THE WORKMANSHIP OF

THE PRAYER BOOK

INTRODUCTION

I.

TH

HE English Prayer Book is not the production of a single author or a single age. It has been formed by operations, slow, irregular and intermittent. Its stately fabric, with a general unity of design apparent throughout, bears the impress of the thoughts of various epochs. It embodies elements of various kinds, some of which carry us back to the devotions of God's ancient people, Israel, while others took shape in the early dawn of Christianity. The East and the West have conjoined to make it what it is. It has been fashioned, it has been enriched and beautified by the genius and the piety of saints and doctors of the Church, whose lots were cast in various lands and various times. The Church of the Fathers has bequeathed to it some of its most precious treasures. Nor are there wanting many traces of the influence of the age of the medieval theologians and liturgists. The great religious upheaval of the sixteenth

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century left intact a large body of the materials that formed the mass of the stately building; but in many places the structural design was altered, sometimes to the advantage and sometimes to the detriment of the whole. The changing fortunes of the Church have left their marks upon it; and upon its front history, civil as well as ecclesiastical, has graven deep lines. To the curious and inquiring it suggests numberless problems of deep interest.

The paramount claim which the Prayer Book has upon the affections and reverent regards of the English-speaking world is doubtless based upon its fitness for its purpose. We love and reverence it because experience has proved, and is daily proving, that in it the Church of God finds a most apt vehicle of worship; because in it our spiritual desires and aspirations, our penitence, our gratitude, our joy, find adequate utterance; because through it God speaks to our hearts, even as He graciously permits us through it to speak to Him. Here, beyond all question, lies the permanent, paramount and inexhaustible source of its power. The simple, unlettered Churchman who joins in the Church's public worship, or who uses the Prayer Book as his manual of private devotion, finds in it satisfaction, comfort, delight. And the best instructed, it may be said, need scarcely ask for more.

But, though this is so, those who will take the trouble to familiarise themselves with the story of the Prayer Book will soon find growing up around it new interests, new attractions of various kinds, which tend to further endear it to their hearts.

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the well-read Churchman there is not, perhaps, a page -there is scarcely a paragraph-of the Book of Common Prayer which is not coloured by associations that touch him, and that often impart a fresh and a truer meaning to familiar words which by others are but half understood.

The well-instructed sons of the Church come to love the Prayer Book as the sons of some old historic house come to love the ancient mansion in which they were born and where they have grown up. The building, it may be, has not the uniformity of style that belongs to a modern structure erected under the guidance of a single mind. Built into it are, perhaps, the massive walls of the old keep, that many a time in former days resisted the assaults of the foe, and now serve to recall distant memories of bygone chivalry. Later additions and reconstructions may show a Tudor front, a Jacobean portal, or a wing added in the days of Queen Anne. But despite diversity there is a sense of dignity, of unity, of completeness. To the sons of the house it has been from the first dawn of memory all that is meant by home. As they have grown up they have little by little learned its story, and for that story they love it yet the more. The great hall, hung round with antique armour, served once as the councilchamber of a king. At the broad flight of steps a cardinal and his retinue in their pomp received a stately welcome. In this chamber a loyal knight brought wounded from the battle-field breathed his last; and in that a royal prisoner languished. From the walls of the long gallery look down the portraits

of members of the noble house who had served their country as soldiers, statesmen, diplomatists, lawyers, ecclesiastics. Everywhere are personal relics of men and women who were distinguished in their time. Here, indeed, is a house to live in day by day, but it is more than that. It is a home around which proud memories gather, though not untouched, it may be, with here and there a sense of regret, of sorrow, or even of shame.

It is in a like manner that the Prayer Book, which is endeared to us in the first instance by its fitness as a home to live in, where the daily needs of our spiritual life have been supplied, comes, as we gradually learn its story, to gather to itself associated interests which enhance its hold

upon our affections. As we study we begin to understand things, we see them in a new light; difficulties that had disturbed us shrink or disappear, and new beauties are revealed at every step. Now and then, doubtless, we learn that mistakes have been committed which we cannot but regret, and that features of liturgical excellence and beauty have been, perhaps, unnecessarily sacrificed in the processes of reconstruction. But the result is not disquieting; and the inquiry may some day prove serviceable, for assuredly the history of the English Prayer Book has not yet closed.

It is quite within the range of probability that the Church of England should some day-a day perhaps not very far off-take up the task of liturgical revision with general consent, supply what is lacking, and rectify what is faulty; while