various additions, certainly needed by reason of the expansion of the Church and its various newly developed activities, might be given a place without in the slightest degree marring the harmonious proportions of the whole.

As a matter of fact, the conditions of Church life at the present day are so different from those of the days when the English Prayer Book was first enjoined, so different even from those of the time of its last revision, that certain of the rubrical directions have ceased to be suitable. By a kind of tacit consent there has come to be considerable departure from rule in a vast number of our churches. It is an unwholesome state of things when the clergy solemnly promise to do one thing, and yet in practice do another. It inevitably tends to break down that sentiment of loyalty to obligations, which is the backbone of corporate life. It is an unwholesome state of things when the Church does not possess the power of adapting herself-let it be in a truly conservative spirit-to the actual conditions and new needs of life.

In the course of the following pages illustrations will from time to time be found of how some of the sister and daughter churches have dealt with some of the practical problems referred to. Their action has not been impeded by such bonds as the connection with the State has imposed upon the Church of England. And though, perhaps, we may come to think that occasionally what has been done has, in some particulars, been ill-advised, yet unquestionably the Church of England has much to

learn from their efforts in the direction of liturgical revision and liturgical development.

The Prayer Book, as has been said, is chiefly endeared to us because we know, through a long and varied experience, its fitness for the expression of Christian devotion, and more particularly of the Church's worship in her corporate capacity. But, moreover, it serves another end; it sets before those who may hereafter be called upon to labour at the task of supplementing our present services, so as to meet the growing needs of the Church's work, a standard of wise sobriety in emotional expression, which it is to be hoped may never be widely departed from.

Mr. Keble never penned anything wiser than when he wrote as follows:-" Next to a sound rule of faith there is nothing of so much consequence as a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion ; and it is the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to possess in her authorised formularies an ample and secure provision for both. But in times of much leisure and unbounded curiosity, when excitement is sought after with a morbid eagerness, this part of the merit of our Liturgy is likely in some measure to be lost on many, even of its sincere admirers: the very tempers which most require such discipline setting themselves, in general, most decidedly against it." These words are perhaps even more necessary now than when they were first written, seventy years ago.* We may not, indeed, be able

*The Christian Year, Advertisement, dated May 30, 1827.

to call our times "times of much leisure"; they are times rather of much fussy activity and much dissipated energy, when "quick returns" are eagerly looked for in the religious as well as the commercial world. But so much the more is the warning needed.

The men of the sixteenth century, who gave us the English Prayer Book, had been brought up from childhood among the influences breathed by the ancient forms of the Church's devotions. These forms, partially disfigured though they had come to be by error and superstition, yet presented to view, after all deductions, a wonderful achievement of religious impulse, working itself outward in liturgical constructive art, as wonderful in its own proper sphere as the great Gothic cathedrals of England are in another. The men who gave us our Prayer Book were at once reverent and bold. Their strong conservatism never took the shape of an obstinate refusal to recognise and, so far as might be, to supply defects and amend disfigurements and abuses. Well will it be if in future movements for liturgical change our leaders are animated by a like spirit.

The practical good sense which as a rule characterises the great body of English Churchmen will, I believe, place effective obstacles in the way of any attempt to shift by liturgical change the accepted position of the Church in respect to doctrine. Great and momentous evils could not fail to follow liturgical alterations effected in the interest of any theological school or party. Indeed, such a course would not improbably end in breaking up the Church into two

or more rival bodies, each filled with the keenest animosity of party-spirit. As it is, men among us belonging to divergent schools manage to live and work happily within the same communion. Occasionally extreme men on each side suffer something, perhaps, of uneasiness and discomfort; but more generally even violent partisans, by a kind of natural instinct of self-preservation, are unconsciously wont to satisfy themselves fairly well by dwelling on what in the Prayer Book seems to make for their own tenets, and overlooking what makes the other way. Perhaps it is, for the time, no loss to us that what Laud wrote in His Majesty's Declaration (still prefixed to the Thirty-nine Articles), when he pronounced that "men of all sorts take the Articles of the Church of England to be for them," may be applied with equal truth when we substitute "Prayer Book" for "Articles." If ever the necessity arises, as I trust it never may, the most strenuous efforts should be made by every lover of peace and unity to oppose any change that would alter, or even be suspected of altering, the balance of doctrinal truth as it is now held in our Book of Common Prayer.

The Prayer Book has been again and again subjected to minute study for the purposes of party polemics. Its language, its grammatical constructions, even its punctuation, have each been examined, as they have been cited in the support of this or that interpretation of some crucial passage. I am very far from thinking such inquiries unimportant; but it is desirable to make plain that in the following pages it will be my endeavour to avoid questions of

doctrinal controversy, and to confine myself chiefly to exhibiting some of the historical connections of certain parts of the Prayer Book, and to illustrating the methods of literary and liturgical workmanship employed by the English divines, to whom we are indebted for so precious a treasure.

II.

The general history of the Prayer Book as the legally authorised service book of the Church of England has been told again and again. There are readily accessible several books, some elementary, others more full and precise, which treat of the successive revisions that have changed the service books of mediæval England into our present Book of Common Prayer. In the following pages some knowledge of the salient facts will be taken for granted. It is assumed that the reader is acquainted with the general character of the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. (1549), and with the more striking alterations in Edward's second book (1552). The points of noteworthy difference between the latter and Elizabeth's Prayer Book (1559) are only some three or four. The additions and rubrical alterations introduced (under doubtful authority) by James I. (1604) are not without interest. They were almost all embodied and legally sanctioned at the last revision under Charles II. (1662).

The true sense of many parts of the Prayer Book can only be gathered after a study of the successive changes. But discussions of this kind will be only incidentally dealt with in the following pages.