A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer Part 12

A Beat.i.tude differs from a Commandment in that while the latter enjoins the former only declares. The one therefore simply calls for a.s.sent, or, at most, a.s.sent coupled with pet.i.tion, while the other peremptorily demands a cry for mercy. The immemorial form of the cry for mercy in the devotions of Christendom is the "Kyrie eleison," _Lord, have mercy upon us_; the immemorial form of a.s.sent the word _Amen_. Can we do better, therefore, in adapting the BEAt.i.tUDES to liturgical use than to treat them precisely as the Curses are treated in the Commination Office of the Church of England, namely, by inserting after each one of them a plain _Amen_.

This recommendation has the great merit of simplicity. Two or three strikingly ingenious schemes for supplying each of the Eight Sayings with a proper response of its own have been suggested;[80] but the objection to them is that, beautiful though they are, their complexity would embarra.s.s and distress the kneeling worshipper.

In these matters, practical drawbacks have to be taken into account as well as abstract excellencies, and no matter how felicitous the antiphonal responses, they would be worse than useless were a puzzled congregation to refuse to join in them.

There will be found appended to this Paper a plan for recasting the Office of the BEAt.i.tUDES in such a way as to make it coincide structurally, as far as it goes, with the introductory portion of the Holy Communion.[81] Were the Office to be thus set forth, it would be possible on week-days, and with singular appropriateness on Saints' Days, to subst.i.tute the BEAt.i.tUDES for the Commandments, without enc.u.mbering the Communion Office with an alternate. Should this suggestion find acceptance, the two Collects in the present Office of BEAt.i.tUDES, which are far too good to be lost, one of them being the modified form of a Leonine original, and the other one of the very best of Canon Bright's own compositions, might be transferred to a place among the "Occasional Prayers."

RESOLUTION VI.

_The Litany_.

The rubrics prefixed to the Litany are a gain, but except by the addition of the two new suffrages, the one for the President and the other for the increase of the ministry, it will probably be best to leave the text of this formulary untouched. Even in the case of the new pet.i.tions it would be well if they could be grafted upon suffrages already existing, a thing that might easily be done.[82]

It would be a liturgical improvement if the Litany, in its shortened form, were to end at the _Christe_, _audi_, and the minister directed to return, at this point, to the General Thanksgiving in the Morning Prayer. This would divide the Litany symmetrically, instead of arbitrarily, as is now done, and would remove the General Thanksgiving from a place to which it has little claim either by historical precedent or natural congruity.

The greatest improvement of all would be the restoration of the august and ma.s.sive words of invocation which of old stood at the beginning of the Litany. The modern invocations have a dignity of their own, but they are not to be compared for devotional power and simple majesty with the more ancient ones. But for an "enrichment"

so good as this, it is too much to hope.

RESOLUTION VII.

_Prayers and Thanksgivings_.

The Maryland Committee[83] have much to say in criticism of this section, and offer many valuable suggestions, the best of them being a recommendation to print the Prayer ent.i.tled, "For Grace to speak the Truth in Love," in Canon Bright's own words. Some of their comments, on the other hand, suggest canons of criticism which, if applied to "The Prayer Book as it is," would make havoc of its choicest treasures.[84]

The Committee of Central New York[85] go much further in the line of destructive criticism than their brethren of Maryland, and after excepting four of the proposed prayers, condemn all the rest to dismissal.

Possibly this is just judgment, but those who have searched diligently the storehouses of devotional English, will think twice before they consent to it. No doubt the phraseology of some of the proposed prayers might be improved. In view of the searching criticism to which for three years it has been exposed, it would be strange indeed if such were not found to be the case. But the collection as a whole, instead of suffering loss, ought to receive increment. At least three or four more prayers for the work of missions in its various aspects ought to be added, also a Prayer for the furtherance of Christian Education in Schools and Colleges.

As Br. Dowden shrewdly asks, in speaking of spiritual needs which we postpone expressing for lack of language sufficiently artistic in form, "What is the measure of our faith in the efficacy of united prayer, when we are content to go on, year after year, and never come together to ask G.o.d to supply those needs?"[86]

There is one consideration connected with this supply of special prayers too frequently lost out of sight. While it is perfectly true that the Book of Common Prayer was never designed to be a _Treasury of Devotion_ for individuals, it is equally true that for thousands and hundreds of thousands of our fellow-countrymen who live remote from "Church book-stores," or lack the means of patronizing them, the Prayer Book is, as a matter of fact, their only devotional help. In countless households, moreover, many of them beyond "Protestant Episcopal" borders altogether, the Prayer Book is doing a work only less beneficent than it might do, were we to concede a very little more to that outwardly illogical but spiritually self-consistent policy which, breaking away, a century ago, from the chain of precedent, inserted in the American Book "The Forms of Prayer to be used in Families."

RESOLUTION VIII.

_Penitential Office for Ash-Wednesday_.

This is the English Commination Office, with the introductory portion omitted. It would add to the merit of the formulary, especially when used as a separate office, were it to be prefaced by the versicle and response, similarly employed in the Hereford Breviary:

_V_. Let us confess unto the Lord, for he is gracious.

_R_. And his mercy endureth forever.

In view of the great length of the Morning Service on Ash-Wednesday, and the close similarity between the closing portion of the Litany and the intermediate portion of this Office, the following emendation of the first Rubric is suggested, a change which would carry with it the omission of the Rubric after psalm li. a little further on.

_On the_ First Day of Lent, _at_ Morning Prayer, _the Office ensuing shall be read immediately after the words_, Have mercy upon us, _in the Litany, and in place of what there followeth_.

In the third Rubric it might be well to add to "_shall be said_"

the words, "_or sung_."

The blessing at the end of the office should stand, as in the English Book, in the precatory form; otherwise we might have the anomaly of a benediction p.r.o.nounced before the end of the service.

RESOLUTION IX.

_Thanksgiving-day or Harvest-home_.

The only alteration needed in this office is the restoration of the beautiful prayer for unity to its own proper wording as given in the so-called "Accession Service" appended to the English Prayer Book. As it stands in _The Book Annexed_ the language of the prayer is possibly ungrammatical and certainly redundant. A critic, already more than once quoted,[87] protests against the prominence given to this office in _The Book Annexed_, ascribing it to influences born of the a.s.sociations of New England. But although the motive of the revisers might have had a worse origin than that of which the reviewer complains, the actual fact is that the formulary was placed where it is purely in consideration of the liturgical fitness of things; it having been held that the proper position for an Office of Thanksgiving must be in immediate sequence to an Office of Penitence.

It is with sincere diffidence that the present writer differs with _The Seminarian_, on a point of historical precedent, but he ventures to suggest that to find the prototype of Harvest-home we must go back far beyond New England, and for that matter far beyond Old England, nay, beyond the Christian era itself, even to the day when it was said, "Thou shalt observe the Feast of Tabernacles, seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine." Doubtless there is a joy greater than the "joy of harvest," and to this we give expression in the Eucharist; but doubtless also the joy of harvest is in itself a proper joy and one which finds fitting utterance in such forms of prayer and praise as this.

RESOLUTION XI.

_Collects, Epistles, and Gospels_.

No department of liturgical revision calls for a nicer touch than that which includes the Collects. That new collects for certain unsupplied feasts and fasts would be a genuine enrichment of The Book of Common Prayer, has long been generally acknowledged among Anglican scholars. The most weighty fault to be found with the collects added by the revisers is that in too large proportion they are addressed to the second and third Persons of the Holy Trinity. The Eucharist itself, as a whole, is properly conceived of as addressed to the Eternal Father. The Collects, as forming part of the Eucharistic Office, ought, strictly speaking, to be also so addressed. It is true that there are exceptions to this rule, and they are found, some of them, in the Prayer Book as it is. But the revisers ought not to have altered the proportion so markedly as they have done, for whereas in our present Book the collects addressed to the Father are as eighty-three to three compared with those not so addressed, the ratio in _The Book Annexed_ is that of eleven to three.

Moreover, there would seem to be no good reason for reverting to the usage of the First Book of Edward VI., which provides a second Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the two great feasts of Christmas and Easter. A better way would be to take these additional collects, which are among the most beautiful in the language, and a.s.sign them respectively to the Sunday after Christmas, and the Monday in Easter-week.

RESOLUTION XII.

_The Holy Communion_.

To the few changes proposed in this Office, comparatively slight exception has been taken in any quarter. It will probably be wise to leave the language of the Prayer of Consecration wholly untouched, notwithstanding the alleged grammatical error near the end of it.

The Rubric which it has been proposed to append to the Office, touching the number of communicants without which it shall not be lawful to administer the Sacrament, being of a disciplinary rather than of a liturgical character, ought not to be urged. The proposal to transfer the Prayer of Humble Access to a place immediately before the Communion appears to be very generally acceptable.

It would relieve many worshippers who scruple as Christians at responding to the Fourth Commandment on the score of its Judaic character, if the language of the rubric prefixed to the Decalogue could contain, as did the corresponding rubric in Laud's Book for Scotland, a clause indicative of the mystical and spiritual sense in which the Law should be interpreted by those who live under the Gospel. But such a proposal would probably be accounted "of doctrine," and so be self-condemned.