Part 18 (1/2)

[78] _Essays on Liturgiology_, p. 226.

[79] The response proposed by the Commissioners ran, ”Lord have mercy upon us, and make us partakers of this blessing,” a prayer un.o.bjectionable for substance, but painfully pedestrian in style.

[80] Notably one in which the responses are all taken from Psalm li.

[81] See Note at the end of this Paper.

[82] _E_. _g_.: ”That it may please thee to send forth laborers into thy harvest, and to have mercy upon all men.”

[83] See Report, pp. 6-9.

[84] ”Strike it out,” said the literalist of a certain committee on hymnody, many years ago, as he and his colleagues were sitting in judgment on Watts's n.o.ble hymn, ”There is a land of pure delight.”

”Either strike out the whole hymn or alter that word, 'living.'

”'Bright fields, beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green.'

What sense is there in '_living_' green? It is the gra.s.s that lives, not the green.” Happily the suggestion failed to find a seconder. But revisers, whose work is to be pa.s.sed upon by ballot, may well be shy of idiomatic English. Take such a phrase as, ”Now for the comfortless trouble's sake of the needy”; Lindley Murray, were he consulted, would have no mercy on it: and yet a more beautiful and touching combination of words is not to be found anywhere in the Psalter. It is the utter lack of this idiomatic characteristic that makes ”Lambeth prayers” proverbially so insipid.

[85] See Report, p. 12.

[86] Quoted in _The Church Eclectic_ for August, 1886.

[87] Prof. Gold in _The Seminarian_, p. 34.

[88] The Rev. Dr. Robert in _The Churchman_ for July 17, 1886,

[89] Specious, because our continuity with the Church life of England is inestimably precious; impracticable, because there is no representative body of the English Church authorized to treat with us.

[90] This Prayer has been gathered from the _Dirige_ in _The Primer set forth by the King's Majesty and his Clergy_, 1545; the same source (it is interesting to note) to which we trace the English form of the _Collect for Purity_ at the beginning of the office.

[91] 1 Cor. iii. 9.

[92] Born into life!--man grows Forth from his parents' stem, And blends their bloods, as those Of theirs are blent in them; So each new man strikes root into a far foretime.

Born into life!--we bring

A bias with us here, And, when here, each new thing Affects us we come near; To tunes we did not call our being must keep chime.

_Empedocles on Etna_.

[93] ”Parliaments, prelates, convocations, synods may order forms of prayer. They may get speeches to be spoken upward by people on their knees. They may obtain a juxtaposition in s.p.a.ce of curiously tessellated pieces of Bible and Prayer Book. But when I speak of the rareness and preciousness of prayers, I mean such prayers as contain three conditions--permanence, capability jot being really prayed, and universality. Such prayers primates and senates can no more command than they can order a new Cologne Cathedral or another epic poem.”--_The Bishop of Berry's Hampton Lectures_, lect iv.

[94] The following _catena_ is curious:

”Salute one another with an holy kiss.”--Rom. xvi. 10.

”Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity.”--1 Pet. v. 14.

”_And let the bishop salute the church, and say_: Let the peace of G.o.d be with you all.

”_And let the people answer_, And with thy spirit.