II. REVISION OF THE AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER.[1] (continued 2)

Unless the first of these two eminently proper questions can be met, there is, or ought to be, an end to all talk about revision. The advantage to a Church of being able to keep all its authoritative formularies of worship within the compass of a single volume is inestimable. Even the present enforced severance of the Hymnal from the Prayer Book is a misfortune.[32]

Those were good days when "Bible and Prayer Book" was the Churchman's all sufficient formula so far as volumes were concerned.

Rome boasts a much larger ritual variety than ours, but she secures it by multiplying books. The Missal is in one volume, the Breviary in four, the Pontifical, the Ritual, and the Ceremonial in one each, making eight in all.[33] This is an evil, and one from which we Anglicans have had a happy escape. It was evidently with a great groan of relief that the Church of England shook herself free from the whole host of service-books, and established her one only volume. It behooves us to be watchful how we take a single step towards becoming entangled in the old meshes.[34]

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 space needed could be secured by the simple expedient of omitting matter that has been found by actual experience to be superfluous. Redundancy and unnecessary repetition 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 petitions 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 identity 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 space engrossed by divers psalms here and there in the Occasional Offices, e. g., Psalm li in the Visitation of Prisoners, and Psalm cxxx 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 space 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 space, 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 constituencies 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 ship is cutting new and untried waters with her keel at every moment. There is no occasion to question the sufficiency of either compass 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 seamanship to present common-sense as well as to respect for ancient usage, and along with it all to feel some confidence that if the ship is what we think her to be, "the winds of God" may be trusted to bring her safely into port.