THE OUTCOME OF REVISION—A SERMON[98]

THE OUTCOME OF REVISION—A SERMON[98]

" . . . We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and build the house that was builded these many years ago."—Ezra v.11.

This was the reply of the rebuilders of Jerusalem to certain critical lookers-on who would fain be informed by what authority a picturesque ruin was disturbed. It is a serviceable answer still. There are always those to whom the activity of the Christian Church is a standing puzzle. Religion, or at any rate revealed religion, having, as they think, received its death-blow, the unmistakable signs of life which, from time to time, it manifests take on almost the character of a personal affront. They resent them. What right have these Christians to be showing such a lively interest in their vanquished faith? they ask. What business have they to be holding councils, and laying plans, and acting as if they had some high and splendid effort in hand? Are they such fools as to imagine that they can reconstruct what has so evidently tumbled into ruin?

But the wonderful thing about this great building enterprise known as the kingdom of God is that, from the day when the corner-stone was laid to this day, the workmen on the walls have never seemed to know what it meant to be discouraged. In the face of taunt and rebuff and disappointment, they have kept on saying to their critics: "We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and build the house that was builded these many years ago." This is just what the Church Council which has been holding its sessions in Baltimore during the last three weeks has to say for itself. Its task has been an architectural task. According to its lights, it has been at work upon the walls of the city of God. Let me give you, as my habit has been under similar circumstances in the past, some account of its doings.

The General Convention of 1892 will be memorable in our ecclesiastical annals for having closed one question of grave moment only to open a kindred one of still larger reach. The question closed was the question of liturgical revision; the question opened is the question of constitutional revision. I should like to speak to you this morning retrospectively of the one, and prospectively of the other.

It is now about twenty years since the question of modifying, to some extent, the methods of our public worship began to be mooted.

While it was acknowledged that the need was greater in the mother country than here, many of the repetitions and superfluities of the English Church service having been set aside by Bishop White and his compeers in the American Revision of 1789, it was felt that further improvements were still possible, and that the time had fully come for making them. Since the beginning of the so-called "tractarian movement" in the Church of England a great deal of valuable liturgical material had been accumulating, and it was discerned that if ever the fruits of the scholarship of such men as Palmer and Neale and Maskell and Bright were to be garnered the harvest-day had arrived. To the question often asked why it would not have been wiser to wait until the Church of England had led the way and set the pattern, the answer is that the hands of the Church of England were tied, as they have been tied these many years past, and as they may continue to be tied, for aught we know to the contrary, for many years to come. The Church of England cannot touch her own Prayer Book, whether to mend or to mar it, except with the consent of that very mixed body, the House of Commons—a consent she is naturally and properly most loth to ask. Immersed in a veritable ocean of accumulated liturgical material, she is as helpless as Tantalus to moisten her lips with so much as a single drop. It was seen that this fact laid upon us American Churchmen a responsibility as urgent as it was unique, viz., the responsibility of doing what we could to meet the devotional needs of present-day Christendom, not only for our own advantage, but with a view to being ultimately of service to our Anglican brethren across the sea. An experiment of the greatest interest, which for them was a sheer impossibility, it lay open to us to try. After various abortive attempts had come to nought, a beginning was at length made in the General Convention of 1880, a joint committee of bishops and deputies being then appointed to consider whether, in view of the fact that this Church was soon to enter upon the second century of its organized existence in America, the changed condition of the national life did not demand certain alterations in the Book of Common Prayer in the direction of liturgical enrichment and increased flexibility of use.

Few were of the opinion at the time that anything definite would come of the deliberations of this committee, and the fact, never before publicly stated till this moment, that of the deputies appointed to serve upon it the greater number were men who had not voted in favor of the measure, makes it all the more interesting to remember that the report, when brought in at Philadelphia three years later, was signed by every member of the committee then living. This Philadelphia report recommended very numerous changes in the direction both of "flexibility" and "enrichment," and by far the greater number of the recommendations met with the approval of the convention. There is, however, a very wise provision of our Church constitution, a provision strikingly characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon mind, which, by way of making allowance for second thought, requires that liturgical changes, before being finally adopted, shall run the gauntlet of two successive conventions. Much was accepted at Philadelphia; it remained to be seen how much would pass the ordeal of its second reading at Chicago three years later.

Into the war of words waged over the subject during that interval period, I have neither the time nor the disposition to carry you. The three years, while they gave opportunity for reaction, also allowed space for counter-reaction; so that when, at last, the question came once more before the Church in council assembled whether the work done at Philadelphia should be approved or disallowed, men's minds had sufficiently recovered balance to permit of their exercising discrimination. Accordingly in 1886 some things were rejected, some adopted, and some remanded for further revision. But why should I confuse your minds by an attempt to tell in detail the whole story of the movement? No matter how clear I might make the narrative it would be difficult to follow it, for in the progress of the work there have been surprises many, successes and reverses not a few; enough that, at last, the long labor is ended and in this Columbian year the ship comes into port.

As to results, their number and their quality, opinions will of course differ. In connection with this, as with all similar undertakings, there are many to cry: "Who will show us any good?" Certainly nothing that could be called a radical change has been brought to pass; but then, is there any reason to suppose that radical changes were either sought or desired by those who have been active in the movement? Certain distinct and indisputable gains may be counted up. The recovery of the great Gospel hymns come under this head. There are some of us who think that only to have succeeded in replacing the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis in the Evening Prayer is of itself a sufficient reward for years of effort, but this is only a small part of our harvest. The new opening sentences for Morning and Evening Prayer, which have so "adorned and beautified" our observance of great festivals, the remodelling of the Ash-Wednesday service, the recovered Feast of the Transfiguration, the various provisions for adapting the Church's worship to the exigencies of times and seasons, the increased freedom in the use of the Psalter, all these go to make up an aggregate of betterment the measure of which will be more fully understood as time goes on. "Parturiunt montes" is an easy verdict to pronounce; it remains to be proved whether in this case it is a just one to render. If there are some (as doubtless some there are) who hold that the sample book presented at Philadelphia in 1883, faulty as it confessedly was, is still, all things considered, a better book for American needs than the standard finally adopted at Baltimore, week before last, if there are some who deeply regret the failure to include among our special offices one for the burial of little children, and among our prayers intercessions for the country, for the families of the land, for schools of good learning, for employers and those whom they employ, together with many other forms of supplication gathered from the wide field of English liturgiology—if, I say, there arc some who are of this mind they must comfort themselves with the reflection that, after all, they are a minority, that the greater number of those upon whom rested the responsibility of decision did not wish for these additions, and that the things which finally found acceptance were the things unanimously desired. For, when we think of it, this is perhaps the very best feature of the whole thing, looked at in its length and breadth, that there is no defeated party, no body of people who feel that they have a right to fret and sulk because unpalatable changes have been forced upon them by narrow majorities. It is a remarkable fact, that of the many scores of alterations effected, it can be truly said that, with rare, very rare exceptions, they found, when it came to the decisive vote, what was practically a unanimous consent. They were things that everybody wanted.

As to the annoyance and vexation experienced by worshippers during the years the revision has been in progress, perhaps the very best thing that can be done, now that the end is so near at hand, will be to forget all about it. In a few months, at the furthest, the Prayer Book, in its complete form, will be available for purchase and use, and the hybrid copies which have been so long in circulation, to the scandal of people of fastidious taste, will quickly vanish away. Meanwhile, it is interesting to know that all through this stretch of years while the Prayer Book has been "in solution," as some have been fond of phrasing it, the Episcopal Church has exhibited a rate of growth quite unparalleled in its history.

Of course nobody can say with certainty what has caused the increase. But it is at least conceivable that among the accelerating forces has been this very work of liturgical revision. People at large have been made aware that this Church was honestly endeavoring to adapt its system of worship to the needs of our time and country; and the mere fact of their seeing this to be the case has served to allay prejudice and to foster a spirit of inquiry. Finding us disposed to relax something of our rigidity, they, on their part, have been first attracted, then conciliated, and finally completely won.

I cannot leave this subject without paying a personal tribute to a prelate but for whose aid in the House of which he is a distinguished ornament, liturgical revision would, humanly speaking, have long ago come to nought. To the fearlessness, the patience, the kindly temper, and the resolute purpose of William Croswell Doane, Bishop of Albany, this Church for these results stands deeply and lastingly indebted. When others' courage failed them, he stood firm; when friends and colleagues were counselling retreat, and under their breath were whispering "Fiasco!" and "Collapse!" his spirit never faltered. He has been true to a great purpose, at the cost of obloquy sometimes, and to the detriment even of old friendships. Separated from him by a dozen shades of theological opinion and by as many degrees of ecclesiastical bias, I render him here and now that homage of grateful appreciation which every Churchman owes him.

So much for the ship that has dropped anchor. I have left my self but a few moments in which to say God-speed to the other craft which is even now sliding down the ways, ready for the great deep. Put perhaps it is just as well. History is always a safer line to enter upon than prophecy; and were I to say all that is in my mind and heart as to the possibilities of this new venture of faith on the Church's part, constitutional revision, I might be betrayed into expressions of hopefulness which would strike most of you as overwrought.

Suffice it to say, that never since the Reformation of Religion in the sixteenth century has a fairer prospect been opened to the Church of our affections than is opened to her to-day. No interpretation of the divine purpose with respect to this broad land we name America has one-half so much of likelihood as that which makes our country the predestined building plot for the Church of the Reconciliation.

All signs point that way. To us, if we have but the eyes to see it, there falls, not through any merit of our own, but by the accident, if it be right to use that word, by the accident of historical association, the opportunity of leadership.

It is possible for us, at this crisis of our destiny, so to mould our organic law that we shall be brought into sympathetic contact with hundreds of thousands of our fellow-countrymen who worship the same God, hold the same faith, love the same Christ. On the other hand, it is possible for us so to fence ourselves off from this huge family of our fellow-believers as to secure for our lasting heritage only the cold privileges of a proud and selfish isolation. There could be no real catholicity in such a choice as that.

We have the opportunity of growing into a great and comprehensive Church. We have the opportunity of dwindling into a self-conscious, self-conceited, and unsympathetic sect. Which shall it be? With those to whom, under God, the remoulding of our organic law has been intrusted it largely rests to say.

COMPARATIVE TABLE OF ADDITIONS MADE TO THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER AT THE SEVERAL REVISIONS SINCE 1549.

1552 1559 1604 1662 1789 1892 Scripture Sentences 11 8 31 Collects 3 1 3 Epistles 2 1 3 Gospels 1 1 3 Offices 13 8 1 1 Prayers 15 2 7 18 13 9 Proper Psalms (days) 2 10 Selections of Psalms 10 10 Canticles 8 2 Versicles 4 3 11 Litany Suffrages 1 1 Catechetical Questions 12 Exhortations 3 2