(_a_) _Foreign_.
As there is reason to believe that opinion at home has been very
considerably affected by foreign criticism of _The Book Annexed_,
it will be well at this point to give some attention to what has
been said in English journals in review of the work thus far
accomplished. The more noteworthy of the foreign criticisms are
those contained in _The Church Quarterly Review_, _The Church
Times_, and _The Guardian_.[40]
The Church Quarterly reviewer opens with an expression of deep
regret at "the failure to take advantage of the opportunity for
reinstating the Athanasian Creed." As already observed, no such
opportunity existed. By formal vote the Joint Committee debarred
itself from any proceeding of this sort, and the Convention, which
sat in judgment on its work, was manifestly of opinion that in so
acting the Committee had rightly interpreted its charter.
The reviewer, who is in full sympathy with the movement for
enrichment as such, goes on to recommend, as a more excellent
way than that followed in _The Book Annexed_, the compilation of
An Appendix to the Book of Common Prayer to contain the much
needed _Additional Services_ for both Sunday and other use in
churches, in mission chapels, and in religious communities, as
well as a full supply of _Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings_
for objects and purposes, missionary and otherwise, which are as
yet entirely unrepresented in our Offices.
There are obvious reasons why this device should commend itself to
an English Churchman, for it is unlikely that anything better than
this, or, indeed, anything one half so satisfactory, could be
secured by Act of Parliament.
For something very much better than this, however, a self-governed
Church, like our own, has a right to look, and, in all probability,
will continue to look until the thing is found. _An Appendix_ to a
manual of worship, whether the manual be Prayer Book or Hymnal,[41]
is and cannot but be, from the very nature of things, a blemish to
the eye, an embarrassment to the hand, and a vexation to the spirit.
Such _addenda_ carry on their face the suggestion that they are
makeshifts, postscripts, after-thoughts; and in their lack of
dignity, as well as of convenience, pronounce their own condemnation.
Moreover, in our particular case, no "Appendix," "Prymer," or
"Authorized Vade-mecum" could accomplish the ends that are most
of all desired. Fancy putting the _Magnificat_, the _Nunc dimittis_,
the Versicles that follow the Creed, and the "Lighten our darkness"
into an "Appendix." It would be the defeat of our main object.
Then, too, this is to be remembered, that in order to secure a
"fully authorized Appendix," we, in this country, should be obliged
to follow precisely the same legal process we follow in altering
the Prayer Book. If an Occasional Office cannot pass the ordeal of
the criticism of two successive Conventions, it ought not to be set
forth at all; if it can and does stand that test, then it ought to
be inserted in the Prayer Book in the particular place where it most
appropriately belongs and may most readily be found.
Moreover, it should be remembered that one, and by no means the
least efficient, of the causes that brought the Common Prayer into
existence in the sixteenth century was disgust at the multiplication
of service-books. We American Churchmen have two already; let us
beware of adding a third.
The critic of _The Quarterly_ was probably unacquainted with the
fact that in the American Episcopal Church the experimental setting
forth of Offices "for optional and discretional use" is not possible
under the terms of the Constitution. We either must adopt outright
and for permanent use, or else peremptorily reject whatever is urged
upon us in the name of liturgical improvement.
Entering next upon a detailed criticism of the contents of The _Book
Annexed_ the writer proceeds to offer a number of suggestions, some
of them of great value. He pleads earnestly and with real force for
the restoration of the Lord's Prayer to its "place of honor" between
the Creed and the Preces, showing, in a passage of singular beauty,
how the whole daily office "may be said to have grown out of, or
radiated from, or been crystallized round the central _Pater
noster_" even as "from the Words of Institution has grown the
Christian Liturgy."
The critic has only praise for the amendments in the Office
for Thanksgiving Day; approves the selection of Proper Sentences
for the opening of Morning and Evening Prayer; avers, certainly
with truth, that the Office of the Beatitudes might be improved;
welcomes "the very full repertory of special prayers"; thinks
that the _Short Office of Prayer for Sundry Occasions_ "certainly
supplies a want"; rejoices in the recognition of the Feast of the
Transfiguration; and closes what is by far the most considerable,
and, both as respects praise and blame, the most valuable of all
the reviews that have been made of _The Book Annexed_ whether at
home or abroad, with these words:
On the whole, we very heartily congratulate our Transatlantic
brothers on the labors of their Joint Committee. We hope their
recommendations may be adopted, and more in the same direction;
and that the two or three serious blemishes which we have felt
constrained to point out and to lament may be removed from the
book in the form finally adopted.
And further, we very earnestly trust that this work, which has
been very evidently so carefully and conscientiously done, may
speedily, by way of example and precedent, bear fruit in a like
process of enrichment among ourselves.
Commending these last words to the consideration of those who
take alarm at the suggestion of touching the Prayer Book lest
we may hurt the susceptibilities of our "kin beyond sea," and
unduly anticipate that "joint action of both Churches," which,
at least until disestablishment comes, must always remain a sheer
impossibility, we pass to a consideration of the six articles
contributed to the _Church Times_ in July and August last, under
the title, _The Revised American Prayer Book_. Here we come upon
a writer who, if not always edifying, has the undoubted merit of
being never dull. In fact, so deliciously are logical inconsequence
and accidental humor mingled throughout his fifteen columns of
discursive criticism that a suspicion arises as to the writer's
nationality. It is doubtful whether anyone born on the English side
of the Irish Sea could possibly have suggested the establishment
of a Saint's Day in honor of the late respected Warden of Racine
College, or seriously have proposed that Messrs. Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Russell Lowell, Henry James, and W. D. Howells be appointed
a jury of "literary arbitrament" to sit in judgment on the liturgical
language of _The Book Annexed_; and this out of respect to our
proper national pride. Doubtless it would add perceptibly to the
amused sense of the unfitness of things with which these eminent
liberals must have seen themselves thus named, if permission could
be given to the jury, when empanelled, to "co-opt" into its number
Mr. Samuel Clemens and Mr. Dudley Warner.[42]
The general tenor of the writer in _The Church Times_ may fairly
be inferred from the following extract from the first article of
the series:
The judgment that must be pronounced on the work as a whole is
precisely that which has been passed on the Revised New Testament,
that there are doubtless some few changes for the better, so obvious
and so demanded beforehand by all educated opinion that to have
neglected them would at once have stamped the revisers as blockheads
and dunces; but that the set-off in the way of petty and meddlesome
changes for the worse, neglect of really desirable improvements,
bad English, failure in the very matter of pure scholarship just
where it was least to be expected, and general departure from
the terms of the Commission assigned to them (notably by their
introduction of confusion instead of flexibility into the services,
so that the congregation can seldom know what is going to happen)
has so entirely outweighed the merits of the work that it cannot
possibly be adopted by the Church, and must be dismissed as a dismal
fiasco, to be dealt with anew in some more adequate fashion.
This paragraph is not reproduced for the purpose of discrediting
the writer of it as a judge of English prose, for there are various
passages in the course of the six articles that would more readily
lend themselves to such a use. The object in quoting it is simply
to put the reader into possession, in a compact form, of the most
angry, even if not the most formidable, of the various indictments
yet brought against _The Book Annexed_.
Moreover, the last words of the extract supply a good text for
certain didactic remarks that ought to be made, with respect to
what is possible and what is not possible in the line of liturgical
revision in America.
Worthless as the result of the Joint Committee's labors has turned
out to be, their motive, we are assured, was a good one. The
critic's contention is not that the work they undertook is a work
that ought not to be done, but rather that when done it should be
better done. The revision as presented must be "dismissed as a
dismal fiasco," but only dismissed "in order to be dealt with anew
in some more adequate fashion." But on what ground can we rest this
sanguine expectation of better things to come? Whence is to
originate and how is to be appointed the commission of "experts"
which is to give us at last the "Ideal Liturgy"?
Cardinal Newman in one of his lesser controversial tracts remarks:
If the English people lodge power in the many, not in the few, what
wonder that its operation is roundabout, clumsy, slow, intermittent,
and disappointing? You cannot eat your cake and have it; you cannot
be at once a self-governing nation and have a strong government.[43]
Similarly it may be said that, however great the difficulties that
beset liturgical revision by legislative process at the hands of
some five hundred men, nevertheless the fact remains that the body
known in law as The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States
of America has provided in its Constitution that change in its
formularies shall be so effected and not otherwise. It may turn
out that we must give up in despair the whole movement for a better
adaptation of our manual of worship to the needs of our land and
of our time; it may be found that the obstacles in the way are
absolutely insuperable; but let us dream no dreams of seeing this
thing handed over, "with power," to a "commission of experts," for
that is something which will never come to pass.
Whether "experts" in liturgies are any more likely to furnish us
with good prayers than "experts" in prosody are likely to give us
the best poetry is a tempting question, but one that must be left,
for the present, on one side. Perhaps, if the inquiry were to be
pushed, we might find ourselves shut up to the curious conclusion
that the framers of the very earliest liturgies, the authors of
the old sacramentaries, were either verbally inspired or else were
lacking in the qualifications which alone could fit them to do
worthily the work they worthily did, for clearly "experts" they
were not.
But the question that immediately concerns us is one of simple
fact. Assuming the present laborious effort at betterment to have
been proved a "fiasco," how is the General Convention to set in
motion any more promising enginery of revision? "Summon in," say
our English advisers, "competent scholars, and give them _carte
blanche_ to do what they will." But the Convention, which is by
law the final arbiter, has no power to invite to a share in its
councils men who have no constitutional right to a seat upon its
floor. How thankfully should we welcome as participants in our
debates and as allies in our legislation the eminent liturgical
scholars who give lustre to the clergy list of the Church of
England; but we are as powerless to make them members of the
General Convention as we should be to force them into the House
of Commons. The same holds true at home. If the several dioceses
fail to discover their own "inglorious Miltons," and will not send
them up to General Convention, General Convention may, and doubtless
does, lament the blindness of the constituencies, but it cannot
correct their blunder. The dioceses in which the "experts"
canonically reside had had full warning that important liturgical
interests were to be discussed and acted upon in the General
Convention of 1883; why were the "experts" left at home? And if
they were not returned in 1883, is there sufficient reason to
believe that they will ever be returned in any coming year of
grace? It must be either that the American Church is bereft of
"experts," or else that the constituencies, influenced possibly
by the hard sense of the laity, have learned hopelessly to confound
the "expert" with the doctrinaire.
Of "expert testimony," in the shape of the liturgical material
gathered, mainly by English writers, during the last fifty years,
the Joint Committee had no lack. That this material was carefully
sifted and conscientiously used, _The Book Annexed_ will itself one
day be acknowledged to be the sufficient evidence.
There is still another point that must be taken into account in
this connection, to wit, the attitude which the Episcopate has a
right to take with respect to any proposed work of liturgical
revision. Bishops have probably become inured to the hard measure
habitually dealt out to them in the columns of the _Church Times_,
and are unlikely to allow charges of ignorance and incompetency so
far to disturb their composure as to make them afraid to prosecute
a work which, from time immemorial, has been held to lie peculiarly
within their province. It may be affirmed, with some confidence,
that no revision of the American Offices will ever be ratified, in
the conduct of which the Bishops of the Church have not been allowed
the leadership which belongs to them of right. Then it is for the
General Convention carefully to consider whether any House of
Bishops destined to be convened in our time is likely to have on
its roll the names of any prelates more competent, whether on the
score of learning or of practical experience, to deal with a work
of liturgical revision than were the seven prelates elected by the
free voice of their brethren to represent the Episcopal Order on
the Joint Committee of Twenty-one.
Coming to details the reviewer of the _Church Times_ regrets, first
of all, the failure of the Convention to change the name of the
Church. He goes on to express a disapproval, more or less qualified,
of the discretionary power given to bishops to set forth forms of
prayer for special occasions, and of the continued permission to
use Selections of Psalms instead of the psalms for the day. It is
not quite clear whether he approves the expansion of the Table of
Proper Psalms or not, though he thinks it "abstractedly desirable"
that provision be made in this connection for "Corpus Christi and
All Souls."
He condemns the latitude allowed in the choice of lessons under
the rules of the new lectionary, fearing that a clergyman who
happens to dislike any given chapter because of its contents may
be tempted habitually to suppress it by substituting another, but
in the very next paragraph he gravely questions the expediency of
limiting congregations to such hymns as have been "duly set forth
and allowed by authority." Yet most observers, at least on this
side of the water, are of opinion that liberty of choice within
the limits of the Bible is a far safer freedom, so far as the
breeding of heresy goes, than liberty of choice beyond the limits
of the Hymnal has proved itself to be. The reviewer is pleased with
the addition of the Feast of the Transfiguration to the Calendar,
but "desiderates more," and would gladly welcome the introduction
into the Prayer Book of commemorations of eminent saints, from
Ignatius down,[44] but of this, mention has already been made,
and it is unnecessary to revert to it.
There follows next a protest against the selection of proper
Sentences prefixed to Morning and Evening Prayer.
The revisers seem to have a glimmering of what was the right
thing to do . . . but they should have swept away the undevotional
and unliturgical plan of beginning with certain detached texts,
which has no fitness whatever, and has never even seemed to answer
any useful end.
This is stronger language than most of us are likely to approve. A
Church that directly takes issue with Rome, as ours does, with
respect to the true source of authority in religion has an excellent
reason for letting the voice of Holy Scripture sound the key-note
of her daily worship, whether there be ancient precedent for such
a use or not. At the same time, the reviewer's averment that "the
only proper opening is the Invocation of the Holy Trinity" is
entitled to attention; and it is worth considering whether the
latter portion of the nineteenth verse of the twenty-eighth chapter
of St. Matthew's Gospel might not be advantageously added to the
list of opening Sentences, for optional use.
In speaking of the new alternate to the Declaration of Absolution,
the reviewer suggests most happily that it would be well to revive
the form of mutual confession of priest and people found in the old
service-books.[45] This proposal would probably not be entertained
in connection with the regular Orders for Morning and Evening
Prayer, but room for such a feature might perhaps be found in
some optional office.
After a grudging commendation of the steps taken in _The Book
Annexed_ to restore the Gospel Canticles, the reviewer next puts
in a strong plea for a larger allowance of versicles and responses
after the Creed, contending that this is "just one of the places
where enrichment, much beyond that of replacing the English versicles
and responses now missing, is feasible and easy," to which the
answer is that we, who love these missing versicles, shall think
ourselves fortunate if we succeed in regaining only so much as we
have lost. Even this will be accomplished with difficulty. It is
most interesting, however, to notice that this stout defender of
all that is English acknowledges the coupling together of the
versicle, "Give peace in our time, O Lord," and the response,
"Because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou,
O God," to be "a very infelicitous _non-sequitur_." For correcting
this palpable incongruity, the authors of _The Book Annexed_ have
been sharply criticised here at home. What were they that they
should have presumed to disturb ancient Anglican precedent in such
a point? If we could not understand why the God of battles, as
the God of battles, should be implored to "give peace in our time,"
so much the worse for our intelligence. But here comes the most
acrid of all our critics, and shows how the collocation of sentences
in the English Book has, from the beginning, been due to a palpable
blunder in condensing an office of the Sarum Breviary. Of the
American substitute for this "unhappy response" the best he can
say, however, is that it is "well intentioned."
Of the "Office of the Beatitudes" the reviewer declares that it
"needs thorough recasting before it can stand," and in this we
agree with him, as will hereafter appear, though wholly unable
to concur in his sweeping condemnation, in this connection, of
one of the most beautiful of Canon Bright's liturgical compositions,
the Collect beginning, "O God, by whom the meek are guided in
judgment and light riseth up in darkness for the godly." Of this
exquisite piece of idiomatic English, the reviewer allows himself
to speak as being "a very poor composition, defective in rhythm."
The criticism of the eucharistic portions of _The Book Annexed_ is
mainly in the line of complaint that more has not been added in the
way of new collects and proper prefaces, but upon this point it is
unnecessary to dwell, the reasons having been already given why
the Joint Committee and the Convention left the liturgy proper
almost untouched. Neither is there anything that specially calls
for notice or serious reply in what is said about the Occasional
Offices.
The Office for the Burial of Children is acknowledged to be a needed
addition, but as it stands "is pitched in an entirely wrong key. The
cognate offices in the _Rituale Romanun_ and the _Priest's Prayer
Book_ ought to have shown the Committee, were it not for their
peculiar unteachableness, a better way." To one who can read between
the lines, this arraignment of the Americans for their lack of
docility to the teachings of the Priest's Prayer Book is not devoid
of drollery.
It will happily illustrate the peculiar difficulties that beset
liturgical revision to close this resume of the censures of
_The Church Times_ by printing, side by side, the reviewer's
estimate of the changes proposed in the Confirmation Office and
the independent judgment of a learned evangelical divine of our
own Church upon the same point.
The Confirmation Service, as one of the very poorest in the Anglican
rites, stood particularly in need of amendment and enrichment,
especially by the removal of the ambiguous word "confirm" applied
to the acts of the candidates, whereby the erroneous opinion that
they came merely to confirm and ratify their baptismal promises,
and not to be confirmed and strengthened in virtue of something
bestowed upon them, has gained currency.
Thus far the English Ritualist. Here follows the American
Evangelical:
I still hope you will see your way clear to modify the present
draft of the proposed Confirmation Office, as it gives a much
higher Sacramentarian idea of it than the present, a concession
which will greatly please the Sacerdotalists, to which they are
by no means entitled.
The critic of _The Guardian_ is a writer of different make,
and entitled every way to the most respectful attention. His
fault-finding, which is invariably courteous, is mainly confined
to the deficiencies of _The Book Annexed_.
He would have had more done rather than less; but at the same
time clearly points out that under the restrictions which controlled
the Committee more could not fairly have been expected. He regrets
that in restoring the lost portions of _Venite_ and _Benedictus_
the Convention did not make the use of the complete form in every
case obligatory; and of the eight concluding verses of the latter
canticle, which under the rubric of _The Book Annexed_ are only
obligatory during Advent, he says, "Imagine their omission on
Christmas Day!"
To this criticism there are several answers, any one of which may
be held to be sufficient. In the first place, it should be remembered
that into the Committee's plan of enrichment there entered the
element of differentiation. The closing portion of the _Venite_
has a special appropriateness to Lent; the closing portion of the
_Benedictus_ a special appropriateness to Advent. Moreover, if any
congregations desire the whole of these two canticles throughout
the year, there is nothing in the rubrics of _The Book Annexed_ to
forbid such an enjoyment of them. They may be sung in full always;
but only in Lent in the one case, and in Advent in the other, mast
they be so sung. The revision Committee was informed, on what was
considered the highest authority, that in the Church of England
the _Benedictus_, on account of its length, had been very generally
disused. But, however this may be, there can be little doubt that
the effort after restoration would have failed completely in the
late Convention had the use of these two canticles in full been
insisted upon by the promoters of revision.
There is less of verbal criticism in _The Guardian's_ review than
could have been wished, for any suggestions with respect to
inaccuracies of style or rhythmical shortcomings would have
been most welcome from the pen of so competent a censor. Attention
is called to the unmusical flow of language in the alternate
Confession provided for the Evening Office; the figurative features
of the proposed Collect for Maundy-Thursday are characterized as
infelicitous; and the Collect provided for the Feast of the
Transfiguration is declared to be inferior to the corresponding
one in the Sarum Breviary.
Of this sort of criticism, at the hands of men who know their
craft, _The Book Annexed_ cannot have too much. In fact, of such
immeasurable importance is good English in this connection, that
it would be no hardship were every separate clause of whatever
formulary it may be proposed to engraft upon the Prayer Book to
be subjected to the most searching tests.
Let an epoch be agreed upon, if necessary, that shall serve as
the criterion of admissibility for words and phrases. Let it
be decided, for instance, that no word that cannot prove an
Elizabethan parentage, or, if this be too severe a standard,
then no word of post-Caroline origin, shall be admitted within
the sacred precincts. Probably there are words in _The Book
Annexed_ which such a canon would eject; but let us have them
pointed out, and their merits and demerits discussed. Such
criticism would be of infinitely more value to the real interests
of revision than those vague and general charges of "crudeness"
and "want of finish" which it is always so easy to make and
sometimes so difficult to illustrate.
The writer in _The Guardian_ closes an only too brief commentary
upon what the Convention has laid before the Church with the
following words:
Many of the proposals now in question are excellent; but others
will be improved by reconsideration in the light of fuller ritual
study, such as will be seen to produce a more exact and cultured
ritual _aesthesis_, perhaps we may, without offence, add, a more
delicate appreciation of rhythm. What _The Book Annexed_ presents
to us in the way of emendation is, on the whole, good; but, if
subjected to a deliberate recension, it would, we predict, become
still better. If thus improved by the Convention of 1886, it might
be finally adopted by the Convention of 1889.
This conspectus of English critical opinion would be incomplete
were no account to be made of the utterances of the various writers
and speakers who dealt with the general subject of liturgical
revision at the recent Church Congress at Portsmouth.
_The Book Annexed_ could scarcely ask a more complete justification
than is supplied by these testimonies of men who at least may be
supposed to be acquainted with the needs of the Church of England.
The following catena, made up from three of the four Papers[46]
read upon the Prayer Book, gives a fair notion of the general tone
of the discussion. It will be worth anyone's while to collate it
with the thirty Resolutions that make up the "Notification to the
Dioceses."
Can it be seriously doubted that there are requirements of this
age which are not satisfied by the provision for public worship
made in the sixteenth century? Can any really suppose that the
compilers of that brief manual, the Prayer Book, however proud
we may rightly be of their work, were so gifted with inspired
foresight as to save the Church of future ages the responsibilities
of considering and supplying the devotional wants of successive
generations?
Who has not felt the scantiness of holy association in our Sunday
and week-day worship? . . . Much, I know, has been supplied by our
hymnology, which has progressed nobly in proportion as the meagreness
of our liturgical provision has been realized. But beyond hymns we
need actual forms of service, which shall strike the ear and touch
the heart by fresh and vivid adaptations of God's Word to the great
mysteries of the Gospel faith . . . After-services on Sunday evenings
have of late grown common; for them we need also the aid of regular
and elastic forms.
Most deplorably have we felt the need of intercessory services
for Home and Foreign Missions; and, though there are beautiful
metrical litanies which bear directly on these and other objects,
yet these are not sufficient, and of course are limited to times
when a good and strong choir can be secured; . . . and further we
want very simple forms of prayer to accompany addresses given in
homes and mission rooms.[47]
I declare it as my conviction, after many years of (I hope) a not
indolent ministry, and of many opportunities of observation and
experiment, that the Church stands in pressing and immediate
need of a few rearrangements and adaptations of some of her
Offices; also of an enormous number of supplementary Offices or
services--some for frequent use, others for occasional purposes
within the consecrated buildings; and that besides these there is
need of a supply of special Offices for the use of a recognized
lay agency outside of the church edifices.
Why limit our introductory sentences to seven deprecatory texts? . . .
Why can we not introduce the anthem used on Easter-day, instead
of the _Venite_, throughout the Octave; or at least on Easter Monday
and Tuesday? Would not spiritual life be deepened and intensified,
and, best of all, be strengthened, by the use in the same manner of
a suitable anthem instead of the _Venite_ on Advent Sundays, on
Christmas-day, at Epiphany, on Ash-Wednesday, on Good Friday,
during Rogation days, at Ascension-tide, and on harvest festivals
and the special annual Church festival of the year?
I submit that an enrichment of the Book of Common Prayer is also
required. For although, as already suggested, this may be provided
to some extent by a Collect for occasional use before the final
prayer of Morning Prayer or Evensong, the needs of the Church will
not be fully supplied without some complete additional offices.
Certainly an additional service for Sunday afternoon and evening . . .
The times are very solemn, and we must wait no longer . . . We have
talked for nearly twenty-five years--not vainly, I believe--but
let us "go and do" not a little in the next five years . . . Prove
yourself to be of the Church of God by doing all the work of the
Church, and in the proper way. Proclaim before our God by your
actions and your activities, and by providing all that is needed,
not only for Churchmen, but for earnest Christians who are not
Churchmen, and for the poor, weary sinners who are living as if
there were neither Church nor Saviour, such services for the one,
and such means for drawing the others to Christ, that they all may
become one in him. And for all this you must have (as I think):