No estimate of the merits and demerits of _The Book Annexed_ can
be a just one that leaves out of account the limitations under
which the framers of it did their work. These limitations were not
unreasonable ones. It was right and proper that they should be
imposed. There is no good ground for a belief that the time will
ever come when a "blank cheque," to borrow Mr. Goschen's mercantile
figure, will be given to any company of liturgical revisers to fill
out as they may see fit. But the moulders of forms, in whatever
department of plastic art their specialty lies, when challenged to
show cause why their work is deficient in symmetry or completeness,
have an undoubted right to plead in reply the character of the
conditions under which they labored. The present instance offers
no exception to the general rule. In the first place, a distinct
pledge was given in the House of Deputies, in 1880, before consent
to the appointment of the Joint Committee was secured, that in case
such permission to launch a movement in favor of revision as was
asked for were to be granted, no attempt would be made seriously
to change the Liturgy proper, namely, the Office of the Holy
Communion.
The question was distinctly asked by a clerical deputy from the
diocese of Maryland,[37] Do you desire to modify the Office of
the Holy Communion? and it was as distinctly answered by the mover
of the resolution under which the Joint Committee was finally
appointed, No, we do not. It is true that such a pledge, made by
a single member of one House, could only measurably control the
action of a Joint Committee in which both Houses were to be
represented; but it is equally plain that the maker of the pledge
was in honor bound to do all in his power to secure the observance
of its terms.
Let this historical fact be noted by those who are disposed to
complain that the Joint Committee did not pull to pieces and
entirely rearrange the Anglo-Scoto-American Office, which now
for a long time, and until quite recently, we have been taught
to esteem the nearest possible approach to liturgical perfection.
Under this same head of "limitations" must be set down the following
resolutions passed by the Joint Committee itself, at its first
regular meeting:
_Resolved_, That this Committee asserts, at the outset, its
conviction that no alteration should be made touching either
statements or standards of doctrine in the Book of Common Prayer.
_Resolved_, That this Committee, in all its suggestions and acts,
be guided by those principles of liturgical construction and ritual
use which have guided the compilation and amendments of the Book
of Common Prayer, and have made it what it is.
It was manifestly impossible, under resolutions like these, to
depart very widely from established precedent, or in any serious
measure to disturb the foundations of things.
The first of them shut out wholly the consideration of such
questions as the reinstatement of the Athanasian Creed or the
proposal to make optional the use of the word "regenerate" in
the Baptismal Offices; while the other forbade the introduction
of such sentimental and grotesque conceits as "An Office for the
Blessing of Candles," "An Office for the Benediction of a Lifeboat,"
and "An Office for the Reconciliation of a Lapsed Cleric."[38]
Still another very serious limitation, and one especially unfriendly
to that perfectness of contour which we naturally look to see
in a liturgical formulary, grew out of the tender solicitude
of the Committee for what may be called the vested rights of
congregations. There was a strong reluctance to the cutting
away even of what might seem to be dead wood, lest there should
ensue, or be thought to ensue, the loss of something really
valuable.
It was only as the result of much painstaking effort, and only at
some sacrifice of literary fastidiousness, that the Committee was
enabled to report a book of which it could be said that, while it
added much of possible enrichment, it took away almost nothing that
had been in actual possession.[39] There could be no better
illustration of this point than is afforded by certain of the
alterations proposed to be made in the Order for Evening Prayer.
The Committee felt assured that upon no point was the judgment of
the Church likely to be more unanimous than in approving the
restoration to their time-honored home in the Evening Office of
_Magnificat_ and _Nunc dimittis_, and yet so unwilling were they
to displace _Bonum est confiteri_ and _Benedic anima mea_ from
positions they have only occupied since 1789 that they authorized
the unquestionably clumsy expedient of printing three responds to
each Lesson.
Probably a large majority of the Committee would have preferred to
drop _Bonum est confiteri_ and _Benedic anima mea_ altogether,
retaining _Cantate Domino_ and _Deus miser eatur_ as the sole
alternates to the two Gospel canticles, as in the English Book,
but rather than have a thousand voices cry out, as it was believed
they would cry out, "You have robbed us," the device of a second
alternate was adopted, to the sad defacement of the printed page.
In may be charged that, in thus choosing, the Committee betrayed
timidity, and that a wise boldness would have been the better
course; but if account be taken of the attitude consistently
maintained by General Convention towards any proposition for the
change of so much as a comma in the Prayer Book, during a period
of fifty years prior to the introduction of _The Book Annexed_, it
will perhaps be concluded that for the characterization of the
Committee's policy timidity is scarcely so proper a word as caution.