A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer Part 7

But need the enrichment of the Prayer Book--such enrichment as has been described, necessarily involve an unwieldiness in the volume, or, what would be still worse, an overflow into a supplement?

Certainly not; for by judicious management every change advocated in this paper, and more besides, might be accomplished without transgressing by so much as a page or a paragraph the limits of the present standard book. All the s.p.a.ce needed could be secured by the simple expedient of omitting matter that has been found by actual experience to be superfluous. Redundancy and unnecessary repet.i.tion are to the discredit of a book that enjoys such an unrivalled reputation as the Common Prayer. They are blemishes upon the face of its literary perfectness. Who has not marvelled at the strange duplication of the Litany and the Office of the Holy Communion in the Ordinal, when the special pet.i.tions proper to those services when used in that connection might easily have been printed by themselves with a direction that they be inserted in the appointed place?

Scholars, of course, know perfectly well how this came about. The Ordinal does not belong to the Prayer Book proper, but has a separate ident.i.ty of its own. When printed as a book by itself it is all very well that it should include the Litany and the Holy Communion in full, but why allow these superfluous pages to crowd out others that are really needed?[35]

It has already been explained how the room now occupied by the "Selections" might be economized, and by the same simple device the s.p.a.ce engrossed by divers psalms here and there in the Occasional Offices, _e_. _g_., Psalm li in the Visitation of Prisoners, and Psalm cx.x.x in the Visitation of the Sick could be made available for other use.

Again, why continue to devote a quarter of a page of precious s.p.a.ce to the "Prayer for imprisoned debtors," seeing that now, for a long time past, there has been no such thing in the United States as imprisonment for debt? By availing ourselves of only a portion of these possible methods of garnering s.p.a.ce, all that is desired might be accomplished, without making the Prayer Book bulkier by a single leaf than it is to-day.

But would a Prayer Book thus enriched be accepted by the Church at large? Is there any reason to think that the inertia which inheres in all large bodies, and to a singularly marked degree in our own Communion, could be overcome? The General Convention can give an approximate answer to these questions; it cannot settle them decisively, for it is a body which mirrors only to a certain extent the real mind and temper of the const.i.tuencies represented in it. One thing is certain, that only by allowing fullest possible play to the principle of "local option" could any wholly new piece of work on the part of revisionists, however excellent it might be in itself considered, find acceptance. To allow features introduced into the body of an existing service to be accounted optional, would indeed be impossible, without gendering the very wildest confusion. Upon such points the Church would have to decide outright, for or against, and stand by her decisions. But as respects every additional and novel Office proposed, the greatest care ought to be taken to have the indefinite An rather than the definite _The_ prefixed to it. Before such new uses are made binding on all, they must have met and endured the test of thorough trial by some. This is only fair.

But there is a limit, it must be remembered, in the Church's case to the binding power of precedent and prescription. The social order changes, and of these tides that ebb and flow it is our bounden duty to take note. Had mere aversion to change, dogged unwillingness to venture an experiment always carried the day, instead of having the "Prayer Book as it is," we should still be drearily debating the rival merits of Hereford and Sarum. The great question to be settled is, Does an emergency exist serious enough to warrant an attempt on our part to make better what we know already to be good? Is the Republic expecting of us, and reasonably expecting of us, greater things than with our present equipment we are quite able to accomplish? There are eyes that think they see a great future before this Church--are they right, or is it only mirage? At any rate ours is no return trip--we are outward bound.

The s.h.i.+p is cutting new and untried waters with her keel at every moment. There is no occasion to question the sufficiency of either compa.s.s or helm, but in certain matters of a practical sort there is a demand upon us to use judgment, we are bound to give a place in our seamans.h.i.+p to present common-sense as well as to respect for ancient usage, and along with it all to feel some confidence that if the s.h.i.+p is what we think her to be, "the winds of G.o.d" may be trusted to bring her safely into port.

THE BOOK ANNEXED: ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS.

THE BOOK ANNEXED: ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS.[36]

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 wors.h.i.+p 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 const.i.tutional 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 st.u.r.dy 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.

LIMITATIONS.

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 pa.s.sed by the Joint Committee itself, at its first regular meeting:

_Resolved_, That this Committee a.s.serts, 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 ill.u.s.tration of this point than is afforded by certain of the alterations proposed to be made in the Order for Evening Prayer.

The Committee felt a.s.sured 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 att.i.tude 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.

SPECIAL CRITICISMS.

(_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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 embarra.s.sment to the hand, and a vexation to the spirit.

Such _addenda_ carry on their face the suggestion that they are makes.h.i.+fts, postscripts, after-thoughts; and in their lack of dignity, as well as of convenience, p.r.o.nounce their own condemnation.

Moreover, in our particular case, no "Appendix," "Prymer," or "Authorized Vade-mec.u.m" 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 pa.s.s 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 Const.i.tution. 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 pa.s.sage 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 Inst.i.tution 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 Beat.i.tudes 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 antic.i.p.ate that "joint action of both Churches," which, at least until disestablishment comes, must always remain a sheer impossibility, we pa.s.s to a consideration of the six articles contributed to the _Church Times_ in July and August last, under the t.i.tle, _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: