Part 15 (1/2)
But when we consider how many exquisite gems of devotional speech there are still left outside the covers of the Prayer Book; when we consider how delightful it would be to have back again the _Magnificat _, and the _Nunc Dimittis _, and some of the sweet versicles of the Evensong of the Church of England; when we consider the lamentable mistake already made in our existing formularies of introducing into Morning and Evening Prayer identically the same opening sentences, the same General Exhortation, the same General Confession, the same Declaration of Absolution, the same Prayer for the President, and the same General Thanksgiving--is it not evident that an additional, or, if you please, an alternative service, composed of material not elsewhere employed, would be for the wors.h.i.+ppers a very great gain? The repet.i.tion which wearies is only the repet.i.tion which we feel need not have been. We never tire of the Collect for Peace any more than we tire of the sunset.
It is in its place, and we always welcome it. In a perfect liturgy no form of words, except the Creed, the Doxology, and the Lord's Prayer, would at any time reappear, but as in arabesque work every square inch of s.p.a.ce differs from every other square, so each clause and sentence of the manual of wors.h.i.+p would have a distinctive beauty of its own, to be looked for precisely there and nowhere else.
This is but one ill.u.s.tration of what may be called a possible enrichment of our Book of Common Prayer. Impoverishment under the name of revision may very justly be deprecated, but who shall find any just fault with an enrichment that is really such?
We must remember that the men who gave us what we now have were, in their day and generation, the innovators, advocates of what the more timid spirits accounted dangerous change. We cannot, I think, sufficiently admire the courageous foresight of those Reformers who, at a time when public wors.h.i.+p was mainly a.s.sociated in men's minds with what went on among a number of ecclesiastics gathered together at one end of a church, dared to plant themselves firmly on the principle of ”common” prayer, and to say, Henceforth the wors.h.i.+p of the National Church shall be the wors.h.i.+p not of priests alone, but of priests and people too. What a bold act it was! The printing-press, remember, although it had given the impulse to the Reformation, was far from being at that time the omnipresent thing it is now; books were scarce; popular education, as we understand it, was unknown; there were no means of supplying service-books to the poorer cla.s.ses (no Prayer Book Societies, like this of yours), nor could the books have been used had they been furnished. And yet in the face of these seemingly insuperable obstacles, the leaders of religious thought in the England of that day had the sagacity to plan a system of wors.h.i.+p which should involve partic.i.p.ation by the people in all the acts of divine service, including the administration of the sacraments.
Here was genuine statesmans.h.i.+p applied to the administration of religion. Those men discerned wisely the signs of their own times.
They saw what the right principle was, they foresaw what the art of printing was destined in time to accomplish, and they did a piece of work which has bravely stood the wear and tear of full three hundred years.
No Churchman questions the wisdom of their innovations now. Is it hopeless to expect a like quickness of discernment in the leaders of to-day? Surely they have eyes to see that a new world has been born, and that a thousand unexampled demands are pressing us on every side. If the Prayer Book is not enriched with a view to meeting those demands, it is not for lack of materials. A Sat.u.r.day reviewer has tried to fasten on the Church of England the stigma of being the Church which for the s.p.a.ce of two centuries has not been able to evolve a fresh prayer.
If the reproach were just it would be stinging indeed; but it is most cruelly unjust. In the devotional literature of the Anglicanism of the last fifty years, to go no further back, there may be found prayers fully equal in compa.s.s of thought and depth of feeling to any of those that are already in public use. Not to single out too many instances, it may suffice to mention the prayers appended to the book of Ancient Collects edited a few years since by a distinguished Oxford scholar. The clergy are acquainted with them, and know how beautiful they are. Why should not the whole Church enjoy the happiness of using them?[97] Why is there not the same propriety in our garnering the devotional harvest of the three hundred years last past that there was in the Reformers garnering the harvest of five times three hundred years?
”One generation pa.s.seth away, another generation cometh.” I have spoken of the present and the past, what now of the future? We know that all things come to an end. What destiny awaits the book to which our evening thoughts have been given? That is a path not open to our tread. The cloudy curtain screens the threshold of it.
Still we may listen and imagine that we hear sounds. What if such a voice as this were to come to us from the distance of a hundred years hence--a voice tinged with sadness, and carrying just the least suggestion of reproach? ”Our fathers,” the voice says, ”in the last quarter of the last century, forfeited a golden opportunity. It was a time of reconstruction in the State, social life was taking on the form it was destined long to retain, a great war had come to an end and its results were being registered, all things were fluent. Moreover, there happened, just then, to be an almost unparalleled lull in the strife of religious parties; men were more disposed than usual to agree; the interest in liturgical research was at its greatest, and scholars knew and cared more than they have ever done since about the history and the structure of forms of prayer. Nevertheless, timid councils prevailed; nothing was done with a view to better adapting the system to the needs of society, and the hope that the Church might cease to wear the dimensions of a sect, and might become the chosen home of a great people, died unrealized. We struggle on, a half-hearted company, and try to live upon the high traditions, the sweet memories of our past.”
G.o.d forbid, my friends, that the dismal prophecy come true! We will not believe it. But what, you ask, is the pathway to any such betterment as I have ventured roughly to sketch to-night? I will not attempt to map it, but I feel very confident which way it does not run. I am sure it does not run through the region of disaffection, complaint, threatening, restlessness, petulance, or secession. Mere fretfulness never carries its points. No, the true way to better things is always to begin by holding on manfully to that which we already are convinced is good. The best restorers of old fabrics are those who work with affectionate loyalty as nearly as possible on the lines of the first builders, averse to any change which is made merely for change's sake, not so anxious to modernize as to restore, and yet always awake to the fact that what they have been set to do is to make the building once more what it was first meant to be, a practicable shelter.
THE OUTCOME OF REVISION--A SERMON[98]
” . . . We are the servants of the G.o.d of heaven and earth, and build the house that was builded these many years ago.”--Ezra v.11.
This was the reply of the rebuilders of Jerusalem to certain critical lookers-on who would fain be informed by what authority a picturesque ruin was disturbed. It is a serviceable answer still.
There are always those to whom the activity of the Christian Church is a standing puzzle. Religion, or at any rate revealed religion, having, as they think, received its death-blow, the unmistakable signs of life which, from time to time, it manifests take on almost the character of a personal affront. They resent them. What right have these Christians to be showing such a lively interest in their vanquished faith? they ask. What business have they to be holding councils, and laying plans, and acting as if they had some high and splendid effort in hand? Are they such fools as to imagine that they can reconstruct what has so evidently tumbled into ruin?
But the wonderful thing about this great building enterprise known as the kingdom of G.o.d is that, from the day when the corner-stone was laid to this day, the workmen on the walls have never seemed to know what it meant to be discouraged. In the face of taunt and rebuff and disappointment, they have kept on saying to their critics: ”We are the servants of the G.o.d of heaven and earth, and build the house that was builded these many years ago.” This is just what the Church Council which has been holding its sessions in Baltimore during the last three weeks has to say for itself.
Its task has been an architectural task. According to its lights, it has been at work upon the walls of the city of G.o.d. Let me give you, as my habit has been under similar circ.u.mstances in the past, some account of its doings.
The General Convention of 1892 will be memorable in our ecclesiastical annals for having closed one question of grave moment only to open a kindred one of still larger reach. The question closed was the question of liturgical revision; the question opened is the question of const.i.tutional revision. I should like to speak to you this morning retrospectively of the one, and prospectively of the other.
It is now about twenty years since the question of modifying, to some extent, the methods of our public wors.h.i.+p began to be mooted.
While it was acknowledged that the need was greater in the mother country than here, many of the repet.i.tions and superfluities of the English Church service having been set aside by Bishop White and his compeers in the American Revision of 1789, it was felt that further improvements were still possible, and that the time had fully come for making them. Since the beginning of the so-called ”tractarian movement” in the Church of England a great deal of valuable liturgical material had been acc.u.mulating, and it was discerned that if ever the fruits of the scholars.h.i.+p of such men as Palmer and Neale and Maskell and Bright were to be garnered the harvest-day had arrived. To the question often asked why it would not have been wiser to wait until the Church of England had led the way and set the pattern, the answer is that the hands of the Church of England were tied, as they have been tied these many years past, and as they may continue to be tied, for aught we know to the contrary, for many years to come. The Church of England cannot touch her own Prayer Book, whether to mend or to mar it, except with the consent of that very mixed body, the House of Commons--a consent she is naturally and properly most loth to ask. Immersed in a veritable ocean of acc.u.mulated liturgical material, she is as helpless as Tantalus to moisten her lips with so much as a single drop. It was seen that this fact laid upon us American Churchmen a responsibility as urgent as it was unique, viz., the responsibility of doing what we could to meet the devotional needs of present-day Christendom, not only for our own advantage, but with a view to being ultimately of service to our Anglican brethren across the sea. An experiment of the greatest interest, which for them was a sheer impossibility, it lay open to us to try. After various abortive attempts had come to nought, a beginning was at length made in the General Convention of 1880, a joint committee of bishops and deputies being then appointed to consider whether, in view of the fact that this Church was soon to enter upon the second century of its organized existence in America, the changed condition of the national life did not demand certain alterations in the Book of Common Prayer in the direction of liturgical enrichment and increased flexibility of use.
Few were of the opinion at the time that anything definite would come of the deliberations of this committee, and the fact, never before publicly stated till this moment, that of the deputies appointed to serve upon it the greater number were men who had not voted in favor of the measure, makes it all the more interesting to remember that the report, when brought in at Philadelphia three years later, was signed by every member of the committee then living. This Philadelphia report recommended very numerous changes in the direction both of ”flexibility” and ”enrichment,”
and by far the greater number of the recommendations met with the approval of the convention. There is, however, a very wise provision of our Church const.i.tution, a provision strikingly characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon mind, which, by way of making allowance for second thought, requires that liturgical changes, before being finally adopted, shall run the gauntlet of two successive conventions.
Much was accepted at Philadelphia; it remained to be seen how much would pa.s.s the ordeal of its second reading at Chicago three years later.
Into the war of words waged over the subject during that interval period, I have neither the time nor the disposition to carry you.
The three years, while they gave opportunity for reaction, also allowed s.p.a.ce for counter-reaction; so that when, at last, the question came once more before the Church in council a.s.sembled whether the work done at Philadelphia should be approved or disallowed, men's minds had sufficiently recovered balance to permit of their exercising discrimination. Accordingly in 1886 some things were rejected, some adopted, and some remanded for further revision. But why should I confuse your minds by an attempt to tell in detail the whole story of the movement? No matter how clear I might make the narrative it would be difficult to follow it, for in the progress of the work there have been surprises many, successes and reverses not a few; enough that, at last, the long labor is ended and in this Columbian year the s.h.i.+p comes into port.
As to results, their number and their quality, opinions will of course differ. In connection with this, as with all similar undertakings, there are many to cry: ”Who will show us any good?”