experience any
_doubts or temptations_ on the subject of your eternal safety? No,
sir; the Lord deals very gently with me and gives me peace. What
are your _views_ of the dark valley of death now that you are
passing through it? _It is not dark_. Now, if it be said that
such questions and answers are not only in their place innocent
but natural and beautiful, I answer that this is not the point,
but this, viz., they are evidently intended, whatever their merits,
as a pattern of what _death-bed examinations should be_. Such is
the Visitation of the Sick in the nineteenth century. Now let us
listen to the nervous and stern tone of the sixteenth. In the Prayer
Book the minister is instructed to say to the person visited:
Forasmuch as after this life there is an account to be given to
the _Righteous Judge_ . . . I require you to examine yourself and
your estate both toward God and man. Therefore I shall rehearse to
you the _Articles of our Faith_, that you may know whether you do
believe as a Christian man should or no . . . 'Then shall the
minister examine whether he repent him truly of his sins, and be
in _charity_ with all the world: exhorting him to forgive from the
bottom of his heart all persons who have offended him, and if he
hath offended any other to _ask their forgiveness_, and where he
hath done injury or wrong to any man that he _make amends_ to the
utmost of his power.' . . . Such is the contrast between the dreamy
talk of modern Protestantism, and 'holy fear's stern glow' in the
Church Catholic."[18]
In this striking, though perhaps somewhat unnecessarily harsh way,
Newman brings out a point which is unquestionably true, namely,
that the language of the Prayer Book is of the sort which it is
just now the fashion to call realistic, that is, a language
conversant with great facts rather than with phases of feeling
and moods of mind; which after all is only another way of saying
that it is a Book of Common Prayer and not a manual for the
furtherance of spiritual introspection.
These, then, are the characteristics of the Prayer Book style:
it is simple, straightforward, unmetaphorical, realistic. Seriously
it looks almost like a studied insult alike to the scholarship and
to the religion of our day, to say that these are excellencies
attainable no longer. That revisers venturing upon additions to
the Prayer Book would be bound to set the face as a flint against
any slightest approach to sentimentality is true. But why assume
that the men do not exist who are capable of such a measure of
self-control? Grant that there are whole volumes of devotional
matter, original and compiled, which one may ransack without
finding a single form that is not either prolix, wishy-washy, or
superstitious--it does not follow that if the Prayer Book is to
be enriched, the enrichments must necessarily come from such
sources. Moreover it is to be remembered that there is another
vice of style to be shunned in liturgical composition quite as
carefully as sentimentality, namely, jejuneness. We cannot escape
being sentimental simply by being dull. Feeling must not be denied
its place in prayer for fear that it may not prove itself a duly
chastened feeling. There ought to be a heart of fire underneath
the calm surface of every formulary of worship. Flame and smoke
are out of place; but a liturgy should glow throughout. Coldness,
pure and simple, has no place in devotion.
Over and above the intrinsic difficulties in the way of revision
growing out of the delicate nature of the work itself, obstacles
of a different sort are certain to be encountered. In so large a
body of men as the Joint Committee of the two Houses, entire and
cordial agreement is almost too much to be expected; and then even
supposing a unanimous report submitted, what is likely to follow?
Why this--if the changes proposed are few, the cry will be raised,
It surely is not worth while to alter the Prayer Book for the sake
of so insignificant a gain; whereas if the changes proposed are
considerable, the counter cry will be sounded, This is revolution.
Then there is the anxious question, How will it look to the English?
What will be the effect on the _Concordat_ if we touch the Prayer
Book? To be sure, the Concordat does not seem to weigh very heavily
on the shoulders of the other party, as indeed there is no reason
why it should. Convocation does not much disturb itself as to the
view General Convention is likely to take of its sayings and doings,
and even disestablishment might proceed without our being called
into consultation. And yet the Concordat difficulty will have to
be reckoned with; and the dire spectre of a possible disowning of
us by our mother the Church of England will have to be laid, before
any alterations in the Book of Common Prayer will be accounted by
some among us perfectly safe.
But it is scarcely worth while to go on gratuitously suggesting
opposition arguments. They will be sure to present themselves
unsolicited in due time. For the present it is enough to add that
if the movement for liturgical revision has not in it enough
toughness of fibre to enable it to survive vigorous attack, it
does not deserve success.
V. Under the head of liturgical enrichment ought to be classed
whatever alteration would really serve to enhance the beauty,
majesty, or fitness, of accepted formularies of worship. Excision
may, under conceivable circumstances, be enrichment. James Wyatt
undoubtedly imagined that he was improving the English cathedrals
when he whitewashed their interiors, added composition pinnacles
to the west towers of Durham, and rearranged the ancient monuments
of Salisbury; but an important part of the enrichment accomplished
by our nineteenth century restorers has lain simply in the undoing
of what Wyatt did.
Again, substitution may be enrichment, as in the case where a
wooden spire built upon a stone tower is taken down to be replaced
by honest work. It would be an enrichment if in St. George's Chapel,
the central shrine of British royalty, the sham insignia now
overhanging the stalls of the knights of the garter were to give
room to genuine armor. Not merely then by addition, but possibly,
in some instances, by both subtraction and substitution, we may
find the "Prayer-book as it is" open to improvement.
Before, however, entering upon any criticism of the formularies
in detail, it is important to draw a distinction between two very
different things, namely, the structure of a liturgical office and
the contents of it. By structure should be understood the skeleton
or frame that makes the groundwork of any given office, by contents
the actual liturgical material employed in filling out the office
to its proper contour.
The offices of the Roman Breviary, for example, continue, for the
most part, identical in structure from day to day, the year through;
but they vary in contents. For an illustration nearer home take
our own _Order for Daily Morning Prayer_. The structure of it
is as follows: 1. Sentences, 2. Exhortation, 3. Confession, 4.
Absolution, 5. Lord's Prayer, 6. Versicles, 7. Invitatory Psalm,
8. The Psalms for the day, 9. Lection, 10. Anthem or Canticle, 11.
Lection, 12. Anthem or Canticle, 13. Creed, 14. Versicles,
15. Collect for the day, 16. Stated Collects and Prayers, 17.
Benediction.
Now it is evident that without departing by a hair's breadth from
the lines of this framework, an indefinite number of services might
by a process of substitution be put together, each one of which
would in outward appearance differ widely from every other one.
The identical skeleton, that is to say, might be so variously
clothed upon that no two of its embodiments would be alike. But
is it desirable to run very much after variety of such a sort in a
book of prayer designed for common use? Most assuredly, No. To
jeopard the supreme _desideratum_ in a people's manual of worship,
simplicity: to make it any harder than it now is for the average
"stranger in the Church" to find the places, would be on the part
of revisionists an unpardonable blunder.
There are, however, a few points at which the Morning Prayer
might advantageously be enriched, and no risk run. It would
surely add nothing to the difficulty of finding the places if
for one-half of the present opening sentences there were to be
substituted sentences appropriate to special days and seasons of
the ecclesiastical year. We should in this way be enabled to
give the key-note of the morning's worship at the very outset.
Having once departed, as in the case of our first two sentences,
from the English precedent of putting only penitential verses of
Scripture to this use, there is no reason why we should not
carry out still more fully in our selection the principle of
appropriateness. The sentences displaced need not be lost, for
they might still stand, as now, at the opening of the Evening
Prayer.
Passing on to the declarations of absolution there is an opportunity
to simplify the arrangement by omitting the alternate form borrowed
from the Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, where
only it properly belongs. This, however, is a change likely to be
resisted on doctrinal grounds, and need not be urged.
Coming to the _Venite_, we find another opportunity to accentuate
the Christian Year. It may be said that the rubric, as it is already
written, allows for the substitution of special anthems on the
greater festivals and fasts. This is true; but by giving the anthem
for Easter a place of honor, while relegating anthems for the other
great days to an unnoticed spot between the Selections and the
Psalter, the American compilers did practically discriminate in
favor of Easter and against the rest. The real needs of the case
would be more wisely met if the permission to omit _Venite_ now
attached to "the nineteenth day of the month" were to be extended
to Ash-Wednesday and Good Friday, and special New Testament anthems
analagous to the Easter one were to be inserted along with the
respective Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, for Christmas-day and
Whitsunday.
By this change we should put each of the three great festivals of
the year into possession of an invitatory anthem of its own; and we
should obviate on the fasting days, by the simple expedient of
omission, the futile efforts of choir-master and organist to
transform _Venite_ from a cry of joy into a moan of grief.
This brings us to the Psalter. Here we have an opportunity to
correct the palpable blunder by which it has come about that the
greatest of the penitential psalms, the fifty-first, has no place
assigned it among the proper psalms either for Ash-Wednesday or
for Good Friday.[19] It would also be well to make optional, if
not obligatory, the use of "proper psalms" on days other than those
already provided with them; _e_. _g_., Advent Sunday, the Epiphany,
Easter Even, Trinity Sunday, and All Saints' Day.[20] There would
be a still larger gain in the direction of "flexibility of use,"
as well as a great economy of valuable space, if instead of
reprinting some thirty of the Psalms of David under the name of
Selections, we were to provide for allowing "select" psalms to be
announced by number in the same manner that "proper" psalms are
now announced. Instead of only the ten selections we now have,
there might then be made available twenty or thirty groups of
psalms at absolutely no sacrifice of room. It has been objected
to this proposal that the same difficulty which now attaches to
the finding of the "proper psalms" on great days would embarrass
congregations whenever "select psalms" were given out; but this
is fairly met by the counter consideration that if our people were
to be educated by the use of select psalms into a more facile
handling of the Psalter it would be just so much gained for days
when the "proper psalms" must of necessity be found and read. The
services, that is to say, would run all the more smoothly on the
great days, after congregations had become habituated, on ordinary
days, to picking out the psalms by number.
Another step in the line of simplification, and one which it is
in order to mention here, would be the removal from the Morning
Prayer of _Gloria in Excelsis_, seeing that it is never, or almost
never, sung at the end of the psalms unless at Evening Prayer. As
to the expediency of restoring what has been lost of _Benedictus_
after the second lesson, the present writer offers no opinion.
There are some who warmly advocate the replacement, and there is,
unquestionably, much to be said in favor of it. It is unlikely
that any doctrinal motive dictated the abbreviation.
Pausing a moment at the Creeds for the insertion of a better title
than "_Or this_" before the confession of Nicaea, we pass to the
versicles that follow.
Here again it would be enrichment to restore the words of the
English book, although the task of finding an equally melodious
equivalent for _O Lord, save the Queen_ might not be easy.
Happily the other versicles are such as no civil revolution can
make obsolete. It will never be amiss to pray,
_Endue thy ministers with righteousness_.
Answer. _And make thy chosen people joyful_.
These are all the alterations for which the present Morning Prayer
considered as a form of Divine Service for Sundays would seem to
call. It will be observed that they are far from being of a radical
character, that they affect the structure of the office not at
all, and touch the contents of it but slightly.
The case is altered when we come to the Order for Evening Prayer.
Here there is a demand, not indeed for any structural change, but
for very decided enrichment by substitution. The wording of the
office is altogether too exact an echo of what has been said only
a few hours before in Morning Prayer. It betokens a poverty of
resources that does not really exist, when we allow ourselves thus
to exhort, confess, absolve, intercede, and give thanks in the
very same phrases at three in the afternoon that were on our lips
at eleven in the morning.
Doubtless liturgical worship owes a good measure of its charm to
the subtle power of repetition; but the principle is one that must
be handled and applied with the most delicate tact, or virtue goes
out of it. We must distinguish between similarity and sameness.
The ordered recurrence of accents is what makes the rhythm of
verse; but for all that, there is a difference between poetry and
sing-song, just as there is a difference between melody and monotony.
Moreover, the taste of mankind undergoes change as to the sorts of
repetition which it is disposed to tolerate. No modern poet of
standing would venture, for instance, to employ identical epithets
to the extent that Homer does, making Aurora "rosy-fingered"
every time she appears upon the scene, and Juno as invariably
"ox-eyed." People were pleased with it then, they would not be
pleased with it now. It is possible in liturgies so to employ
the principle of repetition that no wearying sense of sameness
will be conveyed, and again it is possible so to mismanage it
as to transform worship into something little better than a
"slow mechanic exercise." Mere iteration, as such, is barren
of spiritual power; witness the endless sayings over of _Kyrie
Eleison_ in the Oriental service-books, a species of vain repetition
which a liturgical writer of high intelligence rightly characterizes
as "unmeaning, if not profane."[21] Now the common popular
criticism upon the Evening Prayer of the Church is that it repeats
too slavishly the wording of the Morning Prayer. If this is an
unjust criticism we ought not to let ourselves be troubled by it.
On the other hand, if it is a just criticism it will be much wiser
of us to heed than to stifle the voice that tells us the truth.
It might seem to be straining a point were one to venture to explain
the present very noticeable disinclination of Churchmen to attend
a second service on Sunday, by connecting it with the particular
infelicity in question; but that the excuse, We have said all this
once to-day; why say it again? may possibly have something, even
if not much, to do with the staying at home is certainly a fair
conjecture.
Without altering at all the structure of the Evening Prayer, it
would be perfectly possible so to refill or reclothe that formulary
as to give it the one thing needful which now it lacks--freshness.
In such a process the _Magnificat_ and the _Nunc dimittis_ would
play an important part; as would also certain "ancient collects"
of which we have heard much of late. Failing this, the next best
thing (and the thing, it may be added, much more likely to be done,
considering what a tough resistant is old usage) would be the
provision of an alternate and optional form of Evening Prayer, to
be used either in lieu of, or as supplementary to the existing
office. In the framing of such a _Later Evensong_ a larger freedom
would be possible than in the refilling of a form the main lines
of which were already fixed. Still, the first plan would be better,
if only it could be brought within the range of things possible.
Next to Evening Prayer in the order of the Table of Contents comes
the Litany. Here there is no call for enrichment,[22] though
increased flexibility of use might be secured for this venerable
form of intercessory prayer by prefixing to it the following rubric
abridged from a similar one proposed in The Convocation Prayer
Book:
"_A General Supplication, to be sung or said on Sundays, Wednesdays,
and Fridays, and on the Rogation Days, after the third collect at
Morning or Evening Prayer, or before the Administration of the Holy
Communion; or as a separate Service_.
"_NOTE.--The Litany may be omitted altogether on Christmas Day,
Easter Day, and Whitsunday_"
In connection with the Morning and Evening Service there is another
important question that imperatively demands discussion, namely, a
week-day worship. The movement for "shortened services," so-called,
has shared the usual fate of all efforts at bettering the life of
the Church, in being at the outset of its course widely and seriously
misunderstood. The impression has gone abroad, and to-day holds
possession of many otherwise well-informed people, that a large
and growing party in the Episcopal Church has openly declared
itself wearied out with overmuch prayer and praise. Were such
indeed the fact, the scandal would be grave; but the real truth
about the matter is that the promoters of shortened services,
instead of seeking to diminish, are really eager to see multiplied
the amount of worship rendered in our churches. "Shortened services"
is a phrase of English, not American origin, and has won its way
here by dint of euphony rather than of fitness. Readjusted services,
though a more clumsy, would be a less misdirecting term. In the
matter of Sunday worship, the liberty now generally conceded of
using separately the Morning Prayer, the Litany, and the Holy
Communion is all that need be asked. Whether these services, or
at least two of them, do not in themselves admit of a certain
measure of improvement is a point that has already been considered,
but there certainly is no need of shortening them, whatever else
it may be thought well to do. When what a Boston worthy once termed
"a holy alacrity" is observed, on the part of both minister and
singers, even the aggregated services of Morning Prayer, Litany,
and "Ante-Communion," together with a sermon five-and-twenty minutes
long, can easily be brought within the compass of an hour and a
half--a measure of time not unreasonably large to be given to the
principal occasion of worship on the Lord's Day. As for the Evening
Prayer--there certainty ought to be no call for the shortening of
that on Sundays; for it would be scarcely decent or proper to devote
to such a service anything less than the half hour the existing
office demands.
What the advocates of shortened services really desire to see
furthered is an increase in the frequency of opportunities for
worship during the week, their conviction being that if the Church
were to authorize brief services for morning and evening use, such
as would not occupy much more time than family prayers ordinarily
do, the attendance might be secured of many who, at present, put
aside the whole question of going to church on week-days as
impracticable. Supposing it could be proved that such a provision
would work to the discouragement of family prayer, it would plainly
be wrong to advocate it; no priesthood is more sacred than that
which comes with fatherhood. But we must face the fact that in our
modern American life family prayer, like sundry other wholesome
habits, has fallen largely into disuse. If the Church can, in any
measure, supplement the deficiencies of the household, and help
to supply to individuals a blessing they would gladly enjoy at
their own homes, if they might, it is her plain duty to do so.
Moreover, many a minister who single-handed cannot now prudently
undertake a daily service, as that is commonly understood, would
acknowledge himself equal to the less extended requirement.
Not a few careful and friendly observers of the practical working
of Anglican religion have been reluctantly led to consider the daily
service, as an institution, only meagrely successful. Looking at
the matter historically we find no reason to wonder at such a
conclusion.
Our existing usage (or more correctly, perhaps, _non-user_) dates
from the Reformation period. The English Church and nation of that
day had grown up familiar with the spectacle of a very large body
of clerics, secular and regular, whose daily occupation may be said
to have been the pursuit of religion.[23] The religion pursued
consisted chiefly in the saying of prayers, and very thoroughly,
so far at least as the consumption of time was concerned, were the
prayers said. What more natural than that, under such circumstances,
and with such associations, the compilers of a common Prayer Book
for the people should have failed to see any good reason for
discriminating between the amount of service proper to the Lord's
Day and the amount that might be reasonably expected on other days?
Theoretically they were right, all time belongs to God and he is
as appropriately worshipped on Tuesdays and Thursdays as on Sundays.
And yet as a result of their making no such discrimination, we have
the daily service on our hands--a comparative, even if not an utter
failure. We may lament the fact, but a fact it is, that In spite
of all its improved appliances for securing leisure, the world is
busier than ever it was; and there will always be those who will
insist that the command to labor on six days is as imperative as
the injunction to rest upon the seventh. As a consequence of all
this accelerated business, and of the diminution in the number of
persons officially set apart for prayer, the unabridged service of
the Church fails to command a week-day attendance. We have no
"clerks" nowadays to fill the choir. The only clerks known to modern
times are busy at their desks.
It may be urged in reply to this that the practical working of the
daily service ought to be kept a secondary consideration, and that
its main purpose is symbolical, or representative; the priest
kneeling in his place, day by day, as a witness that the people,
though unable personally to be present, do, in heart and mind,
approve of a daily morning and evening sacrifice of prayer. This
conception of the daily service as a vicarious thing has a certain
mystical beauty about it, but if it is to be adopted as the Church's
own let us, at least, clear ourselves of inconsistency by striking
out the word "common" from before the word "prayer" in characterizing
our book.
What is really needed for daily use in our parishes is a short form
of worship specially framed for the purpose. If they could be
employed without offence to the Protestant ear (and they are good
English Reformation words) _Week-Day Matins_ and _Week-Day Evensong_
would not be ill chosen names for such services. The framework of
these Lesser Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, as they might
also be called, were the other titles found obnoxious, ought to be
modelled upon the lines of the existing daily offices, though with
a careful avoidance of identity in contents. There should be, for
instance, as unvarying elements, the reading of the lessons for the
day, the use of the collect for the day, and the saying or singing
of the psalms for the day. Another constant would be the Lord's
Prayer; but aside from these the _Lesser Order_ need have nothing
in common with the Order as we have it now. There might be, for
example, after the manner of the old service-books, an invitatory
opening with versicles and responses, or if the present mode of
opening by sentences were preferred, specially chosen sentences,
different from those with which the Sunday worship has made us
familiar, could be employed. Moreover, the anthems or canticles
and the prayers, with the exception of the two just mentioned,
ought also to be distinctive, and, in the technical sense of the
word, _proper_ to the week-day use.
Again, it would serve very powerfully and appropriately to emphasize
the pivot points in the ritual year if this same principle were to
be applied to saints' days, and we were to have special _Holyday
Matins_ and _Holy-day Evensong_, there still being required, on the
greater festivals and fasts, the normal Morning and Evening Prayer
proper to the Lord's Day.[24]
The argument in favor of thus specializing the services for week-days
and holydays, in preference to following the only method heretofore
thought possible, namely, that of shortening the Lord's Day Order,
rests on two grounds. In the first place permissions to skip and
omit are of themselves objectionable in a book of devotions. They
have an uncomely look. Our American Common Prayer boasts too many
disfigurements of this sort already.
Such a rubric as _The minister may, at his discretion, omit all
that follows to, etc. _, puts one in mind of the finger-post
pointing out a short cut to weary travellers. It is inopportune
thus to hint at exhaustion as the probable concomitant of worship.
That each form should have an integrity of its own, should as a
separate whole be either said complete or left unsaid, is better
liturgical philosophy than any "shortened services act" can show.
In the second place, a certain amount of variety would be secured
by the proposed method which under the existing system we miss.
There is, of course, such a danger as that of providing too much
liturgical variety. Amateur makers of Prayer Books almost invariably
fall into this slough. Hymn-books, as is well known, often destroy
their own usefulness by including too many hymns; and Prayer Books
may do the same by having too many prayers.[25]
To transgress in the compiling of formularies the line of average
memory, to provide more material than the mind of an habitual
worshipper is likely to assimilate, is to misread human nature.
But here, as elsewhere, there is a just mean. Cranmer and his
colleagues in the work of revision jumped at one bound from a
scheme which provided a distinctive set of services for every day
in the year to a scheme that assigned one stereotyped form to all
days.
Now nothing could be more unwise than any attempt to restore the
methods of the Breviary, with its complicated and artificial forms
of devotion; but so far to imitate the Breviary as to provide within
limits for a recognition of man's innate love of change would be
wisdom. By having a distinctive service for week-days, and a
distinctive service for holydays, Ave might add just that little
increment to the Church's power of traction that in many instances
would avail to change "I cannot go to church this morning" into "I
cannot stay away."
It will be urged as a counter-argument to these considerations that
the thing is impossible, that such a measure of enrichment is
entirely in excess of anything the Church has expressed a wish
to have, and that for reviewers to propose a plan so sweeping would
be suicide. Doubtless this might be a sufficient answer to anybody
who imagined that by a bare majority vote of two successive General
Conventions new formularies of daily worship could be forced upon
the Church. But suppose such formularies were to be made _optional_;
suppose there were to be given to parishes the choice between these
three things, viz.: (_a_) the normal Morning Prayer; (_b_) a
shortened form of the normal Morning Prayer; and (_c_) such a
special order as has been sketched--what then? Would the Church's
liberty be impaired! On the contrary, would not the borders of that
liberty have been most wisely and safely widened by the steady hand
of law?
This is perhaps the right point at which to call attention to the
present state of the "shortened services" controversy, for wearisome
as the story has become by frequent repetition, the nexus between
it and the subject in hand is too important to be left out of sight.
In the General Convention of 1877, where the topic under its
American aspects was for the first time thoroughly discussed,
the two Houses came to a deadlock. The deputies on the one hand,
almost to a man, voted in favor of giving the desired relief by
rubric, thus postponing for three years' time the fruition of
their wish; while the bishops with a unanimity understood to have
been equally striking insisted that a simple canon, such as could
be passed at once, would suffice. And so the subject dropped.
At the late Convention of 1880 an eirenicon was discovered. The
quick eye of one of the legal members of the House of Deputies
detected on the fourth page of the Prayer Book, just opposite the
Preface, a loophole of escape, to wit, _The Ratification of the
Book of Common Prayer_. Here was the very _tertium quid_ whereby
the common wish of both parties to the dispute might be effected
without injury to the sensibilities of either.
The _Ratification_ certainly did not look like a canon; neither
could anybody with his eyes open call it a rubric--why not amend
that, and say no more about it? The suggestion prevailed, and by a
vote of both Houses, the following extraordinary document is
hereafter to stand (the next General Convention consenting) in
the very fore-front of the Prayer Book:
THE RATIFICATION OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. _By the Bishops,
the Clergy, and the Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
General Convention assembled_.
The General Convention of the Church having heretofore, to wit:
on the sixteenth day of October in the year A. D. 1789, set forth
a _Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and
other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church_, and thereby established
the said book, and declared it to be the Liturgy of said Church,
and required that it be received as such by all the members of the
same and be in use from and after the first day of October in the
year of our Lord 1790; the same book is hereby ratified and
confirmed, and ordered to be the use of this Church from this
time forth.
"But note, however, that on days other than Sundays, Christmas-day,
the Epiphany, Ash-Wednesday, Good Friday, and Ascension Day, it
shall suffice if the Minister begins Morning or Evening Prayer at
the General Confession or the Lord's Prayer preceded by one or more
of the Sentences appointed at the beginning of Morning and Evening
Prayer, and end after the Collect for Grace or the Collect for Aid
against Perils, with 2 Cor. xiii. 14, using so much of the Lessons
appointed for the day and so much of the Psalter as he shall judge
to be for edification.
"And note also that on any day when Morning and Evening Prayer shall
have been duly said or are to be said, and on days other than those
first aforementioned, it shall suffice, when need may require, if
a sermon or lecture be preceded by at least the Lord's Prayer and
one or more Collects found in this book, provided that no prayers
not set forth in said book, or otherwise authorized by this Church,
shall be used before or after such sermon or lecture.[26]
"And note further also that on any day the Morning Prayer, the
Litany, or the Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper
may be used as a separate and independent service, provided that
no one of these services shall be disused habitually."
It may seem harsh to characterize this act as the mutilation of a
monument; but really it does seem to be little else. The old
Ratification of 1789 is an historic landmark; it is the sign-manual
of the Church of White's and Seabury's day, and ought never to be
disturbed or tampered with while the Prayer Book stands. The year
1889 might very properly see a supplemental Ratification written
under it; and testifying to the fact of Revision; but to write into
that venerable text special directions as to what may be done on
days other than Ash-Wednesday, and what must not be done without
2 Cor. xiii. 14, is very much as if the City Government of Cambridge
should cause to be cut upon the stone under the Washington elm which
now records the fact that there the commander of the American armies
first drew his sword, divers and sundry additional items of
information, such as the distance to Watertown, the shortest path
across the common, etc., etc.
Why the Convention after having entrusted to a Joint Committee,
by a decisive vote, the task of devising means for securing for
the Prayer Book "increased flexibility of use," should have thought
it necessary subsequently to take up with this compromise of a
compromise (for such the proposal to amend the Ratification really
is) it is difficult to say. Perhaps it was with the determination
to have, at any rate, something to fall back upon in case the larger
and more comprehensive measure should come to naught.
The rubric is confessedly the proper place for directions as to
how to use the services, and but for the very natural and defensible
objection on the part of some to touching the Prayer Book at all,
there never would have been any question about it.[27] This
objection having been at last waived, a straight path is now open
to the end desired, and it ought to be followed even at the cost
of three years more of delay.
Returning to the general subject, and still following the order of
the Table of Contents, we come to Prayers and Thanksgivings upon
several Occasions.
Here it would be well to note more intelligibly than is done by
the present rubric the proper places for the introduction of the
Prayers and the Thanksgivings, providing for the use of the former
before, and of the latter after the General Thanksgiving.
As to the deficiencies in this department let the late Dr. Muhlenberg
speak.
"The Prayer Book," he says, "is not undervalued as to its treasures
in asserting its wants. The latter cannot be denied. Witness the
meagre amount of New Testament prayer and praise for the round of
festivals and fasts; the absence of any forms suited to the peculiar
circumstances of our own Church and country and to the times we
live in; or for our benevolent and educational institutions. There
are no prayers for the increase of Ministers, for Missions, or
Missionaries, for the Christian teaching of the young; for sponsors
on occasions of Baptism; for persons setting out on long journeys
by land, quite as perilous as voyages by sea; for the sick desiring
the prayers of the Church when there is no prospect of or desire
for recovery; for the bereaved at funerals, and many other occasions
for which there might as well be provision as for those few for
which we already have the occasional prayers."[28]
After the _Prayers and Thanksgivings_ come _The Collects, Epistles,
and Gospels _. Here again there is some room for enrichment.
Distinctive collects for the first four days of Holy Week, for
Monday and Tuesday in Easter Week, and for Monday and Tuesday in
Whitsun Week, would add very materially to our liturgical wealth,
while there would seem to be no reason whatever why they should
not be had. It would also serve to enhance the symmetry of the
Christian Year if the old feast of the Transfiguration[29] (August
6) were to be restored to its place among the recognized holy days
of the Church and given its proper collect, epistle, and gospel.
There are some liturgists who desire the restoration of the introits
of the First Book of Edward VI. The introit (so called from being
the psalm sung when the priest goes within the altar-rails) has
been in modern usage replaced by a metrical hymn. A sufficient
reason for not printing the introit for each day in full, just
before the collect, as was the mode in Edward's Book, is that to
do so would involve a costly sacrifice of room. A compromise course
would be to insert between the title of each Sunday or holyday and
the collect proper to it, a simple numerical reference stating
whereabouts in the Psalter the introit for the day is to be found,
and adding perhaps the Latin catchwords. Any attempt to make the
use of the introit obligatory in our times would meet with deserved
failure; the metrical hymn has gained too firm a hold upon the
affections of the Church at large ever to be willingly surrendered.
Coming, next, to the orders for the administration of the two
sacraments, we find ourselves on delicate ground, where serious
change of any sort is out of the question. Permission, under certain
circumstances, still further to abbreviate the Office of the
Communion of the Sick might, however, be sought without giving
reasonable cause of alarm to any, and general consent might perhaps
also be had for a provision with respect to the Exhortation, "Dearly
beloved in the Lord," that in "Churches where there is frequent
Communion it shall suffice to read the Exhortation above written
once in a month on the Lord's Day."[30]
There are three liturgical features of the Scottish Communion
Office which some have thought might be advantageously transferred
to our own service. They are (_a_) the inserting after Christ's
summary of the Law a response, _Lord, have mercy upon us and write
these thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee_; (_b_) the repeating
by the people, after the reading of the Gospel, of a formula of
thanks corresponding to the _Glory be to thee, O Lord_, that
precedes it; and (_c_) the saying or singing of an Offertory
sentence at the presentation of the alms. Upon these suggested
enrichments the present writer offers no opinion.
In the Order of Confirmation a substitution for the present
preface[31] of a responsive opening, in which the bishop should
charge the minister to present none but such as he has found by
personal inquiry "apt and meet" for the reception of the rite would
be a marked improvement.
The remaining Occasional Offices would seem to demand no change
either in structure or contents, although in some, perhaps in all
of them, additional rubrics would be helpful to worshippers.
Some addition to the number of Occasional Offices would be a
real gain. We need, for instance, a short Office for the Burial of
Infants and Young Children; a Daybreak Office for Great Festivals;
an Office for Midday Prayer; an Office of Prayer in behalf of
Missions and Missionaries; an Office for the Setting apart of a
Layman as a Reader, or as a Missionary; a Form of Prayer at
the Laying of a Corner-stone; and possibly some others. It is
evident that these new formularies might give opportunity for
the introduction of hitherto unused collects, anthems, and
benedictions of a sort that would greatly enhance the general
usefulness of the Prayer Book.
This completes the survey of the field of "liturgical enrichment."
A full discussion of the allied topic, "flexibility of use," would
involve the examination in detail of all the rubrics of the Prayer
Book, and for this there is no room. It is enough to say that
unless the rubrics, the hinges and joints of a service-book, are
kept well oiled, much creaking is a necessary result. There are
turning-points in our public worship where congregations almost
invariably betray an awkward embarrassment, simply because there
is nothing to tell them whether they are expected to stand or to
sit or to kneel. It is easy to sneer at such points as trifles and
to make sport of those who call attention to them; but if it
is worth our while to have ritual worship at all it is also worth
our while to make the directions as to how people are to behave
adequate, explicit, plain. A lofty contempt for detail is not the
token of good administration either in Church or State. To the list
of defective rubrics add those that are confessedly obsolete and
such as are palpably contradictory and we have a bill of particulars
that would amply justify a rubrical revision of the Prayer Book even
if nothing more were to be attempted.
There is another reason. Far more rapidly than many people
imagine, we are drifting away from the position of a Church that
worships by liturgy to that of a Church worshipping by directory.
The multiplicity of "uses" that vexed the Anglican Reformers is
in our day multiplied four-fold. To those who honestly consider a
directory a better thing than a liturgy this process of relaxation
is most welcome, but for others who hold that, until the binding
clauses of a Book of Common Prayer have been formally rescinded,
they ought to be observed, the spectacle is the reverse of edifying.
They would much prefer seeing the channels of liberty opened at the
touch of law, and this is one of their chief reasons for advocating
revision.
Two questions remain untouched, both of them of great practical
importance. Could the Prayer Book be enriched to the extent
suggested in this paper without a serious and most undesirable
increase in its bulk as a volume?
Even supposing this were possible, is it at all likely that the
Church could be persuaded to accept the amended book?
Unless the first of these two eminently proper questions can be
met, there is, or ought to be, an end to all talk about revision.
The advantage to a Church of being able to keep all its authoritative
formularies of worship within the compass of a single volume is
inestimable. Even the present enforced severance of the Hymnal
from the Prayer Book is a misfortune.[32]
Those were good days when "Bible and Prayer Book" was the Churchman's
all sufficient formula so far as volumes were concerned.
Rome boasts a much larger ritual variety than ours, but she secures
it by multiplying books. The Missal is in one volume, the Breviary
in four, the Pontifical, the Ritual, and the Ceremonial in one each,
making eight in all.[33] This is an evil, and one from which we
Anglicans have had a happy escape. It was evidently with a great
groan of relief that the Church of England shook herself free from
the whole host of service-books, and established her one only
volume. It behooves us to be watchful how we take a single step
towards becoming entangled in the old meshes.[34]
But need the enrichment of the Prayer Book--such enrichment as has
been described, necessarily involve an unwieldiness in the volume,
or, what would be still worse, an overflow into a supplement?
Certainly not; for by judicious management every change advocated
in this paper, and more besides, might be accomplished without
transgressing by so much as a page or a paragraph the limits of
the present standard book. All the space needed could be secured
by the simple expedient of omitting matter that has been found by
actual experience to be superfluous. Redundancy and unnecessary
repetition are to the discredit of a book that enjoys such an
unrivalled reputation as the Common Prayer. They are blemishes
upon the face of its literary perfectness. Who has not marvelled
at the strange duplication of the Litany and the Office of the Holy
Communion in the Ordinal, when the special petitions proper to
those services when used in that connection might easily have been
printed by themselves with a direction that they be inserted in
the appointed place?
Scholars, of course, know perfectly well how this came about. The
Ordinal does not belong to the Prayer Book proper, but has a
separate identity of its own. When printed as a book by itself
it is all very well that it should include the Litany and the Holy
Communion in full, but why allow these superfluous pages to crowd
out others that are really needed?[35]
It has already been explained how the room now occupied by the
"Selections" might be economized, and by the same simple device
the space engrossed by divers psalms here and there in the Occasional
Offices, _e_. _g_., Psalm li in the Visitation of Prisoners, and
Psalm cxxx in the Visitation of the Sick could be made available
for other use.
Again, why continue to devote a quarter of a page of precious
space to the "Prayer for imprisoned debtors," seeing that now,
for a long time past, there has been no such thing in the United
States as imprisonment for debt? By availing ourselves of only a
portion of these possible methods of garnering space, all that is
desired might be accomplished, without making the Prayer Book
bulkier by a single leaf than it is to-day.
But would a Prayer Book thus enriched be accepted by the Church
at large? Is there any reason to think that the inertia which
inheres in all large bodies, and to a singularly marked degree
in our own Communion, could be overcome? The General Convention
can give an approximate answer to these questions; it cannot settle
them decisively, for it is a body which mirrors only to a certain
extent the real mind and temper of the constituencies represented
in it. One thing is certain, that only by allowing fullest possible
play to the principle of "local option" could any wholly new piece
of work on the part of revisionists, however excellent it might be
in itself considered, find acceptance. To allow features introduced
into the body of an existing service to be accounted optional,
would indeed be impossible, without gendering the very wildest
confusion. Upon such points the Church would have to decide
outright, for or against, and stand by her decisions. But as
respects every additional and novel Office proposed, the greatest
care ought to be taken to have the indefinite An rather than the
definite _The_ prefixed to it. Before such new uses are made binding
on all, they must have met and endured the test of thorough trial
by some. This is only fair.
But there is a limit, it must be remembered, in the Church's case
to the binding power of precedent and prescription. The social
order changes, and of these tides that ebb and flow it is our
bounden duty to take note. Had mere aversion to change, dogged
unwillingness to venture an experiment always carried the day,
instead of having the "Prayer Book as it is," we should still be
drearily debating the rival merits of Hereford and Sarum. The great
question to be settled is, Does an emergency exist serious enough
to warrant an attempt on our part to make better what we know
already to be good? Is the Republic expecting of us, and reasonably
expecting of us, greater things than with our present equipment we
are quite able to accomplish? There are eyes that think they see a
great future before this Church--are they right, or is it only
mirage? At any rate ours is no return trip--we are outward bound.
The ship is cutting new and untried waters with her keel at every
moment. There is no occasion to question the sufficiency of either
compass or helm, but in certain matters of a practical sort there
is a demand upon us to use judgment, we are bound to give a place
in our seamanship to present common-sense as well as to respect for
ancient usage, and along with it all to feel some confidence that
if the ship is what we think her to be, "the winds of God" may be
trusted to bring her safely into port.