RESOLUTION III.

The Morning Prayer.

(a) The First Rubric.—The Maryland Committee is quite right in remarking that the language of this important rubric, as set forth by the Convention of 1883, is "inelegant and inaccurate," but another diocese has called attention to the fact that the substitute which Maryland offers would, if adopted, enable any rector who might be so minded to withhold entirely from the non-communicating portion of his flock all opportunity for public confession and absolution from year's end to year's end. It is not for a moment to be supposed that there was any covert intention here, but the incident illustrates the value to rubric-makers of the Horatian warning—Brevis esse labor o, obscurus fio.

Passing by the Proper Sentences for special Days and Seasons, against which no serious complaint has been entered,[65] we come to the proposed short alternative for the Declaration of Absolution. As it stood in the Sarum Use this Absolution ran as follows:

"The Almighty and Merciful Lord grant you Absolution and Remission of all your sins, space for true penitence, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of the Holy Spirit. Amen."[66]

With the single change of the word "penitence" to "repentance" this is the form in which the Absolution stood in the original Book Annexed. The Convention thought that it detected a "Romanizing germ" in the place assigned to "penitence," and an archaism in the temporal sense assigned to "space," and accordingly rearranged the whole sentence. But in their effort to mend the language, our legislators assuredly marred the music.[67]

(e) The Benedictus es, Domine.—The insertion of this Canticle as an alternate to the Te Deum was in the interest of shortened services for week-day use, as has been already explained. The same purpose could be served equally well, and the always objectionable expedient of a second alternate avoided, by spacing off the last six verses of the Benedicite, which have an integrity of their own, and prefixing a rubric similar to those that stand before the Venite and the Benedictus in "The Book Annexed"; e. g.:

On week-days, it shall suffice if only the latter portion of this Canticle be said or sung.

(n) The Benedictus.—With reference to the restoration of the last portion of this Hymn, it has been very properly remarked by one of the critics of The Book Annexed, that the line of division between the required and the optional portions would more properly come after the eighth than after the fourth verse. This would make the portion reserved for Advent begin with the reference to John the Baptist, as undoubtedly it ought to do: "And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest."

(o) De Profundis.—There will probably be general consent to the omission of this alternate, as being what the Maryland Committee naively call it, "too mournful a psalm" for this purpose.[68]