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the mirror of our Liturgy that we have our vision opened, even as our ears might be touched by an ancient lingering melody, to the memory of what our language once was, and what Providence intended it to be? Let us say it with all courtesy, and yet with all firmness, we are not prepared to entrust the custody of that sacred inheritance to the tender mercies of the perfervid ecclesiastical innovator, or to the tasteless energies of the clerical publication agent. These lively innovators seem to conceive the Liturgies of our Church to be a suitable sphere of experiment in search of a cheap tinsel work of self-advertisement. It is to be hoped that the good sense of the nation will warn them off the ground.

We have to guard against changes in our Liturgy that involve serious doctrinal issues. For these we trust that the common sense of the nation will provide a sufficient bulwark. But let us beware also of changes prompted by a specious desire to make concessions to the deity of fashion. We must change, forsooth, because certain expressions are out of harmony with modern habits of thought, and are perhaps not familiar to those who have been saturated with the language of the yellow press or with the jargon of the music-hall. This type of reviser is familiar to all of us: that of the self-proclaimed champion of broadminded thought and complacent alertness who points to us the sure road to spiritual aspiration in the abandonment of all the oldfashioned rigmarole that pleased our fathers, but has grown tedious to the fastidious ears of their sons. 'Forget these lingering strains of music, and let us hammer out a new language from the slang of the gutter. That way lies new spiritual conquest!' And the strange thing is, that they have their allies amongst our spiritual pastors, and even on the Episcopal Bench.

We are far from saying that certain modifications and revision of our Liturgy may not, as a concession to those whose susceptibilities are offended by archaisms which they find harsh or unintelligible, be not only justified but highly expedient. We cannot attach the same importance to these archaisms as those nicer critics seem to do; but we would be unwilling to give them reason for offence. We are inclined to adopt the wise and balanced language of the Preface of 1662.

'We are,' it says, 'fully persuaded in our judgments (and we here profess it to the world) that the Book, as it stood before established by law, doth not contain in it any thing contrary to the Word of God, or to sound doctrine, or which a godly man may not with a good conscience use and submit unto. . . if it shall be allowed such just and favourable construction as in common equity ought to be allowed to all human writings.'

But with this reservation, the composers of that Preface are ready to do that which to our best understandings we conceived might most tend to the preservation of Peace and Unity in the Church'; and so, for convenience, but not as a matter of supreme moment, they are ready to make some alterations. By all means let us follow that good example. But do not let us shut our eyes to the dangers even of these minor alterations. Remember that if you alter or recast a phrase, you commit yourself to absolute approval of the new form of words. Our ears accommodate themselves to phraseology that is odd or bizarre, if it comes to us mellowed by time, sanctified by long and hallowed associations, and rendered harmonious by the artistry of long usage. Alter that phraseology to suit your own critical tastes, and you bind yourselves implicitly to each detail of the new phrase, and must expect to find yourselves in your turn criticised by those to whom your form of words commands none of the respect born of immemorial tradition. Change is easy: it is not so easy to guard against the caprices of passing taste. One thing we ought certainly to bar very definitely, if we are not to destroy the essential unity of the life of the Anglican Church. On no account will the great lay body in the Church tolerate uncertainty as to our Liturgy, and that those forms of worship which have become absorbed into their very life, are to be subject to arbitrary choice on the part of the officiating clergymen. We can have no alternative Liturgies. We have had far too much of this already; and that it has been allowed to prevail so extensively is a proof of the strange incapacity often evinced by the clerical mind for grasping the moods or commanding the sympathies of their lay fellow citizens. If need be, propose your alterations and revisions. If they are wise and moderate they will find probably

no serious opposition. But let them not trench upon essentials of doctrine, or you will provoke stern resistance. And let them not pretend to alter the primary characteristic of our Church in its unbroken and consistent unity. In our Liturgy we have a great heritage: we will not suffer its consummate beauty to be tarnished by those who ape the language of the market-place, or its solemn majesty to be infringed by the enticements of a capricious variety. Let us not forget that we are moving in a very vague and uncertain atmosphere when we suffer ourselves to be guided by the whimsical moods of ecclesiastical fashion. Its caprices are beyond all possibility of calculation. The only thing that we can safely predict is that none of them will last long.

We can have no such dyarchy in the Church as would be involved in the use of alternative Liturgies. In the political field that ill-conceived plan has worked havoc enough; in religion it would mean the substitution of anarchy and confusion for comely and disciplined order. And still more there can be no compromise with those extremists on either side whose avowed aim it is to bend the traditional development of our Anglican Church in the direction of their own peculiar tenets. It has become clear to the minds of unbiassed laymen that there is, especially, on one side, an almost avowed defiance of that law, by virtue of which they hold both their temporal position and their ecclesiastical authority. England has no love for a rigid Erastianism, and has no wish to base the relations between State and Church upon its principles. But she does highly regard the virtues and the benefits of orderly discipline, and of clear and unreserved loyalty to those standards and traditions which we are proud to have inherited.

THE

QUARTERLY
REVIEW

No. 477

PUBLISHED IN

OCTOBER, 1923

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.1.

NEW YORK:

LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION COMPANY

GENERAL INDEX TO THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.

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