First, last, and always this is to be said with respect to
the revision of the American Common Prayer, that unless we can
accomplish it with hearty good feeling the attempt at improvement
ought to be abandoned altogether.
The day has gone by when new formularies of worship could be
imposed on an unwilling Church by edict, and although under our
carefully guarded system of ecclesiastical legislation there is
little danger of either haste or unfairness, we must bear it well
in mind that something more than "a constitutional majority of both
houses" is needful if we would see liturgical revision crowned with
real success. Of course, absolute unanimity is not to be expected.
Every improvement that the world has seen was greeted at its birth
by a chorus of select voices sounding the familiar anthem, "The old
is better"; and the generation of those, who, in the sturdy phrase
of King James's revisers, "give liking unto nothing but what is
framed by themselves, and hammered on their anvil," will be always
with us. But substantial unanimity may exist, even when absolute
unanimity is impossible, and if anything like as general a consent
can be secured for revision in 1886 as was given to it in 1883, the
friends of the movement will have good reason to be satisfied.
That there has been, since the publication of _The Book Annexed as
Modified_, a certain measure of reaction against the spirit of
change must be evident to all who watch carefully the pulse of
public opinion in the Church. Whether this reaction be as serious
as some imagine, whether it have good reasons to allege, and whether
it be not already giving tokens of spent force, are points which
in the present paper will be touched only incidentally, for the
writer's purpose is rather irenic than polemical, and he is more
concerned to remove misapprehensions and allay fears than to seek
the fading leaf of a controversial victory.