_The Book Annexed_ may be said to hold to the possible standard
Common Prayer of 1890 a relation not unlike that of a clay model
to the statue which is to be. The material is still in condition
to be moulded; the end is not yet. It was in anticipation of this
state of things that the friends of revision in 1883 were anxious
to carry through the preliminary stage of acceptance as many of
their propositions as possible. To revert to our parable, the
modeller, in treating the face of his provisional image, must
be careful to lay on clay enough, or he may find himself barred
at the last moment from giving the features just that finishing
touch which is to make them ready for the marble. All the skill in
the world will not enable him to secure for the face precisely the
expression he would have it wear, if the _materia_ be insufficient.
Looked at in this light, the suggestion made by the Joint Committee
in the House of Deputies at an early stage of the session of 1883,
that the entire Book Annexed, in precisely the form in which it had
been submitted, should be passed, and sent down to the dioceses
for consideration, instead of being the arbitrary and unreasonable
demand it was reckoned by those who lifted their eyebrows at the
very mention of such a thing, was really a sensible proposition
which the Convention would have done well to heed.
Few, if any, critics of _The Book Annexed as Modified_ have
pronounced it an improvement to _The Book Annexed_ as presented.
The Book came out of the Convention less admirable than it went
in. As a school of Liturgies, the long debate at Philadelphia was
doubtless salutary and helpful, but whether the immediate results,
as shown in the emendation of the Joint Committee's work, were
equally deserving of praise is another question.
Nevertheless, as was argued in the paper of which this one is the
continuation, we must take things as we find them, not as we wish
they were; and since there is no other method of liturgical revision
known to our laws than revision by popular debate, to revision by
popular debate we must reconcile ourselves as best we may.
Regrets are idle. Let us be thankful that the amicable struggle
at Philadelphia had for its outcome so large rather than so small
a mass of workable material, and instead of accounting _The Book
Annexed_ to be what one of the signers of the Joint Committee's
Report has lately called it, "a melancholy production," recognize
in it the germ of something exceedingly to be desired. From
the first, there has never been any disposition on the part of
sober-minded friends of Revision to carry through their scheme
with a rush; the delay that is likely to better things they will
welcome; the only delay they deprecate is the delay that kills.
The changes enumerated in the "Notification to the Dioceses," and
illustrated to the eye in _The Book Annexed_ as Modified, may be
broadly classified under the following heads:
(_a_) Clearly desirable alterations, with respect to which there
is practically unanimous consent, and for which there is immediate
demand, _e_. _g_., shortened offices of week-day prayer.
(_b_) Alterations desirable in the main, but likely to be more
cordially acquiesced in, could still further improvement be
secured, _e_. _g_., the new versicles introduced into Evening
Prayer after the Creed.
(_c_) Alterations generally accounted undesirable on any terms,
e. g., the permissive rubrics with respect to the reading of
certain psalms during Lent, instead of the regular responds to
the First and Second Lessons of the Evening Prayer.
The question arises, Is any course of action possible that will
give us without delay the changes which for some fifteen years the
whole Church has been laboring to secure; that will give us, with
a reasonable delay of three years longer, the confessed improvements
a little more improved; while at the same time we are kept from
becoming involved in the wretched confusion sure to result from
putting into circulation, within a brief period, two authorized
but diverse books of Common Prayer? This threefold question it is
proposed to meet with a threefold affirmative.