It follows, from what has been said, that if there are features
that admit of improvement in the proposals which the Convention
has laid before the Church for scrutiny, now is emphatically the
time for suggesting the better thing that might be done. Even the
bitterest opponents of _The Book Annexed_ can scarcely be so
sanguine as to imagine that nothing at all is coming from this
labored movement for revision. A measure which was so far forth
acceptable to the accredited representatives of the Church, in
council assembled, as to pass its first stage three years ago
almost by acclamation, is not destined to experience total collapse.
The law of probabilities forbids the supposition. The personal
make-up of the next General Convention will be to a great extent
identical with that of the last, and of the one before the last.
Sober-minded men familiar with the work of legislation are not
accustomed to reverse their own well considered decisions without
weighty cause. The strong probability is that something in the
line of emendation, precisely how much or how little no one can
say, will, as a matter of fact, be done. In view of this likelihood,
would not those who are dissatisfied with _The Book Annexed_ as
it stands be taking the wiser course were they to substitute
co-operative for vituperative criticism? So far as the present
writer is in any sense authorized to speak for the friends of
revision, he can assure the dissidents that such co-operation
would be most welcome.
A. B., a scholar thoroughly familiar, we will suppose, with the
sources of liturgical material, is dissatisfied with the collects
proposed for the successive days of Holy Week. Very well, he has
a perfect right to his dissatisfaction and to the expression of
it in the strongest terms at his command. He does only his plain
duty in seeking to exclude from the Prayer Book anything that
seems to him unworthy of a place in it. But seeing that he must
needs, as a "liturgical expert," acknowledge that the deficiency
which the Joint Committee sought to make good is a real and not
a merely fancied deficiency, would not A. B. approve himself a
more judicious counsellor if, instead of bending all his energy
to the disparagement of the collects proposed, he should devote a
portion of it to the discovery and suggestion of prayers more
happily worded?
And this remark holds good with reference to whatever new feature
is to be found between the covers of The Book Annexed. If
betterment be possible, these six months now lying before us
afford the time of all times in which to show how, with the least
of loss and most of gain, it may be brought about.
The Diocese of Maryland is first in the field with an adequate
contribution of this sort. A thoroughly competent committee,
appointed in October, 1884, has recently printed its Report, and
whether the Diocesan Convention adopt, amend, or reject what is
presented to it, there can be little doubt that the mind of the
Church at large will be perceptibly affected by what these
representative men of Maryland have said.[57] Apart from a
certain aroma of omniscience pervading it (with which, by the
way, sundry infelicities of language in the text of the Report,
only indifferently consort), the document, is a forcible one, and
of great practical value.
The Committee have gone over the entire field covered by the
"Notification to the Dioceses," taking up the Resolutions one
by one, and not only noting in connection with each whatever is
in itself objectionable, but also (a far more difficult task)
suggesting in what respect this or that proposition might be
better put. The _apparatus criticus_ thus provided, while not
infallible, is eminently helpful, sets a wholesome pattern, and
if supplemented by others of like tenor and scope, will go far
to lighten the labor of whatever committee may have the final
recension of the whole work put into its hands.[58]
It would be a poor self-conceit in the framers of _The Book
Annexed_, that should prompt them to resent as intrusive any
criticism whatsoever. What we all have at heart is the bringing
of our manual of worship as nearly as possible to such a pitch
of perfectness as the nature of things human will allow. The thing
we seek is a Liturgy which shall draw to itself everything that
is best and most devout within our national borders, a Common
Prayer suited to the common wants of all Americans. Whatever
truly makes for this end, it will be our wisdom to welcome, whether
those who bring it forward are popularly labelled as belonging
to this, that, or the other school of Churchmanship. To allow
party jealousies to mar the symmetry and fulness of a work in which
all Churchmen ought to have an equal inheritance would be the worst
of blunders. By all means let the raiment of needlework and the
clothing of wrought gold be what they should be for such sacred
uses as hers who is the daughter of the great King, but let us not
fall to wrangling about the vats in which the thread was dyed or
the river bed from which the gold was gathered.
In a later paper the present writer intends to venture upon a task
similar to that undertaken by the Maryland Committee. He will do
this largely in the hope of encouraging by example other and more
competent critics to busy themselves in the same way. Meanwhile a
few observations may not be amiss with respect to the sources of
liturgical material, and the methods by which they can be drawn
upon to the best advantage.
There has been, first and last, a deal of ill considered talk
about the boundlessness of the liturgical treasures lying unused
in the pre-Reformation formularies of the English Church, as well
as in the old sacramentaries and office-books of the East and the
West. Wonder is expressed that with such limitless wealth at its
command, an "Enrichment Committee" should have brought in so
poverty-stricken a Report. Have we not Muratori and Mabillon? it
is asked: Daniel and Assemani, Renaudot and Goar? Are there not
Missals Roman, Ambrosian, and Mozarabic? Breviaries Anglican,
Gallican, and Quignonian? Has Maskell delved and Neale translated
and Littledale compiled in vain? To all of which there are two
replies, namely: first, It is inexpedient to overload a Prayer
Book, even if the material be of the best; and secondly, This best
material is by no means so abundant as the volume of our resources
would seem to suggest. It was for the very purpose of escaping
redundancy and getting rid of surplusage that the Anglican Reformers
condensed Missal, Breviary, and Rituale into the one small and
handy volume known as the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. It was
a bold stroke, doubtless denounced as perilously radical at the
time; but experience has justified Cranmer and his friends. In the
whole history of liturgies there is no record of a wiser step. It
is scarcely possible so grievously to sin against a people's Prayer
Book as by making it more complicated in arrangement and more bulky
in volume than need actually requires. It was ground of justifiable
pride with the "Enrichment Committee" that the Book which they
brought in, despite the many additions it contained, was no thicker
by a single page than the Prayer Book as it is. To be sure, the
General Convention spoiled all this by insisting on retaining
certain duplicated formularies which the Committee had very properly
dropped in order to find room for fresh material. But of the Book
as first presented, it was possible to say that in no degree was
it more cumbrous than that to which the people were already
accustomed. Doubtless it would have been still more to the
Committee's credit could they have brought in an enriched Book
smaller by a third than the Book in use; but this their conservatism
forbade.
Of even greater moment is the other point, which concerns the
quality of the available material. It is the greatest mistake in
the world to suppose that simply because a given prayer exists,
say in an Oriental liturgy, and has been translated into English
by an eminent scholar, it is therefore proper material to be worked
into our services. As a matter of fact, a great deal of devotional
language of which the Oriental liturgies is made up is prolix and
tedious to a degree simply insufferable. Moreover in the case of
prayers in themselves admirable in the original tongue in which
they were composed, all is often lost through lack of a verbal
felicity in the translation. If anyone questions this judgment,
let him toil through Neale's and Littledale's _Translations of
the Primitive Liturgies_ and see whether he can find six, nay,
three, consecutive lines which he would be willing to see introduced
into our own Communion Office. Or, as respects translations
from the Latin office-books of the Church of England, let him
scrupulously search the pages of the "Sarum Hours," as done
into the vernacular by the Recorder of Salisbury, and see how
many of the Collects strike him as good enough to be transplanted
into the Book of Common Prayer. The result of this latter voyage
of discovery will be an increased wonder at the affluence of the
mediaeval devotions, combined with amazement at the poverty and
unsatisfactoriness of the existing translations. It is with a Latin
collect as with a Greek ode or an Italian sonnet: no matter how
wonderful the diction, the charm of it is as a locked secret until
the thing has been Englished by genius akin to his who first made
it out of his own heart. Of others besides the many brave men who
lived before Agamemnon might it be written:
sed omnes illacrumabiles
Urgentur, ignotique larga
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
It was the peculiar felicity of Schiller that he had Coleridge for
a translator, and the shades of Gregory and Leo owe it to a living
Anglican divine that we English-speaking Christians can think their
thoughts after them, and pray their prayers.
Such being the facts in the case, it is evident that the range of
choice open to American revisers is far narrower than half-informed
persons imagine it to be.
The very best sources of liturgical material are the following:
(_a_) King James's Bible, including the Apocrypha, and supplemented
by the Prayer Book version of the Psalms;
(_b_) The old Sacramentaries, Leonine, Gregorian, and Gelasian,
chiefly as illustrated by the genius of Dr. Bright;
(_c_) The Breviary in its various forms;
(_d_) The Primers and other like _fragmenta_ of the era of the
English Reformation;[59]
(_e_) The devotional writings of the great Anglican divines of the
school of Andrews, Ken, and Taylor;[60] and last and least,
(_f_) The various manuals of prayer, of which the past twenty years
have shown themselves so prolific.[61]
Of the Anglican writers, Jeremy Taylor would be by far the most
helpful, were it not for the efflorescence of his style. As it is,
the best use that can be made of his exuberant devotions is to cull
from them here and there a telling phrase or a musical cadence.
The "General Intercession," for example, on page 50 of _The Book
Annexed_, is a cento to which Taylor is the chief contributor.
That the Enrichment Committee made the best possible use of the
various quarries to which they had access is unlikely. Even if they
credited themselves with having done so, it would be immodest of
them to say it. Better material than any that their researches
brought to light may still be lying near the surface, somewhere
close at hand, waiting to be unearthed. Certainly this paper will
not have been written in vain if it serves the purpose of provoking
to the good work of discovery some of those who on the score both
of quality and of quantity account what has been thus far done in
the line of revision inadequate and meagre.