A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer Part 6

"_NOTE.--The Litany may be omitted altogether on Christmas Day, Easter Day, and Whitsunday_"

In connection with the Morning and Evening Service there is another important question that imperatively demands discussion, namely, a week-day worship. The movement for "shortened services," so-called, has shared the usual fate of all efforts at bettering the life of the Church, in being at the outset of its course widely and seriously misunderstood. The impression has gone abroad, and to-day holds possession of many otherwise well-informed people, that a large and growing party in the Episcopal Church has openly declared itself wearied out with overmuch prayer and praise. Were such indeed the fact, the scandal would be grave; but the real truth about the matter is that the promoters of shortened services, instead of seeking to diminish, are really eager to see multiplied the amount of worship rendered in our churches. "Shortened services"

is a phrase of English, not American origin, and has won its way here by dint of euphony rather than of fitness. Readjusted services, though a more clumsy, would be a less misdirecting term. In the matter of Sunday worship, the liberty now generally conceded of using separately the Morning Prayer, the Litany, and the Holy Communion is all that need be asked. Whether these services, or at least two of them, do not in themselves admit of a certain measure of improvement is a point that has already been considered, but there certainly is no need of shortening them, whatever else it may be thought well to do. When what a Boston worthy once termed "a holy alacrity" is observed, on the part of both minister and singers, even the aggregated services of Morning Prayer, Litany, and "Ante-Communion," together with a sermon five-and-twenty minutes long, can easily be brought within the compa.s.s of an hour and a half--a measure of time not unreasonably large to be given to the princ.i.p.al occasion of worship on the Lord's Day. As for the Evening Prayer--there certainty ought to be no call for the shortening of that on Sundays; for it would be scarcely decent or proper to devote to such a service anything less than the half hour the existing office demands.

What the advocates of shortened services really desire to see furthered is an increase in the frequency of opportunities for worship during the week, their conviction being that if the Church were to authorize brief services for morning and evening use, such as would not occupy much more time than family prayers ordinarily do, the attendance might be secured of many who, at present, put aside the whole question of going to church on week-days as impracticable. Supposing it could be proved that such a provision would work to the discouragement of family prayer, it would plainly be wrong to advocate it; no priesthood is more sacred than that which comes with fatherhood. But we must face the fact that in our modern American life family prayer, like sundry other wholesome habits, has fallen largely into disuse. If the Church can, in any measure, supplement the deficiencies of the household, and help to supply to individuals a blessing they would gladly enjoy at their own homes, if they might, it is her plain duty to do so.

Moreover, many a minister who single-handed cannot now prudently undertake a daily service, as that is commonly understood, would acknowledge himself equal to the less extended requirement.

Not a few careful and friendly observers of the practical working of Anglican religion have been reluctantly led to consider the daily service, as an inst.i.tution, only meagrely successful. Looking at the matter historically we find no reason to wonder at such a conclusion.

Our existing usage (or more correctly, perhaps, _non-user_) dates from the Reformation period. The English Church and nation of that day had grown up familiar with the spectacle of a very large body of clerics, secular and regular, whose daily occupation may be said to have been the pursuit of religion.[23] The religion pursued consisted chiefly in the saying of prayers, and very thoroughly, so far at least as the consumption of time was concerned, were the prayers said. What more natural than that, under such circ.u.mstances, and with such a.s.sociations, the compilers of a common Prayer Book for the people should have failed to see any good reason for discriminating between the amount of service proper to the Lord's Day and the amount that might be reasonably expected on other days?

Theoretically they were right, all time belongs to G.o.d and he is as appropriately worshipped on Tuesdays and Thursdays as on Sundays.

And yet as a result of their making no such discrimination, we have the daily service on our hands--a comparative, even if not an utter failure. We may lament the fact, but a fact it is, that In spite of all its improved appliances for securing leisure, the world is busier than ever it was; and there will always be those who will insist that the command to labor on six days is as imperative as the injunction to rest upon the seventh. As a consequence of all this accelerated business, and of the diminution in the number of persons officially set apart for prayer, the unabridged service of the Church fails to command a week-day attendance. We have no "clerks" nowadays to fill the choir. The only clerks known to modern times are busy at their desks.

It may be urged in reply to this that the practical working of the daily service ought to be kept a secondary consideration, and that its main purpose is symbolical, or representative; the priest kneeling in his place, day by day, as a witness that the people, though unable personally to be present, do, in heart and mind, approve of a daily morning and evening sacrifice of prayer. This conception of the daily service as a vicarious thing has a certain mystical beauty about it, but if it is to be adopted as the Church's own let us, at least, clear ourselves of inconsistency by striking out the word "common" from before the word "prayer" in characterizing our book.

What is really needed for daily use in our parishes is a short form of worship specially framed for the purpose. If they could be employed without offence to the Protestant ear (and they are good English Reformation words) _Week-Day Matins_ and _Week-Day Evensong_ would not be ill chosen names for such services. The framework of these Lesser Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, as they might also be called, were the other t.i.tles found obnoxious, ought to be modelled upon the lines of the existing daily offices, though with a careful avoidance of ident.i.ty in contents. There should be, for instance, as unvarying elements, the reading of the lessons for the day, the use of the collect for the day, and the saying or singing of the psalms for the day. Another constant would be the Lord's Prayer; but aside from these the _Lesser Order_ need have nothing in common with the Order as we have it now. There might be, for example, after the manner of the old service-books, an invitatory opening with versicles and responses, or if the present mode of opening by sentences were preferred, specially chosen sentences, different from those with which the Sunday worship has made us familiar, could be employed. Moreover, the anthems or canticles and the prayers, with the exception of the two just mentioned, ought also to be distinctive, and, in the technical sense of the word, _proper_ to the week-day use.

Again, it would serve very powerfully and appropriately to emphasize the pivot points in the ritual year if this same principle were to be applied to saints' days, and we were to have special _Holyday Matins_ and _Holy-day Evensong_, there still being required, on the greater festivals and fasts, the normal Morning and Evening Prayer proper to the Lord's Day.[24]

The argument in favor of thus specializing the services for week-days and holydays, in preference to following the only method heretofore thought possible, namely, that of shortening the Lord's Day Order, rests on two grounds. In the first place permissions to skip and omit are of themselves objectionable in a book of devotions. They have an uncomely look. Our American Common Prayer boasts too many disfigurements of this sort already.

Such a rubric as _The minister may, at his discretion, omit all that follows to, etc. _, puts one in mind of the finger-post pointing out a short cut to weary travellers. It is inopportune thus to hint at exhaustion as the probable concomitant of worship.

That each form should have an integrity of its own, should as a separate whole be either said complete or left unsaid, is better liturgical philosophy than any "shortened services act" can show.

In the second place, a certain amount of variety would be secured by the proposed method which under the existing system we miss.

There is, of course, such a danger as that of providing too much liturgical variety. Amateur makers of Prayer Books almost invariably fall into this slough. Hymn-books, as is well known, often destroy their own usefulness by including too many hymns; and Prayer Books may do the same by having too many prayers.[25]

To transgress in the compiling of formularies the line of average memory, to provide more material than the mind of an habitual worshipper is likely to a.s.similate, is to misread human nature.

But here, as elsewhere, there is a just mean. Cranmer and his colleagues in the work of revision jumped at one bound from a scheme which provided a distinctive set of services for every day in the year to a scheme that a.s.signed one stereotyped form to all days.

Now nothing could be more unwise than any attempt to restore the methods of the Breviary, with its complicated and artificial forms of devotion; but so far to imitate the Breviary as to provide within limits for a recognition of man's innate love of change would be wisdom. By having a distinctive service for week-days, and a distinctive service for holydays, Ave might add just that little increment to the Church's power of traction that in many instances would avail to change "I cannot go to church this morning" into "I cannot stay away."

It will be urged as a counter-argument to these considerations that the thing is impossible, that such a measure of enrichment is entirely in excess of anything the Church has expressed a wish to have, and that for reviewers to propose a plan so sweeping would be suicide. Doubtless this might be a sufficient answer to anybody who imagined that by a bare majority vote of two successive General Conventions new formularies of daily worship could be forced upon the Church. But suppose such formularies were to be made _optional_; suppose there were to be given to parishes the choice between these three things, viz.: (_a_) the normal Morning Prayer; (_b_) a shortened form of the normal Morning Prayer; and (_c_) such a special order as has been sketched--what then? Would the Church's liberty be impaired! On the contrary, would not the borders of that liberty have been most wisely and safely widened by the steady hand of law?

This is perhaps the right point at which to call attention to the present state of the "shortened services" controversy, for wearisome as the story has become by frequent repet.i.tion, the nexus between it and the subject in hand is too important to be left out of sight.

In the General Convention of 1877, where the topic under its American aspects was for the first time thoroughly discussed, the two Houses came to a deadlock. The deputies on the one hand, almost to a man, voted in favor of giving the desired relief by rubric, thus postponing for three years' time the fruition of their wish; while the bishops with a unanimity understood to have been equally striking insisted that a simple canon, such as could be pa.s.sed at once, would suffice. And so the subject dropped.

At the late Convention of 1880 an eirenicon was discovered. The quick eye of one of the legal members of the House of Deputies detected on the fourth page of the Prayer Book, just opposite the Preface, a loophole of escape, to wit, _The Ratification of the Book of Common Prayer_. Here was the very _tertium quid_ whereby the common wish of both parties to the dispute might be effected without injury to the sensibilities of either.

The _Ratification_ certainly did not look like a canon; neither could anybody with his eyes open call it a rubric--why not amend that, and say no more about it? The suggestion prevailed, and by a vote of both Houses, the following extraordinary doc.u.ment is hereafter to stand (the next General Convention consenting) in the very fore-front of the Prayer Book:

THE RATIFICATION OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. _By the Bishops, the Clergy, and the Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in General Convention a.s.sembled_.

The General Convention of the Church having heretofore, to wit: on the sixteenth day of October in the year A. D. 1789, set forth a _Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church_, and thereby established the said book, and declared it to be the Liturgy of said Church, and required that it be received as such by all the members of the same and be in use from and after the first day of October in the year of our Lord 1790; the same book is hereby ratified and confirmed, and ordered to be the use of this Church from this time forth.

"But note, however, that on days other than Sundays, Christmas-day, the Epiphany, Ash-Wednesday, Good Friday, and Ascension Day, it shall suffice if the Minister begins Morning or Evening Prayer at the General Confession or the Lord's Prayer preceded by one or more of the Sentences appointed at the beginning of Morning and Evening Prayer, and end after the Collect for Grace or the Collect for Aid against Perils, with 2 Cor. xiii. 14, using so much of the Lessons appointed for the day and so much of the Psalter as he shall judge to be for edification.

"And note also that on any day when Morning and Evening Prayer shall have been duly said or are to be said, and on days other than those first aforementioned, it shall suffice, when need may require, if a sermon or lecture be preceded by at least the Lord's Prayer and one or more Collects found in this book, provided that no prayers not set forth in said book, or otherwise authorized by this Church, shall be used before or after such sermon or lecture.[26]

"And note further also that on any day the Morning Prayer, the Litany, or the Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper may be used as a separate and independent service, provided that no one of these services shall be disused habitually."

It may seem harsh to characterize this act as the mutilation of a monument; but really it does seem to be little else. The old Ratification of 1789 is an historic landmark; it is the sign-manual of the Church of White's and Seabury's day, and ought never to be disturbed or tampered with while the Prayer Book stands. The year 1889 might very properly see a supplemental Ratification written under it; and testifying to the fact of Revision; but to write into that venerable text special directions as to what may be done on days other than Ash-Wednesday, and what must not be done without 2 Cor. xiii. 14, is very much as if the City Government of Cambridge should cause to be cut upon the stone under the Washington elm which now records the fact that there the commander of the American armies first drew his sword, divers and sundry additional items of information, such as the distance to Watertown, the shortest path across the common, etc., etc.

Why the Convention after having entrusted to a Joint Committee, by a decisive vote, the task of devising means for securing for the Prayer Book "increased flexibility of use," should have thought it necessary subsequently to take up with this compromise of a compromise (for such the proposal to amend the Ratification really is) it is difficult to say. Perhaps it was with the determination to have, at any rate, something to fall back upon in case the larger and more comprehensive measure should come to naught.

The rubric is confessedly the proper place for directions as to how to use the services, and but for the very natural and defensible objection on the part of some to touching the Prayer Book at all, there never would have been any question about it.[27] This objection having been at last waived, a straight path is now open to the end desired, and it ought to be followed even at the cost of three years more of delay.

Returning to the general subject, and still following the order of the Table of Contents, we come to Prayers and Thanksgivings upon several Occasions.

Here it would be well to note more intelligibly than is done by the present rubric the proper places for the introduction of the Prayers and the Thanksgivings, providing for the use of the former before, and of the latter after the General Thanksgiving.

As to the deficiencies in this department let the late Dr. Muhlenberg speak.

"The Prayer Book," he says, "is not undervalued as to its treasures in a.s.serting its wants. The latter cannot be denied. Witness the meagre amount of New Testament prayer and praise for the round of festivals and fasts; the absence of any forms suited to the peculiar circ.u.mstances of our own Church and country and to the times we live in; or for our benevolent and educational inst.i.tutions. There are no prayers for the increase of Ministers, for Missions, or Missionaries, for the Christian teaching of the young; for sponsors on occasions of Baptism; for persons setting out on long journeys by land, quite as perilous as voyages by sea; for the sick desiring the prayers of the Church when there is no prospect of or desire for recovery; for the bereaved at funerals, and many other occasions for which there might as well be provision as for those few for which we already have the occasional prayers."[28]

After the _Prayers and Thanksgivings_ come _The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels _. Here again there is some room for enrichment.

Distinctive collects for the first four days of Holy Week, for Monday and Tuesday in Easter Week, and for Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun Week, would add very materially to our liturgical wealth, while there would seem to be no reason whatever why they should not be had. It would also serve to enhance the symmetry of the Christian Year if the old feast of the Transfiguration[29] (August 6) were to be restored to its place among the recognized holy days of the Church and given its proper collect, epistle, and gospel.

There are some liturgists who desire the restoration of the introits of the First Book of Edward VI. The introit (so called from being the psalm sung when the priest goes within the altar-rails) has been in modern usage replaced by a metrical hymn. A sufficient reason for not printing the introit for each day in full, just before the collect, as was the mode in Edward's Book, is that to do so would involve a costly sacrifice of room. A compromise course would be to insert between the t.i.tle of each Sunday or holyday and the collect proper to it, a simple numerical reference stating whereabouts in the Psalter the introit for the day is to be found, and adding perhaps the Latin catchwords. Any attempt to make the use of the introit obligatory in our times would meet with deserved failure; the metrical hymn has gained too firm a hold upon the affections of the Church at large ever to be willingly surrendered.

Coming, next, to the orders for the administration of the two sacraments, we find ourselves on delicate ground, where serious change of any sort is out of the question. Permission, under certain circ.u.mstances, still further to abbreviate the Office of the Communion of the Sick might, however, be sought without giving reasonable cause of alarm to any, and general consent might perhaps also be had for a provision with respect to the Exhortation, "Dearly beloved in the Lord," that in "Churches where there is frequent Communion it shall suffice to read the Exhortation above written once in a month on the Lord's Day."[30]

There are three liturgical features of the Scottish Communion Office which some have thought might be advantageously transferred to our own service. They are (_a_) the inserting after Christ's summary of the Law a response, _Lord, have mercy upon us and write these thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee_; (_b_) the repeating by the people, after the reading of the Gospel, of a formula of thanks corresponding to the _Glory be to thee, O Lord_, that precedes it; and (_c_) the saying or singing of an Offertory sentence at the presentation of the alms. Upon these suggested enrichments the present writer offers no opinion.

In the Order of Confirmation a subst.i.tution for the present preface[31] of a responsive opening, in which the bishop should charge the minister to present none but such as he has found by personal inquiry "apt and meet" for the reception of the rite would be a marked improvement.

The remaining Occasional Offices would seem to demand no change either in structure or contents, although in some, perhaps in all of them, additional rubrics would be helpful to worshippers.

Some addition to the number of Occasional Offices would be a real gain. We need, for instance, a short Office for the Burial of Infants and Young Children; a Daybreak Office for Great Festivals; an Office for Midday Prayer; an Office of Prayer in behalf of Missions and Missionaries; an Office for the Setting apart of a Layman as a Reader, or as a Missionary; a Form of Prayer at the Laying of a Corner-stone; and possibly some others. It is evident that these new formularies might give opportunity for the introduction of hitherto unused collects, anthems, and benedictions of a sort that would greatly enhance the general usefulness of the Prayer Book.

This completes the survey of the field of "liturgical enrichment."

A full discussion of the allied topic, "flexibility of use," would involve the examination in detail of all the rubrics of the Prayer Book, and for this there is no room. It is enough to say that unless the rubrics, the hinges and joints of a service-book, are kept well oiled, much creaking is a necessary result. There are turning-points in our public worship where congregations almost invariably betray an awkward embarra.s.sment, simply because there is nothing to tell them whether they are expected to stand or to sit or to kneel. It is easy to sneer at such points as trifles and to make sport of those who call attention to them; but if it is worth our while to have ritual worship at all it is also worth our while to make the directions as to how people are to behave adequate, explicit, plain. A lofty contempt for detail is not the token of good administration either in Church or State. To the list of defective rubrics add those that are confessedly obsolete and such as are palpably contradictory and we have a bill of particulars that would amply justify a rubrical revision of the Prayer Book even if nothing more were to be attempted.

There is another reason. Far more rapidly than many people imagine, we are drifting away from the position of a Church that worships by liturgy to that of a Church worshipping by directory.

The multiplicity of "uses" that vexed the Anglican Reformers is in our day multiplied four-fold. To those who honestly consider a directory a better thing than a liturgy this process of relaxation is most welcome, but for others who hold that, until the binding clauses of a Book of Common Prayer have been formally rescinded, they ought to be observed, the spectacle is the reverse of edifying.

They would much prefer seeing the channels of liberty opened at the touch of law, and this is one of their chief reasons for advocating revision.

Two questions remain untouched, both of them of great practical importance. Could the Prayer Book be enriched to the extent suggested in this paper without a serious and most undesirable increase in its bulk as a volume?

Even supposing this were possible, is it at all likely that the Church could be persuaded to accept the amended book?

Unless the first of these two eminently proper questions can be met, there is, or ought to be, an end to all talk about revision.

The advantage to a Church of being able to keep all its authoritative formularies of worship within the compa.s.s of a single volume is inestimable. Even the present enforced severance of the Hymnal from the Prayer Book is a misfortune.[32]

Those were good days when "Bible and Prayer Book" was the Churchman's all sufficient formula so far as volumes were concerned.

Rome boasts a much larger ritual variety than ours, but she secures it by multiplying books. The Missal is in one volume, the Breviary in four, the Pontifical, the Ritual, and the Ceremonial in one each, making eight in all.[33] This is an evil, and one from which we Anglicans have had a happy escape. It was evidently with a great groan of relief that the Church of England shook herself free from the whole host of service-books, and established her one only volume. It behooves us to be watchful how we take a single step towards becoming entangled in the old meshes.[34]