THE ISSUES OF PRAYER BOOK REVISION I. Revised Prayer Book (Permissive Use) Measure, 1923. 2. Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline. 1906. 3. Report of the Committee on Prayer Book Revision. English Church Union. 1922. 4. Report of the First Anglo-Catholic Congress. 1920. Oxford. July, 1921. I. PRAYER RAYER Book Revision is the outcome of three distinct but parallel movements within the Church of England. The parish clergy, finding by experience how inadequate and unsuitable are many of the provisions and requirements of the Prayer Book for the actual needs of their parishioners, have long desired that some changes should be made in the prescribed services, and a larger measure of elasticity secured by the rubrics. The Liberal' Anglicans have steadily pressed for relief from certain obligations imposed by the existing book, which in their view place an unfair and even an intolerable burden on the consciences of educated Churchmen. 'High' Anglicans have persistently clamoured for such an alteration of the Prayer Book as shall bring it into line with the primitive liturgies, and legalise their interpretation of the unhappy Ornaments Rubrick.' Thus for different reasons the three traditional schools of thought' in the Established Church have united in desiring Prayer Book revision. Their several aims have coalesced in the proposals for revision which have now been formally submitted to the National Assembly, and will presumably be considered by that body in the course of this summer. If these proposals were to become law, all three sections would secure the objects for which they have mainly striven, perhaps not all the objects, but certainly most of them. The parish clergyman would find much permitted which he has hitherto desired in vain, or taken illegally; the prescribed services would generally be shorter, and the rubricks would be less rigid; some ambiguities would be cleared up, and some anachronisms removed. He would find that the Marriage Service had been wisely and moderately dealt with, and that some new needs had been fairly met. The Prayer Book in its revised form would be a more efficient and elastic instrument of normal parochial ministry. Parishioners and parsons would have lost nothing that they valued, and would have gained much that they wanted. Liberal Anglicans would no more be compelled to read the Athanasian Creed' thirteen times in the year, for the rubrick ordering its use would have been made optional. The parish clergyman would be free to use either the Apostles' Creed or the 'Athanasian' at his discretion. Some of the crudest and least edifying applications of the Old Testament would have disappeared, and the deacon at his ordination would no longer be required to declare his unfeigned belief in all the canonical scriptures of the Old and New Testament. The revised Prayer Book would certainly be far more acceptable to those whom it is the fashion in some quarters to describe as 'Modernists.' Perhaps, however, the greatest gainer by the revision would be the High' Churchman, for he would secure, under certain equitable conditions, his darling object, the legalising of the Eucharistic Vestments as provided in the following note to be prefixed to the Order of Holy Communion, after the title : 'For the avoidance of all controversy and doubtfulness, it is hereby prescribed that notwithstanding anything that is elsewhere enjoined in any Rubric or Canon, the Priest in celebrating the Holy Communion shall wear either a surplice with stole or with scarf and hood, or a white alb plain with a vestment or cope.' The Order for Holy Communion would be brought into substantial agreement with the ancient liturgies. The substitution of a Sung Eucharist' for Morning Prayer as the principal service on Sunday mornings would be facilitated, and most of the small rubrical changes would be found to legalise familiar procedures of High Church clergymen. The broad effect of the Revision would certainly be to emphasise the 'Catholic' rather than the 'Protestant' features of the Prayer Book. The proposed changes appear to represent an honest compromise. They might well satisfy the moderate men of all parties, and they certainly demand from none anything more than such a measure of 'give and take' as might fairly be looked for in fellow-churchmen. If the National Assembly and Parliament should approve these proposals, we see no reason for doubting that the revision of the Prayer Book would commend itself to reasonable Churchmen as sound and moderate. It would increase the efficiency of the Church in the parishes, relieve many consciences, and do much to restore the authority of the law. If the revision fails to secure acceptance, its failure will arise from two causes: an unarguing dislike of change in the English public generally, and a suspicion, which is almost a conviction, that there is an organized party within the Church determined to use the opportunity of revision, not to strengthen and unite the Church of England, but to change its system fundamentally, or at least so to alter it as to pave the way for fundamental change in the near future. With regard to the first, there is not much to be said. The Prayer Book, like the English Bible, though not to the same degree, is a national fetish. The fact is sufficiently intelligible, for the Prayer Book is not only one of the supreme monuments of English speech, but its historic interest is unrivalled. Every educated and patriotic Englishman must needs feel apprehensive at the mere suggestion of revision. Besides, the Prayer Book is bound into the personal life of the vast majority of English folk. They were baptised, and they have caused their children to be baptised, according to its prescribed form. Marriage and burial— the great emotional crises of normal experience in which human hearts are most profoundly stirred, and human lives most powerfully influenced-are marked in the memories of English people by the words and ceremonies of the Prayer Book. Most Englishmen attend the parish churches occasionally, if not habitually, and they are familiar with the simple and dignified worship which the Prayer Book provides. To touch the Prayer Book, therefore, is to touch a personal interest of the ordinary English citizen, be he Anglican, or Nonconformist, or even Secularist. His first impulse on hearing of Prayer Book revision is to interpose a prompt and final veto. The apprehensive religious conservatism of the ordinary Englishman is a sentiment which no considering man will despise, and which the authorities of the Church cannot rightly or wisely ignore. If it ought not to arrest the policy which, on weighty grounds, has been deliberately adopted, it ought certainly to affect the manner in which that policy is carried out. The changes should be limited to what is clearly required if the objects for which the revision was undertaken are to be gained. Less than that would make revision practically worthless; more than that would assuredly render it practically futile. Anything that goes beyond the avowed and admitted necessities of the case must be rigorously rejected. The bishops, with whom rests the final decision in the National Assembly, would be unworthy of their position if they abandoned a policy, so deliberately adopted, at the bidding of a popular protest, which is largely misinformed, and even more largely manufactured. They would be hardly less culpable if they allowed any considerations other than those of a weighty and general character to determine their treatment of the book which the last Lambeth Conference did not describe unfitly or excessively as the Anglican standard of doctrine and 'practice.' With regard to the second cause of failure, the suspicion, which is almost a conviction, that at least in one important quarter there is a lack of good faith which prohibits all reasonable probability of any effective restoration of harmony to the Church of England,it is impossible to speak without considerable misgiving. Neither a review of the circumstances which occasioned the present attempt to revise the Prayer Book nor a candid estimate of the actual influences under which that attempt must be carried through, permits any measure of optimism. II. It is more than sixteen years since the Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline was issued. That document, probably the last of its kind, will have historic value as describing authoritatively the internal disorders of the Church of England on the eve of the Great War. The Commissioners, a singularly weighty and representative body of English Churchmen, including the present Archbishop of Canterbury and the late Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Paget), set on record the following estimate of the situation which had been disclosed to them in the course of their enquiries : 'Our consideration of the evidence laid before us has led us to two main conclusions. First, the law of public worship in the Church of England is too narrow for the religious life of the present generation. It needlessly condemns much which a great section of Church people, including many of her most devoted members, value; and modern thought and feeling are characterised by a care for ceremonial, a sense of dignity in worship, and an appreciation of the continuity of the Church, which were not similarly felt at the time when the law took its present shape. In an age which has witnessed an extraordinary revival of spiritual life and activity, the Church has had to work under regulations fitted for a different condition of things, without that power of self-adjustment which is inherent in the conception of a living Church, and is, as a matter of fact, possessed by the Established Church of Scotland. The result has inevitably been that ancient rubrics have been strained in the desire to find in them meanings which it has been judicially held they cannot bear; while, on the other hand, the construction placed on them in accordance with legal rules has sometimes appeared forced and unnatural. With an adequate power of self-adjustment, we might reasonably expect that revision of the strict letter of the law would be undertaken with such due regard for the living mind of the Church as would secure the obedience of many, now dissatisfied, who desire to be loyal, and would justify the Church as a whole in insisting on the obedience of all. Secondly, the machinery for discipline has broken down. The means of enforcing the law in the Ecclesiastical Courts, even in matters which touch the Church's faith and teaching, are defective and in some respects unsuitable. They have been tried and have often failed; and probably on that account they have been too much neglected. Although attempts to deal administratively with ritual irregularity have been made, they have been unsuccessful, in some cases on account of the lack of firmness of those who made them, but also largely because, in regard to the rites and ceremonies of public worship, the law gives no right or power to discriminate between small and great matters. It is important that the law should be reformed, that it should admit of reasonable elasticity, and that the means of enforcing it should be improved; but, above all, it is necessary that it should be obeyed. That a section of clergymen should, with however good intentions, conspicuously disobey the law, and continue to do so with impunity, is not only an offence against public order, but also a scandal to religion and a cause of weakness to the Church of England. It is not our duty to assign responsibility for the past; we have indicated our opinion that it lies in large measure with the law itself. But with regard to the future we desire to state with distinctness our conviction that, if it should be thought well to adopt the recommendations we make in this report, one essential condition of their successful operation will be that obedience to the law so altered shall be required and, if necessary, enforced, by those who bear rule in the Church of England.' This estimate of the actual situation as it stood in 1906 underlies the recommendations of the report. The policy of the Royal Commissioners here indicated was to be pursued by the methods |