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 PRINCETOX . NEW JERSEY 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER 
 
 BX 5945 .S8 1919 
 
 Suter, John Wallace, 1859- 
 
 1942. 
 The people's book of worship 
 
Cburcb iprtnclples for Xas people 
 
 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK 
 OF WORSHIP 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 HBW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCIHTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 TORONTO 
 
THE PEOPLE'S 
 BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 A STUDY OF THE BOOK 
 OF COMMON PRAYER 
 
 BY , \%: 
 
 JAN 15 19 
 JOHN WALLACE SUTER^'^^^^^^AL ^ 
 
 AND 
 
 CHARLES MORRIS ADDISON 
 
 ii3eto gotfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1919 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPTEIGHT, 1919 
 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, April, 1919 
 
TO 
 
 H. J. S. 
 
 AND 
 
 A. T. A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Meaning of Worship ... i 
 
 II The Book Itself ii 
 
 III The Fundamental Principles . . 23 
 
 IV The Three Working Principles . 34 
 
 V Morning Prayer and Evening 
 
 Prayer 44 
 
 VI The Litany 56 
 
 VII The Holy Communion .... 62 
 
 VIII The Spirit of the Book and its Use 70 
 
THE PEOPLE'S BOOK 
 OF WORSHIP 
 
THE PEOPLE'S BOOK 
 OF WORSHIP 
 
 I 
 
 THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 
 
 THE Book of Common Prayer is one of many 
 forms by which the religious life expresses it- 
 self in worship. Before we can study the Book in- 
 telligently, we must first consider its purpose. 
 That, very evidently, is to provide an authoritative 
 form for the expression, in public and corporately, of 
 the human desire to worship God, as it is found 
 among members of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
 in the United States of America. The meaning and 
 value of its contents can only be judged when we 
 have settled what we are to understand by worship, 
 and that in turn must be governed by what we 
 know of the character of God, who is the object 
 of our worship. To have a false idea of God's na- 
 ture must give a false tone to our worship. " He 
 that Cometh to God must believe that he is, and 
 that he is a rewarder of them that seek after him." 
 (Heb. II : 6). The angry God must be propitiated 
 
2 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 with the blood of men and beasts, the sensuous God 
 with the odor of incense, the God who is far off 
 will be worshiped differently from the God who 
 is within; if God is only the great theological 
 Purist, we need only approach him through the 
 Westminster Catechism, which is a different ap- 
 proach from that of the prodigal to his loving 
 Father. The God whom we worship in the use 
 of our Prayer Book is the one revealed to us by his 
 Son, a Person who is Spirit, a Person who can be 
 loved by us with all our heart and mind and soul 
 and strength, because we too are spirits, and be- 
 cause he is our Father and we are his children. It 
 is that sense of relationship at the root of our re- 
 ligion which constitutes our right to approach this 
 God, and which, once felt, draws us to worship in 
 this way. 
 
 Given the true God, then, our worship is what 
 we do when we are conscious of him, of his worth- 
 iness and his presence. Because worship's root 
 meaning is worth-ship, the acknowledgment of the 
 dignity, the infinite value of God. Worship is the 
 attitude and the act of man when he realizes how 
 much God is worth. The thought of God com- 
 prises everything that we can conceive as most wor- 
 thy. What he is, — all powerful, ever-present, in- 
 finitely righteous, loving and merciful, — is worth 
 more to us than anything else in the world. If 
 he were not, or if he were not all this, then life 
 would be not worth living, nothing would be worth 
 while. But in him all life gains a value and all 
 we are and all we have and all we hope to be be- 
 comes of worth to us because God is and is what 
 
THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 3 
 
 he is. The vision of the worship of God in 
 heaven, so beautifully set forth in the Apocalypse, 
 is only the vision of God and his perfection, the 
 adoration of his worthiness. " And when the liv- 
 ing creatures shall give glory and honor and 
 thanks to him that sitteth on the throne, to him 
 that liveth forever and ever, the four and twenty 
 elders shall fall down before him that sitteth on 
 the throne and shall worship him that liveth for- 
 ever and ever and shall cast their crowns before 
 the throne, saying, ' Worthy art thou, our Lord 
 and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and 
 the power: for thou didst create all things, and 
 because of thy will they were, and were created.' " 
 (Rev. 4: 9-1 1.) 
 
 This acknowledgment of the infinite worth of 
 God, this adoration of him for his perfections, this 
 dedication of ourselves to his service, is the expres- 
 sion of our religious life, and is not to be confined 
 to certain times and places. Religion is all inclu- 
 sive and so is worship. It takes in all of life. It is 
 not an appendage or attachment to life. It is con- 
 stant, not recurrent. Laborare est orare. " Serv- 
 ices," as we call what we do in church, are only 
 a part of our " bounden duty and service," which 
 Christians are trying to render all the time. 
 
 '* True worship," says Charles Kingsley, '' is a 
 life, not a ceremony." And before him St. James 
 had said, '* Pure religion and undefiled before our 
 God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and 
 widows in their affliction and to keep himself un- 
 spotted from the world." (James 1:27.) And 
 the word translated " religion " here, means serv- 
 
4 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 ice, or worship ; the truest expression of our rev- 
 erence for God is always and everywhere to do his 
 will in ministering to his children. 
 
 This is all true. But in studying the Prayer 
 Book, we are justified in confining ourselves to this 
 particular aspect of the religious life, which has 
 come to be commonly known as Worship — what 
 we do when we are definitely conscious of God's 
 presence and worth and have, or ought to have, 
 nothing else to do. 
 
 We are also justified in still further narrowing 
 the scope of our study by eliminating the worship 
 of the individual. It is possible and very general 
 and very valuable to worship God, in private. But 
 the Prayer Book we are to study is the Book of 
 Common Prayer, and implies the corporate char- 
 acter of its worship. Religion not only takes in 
 the whole of each man's life, but is distinctly social 
 and is only true religion when it feels its brother- 
 hood as one family of God. Because God is the 
 Father of a family, he is never truly known except 
 as a Father. So Christ taught. And no father 
 can be known except in relation to his family, in 
 his home and around his family board. We may 
 use no selfish, personal pronouns in addressing him. 
 We must say " Our Father," remembering his other 
 children. 
 
 So we believe that the highest form of worship 
 must be social, the most effective prayer must be 
 Comm.on Prayer. The sense of God's presence 
 may be very vivid to the man who has shut the 
 
THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 5 
 
 door and is alone with God, but there is a promise 
 of a more special presence to the group of even 
 two or three, and then the communion with God 
 comes, as we know, not only directly, as in the 
 closet, but communicated with a thrill from soul 
 to soul, in the worshiping assembly. The mere 
 fact of aggregation enhances the ability of each 
 individual in the crowd to realize a great fact or 
 spiritual truth. In all great crises men naturally 
 flock together. So in worship, as in sorrow or in 
 joy, men learn by gathering together and feel more 
 deeply than any could alone. 
 
 " Psychologists have noted," says Streeter, " this 
 power of mutual stimulus as the explanation of the 
 fact that bodies of men acting together under a 
 single impulse are capable, whether for good or 
 evil, of a sensitiveness to impression, of a depth 
 of emotion, or of a strength of purpose far beyond 
 the individual capacity of their constituent mem- 
 bers. Is it strange, then, that experience should 
 show that a group of men or women are capable 
 of realizing and appropriating the inspiration of 
 the Divine Presence, or of submitting themselves 
 to the guidance of the Divine Will, to an extent 
 far exceeding anything which would have been 
 possible to them alone? The Divine Presence is 
 always there; the gathering together of the faith- 
 ful is not a magic spell which attracts to a par- 
 ticular spot what was previously absent, but it may 
 and does enable them individually to realize and 
 appropriate that which was always there, and en- 
 ables them to see clearly what before was hidden 
 by a veil." 
 
6 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 To sum up, therefore, we shall say that public, 
 corporate worship, which our Prayer Book attempts 
 to express and give, while mysterious, as must be all 
 intercourse with the Infinite, is simply the attitude 
 and act of man, sensible of God's presence and 
 feeling God's worth. Now this feeling and its 
 expression may take many forms. Whatever is 
 natural for a child of God to think and do in the 
 felt presence of his Father is a form of worship. 
 It may be confession of sin, as he sees himself and 
 his past life in the presence of God's holiness; it 
 may be the yearning to know of God's nature and 
 will, as revealed and heard in his Word, w^hether 
 God is forgiving or not, loving or not; it may be 
 fervent petition for some benefit sought or it may 
 be a burst of praise, in the face of his glory. These 
 are all aspects, or parts, of worship. It is to the 
 consideration of the question whether, and if so, 
 how, our Prayer Book gives fitting expression to 
 this worship, as we have defined it, that the follow- 
 ing pages are devoted. 
 
 Ill 
 
 But before we take up the study of the Book 
 Itself, a few words are necessary on the need and 
 method of expressing this worshipful attitude in 
 act. The ideal worship is before us: and the ideal 
 is always the real. But the ideal must have its 
 visible, concrete expression. What the soul feels 
 in the presence of God must come out in some form. 
 Just as the ideal man must take flesh, just as the 
 
THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 7 
 
 ideal Church must take form in the organized and 
 visible church, just as the organized church must 
 express and perform its functions through a min- 
 istry, so the Church's desire to worship God must 
 find for itself some outward, and organized and 
 authoritative expression. 
 
 We encounter here two conflicting theories which 
 must be discussed before we can understand the 
 principle on which our Prayer Book is framed as a 
 vehicle of expression and a guide to our common 
 worship. 
 
 A genius for comprehension is one of the marks 
 of our church. This may and sometimes does de- 
 generate into mere compromise, but at its best it 
 means giving fair play to contradictions, allowing 
 each its chance and holding both to be essential to 
 the perfect whole. 
 
 In this matter of worship one man feeling in- 
 tensely the spiritual in his intercourse with God, 
 even in its public form, regards the quiet of silence 
 as the only worshipful atmosphere. He regards as 
 distracting and intrusive any motions, or sounds, 
 and would worship him who is Spirit only in spirit. 
 Thus the so-called Quaker thinks and he is being 
 joined by many in our own church, who appre- 
 ciate and depend more and more upon services of 
 silence to feed their souls and render spiritual wor- 
 ship to God. 
 
 At the other extreme one sees the service of the 
 Holy Orthodox, or Eastern Church, and notes the 
 elaboration of posture and act, of music and incense, 
 each act full of meaning and the whole of worship 
 
8 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 strikingly dramatic and appealing to the senses by 
 every avenue. Any error in act or word vitiates 
 the worship. 
 
 In which of these two ways should we worship 
 God? In neither, but in both, using each to curb 
 the other, and finding only so the full expression of 
 all the soul desires when it comes to meet God. 
 To take two very loosely defined and much misun- 
 derstood terms, let us call the first of these the 
 Puritan and the other the Ritualistic position. 
 Both are right, but only when joined, both as ex- 
 tremes and alone fail to express the whole heart of 
 man's worship. For man is body and spirit and as 
 the body without the spirit is dead, so the spirit 
 without the body is dumb and expressionless. In 
 this world, certainly, neither is without the other, 
 though one may be higher than the other. Just as 
 the government is not the denial of the primary 
 fact of the sovereignty of the people, but makes it 
 operative, just as the organized church with its 
 appointed ministry is no denial of the priesthood 
 of all believers, so the outward forms and symbol- 
 isms of our worship are no contradiction to the 
 truth of the spiritual access to God. As a matter 
 of fact, they are absolutely necessary for the appre- 
 ciation and expression of the larger truth. 
 
 The danger to the Puritan is that his worship 
 after a while dies of inanition, for that which is 
 unexpressed dies; while the danger to the Ritualist 
 is that he, after a while, dies of a surfeit because the 
 body has become to him more than the soul. 
 
 There should be no question of partisanship with 
 regard to what is called Ritualism. For that only 
 
THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 9 
 
 means the science of Rites, of any sort, plain or 
 ornate, and even in its ordinary meaning to-day is 
 only the use of symbolic emblems and acts to ex- 
 press spiritual things. 
 
 According to this definition, we are all ritualists 
 because we are human and we cannot express the 
 spiritual in us save by the use of symbols. The 
 Puritan is a ritualist when he permits the sweet 
 tones of the organ to lull him with a response; he 
 is a ritualist when he stands to sing a hymn or bows 
 his head in prayer. The " Low " churchman who 
 wears his surplice in a cruciform church and lifts 
 his hand in blessing over his congregation, is a rit- 
 ualist, for he is making use of symbols, as he must, 
 to express the otherwise inexpressible. 
 
 On the other hand we must remember that any 
 act of worship is not only expressed towards God 
 as adoration, but has its reflex action towards the 
 worshiper as education. And just as we may be 
 sure God wishes us to worship him not only in 
 spirit but in truth, so we must be very careful that 
 what we are doing in church trains us in the truth. 
 For that is, or should be, the basis of any objection 
 that may be felt to much that is called Ritualism. 
 It is not its use of symbols that is objectionable, but 
 its use of symbols to express that which our church 
 has repudiated and deems false. The symbols and 
 symbolic acts must not be used to express a theory 
 of transubstantiation ; they must not set forth a 
 false sacerdotalism. If Ritualism means these 
 things, it is bad, but not as ritualism, simply as un- 
 truth and so disloyalty. If what it does in church 
 means nothing, then it is petty, unworthy and ir- 
 
lo THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 reverent. If it is used to teach error, it is worse 
 than this. But when it expresses the truth of the 
 child's loving approach to his Father, then the more 
 we have of it the better, art in all its branches to 
 beautify our churches, and adorn our services, the 
 most expressive and affecting liturgy we can com- 
 pose or compile, using all the riches of the past and 
 calling in all the contributions of the present. 
 
 Does our Prayer Book, in word and act, fulfill 
 all these demands, and if so, how? 
 
 SUGGESTED READING 
 
 Freeman: The Principles of Divine Service. 
 Gratacap: Philosophy of Ritual. 
 
II 
 
 THE BOOK ITSELF 
 
 THE method of treating the Prayer Book pur- 
 sued in this book is primarily descriptive. It 
 is an attempt, in a simple way, to describe what 
 manner of book it is which we hold in our hands. 
 It assumes that we do hold it in our hands, and use 
 it, as members of the worshiping congregation. 
 That other methods of treatment make a strong ap- 
 peal is not denied. The historical method, which 
 deals with the origins of the book, and reveals its 
 sources, has its fascinations. The book is so full 
 of history that its use as a manual for teaching 
 the history of the Christian Church is conceivable, 
 and might well prove helpful. The apologetic 
 method, which would seek to commend it to those 
 who worship, and yet do not use the Prayer Book, 
 is a valuable method in unearthing its hidden treas- 
 ures. The practical method, which would employ 
 it as a manual for the teaching of worship, or re- 
 ligious expression, is a method full of possibilities 
 for realizing and strengthening the religious life. 
 The normal method would unfold its excellencies 
 as a text-book for the teaching of teachers, who are 
 called upon to train children in its use, and to help 
 II 
 
12 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 them to the knowledge of how to worship, is a much 
 needed exercise. But the present attempt is purely 
 descriptive. In being descriptive, it will, of neces- 
 sity, be not altogether forgetful of other possible 
 methods and their demands. It cannot avoid the 
 appeal to the basis in history, nor can it, if it 
 would, avoid the remembrance of those who w^or- 
 ship according to its forms, or who are engaged in 
 teaching the Church's children, or those to whom 
 its power and inspiration are unknown; and with 
 this remembrance there dwells the hope, at the 
 heart of the description, that what is here written 
 may bring new light and new power of expression 
 to all who worship, to the increase in them of true 
 religion. 
 
 II 
 
 What then is the Book of Common Prayer? In 
 the first place, it is not a book at all, but a library 
 of books, bound together to make one volume. It is 
 this very same description, applied to the Bible, 
 which has done so much, as a starting point, to re- 
 store the Bible to this generation, as a source of 
 power and inspiration. Setting out from this de- 
 scription, Christians of to-day have come into an 
 understanding of the richness which is revealed to 
 them through the results of the Higher Criticism, 
 and have at the same time been released from the 
 blighting effects of regarding the Bible as a fetich, 
 possessed of an authority which is infallible, but at 
 the same time incomprehensible, and inapplicable to 
 the soul's needs. In a similar way, starting from 
 the conception of a library, we are led to apprehend 
 
THE BOOK ITSELF 13 
 
 the riches of the Book of Common Prayer, and to 
 discover its unrealized treasures of helpfulness for 
 the worshiper, while we are at the same time freed 
 from the superstition of regarding it as the Church- 
 man's sacred fetich, not to be touched or altered, 
 and to be honored by empty phrases as to its in- 
 comparable excellence, rather than used with intel- 
 ligence and freedom, to the soul's health. 
 
 What are the books which make up this library? 
 They are five in number, and are arranged in this 
 order. 
 
 1. The Book of Daily Offices, or Services; or 
 (to use one word of Latin and ancient origin) the 
 Breviary. This book contains Morning Prayer, 
 Evening Prayer and the Litany, together with cer- 
 tain Prayers and Thanksgivings, for occasional in- 
 sertion in these above named services. 
 
 2. The Book of the Holy Communion, or Mis- 
 sal. This book contains the Divine Liturgy, or 
 Order for the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion, 
 together with the Collects, Epistles and Gospels for 
 the Sundays and Holy Days of the year, which are 
 to be inserted in that service. 
 
 3. The Book of Offices for Special Occasions, 
 or the Manual, or Minister's Hand Book. This 
 book contains the services for Baptism, Confirma- 
 tion, Matrimony, Churching of Women, Visitation 
 and Communion of the Sick and Burial of the Dead, 
 — following the course of an individual Christian's 
 life, with offices of the Church's benediction upon 
 that life's experiences from birth to death. 
 
 4. The Book of Psalms, or the Psalter, a Bible 
 book, extracted and printed here, for convenience, 
 
14 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 since the Psalms are so constantly used in the 
 Church's services; and given substantially in the 
 ancient translation of the Great Bible of 1539, the 
 work of that master of the English tongue, Cover- 
 dale, " a translation of a poet, and not of a diction- 
 ary," and preserved in our Prayer Book, in prefer- 
 ence to later, more accurate translations, because of 
 its adaptability for musical rendering, and because 
 its simple and forcible vocabulary and beautiful 
 rhythm endear it to the people. 
 
 5. The Book of Forms for Ordination^ or the 
 Ordinal. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The first question which occurs to one in regard 
 to the contents of the volume as thus given, is why 
 it is made to contain so much. It is primarily a 
 Book of Common Prayer, that is to say, a handbook 
 for the worshiping congregation. For the people's 
 use only the first two books are needed, together 
 with the Psalter, for the sake of convenience. 
 These books supply all that is required by worship- 
 ers from day to day. Why bind up with these 
 books, the priest's book, containing the Baptismal 
 and other offices, and the Bishop's book, containing 
 the services of ordination? The answer to this 
 question is to be found, in the first instance, by 
 reference to the temper of the Reformation-time, 
 out of which our English Prayer Book came into 
 being. The watchword of the Reformation is im- 
 mediacy of relationship. The soul is to approach 
 God directly, without the intrusion of mediatorial 
 priestliness. The Church belongs to the people. 
 
THE BOOK ITSELF 15 
 
 The worship is theirs, and is to be in their own 
 language. It is not expedient, nor is it edifying 
 that the priest should have a book of his own, nor 
 the bishop his special book. The rites and cere- 
 monies which concern the life of the people, the or- 
 dinations of the people's ministers, must be in their 
 own hands, open to their knowledge and under- 
 standing, free for their constant reading and study, 
 designed for their participation. These offices are 
 not merely to be heard occasionally, and participated 
 in solely by the people's presence, nor liable to the 
 clergyman's unguarded discretion. They concern 
 intimately the development of the individual wor- 
 shiper's life — especially the Manual, which, in 
 its offices, touches upon the great moments of 
 Christian experience. The principle is a sound one, 
 and is likely to preserve the book intact in its pres- 
 ent general outline and inclusiveness. 
 
 IV 
 
 Another question which occurs to one who turns 
 the pages of the Prayer Book, with the above out- 
 line in mind, is as to the omissions in that outline. 
 Not all which is to be found between the covers of 
 the book is mentioned. This is true. The outline 
 of the Five Books as printed above is not exhaustive. 
 It is general, covering the essential points. 
 
 Let us consider the omissions. 
 
 a. In Book I, no mention was made of the Pen- 
 itential Office. This Office does not properly be- 
 long in this place. It is occasional, in the sense 
 that it is designed primarily for one day, Ash 
 
i6 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 Wednesday. It Is comparable to the Office for 
 Thanksgiving Day, which is now printed in the 
 Manual, with the other occasional offices. In the 
 rearrangement of the Prayer Book, which is con- 
 templated in connection with the revision of the 
 book now in process, the Penitential Office will 
 doubtless be removed from Book I to Book III. It 
 is true that there is a double use of the word occa- 
 sionalj in this connection, which is somewhat con- 
 fusing. The Penitential Office is an occasional 
 congregational service, — while the occasional offices 
 proper are not congregational in the same sense, but 
 rather personal. There is, however, no separate 
 book of Occasional Offices of the Congregation, and 
 a place for the Penitential Office at the end of Book 
 III is better than its present position in Book I. 
 
 b. In Book III, the following offices were 
 omitted in the outline, viz. : The Catechism, Forms 
 of Prayer at Sea, Visitation of Prisoners, Thanks- 
 giving Day Services, Family Prayer. In regard to 
 them, these things are to be noted. 
 
 I. The Catechism. The first and most obvious 
 thing to say about the Catechism is that it seems 
 out of place in a book of worship. This is true 
 whether we consider it as a hand-book for the edu- 
 cation of the young, or as a brief compendium of 
 theological teaching. But it is also true that it is 
 interwoven with the two offices for Special Occa- 
 sions between which it stands, viz.: Baptism and 
 Confirmation, and is referred to in both these offices. 
 For this reason it is likely to remain where it is, 
 unless these offices are radically revised. Such re- 
 vision is certainly needed in the case of Baptism, 
 
THE BOOK ITSELF 17 
 
 and is greatly to be desired. It is further to be 
 remarked that the Catechism has old and treasured 
 associations with many users of the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer, and is not without significance as a 
 symbol of the consecration of education in the un- 
 folding of the Christian life. These reasons, to- 
 gether with certain excellencies of statement in the 
 Catechism itself, add to the likelihood of its con- 
 tinued inclusion, in some form, within the book. 
 
 2. The Forms of Prayer to be used at sea, — 
 and the Form for the Visitation of Prisoners have 
 nothing to commend them as offices, and their con- 
 tents in general are archaic and not helpful in meet- 
 ing the needs of the Church to-day. Both forms, 
 with the exception of certain prayers, will doubtless 
 be dropped from the book at the next revision. 
 
 3. The Thanksgiving Day Service has no fea- 
 tures which require its printing as a separate office. 
 Its excellent suggestions and lessons, sentences, can- 
 ticles and prayers, as well as collect, epistle and 
 gospel, can be distributed to the different places in 
 the book where they naturally belong, the office 
 itself in this way disappearing, while all of value 
 that it contains is preserved. 
 
 4. Forms of Prayer to be used in Families. It 
 may be decidedly useful to include within the vol- 
 ume of the people's book of worship, a suggested 
 form for Family Prayer. It would be, moreover, 
 unfortunate to discourage a practice already suffi- 
 ciently discouraged, by dropping this material from 
 the book. But it has no place in the Manual, or 
 book of Special Offices, and is easily lost sight of, 
 where it stands. The suggestion is a good one to 
 
i8 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 dignify it with a separate title page, to enlarge it 
 somewhat by adding certain prayers, and to place it 
 outside the Prayer Book proper (so making it amen- 
 able to easier revision) — but just inside the back 
 cover of the volume. The forms as they now stand 
 in the book are, it is true, old-fashioned, and of a 
 fashion not belonging to the days of the happiest 
 liturgical expression. These forms have, however, 
 a certain flavor and suggestiveness of their own, 
 and with slight revision, are capable of being used 
 helpfully and appealingly. When combined with 
 prayers of more immediate reference to to-day's con- 
 ditions and needs, they ought to form a little book 
 of family prayer of great usefulness, and serve to 
 commend a practice to which our people ought to 
 return. 
 
 c. In Book V, no mention was made in the Out- 
 line of the Form of Consecration of a Church, and 
 the Office of Institution of Ministers. This was 
 with the intention of emphasizing the important 
 contents of this book, the ordination services. The 
 inclusion of these two offices in the book makes 
 of it a Pontifical, or Bishop's Book, rather than an 
 Ordinal, the title chosen. Of course, a Bishop's 
 Book proper would also, in order to serve the 
 bishop's convenience, include the other service which 
 peculiarly belongs to him, the Confirmation Service. 
 But it is important and helpful in a people's book 
 that this office should stand w^ith the other offices 
 in Book III, which so vitally concern the Christian's 
 personal religious life. The two offices mentioned 
 above are peculiar to the American Prayer Book. 
 While open to some criticisms, when compared with 
 
THE BOOK ITSELF 19 
 
 the best liturgical standards, they possess dignity, 
 and contain some excellent material. This is es- 
 pecially true of the Office for the Consecration of a 
 Church. Moreover, they represent occasions for 
 the bishop's presence which are of very real sig- 
 nificance in the life of the congregation. They 
 were conceived to be the two occasions of deepest 
 concern recurring in a parish's history; and, on the 
 whole, this judgment must stand approved. It is 
 undoubtedly true, if the American Church ever 
 authorizes a Book of Offices (a book which would 
 conceivably contain offices for the Laying of a Cor- 
 ner Stone, for the Dedication of a Parish House, 
 Rectory, or Hospital, for the Benediction of Me- 
 morials, etc.), that these two services will be trans- 
 ferred to such book, leaving the Ordinal to stand 
 by itself. Meantime, they will remain where they 
 are now, a part of Book V. 
 
 The Litany and Holy Communion now printed 
 in Book V are there because they were needed there 
 in connection with ordinations, when this book was 
 bound by itself as a separate book. Now that it is 
 bound up with the other books, they are not needed, 
 since they are provided in a more convenient form 
 elsewhere, and these will doubtless be removed from 
 the revised Prayer Book. 
 
 There is to be found in the Book of Common 
 Prayer, besides the five books which represent its 
 real contents, still other material. There stands 
 printed, at the beginning, the prefatory matter, and 
 at the end, the Articles of Religion. 
 
20 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 a. The Prefatory Matter. This matter, besides 
 a descriptive title page, and a table of contents, 
 which things are common to books in general, in- 
 cludes first of all the Ratification of the book by 
 the new-born American Church of 1789, together 
 with the interesting and illuminating preface of the 
 same date. There then follow these items for the 
 convenience of users of the book. 
 
 1. Tables of Proper Psalms and Lessons, as 
 suggested for certain days and seasons. 
 
 2. Tables of Feasts and Fasts. 
 
 3. General directions as to the services of the 
 Church. 
 
 In addition to these convenient directions and 
 tables, there is included in this prefatory matter 
 certain tables for finding the date of Easter, includ- 
 ing tables for finding the Dominical Letter. These 
 present a difficult and mysterious study to the aver- 
 age man, who is w^ithout miathematical or astro- 
 nomical leanings, and seem of doubtful value in a 
 people's book of worship. It is recorded of Dr. 
 Hart, the late custodian of the book, to whom the 
 Church is indebted for helpful teaching about the 
 Prayer Book, based upon a careful and sympathetic 
 study of its history', that he strongly advocated the 
 retention of the tables in the volume as a sort of 
 symbol of mystery, a pledge of those hidden treasures 
 of the volume, which are the reward of the patient 
 student and constant user. 
 
 b. The Articles of Religion. There can be, of 
 course, no liturgical excuse for the retention of the 
 Articles in our Book of Worship. They are an 
 interesting exhibit of an attempt at theological defi- 
 
THE BOOK ITSELF 21 
 
 nition dating from Reformation times. They do 
 not express, in many instances, the thoughts of men 
 to-day on the great themes with which they deal. 
 When they do express these thoughts, they express 
 them in an outgrown language. They are not 
 " binding," as a prerequisite for membership or of- 
 fice in the Church, upon either clergy or people. 
 What keeps them in the book is a vague feeling 
 that they express a spirit which their excision might 
 seem to deny, and which no one wishes to deny, — 
 the spirit of freedom, which is the supreme heritage 
 of the Reformation, and that attitude towards the 
 life of the Christian and of the Christian Church 
 which makes our Church a Reformed Church. 
 
 VI 
 
 The stranger to our Church's forms of worship 
 sometimes finds the Prayer Book a puzzling book 
 through which to find one's way. It seems at times 
 to this stranger that the book is specially designed 
 to make the finding of one's place practically im- 
 possible. It must be confessed that there are cer- 
 tain inevitable difficulties, in the use of a book of 
 worship, which cannot be overcome. Its very 
 genius, expressed in its use of varying, or alternat- 
 ing, or of varyingly appropriate forms or selections, 
 renders a certain amount of turning back and forth 
 inevitable. All that the lover of the book can say 
 to the bewildered novice is that it is worth all the 
 study and trouble he can give, to learn how to use 
 it, and to discover, with pains if need be, its riches. 
 
 At the same time, it is certainly to be desired 
 
22 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 that in its arrangement it should be as simple and 
 convenient as possible. To this end, certain changes 
 in its present make-up are recommended. These 
 are, in the first place, to move the Collects, Epistles 
 and Gospels from their position before the Order 
 for the Holy Communion to a place immediately 
 following that service. The result will be that the 
 four great services of constant congregational use, 
 Morning and Evening Prayer, Litany and Holy 
 Communion, will stand together in the first part 
 of the book. The Prayers and Thanksgivings, it 
 is suggested, should come between the two Daily 
 Offices and the Litany, into which services they are 
 most commonly introduced. This will bring the 
 Litany to a position immediately before the Holy 
 Communion, a place not without appropriateness, 
 since it is frequently used as a preparation for Holy 
 Communion. That the Manual, the book of occa- 
 sional offices which most closely concern the people, 
 should follow, as it does, the two books which com- 
 prise the people's congregational offices is appro- 
 priate. 
 
 It is true that the Psalter is in a sense primarily 
 associated with the Daily Offices, and might for 
 that reason stand next to the first book. It is also 
 true that Psalms are being increasingly used as In- 
 troits to the Holy Communion in Book II, and are 
 required in some of the offices of Book III, and it 
 is probable that the present place of the Psalter is 
 the most convenient one, while its bulk, if intro- 
 duced next the Daily Offices, would break up the 
 helpful juxtaposition of the great services of the 
 people's worship. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 
 GROWTH AND COMPREHENSION 
 
 I 
 
 BY the Principle of Growth is not meant the 
 fact of growth. The fact of growth is un- 
 questioned. Our present Prayer Book has grown, 
 through a process covering many years, into the book 
 it is to-day. This fact really reveals a growing 
 principle in the book itself, which makes it a living 
 book. The Principle of Growth is based upon the 
 fact that our American Prayer Book is the result 
 of four processes of revision extending through three 
 centuries. It is based upon the fact that the Book 
 has gathered up, and contains within itself precious 
 treasures out of the experience in worship of past 
 ages. And this very fact is in itself an assurance 
 of new treasures to come out of new experiences, 
 and of formal and deliberate revisions, as in the 
 past, so also in the future. The Prayer Book is not 
 an historical relic. It is not a monument to the 
 manners in worship and pious observance of a de- 
 funct religion. It is the continuing hand-book of 
 a living religion. Its revisability, its adaptability, 
 its readiness to absorb new material and to redis- 
 2Z 
 
24 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 cover old, its inherent principle of growth, this it 
 is which is the pledge of the Prayer Book's vitality. 
 
 The first of the four great revisions is the Prayer 
 Book of Elizabeth in 1559, the Revision of the Re- 
 formation. The outstanding fact about it is that it 
 is a Book of Worship in the English language. 
 Henceforth the Prayer Book is to be the people's 
 book, in their own tongue, and in their own hands. 
 The five books which constitute it had been pre- 
 viously five Latin books. They had been the books 
 of the priests, or of the technically *' religious." 
 They are now to belong to all Christ's people, all 
 the Church's children. The first service to become 
 Englished was the Litany, and rightly, as the most 
 markedly of all services the people's service. This 
 had been set forth in the reign of Henry the Eighth. 
 
 The other outstanding fact was that it was the 
 book of a Reformed Church. It undertook to cor- 
 rect Roman abuses in worship and practice. It 
 was not only a translation into the simplicity and 
 understandableness of the people's spoken language; 
 it was also a translation out of the accretions and 
 remotenesses of a scholastic and sacerdotal system 
 into the simplicity and immediacy of the Christian 
 fellowship of primitive tradition, when the Church 
 was the people's Church. 
 
 The book of Elizabeth was itself the final out- 
 come of the Reformation process. There had been 
 two books immediately preceding it in the reign of 
 Edward VI. The first book of Edward VI had 
 been the book of the more traditional or Catholic 
 cast. The second book of Edward VI was the 
 book of a more pronouncedly Protestant hue. The 
 
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 25 
 
 final book represented the completion of the task of 
 revision. It became the book of the English church, 
 and continues, in spite of some further revision, 
 that Church's book to-day. We have spoken of the 
 two outstanding facts of the Reformation Revision ; 
 but we are not to forget that it was a revision. 
 We are not celebrating the creation of a new book. 
 It was the old book, or books, with the genius of 
 their services, in the main, preserved, and with their 
 great utterances in prayer and praise, marvelously 
 enshrined in the unequaled English of the period. 
 For this we are indebted to the great translators of 
 the Bible into English, — and especially are we In- 
 debted to the genius of Cranmer. 
 
 The second of the four revisions was the Book of 
 1662, the Revision of the Restoration. After the 
 years of Cromwell, and the period of Puritan su- 
 premacy, upon the occasion of the return of the 
 Stuarts and the rehabilitation of Episcopacy, a re- 
 vision of the Prayer Book was undertaken and 
 carried through. While the changes were very 
 numerous, they were all minor changes, and the 
 revision represents no fundamental principles, as 
 was the case a hundred years before. 
 
 The third great revision Is the revision of 1789, 
 the date of our first American book. This is the 
 Revision of the Revolution. In a new land. In the 
 face of new conditions, the temper of the revision 
 was radical. The revisers were willing to consider 
 everything. It is true that the resultant changes 
 were not very numerous or very great, but we are 
 not to be misled into imagining that the business 
 in hand was principally to substitute the word Presi- 
 
26 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 dent for the word King. The Communion office 
 was vitally altered. One of the Creeds (the Atha- 
 naslan) was dropped. There was talk of dropping 
 the NIcene Creed. The Apostles' Creed was 
 amended. Nothing was sacrosanct. The needs of 
 the people were paramount. Language was altered, 
 to be more intelligent, or rhythmical, or more con- 
 sonant with an American sense of humor. It hap- 
 pened that the two leaders in the movement were 
 representative of the two elements, w^hose compre- 
 hension had been the supreme task of the Reforma- 
 tion book. These were Bishop Seabury, the Catho- 
 lic-minded, and Bishop White, the Protestant- 
 minded. To the former we are indebted for the 
 splendid revision of the Communion Service, and 
 to the latter for insistence upon the liberties and 
 sanities that the hour demanded, and also for a for- 
 tunate ear for phrase and rhythm, comparable to 
 Cranmer's great gifts along these lines. 
 
 The fourth revision is that of 1892, the Revision 
 of Enrichment, — which we may write en-RIchment, 
 in order to secure the four R's of the four revisions. 
 Here again was a revision of details, as In 1662, 
 rather than a revision of radicalism. It was a pe- 
 riod of hesitancy and timidity. There was a great 
 and widespread fear that doctrine might be under- 
 mined, or the precious heritage of the great book 
 Impaired. The outstanding figure In the work was 
 that of Dr. Huntington, who brought to the task 
 great enthusiasm and wisdom, and who won, 
 through his generous tactfulness, and parliamentary 
 prowess, the confidence of the whole church. His 
 controlling thought and desire was for the unity 
 
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 27 
 
 of the Church, the unity of American Christianity, 
 and he believed that the Prayer Book, if revised to 
 meet present day needs, would prove a potent influ- 
 ence to bring about the sought-for end. He pos- 
 sessed, furthermore, that indispensable quality for 
 the task of revision, a keen liturgical sense, and a 
 sensitive ear and unerring touch, combined with the 
 necessary facility and yet reticence in expression. 
 It has been said that after the careful labors of 
 twelve years, from 1880 to 1892, the result was, 
 after all, insignificant. There is truth in this, but 
 when we remember the difficulties of the undertak- 
 ing at that time, and look to the effect of having 
 accomplished revision at all, rather than to specified 
 results, the work is to be recognized as highly sig- 
 nificant, not only for our own Church, but for the 
 whole Anglican communion. Moreover, the de- 
 tailed changes have more than justified themselves. 
 It will be noticed that the four revisions are al- 
 most exactly a hundred years apart, and also that 
 they alternate as between radical and detailed re- 
 visions. Because of the time periods, probably, it 
 came to pass that after 1892, it was freely prophe- 
 sied that the business of revision was over for a hun- 
 dred years at least. Subsequent events have not 
 verified this prophecy. Times and occasions change 
 rapidly in these later years, and instead of a cen- 
 tury, a generation only marks the beginning of a 
 new process of revision. If we count a generation 
 as thirty-three years, it is exactly that between the 
 inauguration of revision in 1880 and the appoint- 
 ment of the present Commission on Revision in 
 191 3. Moreover, it looks as if the principle of al- 
 
28 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 ternation were to hold, and as if a radical revision 
 were in contemplation. The temper of the Church 
 is manifestly to the effect that everything is open 
 to consideration, and possible amendment or re- 
 vision, and this temper is encouraged and strength- 
 ened by the lessons of the Great War. It is not 
 meant by this that the faith of the Church is shaken, 
 or to be altered. Nor is it meant that the services 
 of chief moment, the great services of the congrega- 
 tion, are to be changed in their general outline or 
 content. It is meant, rather, that the needs of the 
 religious life of men are paramount, and that they 
 must be met by a flexibility in forms never even 
 contemplated before, by new expressions in prayer 
 to meet new requirements and aspirations, and by 
 radical revision of the special offices, for Baptism, 
 Marriage and Burial and the like, where the de- 
 mand for change is insistent and universal. 
 
 The record of the great revisions is the record 
 of such formal or official changes as illustrate the 
 principle of growth. But that principle is realized 
 even more clearly in a larger outlook, which remem- 
 bers how the book has gathered up into itself the 
 religious forms and prayer and praise utterances of 
 the ages. All the Christian centuries have left their 
 marks upon it. Phrases and prayer utterances go 
 back to the Fathers of the first centuries, and litur- 
 gical forms like the *' Sursum Corda," the " Lift 
 up your hearts " of the Communion Service, are de- 
 rived from the very earliest times. The terse and 
 pregnant clauses of the collects reflect the Latin 
 genius of the centuries when the church of Rome 
 dominated. The devotional utterances of the Re- 
 
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 29 
 
 formation time, with the freshness of its religious 
 awakening, find a place. There are reminiscences, 
 sometimes ancient, sometimes more modern, which 
 rejoice in a method of repetitional phrases, for em- 
 phasis or elucidation. There are suggestions of the 
 impress of later devotional thought and expression, 
 from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and 
 even to our own times. 
 
 More than this, there lie imbedded in the book 
 the religious influences of the synagogue, as well 
 as all the wealth of Jewish devotion, especially in 
 the Psalms, or in the derivations or suggestions 
 which spring from them. And what is good in ap- 
 proaches to worship or methods of expression in 
 heathen rites, the Eleusinian mysteries, or other 
 forms, has left its impress. Still further, there is 
 formal adoption, and sanctification of those atti- 
 tudes and gestures of the worshiping soul, which 
 antedate all formal religions, and whose remote 
 sources we cannot even guess. Such are the bended 
 knees of prayer, the erect pose of praise and of 
 prayer too, and the hands of blessing upon the head, 
 with their downward palms. It is good to remem- 
 ber these things. The book testifies, indeed, upon 
 its every page, to its inherent principle of growth. 
 
 And this principle, as we look back, teaches us to 
 turn about, and to look forward. This, its funda- 
 mental principle, is a pledge to us that is to take 
 up Into itself in times to come, sufficing expression 
 of the newer aspirations of religion, the developing 
 needs of worship. To-day, religious experience 
 finds common expression in the realization of God 
 in nature, in the enthusiasms for education and 
 
30 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 philanthropy and social reform, in the expanding 
 and soul-stirring activities of missionary zeal and 
 world federation. These must find fuller utterance 
 in the people's book of worship. We may rest 
 assured that they will find such utterance, and that 
 other forms of expression in prayer and praise, 
 which our present-day imagination cannot compass, 
 will find their place within the Book of Common 
 Prayer. 
 
 II 
 
 The second fundamental principle of the Prayer 
 Book is the Principle of Comprehension. By com- 
 prehension is meant neither comprehensibility, nor 
 yet comprehensiveness. It connotes something spe- 
 cial. It is based, this principle, upon the happen- 
 ings out of which the English Prayer Book issued. 
 It represents that great experiment in the life and 
 worship of the church which specifically character- 
 izes the historic church of English-speaking peoples. 
 It consists, where there are two diiiering and di- 
 vergent, even to all appearance contradictory views, 
 in the refusal to choose the one or the other, or to 
 compromise between them, and in the insistence 
 upon embracing both, each in its fullness. It is the 
 pledge of catholicit}''. 
 
 The problem which faced the Church of Eng- 
 land at the time of the Reformation was the prob- 
 lem of maintaining a national church for the people 
 of England, and a church which should include all 
 the people. It must embrace within itself the Cath- 
 olic-minded and the Protestant-minded, — the two 
 sides, which were represented in the great struggle. 
 
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 31 
 
 There must be room, and ample and satisfying 
 room, for those who loved and held by the ancient 
 traditions, and forms and usages of the past, and 
 for those who keenly resented the errors which had 
 crept into the ancient church, and whose minds and 
 souls were strongly set against the perversions in 
 truth and practice which characterized, they be- 
 lieved, a corrupted order. The Church of England 
 set itself resolutely to the task with a conscious 
 determination, and with a will to be fair and to 
 succeed. There were leaders of the people, to 
 whose patience and wisdom the success of the great 
 experiment was in large measure due. The re- 
 sultant Prayer Book of the reign of Elizabeth, which 
 had been preceded by the Catholic-minded book of 
 Edward VI, the first of that reign, and by the' 
 Protestant-minded book, the second, is an eloquent 
 tribute to the genius of those to whom the task was 
 entrusted, and to the purpose and will of the people 
 of the land, which sustained them. For that book 
 remains substantially, after all, the book of to-day. 
 It continues, after four centuries, the book alike 
 of Catholic-minded and Protestant-minded wor- 
 shipers, — used and loved by all. In practically 
 every service, one might almost say on every page, 
 it bears its witness to the great experiment, or rather 
 to the great success, to the triumphant principle of 
 comprehension. 
 
 In the unfolding of the Church Year, those Cath- 
 olic-minded people, who would find there days of 
 Mary, may find them in the Annunciation and Puri- 
 fication, while those same days are to the Protestant- 
 minded, days of our Lord, as indeed they are. In 
 
32 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 the Baptism offices, the Catholic doctrine of regen- 
 eration, and the Protestant insistence upon repent- 
 ance and faith stand side by side; and the sign of 
 the Cross, or its omission, are equally recognized. 
 In the Confirmation service are to be found both 
 the Catholic-minded emphasis upon the gift of the 
 Holy Spirit, and the Protestant conception of the 
 renewal of vows. In the Ordination of Priests, 
 there are two sentences of ordination provided as 
 alternates, one for the Catholic, the other for the 
 Protestant. Formerly there stood in the Litany the 
 ultra Catholic suffrage: " Saint Mary, Mother of 
 God, all holy patriarchs and prophets. Pray for us," 
 and the ultra Protestant prayer: — " From the tyr- 
 anny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable 
 enormities. Good Lord, deliver us." Both have 
 now been happily eliminated by mutual and glad 
 consent, since they contravened rather than exempli- 
 fied the principle. 
 
 The central and all sufficient example of the prin- 
 ciple lies at the heart of the book, at the solemn 
 moment of the distribution of the elements in the 
 Holy Communion. The Catholic-minded book of 
 Edward VI had the Catholic-minded sentence of 
 distribution: '' The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul 
 unto everlasting life." The Protestant-minded 
 book of Edward VI had the Protestant-minded sen- 
 tence, '' Take and eat this in remembrance that 
 Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart, 
 by faith, with thanksgiving." The solution was to 
 say both (as they stand in both sentences to-day), 
 one after the other. There was no decision of 
 
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 33 
 
 choice. There was no compromise, by so much as 
 an iota. There was perfect application of the 
 Principle of Comprehension. We have here its 
 complete exposition. And the great double sentence 
 stands in the book of worship as the final justifica- 
 tion of the principle, and as the enduring monument 
 to the genius of the book. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The two principles, of Growth and Comprehen- 
 sion, have obviously an intimate relation. In their 
 interplay is the guarantee of the book's endurance, 
 and the indication of the possibility for growth 
 through successful revision. When it is urged, in 
 any consideration of the book's revision, that doc- 
 trine must not be touched, it is to be remembered 
 that what is meant is, that the sacred and funda- 
 mental principle of comprehension must not, by 
 so much as a jot or tittle, be impaired. There must 
 continue to exist, within the book's scope, for Cath- 
 olic-minded and Protestant-minded alike, the fullest 
 opportunity for freedom and satisfaction in w^or- 
 shlp. Nothing must be done to cause either to feel 
 less at home. The lon<T-maintained union in the 
 common worship of the Church must not be jeopard- 
 ized. 
 
IV 
 
 THE THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 
 
 BESIDES the two fundamental principles which 
 underlie the whole structure of the book, there 
 are certain Working Principles which are essential 
 to its intelligent and helpful using. The first of 
 these is the Principle of Interpretation. The neces- 
 sity for the application of this principle rests in the 
 circumstance that by its very nature, a book of 
 worship embodies within it forms and expressions 
 which are ancient, and which continue unaltered 
 through generations, and indeed centuries. Such 
 forms and expressions are the things which first of 
 all commend the book to the user, and make of it 
 a treasury of devotion. At the same time, their 
 very presence demands, if the ancient utterances are 
 to be realities for modern experiences, that there 
 should be a working principle of interpretation. 
 The principle is based upon the fact that our preser- 
 vation of ancient forms of expression, which secure 
 to us the historic sense, and the grateful feeling of 
 oneness with Christ's people of all ages, necessitates 
 the filling and re-filling of these forms with the 
 thoughts and experiences and convictions of to-day, 
 the immediate utterances of the Holy Spirit to the 
 34 
 
THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 35 
 
 Church. Flexibility of interpretation becomes of 
 the essence of creed and liturgy. The principle of 
 interpretation is for us the pledge of reality. It is 
 not necessary to multiply illustrations, but a mo- 
 ment's thought serves to convince us that we are 
 constantly called upon to exercise this principle. A 
 familiar illustration, often referred to, is the clause 
 in the creed, *' the resurrection of the body." The 
 original concept of the resuscitation of flesh and 
 bones has become universally untenable. Behind 
 the concept was a faith which endures in the per- 
 sistence of the individual. There are new concepts, 
 as to the methods of this persistence, and the words 
 are reinterpreted to fit these, and that without great 
 difliculty or embarrassment. The collects use not 
 infrequently legalistic language in regard to God 
 and his dealings, which springs out of Latin con- 
 cepts. The concepts are no longer ours, but we 
 interpret the language to fit our new and as we 
 believe better thoughts. We turn expressions which 
 belonged to a Calvinistic and outgrown doctrine of 
 original sin, to fit our modern notions of heredity. 
 In the Marriage Service we keep on saying, " Who 
 giveth this woman to be married to this man?" — 
 although we strongly repudiate the chattel notion 
 regarding woman, out of which the words sprang, — 
 because we interpret it as a gracious opportunity 
 for recognition of the father's love and protecting 
 care. The process is familiar to Christians of every 
 name in the use of hymns. We continue to use 
 hymns, just because they are old and familiar, or 
 beautiful in form or expression, or wedded to an 
 appealing and singable tune, which teach a theology 
 
36 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 or even a morality which we repudiate. We do it, 
 because we interpret the words. By use of the 
 principle of interpretation we get to the heart of 
 the first singer's faith, and cast aside his transient 
 beliefs and dogmas. We love especially the 
 ** heavenly Jerusalem" hymns, though other world- 
 liness is not our dominant mood, because we inter- 
 pret them into promises and determinations of social 
 reform. 
 
 It is not to be denied that interpretation is not 
 always easy. Sometimes the process is a strain. 
 We endure it, because of the gain that outweighs, 
 and which is the sense of fellowship with past ages 
 which the persisting words supply, because of the in- 
 spiration that comes through realization of our one- 
 ness with all saints. When the strain is too great, 
 then we cease to sing the hymn, or strive for amend- 
 ment and revision of the form of words. But such 
 cases are on the whole few, and even where revision 
 seems most imperative, we patiently apply our prin- 
 ciple, remembering that the process of revision is 
 necessarily slow, where the whole Christian con- 
 sciousness is concerned. 
 
 II 
 
 A second principle is the Principle of Rubrlca- 
 tion. This principle is based upon the fact that the 
 rubric is not a law, to be obeyed, but a suggestion 
 or direction, to be followed when applicable. Fi- 
 deUty to the principle consists in a reasonable fol- 
 lowing of directions where they are appropriate, in 
 distinction from a blind obedience to the letter 
 
THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 37 
 
 which killeth. If one enters the great gates of a 
 park he may discover a rubric, or sign board, which 
 says, " Take this path to the lion's den." The form 
 of words is mandatory, but the visitor will not obey 
 the rubric if the lion's den is a place where he does 
 not wish to go. We are not to be misled by the 
 mandatory form of rubrics. They are not laws, 
 requiring obedience, or in relation to which obedi- 
 ence is a virtue. The verb " shall " in a rubric 
 does not connote an order, but an opportunity. It 
 makes a suggestion. When the word " may " 
 stands in its place, there are two suggestions of- 
 fered, either one of which is good, the choice to 
 be determined by circumstances. Much difficulty 
 might be avoided, if this essential nature of the 
 rubric were always remembered. It would serve to 
 relieve some ministers of a certain false pride in 
 " always obeying the rubrics," by making it clear 
 that this is far from being a virtue. It is obvious 
 that due regard to their intention, and genuine ap- 
 prehension of the genius of the Prayer Book, will 
 require at times " disobedience." And as for the 
 people, it will correct an unjustly critical attitude 
 towards a minister who has disregarded a rubric, 
 and substitute for it satisfaction in the fact that the 
 leader of the worship is intelligent, and knows the 
 value and purpose of rubrical directions. One il- 
 lustration will suffice. Let us suppose that the 
 circumstances of a congregation's life and environ- 
 ment make the one service of Good Friday an even- 
 ing service. The strict rubrical provision will com- 
 pel the reading of the two lessons for Good Friday 
 evening. But these are appointed on the assump- 
 
38 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 tion that the morning lessons, and epistle and gospel, 
 have been read and heard. This is not the case in 
 this instance, and Good Friday demands, if it de- 
 mands anything, that the people hear the story of 
 the cross. The minister will read this. He will 
 be true to the genius of the Prayer Book. He will 
 disregard the rubric, because it is not applicable. 
 He will recognize the fact that in this case dis- 
 obedience is the truest obedience. 
 
 It was an English bishop who wrote : " I long 
 to see a plain recognition of the fact that rubrics 
 are not canons, i.e., a rubric records simply how 
 things are done (i.e., unless there is valid reason for 
 some other course), and that it is the function of 
 a canon to prescribe how things shall be done." 
 And we are not to think that the definition con- 
 tained in his words is merely a pious wish, rather 
 than a statement based upon historic and verifiable 
 fact. This is just what the rubric historically is, — 
 a direction in regard to the conduct of the service. 
 It is nevertheless true that the confusion and mis- 
 understanding which have arisen have their roots 
 in English history. Because of the laws of con- 
 formity, the rubrics in England have become acts 
 of Parliament, and therefore laws. We in America 
 are free from this unfortunate situation, and may 
 vindicate in our usage the rubric's original char- 
 acter. At the same time, because our church is 
 descended from the English, it has come to pass 
 that included among the rubrics of our Prayer Book, 
 — the true rubrics, — are certain rubrics which are 
 not really rubrics at all, but bits of canon law. 
 Such, for instance, is the rubric forbidding the use 
 
THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 39 
 
 of the Burial Office for suicides, — a relic of medi- 
 aeval casuistry. Obviously, the presence of such 
 rubrics tends to obscure the rubric's real nature, and 
 to militate against the principle of rubrication. It 
 is also because of the presence of rubrics of this 
 nature that the law of the Church recognizes as 
 an offense for which a minister may be tried " the 
 violation of the rubrics." It is manifest that there 
 could be no such thing as trial for the violation of 
 a true rubric. The situation presents a dilemma 
 which ought to be frankly stated. It might seem 
 desirable to remove from the Book of Worship all 
 fragments of canon law, leaving only the true ru- 
 brics. But, on the other hand, to put such frag- 
 ments of canon law in the law book would deprive 
 them of the innocuous character they now enjoy, 
 and which it may be desirable to preserve. As it 
 is, they necessarily partake of the rubric character, 
 and may be open to such following as is properly 
 given to rubrical directions. To revert to the il- 
 lustration of the park, there may exist like incon- 
 sistencies there; for adjacent to the rubric con- 
 cerning the lion's den is one which reads, " Keep 
 off the grass," and which, if representing a city or- 
 dinance, may well be a law. 
 
 One thing is certain. The American Church 
 has an opportunity to rehabilitate and emphasize the 
 true rubric, and users of the Prayer Book must 
 build upon the principle of rubrication, which is a 
 pledge for us of liberty and flexibility. 
 
40 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 III 
 
 The third principle is the Principle of Liturgism. 
 Liturgism is a coined word, but convenient and un- 
 derstandable. It is designed to emphasize the fact 
 that users of the Prayer Book to be intelligent must 
 remember that its genius is that it supplies an in- 
 strument of worship which is in a special sense 
 liturgical. There are three sorts of worship. 
 There is the " free worship " w^hich characterizes 
 the Protestant Communions generally, and which 
 emphasizes the " word " to the exclusion of the 
 " act." It is that familiar type of congregational 
 service, in which the sermon is everything, the 
 other parts of the service being of the nature of 
 " preliminary exercises." The people are passive. 
 They are ensconced in a sitting posture for the pur- 
 pose of listening, that being the main object of their 
 gathering. Theoretically, the parts of the prelim- 
 inary exercises are free, in that they are not ap- 
 pointed or ordered. The minister reads from the 
 " Word " where his instinct, or momentary choice, 
 dictates. He, or the people, " start " a hymn of 
 praise. He, or they, pray as the spirit moves, out 
 of the momentary dictates of the heart. 
 
 There is the " ritualistic worship," which char- 
 acterizes the Church of Rome, and the Orthodox 
 Churches of Russia and the East, and which em- 
 phasizes the ** act " to the exclusion of the " word." 
 The important thing is that the sacrifice shall be 
 offered. The miracle of the Mass is to be accom- 
 plished. The bell rings to announce that the act 
 
THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 41 
 
 Is done. It does not matter that the words which 
 may be said are in a language not '^ understanded 
 of the people." It does not matter if there is no 
 sermon. The people are again passive. Their part 
 is to assist by their presence. In Browning's " The 
 Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's," the 
 Bishop says: 
 
 " And then how I shall lie through centuries 
 And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, 
 And see God made and eaten all day long, 
 And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste 
 Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke ! " 
 
 This suggests the ideal of the ritualistic service, and 
 emphasizes its materialistic perils, when the " act " 
 is made supreme, and the " word " subordinated. 
 
 The third sort of service, which is the normal 
 service of the Book of Common Prayer, is the *' lit- 
 urgical service." Its aim is to emphasize equally 
 the word and the act, maintaining them in their 
 due proportion as complementary one to the other. 
 It seeks to avoid the vagaries and individualism of 
 the " free service," with its loss of the sense of the 
 common Christian consciousness, and its dangers 
 of cold intellectualism, and irreverence, and at the 
 same time to escape the formalities, and mindless- 
 ness, and possible materialism and irreverences of 
 the " ritualistic service." In worship, as in other 
 ways, the Church of the Prayer Book has a mission 
 of reconciliation. It has a " via media " ambition, 
 and strives for a sanity and sweet-reasonableness 
 in worship, which shall preserve what is good in the 
 
42 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 ideals of both the Protestant Communions, and the 
 ancient churches of Rome and the East, and ex- 
 plain them to one another. 
 
 Of course, an epigrammatic definition such as 
 has been attempted above has its dangers of half- 
 truth. It cannot be strictly maintained that either 
 the free or ritualistic service Is represented with 
 complete fairness. There cannot be, obviously, 
 complete subordination of act or word, either In 
 the one or in the other. But there Is truth, never- 
 theless, In the attempted distinction, and the ideal 
 and method of the Prayer Book are made sufficiently 
 clear. Liturgism is, when all is said, the Prayer 
 Book's ambition; and an understanding of this 
 principle is a boon to all its users, who would use 
 it with intelligence and effectiveness. Within the 
 Prayer Book church, It is of course true that there 
 will be found, at times and places, services which 
 are purely ritualistic, or purely free. But even 
 these will be " different," in that they will be 
 molded by the essential norm Into reticence and 
 reasonableness. Meantime, in the general usage 
 of the Church, the services are consciously and 
 helpfully liturgical. They are liturgical in that the 
 people are active, not passive. In all the services 
 of the congregation the people have a constant and 
 vital part. Something Is all the time expected of 
 them. The service is in every instance theirs. 
 Even In listening to the word, their response Is an- 
 ticipated and provided for, and at every phase of 
 praise or prayer, their attitude of participation or 
 response Is significant. The New England farmer 
 who testified on the occasion of his first experience, 
 
THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 43 
 
 that he " never let on, but riz and fell every time," 
 paid his unconscious tribute to the excellence of a 
 form of worship, which excluded no one, and was 
 not performed for lookers-on. 
 
 The careful welding of word and act together 
 has its illustration in every service. The Holy 
 Communion, in the nature of the case, is the service 
 wherein the act has its strongest emphasis, and that 
 is the very service where the solemn reading of the 
 word, in the Gospel, has special prominence, and 
 the only service in which there is special provision 
 for the sermon. Moreover, in this service, too, the 
 acts of consecration and communion are enshrined 
 in a form which is preeminent for its presentation 
 of the great truths of the word, in repeated se- 
 quences of supreme significance, in Comfortable 
 Words, and Sanctus, in Consecration Prayer and 
 Gloria in Excelsis. On the other hand, the Daily 
 Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, while em- 
 phatically offices of the word, and its presentation, 
 look for the expressive act in the people's kneeling 
 and standing, and formal responses, and especially 
 in the Creed climax, where as one body they give 
 the sign of allegiance and loyalty. 
 
 By faithful and intelligent adherence to these 
 three Working Principles of Interpretation, Rubri- 
 cation and Liturgism, the people enter into a deeper 
 understanding of the riches of the book, and its 
 ever-unfolding opportunities, and come to a truer 
 and more vital using of its services in their worship. 
 
V 
 
 MORNING PRAYER AND EVENING PRAYER 
 
 THE first book in the Library of our Service 
 books contains the Order for Morning and 
 Evening Prayer. These are more frequently used 
 than any other of our services, and so stand in the 
 forefront. 
 
 In studying these we must say something of 
 their history: because in Chapter I it may have 
 seemed as if the philosophy of ritual there expressed 
 implied a book especially compiled to set forth 
 these ideas. This is not so. The idea of worship 
 and its expression set forth already is inherent in 
 all human nature and in every religion, and es- 
 pecially in Christianity has been full of changes 
 and a matter of growth. Our Book of Worship 
 was never framed, or composed — it grew. And 
 it grew in the persistent effort of the human heart 
 to express more and more adequately its desire for 
 worship. Our services of Morning and Evening 
 Prayer, then, are only a stage in this long process, 
 the outcome of centuries of worship, each age try- 
 ing out new methods and using the experiments of 
 the past. They are the compressed expression of 
 the Church's life of worship through eighteen cen- 
 turies. 
 
 44 
 
MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 45 
 
 What that spirit of worship is we have seen in 
 Chapter I, and in Chapter II we have set forth 
 the various forms into which it has flowed. We 
 come now after discussing some general principles 
 to the twofold task of tracing the growth of two 
 of these services, and then of seeing how far they 
 fulfill the demands of our hearts when we come to 
 worship God. 
 
 The Daily Offices have their roots in the Syna- 
 gogue worship of the Jews, just as our Holy Com- 
 munion reaches back to the ritual of the Temple. 
 The early Christians worshiped still in the Syna- 
 gogue, and the reading of psalms and lessons and 
 the prayers was familiar to them. (James 2:2.) 
 But the separation must have come early and by 
 themselves the Christians continued the simple 
 form to which they had been accustomed. The 
 Lord's Prayer and the growing creed would be 
 said in unison and the reading of portions of the 
 scripture, the Old Testament first, and then as the 
 years went on, a circular letter from St. Paul, or 
 St. Peter, or a fragment of St. Mark's Gospel, as 
 it was copied and handed about, would be read 
 and prayers would follow, extemporaneous or more 
 formal and pre-composed. But it was all simple, 
 and the worshipers took some part. It was 
 " common " prayer. Then came the days of the 
 monks, when the times and the trend of religion 
 drove so many men from the active life of the world 
 into the deserts and into monasteries, when life 
 was cut into two parts, the secular and the sacred, 
 and the latter, the so-called " religious," was made 
 into a life of constant worship. There was plenty 
 
46 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 of time and little to do, life's wants were easily 
 supplied, and so the monastic life performed its 
 necessary duties for the body in the short intervals 
 between the services of the hours. (Ps. 55:18. 
 Cf. Ps. 119: 164). The whole day and even the 
 night were turned into a round of services. Be- 
 tween midnight and daybreak there was the service 
 called Nocturns or Matins, with Lauds attached. 
 At six came Prime, at nine Tierce, and noon Sext, 
 in the afternoon at three. Nones, about six, Ves- 
 pers was said, and the round closed at nine o'clock 
 by saying the last of the services, called Compline. 
 These services were long and repetitious, dry and 
 formal. They continued all through the Middle 
 Ages, with but little change. 
 
 The Christian life of worship had been expanded 
 to its utmost. Only those who had little or noth- 
 ing else to do, could join in it. It was no longer 
 " common " prayer. The common people could 
 have no part in it. The so-called " religious " had 
 monopolized common worship and the laity only 
 " assisted " by kneeling at the celebration of the 
 Mass. If they attended any of the services men- 
 tioned above and which were contained in the 
 book called the Breviary, they could understand 
 nothing that was said, for Latin was the language 
 used. The worship of God had become not only 
 burdensome but unintelligible. 
 
 At the time of the Reformation there w^as felt 
 the need, not only of purifying these old forms from 
 false doctrine, but of simplifying and shortening 
 them and of putting them into the tongue under- 
 stood by the people. The priesthood of the laity 
 
MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 47 
 
 was once more to be made vocal and effective. 
 The men of the Church of England to whom we 
 owe our Prayer Book undertook this work. And 
 characteristically, in obedience to the spirit of their 
 church and nation, they clung to all that was good 
 in the old and refused to set forth a new order of 
 worship. As their church was not a new creation, 
 but a return to the principles and polity of the 
 Apostolic times, so their Book of Worship was to 
 retain all that the worshiping Church had de- 
 veloped through centuries of prayer — all that was 
 good in it. They had at hand the Breviary, with 
 its hours of devotion, and they found that these 
 could easily be purified and compressed and simpli- 
 fied, and that when this process was completed, they 
 had in their hands, the same expression of w^orship 
 which had persisted through the accretions of the 
 Middle Ages, the same order of approach to God, 
 the result of the experience and experiments of 
 centuries. These are taken up into the structure 
 and very words of our Morning and Evening 
 Prayer and made vital for the worship of millions 
 to-day. And it is interesting to note that only 
 in our Prayer Book do these appear in living form 
 to-day. No other church has done this work. Ex- 
 cept as recited in Latin by the Roman priests of 
 to-day, a task they are compelled to fulfill and which 
 is fulfilled by rapid reading each for himself, in 
 the course of the day, no church but ours carries 
 out by daily use the spirit and order of the old 
 Breviar>% The Breviary, as the people's book, is 
 dead. The Breviary, as forming Book I of our 
 Prayer Book, is alive and still growing. All that 
 
48 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 Christian men in the past had found necessary to 
 express when they came to worship God, is here 
 retained, in order and largely in word. Our re- 
 formers believed that the Church, through long 
 practice, had developed an almost perfect scheme 
 of worship, and they were wise enough to retain 
 it. Cranmer and his fellow-workers took the seven 
 hour devotions and out of the morning hours, 
 Nocturns or Matins, Lauds and Prime, framed our 
 Morning Prayer, and out of the evening hours. 
 Vespers and Compline, made our Evening Prayer, 
 so that what used to take the larger part of both 
 night and day, now could be said in an hour and 
 a half. They have given us the compressed form 
 of a life of constant worship extending over eighteen 
 centuries. Thus the book we are studying is 
 plainly an evolution and not something framed to 
 fit a theory of worship. 
 
 " The Prayer Book as it stands is a long gal- 
 lery of Ecclesiastical history which, to be under- 
 stood and enjoyed thoroughly, absolutely compels a 
 knowledge of the greatest events and names of all 
 periods of the Christian Church. 
 
 " To Ambrose we owe our Te Deum, Charle- 
 magne breaks the silence of our Ordination 
 Prayer by the Veni Creator Spiritus. The perse- 
 cutions have given us one creed, the Empire an- 
 other. The name of the first great patriarch of 
 the Byzantine Church closes our daily service. 
 The Litany is the bequest of the first great patriarch 
 of the Latin Church am^st the terrors of the 
 Roman pestilence. Our Collects are the joint pro- 
 duction of Fathers, Popes and Reformers. Our 
 
MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 49 
 
 Communion Service bears the traces of every fluctu- 
 ation of the Reformation, through the two ex- 
 tremes of the reign of Edward to the conciliatory 
 policy of Elizabeth and the revolutionary zeal of 
 the Restoration." Stanley. 
 
 II 
 
 But our purpose is not historical. Most works 
 on the Prayer Book are concerned chiefly either 
 with its history or with minute explanation of its 
 parts, to its very phraseology. To some of these 
 the reader is referred in the note at the end of 
 this chapter. 
 
 We are concerned with the worshipful atti- 
 tude and its expression in word and act in the 
 Prayer Book. What is it that, as we have set 
 forth already in Chapter I, should be found in the 
 expression of the soul's worship? Praise. There 
 are other feelings to be expressed, but praise is the 
 highest and dominates all. To approach God and 
 get any glimpse of his Being and glory is to burst 
 forth into praise. This aspect is the most promi- 
 nent one in the ancient Hours. They are built on 
 the principle of Praise, they center in the saying or 
 singing of the Psalms, so that another name for 
 the Breviary is " Psalterium." The services for 
 Matins and Prime began with the Invocation, *' In 
 the Name " etc., then came the Lord's Prayer with 
 its doxology, and then the Versicle, *' O Lord, 
 open," and the response, " and our mouth " etc., 
 and the Gloria, " Praise ye the Lord " and " The 
 Lord's Name be praised," and then the Venite, the 
 
50 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 great invitatory to praise, '* O come, let us sing 
 unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice," etc. This 
 was followed by the Psalter, a selection of only 
 twelve Psalms with their antiphons and glorias. 
 This is the heart of our own two services, as it 
 should be. It is the way that men have always 
 approached the Christian's God. But the fram- 
 ers of our Book have added more praise. Instead 
 of reciting daily or weekly only a dozen, or on 
 Sunday eighteen Psalms, they have given us the 
 whole Psalter in the course of the month, and so 
 in time every aspect of praise is put into our 
 mouths. 
 
 The Psalms are thus the dominant element in 
 our worship. They dominate all the others, con- 
 fession of sin, hearing God's word, profession of 
 faith, and pra^-er, all these are taken up and ap- 
 propriated and fused by the overpowering outpour- 
 ing of praise. " Thou art worthy, O Lord, to re- 
 ceive glory and honor and power." In this spirit 
 the framers of our book were not afraid to sound 
 at its very beginning the note of penitence. And 
 so they took the Confession and Absolution from 
 the end of the old services, where it was wont to 
 refer to the imperfection of the congregation's wor- 
 ship, personal confession, being then private and 
 auricular, and so having no place in public worship, 
 and put these in the forefront with verses from 
 God's word and an Exhortation as to the worship 
 which follows. Because in the light of God's 
 presence we first see ourselves as we really are, 
 and that is penitence. Only on our knees can we 
 begin to praise God, and after we have confessed 
 
MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 51 
 
 our sin and begged for forgiveness and heard it 
 freely given to such as ask for it humbly, can we 
 be fit and ready to stand on our feet and praise. 
 Only then do we personally feel the goodness and 
 mercy of God, — how worthy he is. Then our 
 book commands us to stand, invites us to praise 
 in the Venite, and puts the words of the glorious 
 Psalms in our mouths. 
 
 But the more we know of God, the more we 
 shall be moved to praise him. The service of 
 Matins had a lesson consisting of three or nine 
 short passages, and Lauds and Prime had a short 
 chapter and these were each followed by a burst of 
 praise, the former by Te Deum, " We praise thee, 
 O Lord," and the latter by the Benedictus, 
 " Blessed be the Lord God of Israel." 
 
 And so, bodily, this next stage of worship has 
 been incorporated into our Book. And here again 
 its compilers have generously given us more than 
 the old monks would. Instead of short selections, 
 with many repetitions and with bits from the lives 
 of the Saints, they have given us, as with the 
 Psalter, the whole of God's words in the Holy 
 Scriptures. The Lectionary gives us in daily por- 
 tions every word of the Old Testament in the 
 course of the year, and the New Testament twice 
 over, and the more we hear of God, the more we 
 desire to praise him. The natural desire of the 
 mind, after listening to the revelation which God 
 has made of himself, is to gather up this knowledge 
 into some form which will express our faith. And 
 so we use here the Apostles' Creed, not a com- 
 plete statement but a symbol of our Faith, collect- 
 
52 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 ing in a few short articles the essentials, on which 
 our praise rests, and which give us our confidence 
 to approach God in pra5er, which we are now 
 ready to do at the close of our worship. The 
 prayers begin with the Collect for the Day, thereby 
 connecting the Divine Office, as our two services 
 used to be called, with the Divine Liturgy, or 
 Office of Holy Communion; the other name for 
 which and that which best describes its character, 
 is " The Eucharist," which means ** giving of 
 thanks." The two are only different expressions 
 of our praise. 
 
 Then come the prayers, which are mostly in- 
 tercessions. These are collected from the three 
 early offices, Matins, contributing the Lord's 
 Prayer, which has been used earlier, Lauds, the 
 Collect for the Day, and the Collect for Peace 
 and Prime giving us the Collect for Grace. Here 
 the old service ended. But our compilers once 
 more added, perfectly in the spirit of the old forms, 
 the prayer for All in Authority, typifying the Na- 
 tion, and those for the clergy, typifying the 
 Church, and for All Conditions of Men, adding, 
 still in the spirit of praise, the General Thanksgiv- 
 ing and closing with the beautiful prayer of St. 
 Chrysostom, and the Grace in St. Paul's words to 
 the Corinthians. 
 
 The service of Evening Prayer is naturally as- 
 similated to the Morning Prayer. It is taken 
 from the Hours for Vespers and Compline which 
 each began at the Lord's Prayer, and were each 
 rich in the recitation of the Psalter. Vespers had 
 a lesson from the Old Testament, followed by the 
 
MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 53 
 
 Magnificat, while Compline had a lesson from the 
 New Testament, followed by Nunc Ditnittis. 
 
 Again the compilers having kept the spirit of 
 praise, prefix opening invitatory sentences, an ex- 
 hortation, or description of the order of the service 
 to follow ; the general confession and absolution 
 and the closing prayers after the Creed are, in the 
 main, like those in the morning, only the Prayer 
 for Peace is not now for outward peace from 
 enemies and adversaries, but that inward peace 
 of the heart, which the world cannot give, and 
 the next prayer is not for grace and guidance 
 through the day, but for protection during the 
 helpless hours of the night. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The two officers are, it will be noticed, exactly 
 similar in outline. What we may call the *' wor- 
 shipful content," or that which makes the service 
 an efficient vehicle of worship, is in each case the 
 same. The service presents an inevitable process, 
 and a satisfying progress, in accordance with what 
 is, as it were, a natural history of worship. The 
 great steps of the progress are five. Coming into 
 the Presence, entering expectant into God the Fa- 
 ther's house, the worsliiper's first instinct of un- 
 worthiness finds expression in the confession of sin, 
 led up to by exhortation, and culminating in the 
 declaration of absolution, and the Lord's Prayer, 
 to which the Absolution serves as a bidding. The 
 second inevitable and natural instinct is to give 
 thanks to the Father for his manifold gifts, and 
 
54 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 this finds expression in repeated songs of praise, 
 in Venite or Psalms, in first and second canticles. 
 A third instinct, or desire, upon entering the Pres- 
 ence is to hear the word of the Lord, and the lis- 
 tening soul is satisfied by the lections from Old 
 and New Testaments which alternate with the 
 expressions of praise. The worshipers then come, 
 united as they are in and through their corporate 
 experiences of confession, praise and listening, to 
 the climax of the service, the great gateway of the 
 Creed, the symbol of their common faith, the 
 pledge of their unswerving loyalty, through which 
 they enter the final part of the service, the enjoy- 
 ment of communion, the untrammeled outpouring 
 of their souls in petition, intercession and thanks- 
 giving to the Father of all. 
 
 It is this unfaltering rightness of the order, this 
 genius of the service, which furnishes the answer 
 to the question which every user of the Prayer 
 Book must ask himself — What is it which makes 
 this service, which commands my admiration and my 
 love, a great service? For that it is great we in- 
 stinctively feel, and of this excellence which makes 
 the service a great expression of worship we are 
 even ready to boast. We know that it is not 
 merely because the form is ancient, or contains 
 much Scripture, or chances to meet our habitual 
 moods. We see the ground of its beauty and 
 power in the unity and progress of its structure, 
 and in its worshipful reasonableness. 
 
 Note. Supplementing what was said in Chap- 
 ter II about the five books which are now bound 
 into one in our Pra5^er Book, it is important to 
 
MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 55 
 
 note that there is one still left outside. While 
 our Hymnal is sometimes closely attached to the 
 Prayer Book by its binding, it is a separate book. 
 And yet it is one of our books of worship. It is 
 the expression of our praise through music, the 
 setting of lyrical songs so that the congregation 
 may praise God musically in unison. Thus the 
 principle of praise is still further carried out and 
 we generally begin and end our Morning and 
 Evening Services with the singing of a hymn. We 
 now have incorporated in the Prayer Book, as one 
 of its five books, the Psalter, or Jewish Hymn Book. 
 It is conceivable that some day there might be in- 
 corporated there the Christian Hymn Book, which 
 ought to be that body of hymns which forms the 
 invariable element in all hymnals, and is the uni- 
 versal hymnody of Christendom. 
 
 SUGGESTED READING 
 
 Barry: Teacher's Prayer Book. (Am, Ed.) 
 
 Proctor and Frere: A New History of the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer. 
 
 Daniel : The Prayer Book ; Its History, Language and 
 Contents. 
 
 Pullan: The History of the Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 Dearmer: Everyman's History of the Prayer Book. 
 
 Hart: The Book of Common Prayer. 
 
VI 
 
 THE LITANY 
 
 THE Litany is in a peculiar and impressive 
 sense the people's service. In this fact rests 
 its claim upon the constant affection of Christian 
 congregations. It is through the full recognition 
 of this quality in it that we are to understand its 
 preeminent place among those great offices of de- 
 votion which are the recognized instruments of the 
 people's worship. 
 
 That it belongs in a special sense to the people 
 is made very clear by a consideration of its his- 
 toric uses. It is the service which leaves the re- 
 moter sanctuary, and the place of the high altar, 
 and comes down to linger in procession in the midst 
 of the kneeling congregation. More than that, it 
 goes out through the Church's open door, and 
 walks the familiar streets of traffic. It passes close 
 to the doors of the homes, and the humblest of 
 them, where the people dwell, and winds its way 
 among the fields where they toil, mingling itself 
 with all the intimacies of their daily experience. 
 
 It is said that the Litany form had its origin in 
 the time which followed upon the break-up of the 
 Roman Empire, and that it was the invention of 
 56 
 
THE LITANY 57 
 
 Bishop Mamertus, whose soul was burdened by 
 the needs and distresses of his day, when moral 
 degradations and excesses were emphasized by the 
 occurrence of earthquakes, pestilences and 
 droughts. There must be a new form, he felt, 
 for " drawing down the mercy of God." It was a 
 similar need, in the exigencies of the Reformation 
 and the convulsions of that age, which urged the 
 setting forth of our English Litany. There were 
 many varying forms of Litany, which sprang up in 
 different times and places, but the general manner 
 and outline are the same, and our Litany retains 
 a place of preeminence, just because it has grown 
 into its present outline through accretions and ad- 
 ditions which have sprung spontaneously out of re- 
 curring experiences of human needs. It is the 
 people's, because it goes out among them and their 
 deepest needs, and because through it the people 
 reach out of themselves to lay hold upon God's 
 mercy and deliverance. 
 
 Furthermore, it is close to the heart of the 
 people, because after its opening invocations to the 
 Triune God, it is consistently, from beginning to 
 end, from the appeals to " the precious blood " of 
 the first suffrage, through the appeal to his promise 
 to be present with the " two or three," even to the 
 end of the world, of St. Chrysostom's prayer, a 
 prayer to Christ. It keeps close to the heart of 
 the Elder Brother. It gives every one, the un- 
 worthiest and the most hesitant, a chance to be 
 included, because of the assurance that he who 
 was tempted like as we are understands. It lays 
 fast hold of the Humanity of God. 
 
58 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 Finally, in its form and method, it expects and 
 requires the constant participation of the people 
 themselves. It is not done for them, as if a sacrifice 
 by a priest. It is not prayed for them, by a minister 
 however truly their leader, or by one who repre- 
 sents, however welcome, or trusted, or sympathetic 
 his representation. It is prayed by themselves. As 
 an actual fact, throughout the service, the prayer 
 utterance is in the mouths of the people. The 
 minister recites the needs, but it is the people who 
 pray the prayer. The people's voices are for- 
 ever the dominant and all-embracing note. 
 
 II 
 
 But there is something still deeper, which forms 
 the basis of the service's power and appeal. We 
 ought to expect that a form of service which has 
 so long endured in the affection of the people, and 
 which has p^-ovided them with so potent a vehicle 
 for worship, would possess in the very genius of 
 the service itself an explanation of its power. It 
 challenges us to find an answer to the question as 
 to what is the " worshipful content " which ex- 
 plains its greatness. " This is a great service," 
 say the people. '' We love it." What is it that 
 makes it great? Let us try to answer that ques- 
 tion, that understanding, we may love it the more, 
 and use it the better. 
 
 The answer is that it unites in a wonderful way 
 the two primal instincts of prayer. These are 
 what we may call " the right of petition," and 
 *' the rest in God." If prayer be prayer, then may 
 
THE LITANY 59 
 
 we bring to God all our needs, as children ask their 
 father for what they want, without stinting and 
 without hesitation. We do not know if we shall 
 get that for which we ask, or if it is best that we 
 should have it. We know that we may ask, and 
 that it is good for us, and for God (may we not 
 say?) that there should be this asking. Therefore 
 we bring all our fears in the face of Nature's ter- 
 rors, or of man's cruelties; and all our wishes for 
 the welfare of those dear to us, in their sicknesses 
 and sorrows, their misfortunes and lonelinesses, 
 their great experience in child-bearing, and in con- 
 flict, and in dangerous adventure. It is this primal 
 instinct in prayer which is met by the piled up 
 petitions of the suffrages, with their insistence of 
 need and their haunting rhythm. 
 
 And the other instinct is supplied by the constant 
 refrain of the " Good Lord," singing its way 
 through the whole, as it weaves itself in and out 
 in the progress of the prayer, and reassures the 
 heart in its confidence in God. The instinct of 
 *' rest in God " has not need for many words. 
 Sometimes It requires only silence, and rest in 
 the thought of him, and openness of soul. If there 
 be a word, as in this people's service, for the as- 
 surance of heart to heart, It is only the one word 
 that is required, said over and over again to the 
 soul's refreshing, of " the goodness of the Lord." 
 
 Sometimes, It is to be feared, the gist of the mat- 
 ter is obscured or forgotten, when the mind or 
 voice stresses the other part of the response, the 
 '' deliver us," or the " we beseech thee to hear 
 us," which is not to be stressed at all, but is only 
 
6o THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 the formal prayer-expression. It Is this false em- 
 phasis which leads some at times to imagine that 
 the Litany is a process of wresting from an un- 
 willing God the blessings which in reality he waits 
 to give. 
 
 Even if it be historically true that the thought 
 of inventing a method of wresting mercy from 
 God lay at the heart of the Litany's origin, we 
 must not forget that the inventors builded better 
 than they knew. Nor must we forget that succeed- 
 ing ages of Litany users have by their interpreta- 
 tion filled the great prayer with its deeper and 
 truer meaning. Indeed, in the very prayer forms 
 themselves we have a right to find and feel a 
 meaning more original than their origin. The 
 word '' deliver us " means '* set us free," and in 
 it our hearts speak, not a last resort in our despair 
 to God's possible mercy, but a laying hold on that 
 liberty which is the heritage of the sons of God. 
 In like manner the prayer utterance of the people, 
 '' we beseech thee to hear us," is not a hesitating 
 approach to our Lord's possibly unwilling atten- 
 tion, but our glad and confident claim upon him 
 whose concern for our needs we know beforehand, 
 upon One who heareth prayer, and to whom all 
 flesh shall come. 
 
 The purpose here is merely to indicate and make 
 clear this underlying idea of the whole service. It 
 is this combination of the two primal instincts of 
 prayer which constitutes its genius, and which ex- 
 plains the fact of its being so great an instrument 
 of worship. 
 
THE LITANY 6i 
 
 III 
 
 With this principle in mind, one may approach 
 each part of the service with new appreciation, and 
 especiall}^ find new beauties in its changing phases, 
 which save it from undue monotony, and furnish 
 it with fresh and inspiring surprises, or terms of 
 thought. The remembrance of its inherent princi- 
 ple and source of power will illuminate its opening 
 section of seven " deprecations " or prayers for 
 " deliverance from," with its two " obsecrations," 
 or recollections of the meaning of Christ's whole 
 life for us, and will fill with understanding and 
 satisfaction the section which follows of seven plus 
 ten '' intercessions," with the closing " lesser lit- 
 any," and culminating Lord's Prayer, of the Lit- 
 any's main division. And it will give added value 
 to the second section, sometimes called the *' war 
 section," with its versicles and responses, its an- 
 tiphon, and its prayers. 
 
VII 
 
 THE HOLY COMMUNION 
 
 THAT the service of the Holy Communion is 
 the chief of all the services of the congre- 
 gation is universally acknowledged by the people of 
 the church. Its preeminence is equally recognized 
 by those who urge its frequent use, and by those 
 who would reserve it for less frequent and there- 
 fore more impressive and better prepared-for oc- 
 casions. Why is it thus esteemed the great, the 
 culminating service and act of worship ? 
 
 The attempt to answer this question will lead us 
 on our way to an understanding of its supreme ap- 
 peal, and to a clear apprehension of its genius as an 
 instrument of worship. 
 
 The first answer, and the one which possesses 
 perhaps the most immediate and general recogni- 
 tion, is that it is the service ordained by Christ 
 himself. In seeking expression in \^orship for our 
 sense of loyalty to him, there can be no more ob- 
 vious and simple way than the way of obedience to 
 his express command. It is certainly true that 
 many of his followers, with no ven»^ clear notion 
 of the Master's intention or purpose, and with no 
 thought-out estimate of the inherent value of the 
 62 
 
THE HOLY COMMUNION 63 
 
 sacrament itself, give themselves in humility and 
 trust to the simple carrying out of his sacred 
 charge, — " Do this in remembrance of me." No 
 analysis of Gospel records, with an alleged redis- 
 covery of the original Gospel, and of the Master's 
 mind the night before his death, can serve to shake 
 the universal Christian consciousness that there was 
 intent to leave with his followers an obligation to 
 a Memorial Service of fellowship. It is well that 
 is so. The motive of obedience is a potent one, and 
 the service which enshrines this participation in the 
 Master's will, through obedience and remembrance, 
 must necessarily be supreme. 
 
 There is a further reason in the constant observ- 
 ance of the Church from the beginning. To this 
 all ancient records, within the New Testament, and 
 beyond it, give eloquent testimony. The stary of 
 the liturgies of all the churches, in their infinite 
 richness and variety, speaks of the persistence of 
 the great service, and of the sense of sacred obli- 
 gation with which the followers of Christ gather 
 for the supper of their Lord. This cloud of wit- 
 nesses through all the ages presents in itself an in- 
 escapable appeal to the Christians of to-day. The 
 sense of the great company, not only of those drawn 
 together throughout the world of this present time, 
 but gathered from all generations and centuries, 
 urges the souls of men to lay hold upon this bond 
 of union, and to become partakers in the universal 
 fellowship which is the Communion of Saints. It 
 
64 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 is an urgent and compelling call that the supper 
 be furnished with guests, and the disciple knows 
 that the faithful of all ages and lands are expecting 
 until his place be filled. The invitation echoes 
 from countless lips, " This do in remembrance of 
 me, — in remembrance of him." 
 
 Ill 
 
 But in itself the observance possesses the elements 
 of an inevitable greatness. It is instinct with 
 genius for the realizing within men's souls of the 
 final facts of the spiritual life. Partaking together 
 of the common food is the very method of individual 
 and corporate life. The material side of it gives 
 it power because we are in very deed tabernacled in 
 the flesh. It is the testimony of age-long human 
 experience that no other act can compare with 
 the partaking together of the bread of life, in es- 
 tablishing and cementing that communion with the 
 life of God and with the life of man, without 
 which we cannot live. Had Christ himself not 
 instituted the Lord's Supper, then must his fol- 
 lowers have perforce forthwith instituted it, since 
 their life with him and with one another demands 
 it. 
 
 The two names by which the sacrament is most 
 commonlv and universally designated are the 
 Lord's Supper, and the Holy Communion, and 
 these names are equally expressive of the genius 
 and method of the great service, and testify to its 
 preeminence. Each name is of two words. One 
 word is not sufficient, because what is demanded is 
 
THE HOLY COMMUNION 65 
 
 a combination of intimacy and mystery, and this 
 combination eacli name supplies. The soul requires 
 in its culminating act of worship the opportunity 
 of intimacy. It must make and keep connection 
 with the most familiar and constant things of life. 
 Its feet must be upon the ground. It must also 
 possess the immediacy of approach to things divine. 
 It demands to lay hold upon the ultimate mystery. 
 In its very expression it must have to do with 
 things inexpressible and unutterable. The names 
 give form to these two equally insistent demands. 
 There is nothing more intimate, homely, or fa- 
 miliar than a supper. But it is the Lord's supper. 
 There is nothing more intimate and familiar, more 
 essential to living, than communion or fellowship. 
 The ultimate horror for the human soul is soli- 
 tude. But it is the Holy Communion. Its very 
 title helps us to an understanding of the fact that 
 this service is our culminating and supreme act of 
 worship. 
 
 IV 
 
 There is a further question for users of the 
 Prayer Book. Why is the Communion Service of 
 that book so great and satisfying an instrument of 
 worship, — so worthy a vehicle for the supreme ob- 
 servance ? 
 
 The service itself, as we hold it in our hands 
 to-day, is the descendant of a long line of ancient 
 liturgies. It has taken up into itself a vast and 
 sacred experience in Christian worship. This is 
 much in itself. 
 
 When we come to study these ancient liturgies, 
 
66 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 one thing at least becomes plain, and that is that 
 each one is composed of parts. There are, for in- 
 stance, two parts which may be universally recog- 
 nized. The names of these are familiar to students 
 of the subject, the pro-anaphora, and the anaphora, 
 or the ordinary of the mass, and the canon of the 
 mass. In a word, these two parts represent a 
 preparatory service, and the service, or celebration 
 of the sacrament itself. Still a third part becomes 
 recognizable at certain times or under certain con- 
 ditions, and this is the Communion, that is the 
 partaking by the people of the offered sacrifice. 
 There is a possibility, and in certain cases, a tend- 
 ency, to make these parts not only separable, but 
 separate. The pro-anaphora, or ordinary of the 
 mass, or the ante-Communion, may be severed by 
 an interval, or inserted hymn, from the real serv- 
 ice which follows. It may be used by itself. It is 
 of possible edification to outsiders, who are not as 
 yet of the number of the faithful. It may con- 
 ceivably be used on the day before, as a serv^ice by 
 itself of preparation for to-morrow's sacrament. 
 In like manner, the Communion of the people, if 
 this Communion is infrequent, and if it is esteemed 
 unessential, the offering of the sacrifice being the 
 one necessary celebration of the feast, may be 
 relegated to a subordinate place of occasional oc- 
 currence. 
 
 But it is the genius of our Prayer Book service 
 to make clear, wliile the service has parts, that 
 these parts are not detachable, but are parts of a 
 whole, are parts \\hose significance consists in em- 
 phasizing and realizing the whole. 
 
THE HOLY COMMUNION 67 
 
 As a matter of fact, the parts of the service, as 
 it stands in our book to-day, are three. They may 
 be designated as a series of Approaches, in order by 
 means of a series, to make it clear that the one 
 great service all through is presented as an Ap- 
 proach to the Presence. Herein rest the reasonable- 
 ness and beauty of its structure. The approaches 
 may be symbolized by the plan of Solomon's 
 Temple, or of any Christian church. There are 
 the Outer Court, and the Inner Court, and the 
 Holy of Holies. There are the Nave and the 
 Choir and the Sanctuary. But the temple is 
 one — the church is one. This structure of the 
 service is carried through with amazing symmetry 
 and proportion and richness of detail, like an ar- 
 chitectural plan. The first approach may be called 
 the Instructional Approach. Here are the Scrip- 
 tural lessons, from the New Testament, in Epistle 
 and Gospel, and from the Old, in the Ten Com- 
 mandments; and here through the same enunciation 
 of God's law, is the opportunity for self-examina- 
 tion. The second approach may be called the In- 
 tercessional Approach. Here is the remembrance 
 of our brethren in the giving of alms, and in the 
 great intercession, which leads as intercession does, 
 to confession, followed by the assurance of God's 
 forgiveness, fortified by the summary of his gifts of 
 grace, as contained in the Comfortable Words. 
 The third approach is the Sacramental Approach, 
 with the central Prayer of Consecration and its 
 Words of Institution, followed by the Communion 
 of the people. 
 
 Moreover, each approach is ordered in a cor- 
 
68 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 responding manner with every other, in the method 
 of its inauguration and of its climax. Each be- 
 gins, with the priest and people, so to speak, on 
 their knees in humility or penitence, and each ends 
 with an outburst of triumphant thanksgiving and 
 praise. In the first, we begin with the Office's col- 
 lect, and its prayer that the thoughts of our hearts 
 may be cleansed; and we end with the triumphant 
 singing or saying of the Nicene Creed. In the sec- 
 ond, we begin with the great prayer of intercession 
 which takes up into itself our alms and oblations, 
 and we end with the exultant Sanctus. In the 
 third, we begin with the prayer of humble access, 
 and the sense of our unworthiness so much as to 
 gather up the crumbs, and we end, after the cul- 
 minating Lord's Prayer and word of Thanksgiving, 
 with the praises of the Gloria in Excelsis. And 
 then, with the Blessing, the service is over, and it 
 is over with a sense of completeness. The unity is 
 the striking fact, and gives its compelling force and 
 beauty to the supreme act of worship. It is an ap- 
 proach through a series, but it is one great ap- 
 proach. No part is detachable or inconsequential. 
 It is a progressive realization of the fundamental 
 facts of God's gift, and of man's participation. It 
 is a continuous and self-completing sacrifice. 
 Priest and people together enter into solemn prepa- 
 ration, together they consecrate the bread and wine, 
 and plead the sacrifice, together they partake of 
 the Body and Blood. All are interdependent in one 
 communion, all parts of the service are indis- 
 solubly united, and contribute essentially to the per- 
 fection of the whole. 
 
THE HOLY COMMUNION 69 
 
 The service of our Prayer Book indubitably de- 
 rives its greatness, in a true sense, from the fact 
 that its roots are in the great liturgies of the past, 
 and from its fidelity to the total experience of wor- 
 shiping Christendom. But it may claim with rea- 
 son that it is a very perfect flower of a long process 
 of growth, and though sometimes the methods of 
 its development have been almost by accident, while 
 again they have been through deliberate determina- 
 tion, the result is a model, not necessarily perfect, 
 or the denial of further development to come, — but 
 yet a model, to which the churches of the Anglican 
 Communion and churches everywhere, may well 
 look vs^ith imitative envy, and gratitude. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK AND ITS USE 
 
 I 
 
 THE question was asked in the opening chap- 
 ter whether, and if so, how, our Book of 
 Common Prayer expressed and fulfilled the mani- 
 fold needs of the human heart as it came to worship 
 God. It is hoped that this question has been 
 answered. But not only, as was said in the closing 
 words of Chapter V, does it satisfy the needs of 
 the individual worshiper, not only does it bring 
 the individual into a common worship with other 
 individuals, its scope is far wider. It has no sym- 
 pathy with the selfish " private worship in public," 
 which so many try to make it. It is the People's 
 Book. The word *' Common " in its title has 
 the same connotation as in " Commonwealth," it 
 is less for the individual than for the co?nmunity. 
 
 This comes not only from its Catholic compre- 
 hensiveness, its determined acceptance of opposite 
 views, nor from its touching the needs and aspira- 
 tions of every part of a man and of so many differ- 
 ent kinds of men, but from its inherent interest in 
 and insistence on the social side of man's life. It 
 has caught its spirit from the Lord's Prayer, 
 *' After this manner, therefore pray ye, say Our 
 70 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK 71 
 
 Father." The "we" and ''us" and "our" are 
 not editorial but vital. They mean what they say 
 and they call on us to mean it. The congregation 
 which uses this Book is not a congeries of units, 
 a number of grains of sand in a heap, with no co- 
 hesion nor unity. It is a body of worshipers ap- 
 proaching God as an organic unity, each cooperating 
 with each, and all forming the body of Christ which 
 is the Church. 
 
 There is a time and a place for a man to stand 
 before God alone. We all must. But when we 
 assemble and meet together to use this Book, is not 
 the time. It fulfills and expands the form of wor- 
 ship Christ gave us in the Lord's Prayer. It com- 
 pels us, like that, to clasp hands in spirit with all 
 our brothers and thus to approach our Father to- 
 gether. Here we are forced to remember that all 
 we are brethren, that we are one in our sin and in 
 our need of salvation, one in our desire to praise 
 God, and that it is good and necessary to pray one 
 for another. The Prayer Book's Confession of Sin, 
 whether in Daily Office, or Communion Service, is 
 not y€ur sin or mine; the terms are too general to 
 satisfy the individual conscience, which has to say, 
 " thus and thus have I sinned and done this evil in 
 thy sight." It is purposely general, because it is 
 confession of the corporate sin of a great body of 
 people. Our thoughts are to be lifted from what 
 we have done that is wrong to the sin of the world, 
 the sins of the people kneeling by us, the crimes 
 committed in our community; and we are made to 
 feel these vicariously as our own, the shame and 
 blame of them, the need of repentance for them, 
 
72 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 and the need of forgiveness. Our common brother- 
 hood makes us responsible for the sins of our broth- 
 ers, makes us share them, makes us feel their weight. 
 In like manner the great words of the Absolution 
 declare that God promises forgiveness to his people, 
 that he pardoneth all who truly repent, in which 
 pardon we pray that we may have a share. And 
 after confession and absolution comes the climax 
 in the Lord's Prayer whose spirit we have now 
 caught and whose words we can now say. This 
 is what is meant by the Social Character of our 
 Book of Worship. 
 
 It is still further expressed by its common praise, 
 too often usurped by a choir. When we rise from 
 our knees and stand in joy, all of us should sing 
 aloud ; *' O come let us sing unto the Lord, let us 
 heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation " ; 
 or " Glory be to God on High, and on earth 
 peace." It is a perfect example of that modern ex- 
 ercise called " a community sing," the spontaneous 
 expression of a common joy, into which all must 
 enter if it is to be worthily expressed. And in the 
 hearing of the message from God, wherever in any 
 service the Word is read, the burden in the Old 
 Testament is that of a people, a nation, guided and 
 redeemed by God as a whole; and in the New, that 
 of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of 
 Man. Nor do we forget how largely the prayers 
 are intercessory, remembering the needs of others 
 before our own. 
 
 Here is the Social Gospel proclaimed in every part 
 of our Book. It belongs to the people and has their 
 interests at heart. It is not something for good 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK 73 
 
 Episcopalians to enjoy, in beautiful churches and 
 with sumptuous adjuncts, but should be heard like 
 the Lord, by the common people gladly; as it will 
 be when they understand what is their heritage. 
 
 If this is true, instead of being one of the dis- 
 tinctive (and separating) marks of our Episcopal 
 Church, the Prayer Book should of^er one of the 
 strongest bonds of unity to Christians of every 
 name. 
 
 n 
 
 This spirit of the Book, which makes of it a 
 unifier for all Christian worshipers, imposes upon 
 its users a serious responsibility. As its users, they 
 are in a real sense its possessors, and its possessors in 
 order that they may give it freely to the world's 
 and the Church's needs. In the long run its wider 
 influence rests upon the simple devotion of the 
 worshipers who use the book, and upon their in- 
 telligent, high-minded, and true-hearted employ- 
 ment of its great expressions of worship. 
 
 As one dwells upon the beauty and impressiveness 
 of each of its great services, a thought which is sure 
 to be brought home is this. The occasion of the 
 use of any one of these is a great opportunity, a 
 great event. This ought to be the conviction of 
 every individual who goes to God's house to wor- 
 ship. He is to take his part in a great act of 
 worship, which is to be ordered according to a form 
 of service, which has been perfected in its expres- 
 sion through the thought and experience and inspi- 
 ration of ages of worship and of leaders of worship. 
 There ought to be an exhilaration and a sobriety 
 
74 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 and a joy in his approach. His silent prayer of 
 preparation ought to be a heartfelt prayer that he 
 may be worthy to be a partaker, and that he may 
 make a complete offering, keeping nothing back, 
 whether of penitence or praise. 
 
 And here it must be recognized how much de- 
 pends upon the leader of the worship. If the serv- 
 ice is a great event for the worshiper in the pew, 
 how great an event ought it to be for the minister. 
 He brings not only the needs and offerings of his 
 own soul, but the demands upon him of all the 
 waiting people. His is a great responsibility, — to 
 be the sufficient medium for utterance, the director 
 and inspirer, the interpreter, encourager, ambassa- 
 dor in Christ's stead. These things are not said 
 with a view of suggesting any external dignity of 
 office, or any superior or imposed priesthood. They 
 are said simply to call to mind the facts of the 
 situation, the inescapable findings of experience. 
 So much, so very much depends on the minister. 
 It is true that there are the prayers and hymns 
 themselves, the forms of the service, the great words 
 and sublime thoughts, made doubly sacred by age- 
 long and precious associations — these things which 
 no man can take away. It is true that in a very 
 real sense the book itself in the worshiper's hand 
 is a protection from the vagaries of the minister. 
 And yet when all is said, so much depends upon 
 him. In the light of the great event, there is surely 
 no room for lack of preparation on his part. He 
 ought to know beforehand what he is going to read 
 from God's word and how to read it. Surely he 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK 75 
 
 ought to pray, not read, the prayers, and know and 
 feel just what prayers ought to be prayed that day 
 and that hour. And the words of praise in hymn 
 and canticle that are to be the people's utterances 
 ought to be his special care. The unity of impres- 
 sion of that given service which it is so possible to 
 obtain, through an understanding of the book's 
 riches and possibilities in variety and flexibility, — 
 this must be his care. In face of the great event, 
 there can be no room for thoughtlessness, careless- 
 ness, the slipshod or irreverent manner, the unin- 
 telligible utterance, the destro5ing wrong emphasis, 
 the annoying and obtrusive mannerism, the unsym- 
 pathetic and perfunctory rendering, and the half- 
 hearted entrance into the act of w-orship. And yet 
 these things happen, and happen often. Ministers 
 and people cannot tell themselves too often that the 
 service in which they take part is a great event. 
 
 Unity is the watchword of our day and genera- 
 tion. Whether it be unity between classes or races, 
 unity Industrial or social, the unity between nations 
 which is to insure a new and better world, or the 
 unity of the Church, which seizes the imagination 
 and fires the zeal, it Is for unity that the religious 
 labor most earnestly, It Is the vision of the coming 
 Kingdom that most Insistently Inspires the enthus- 
 iasm of Christian worshipers. It Is because our 
 People's Book of Worship Is so great a medium for 
 the realizing of unity, so truly a handbook of the 
 Kingdom of God and of his Christ, that the lovers 
 and users of It must hold It as a sacred trust, and 
 so deeply feel their responsibility that their use of 
 
76 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 
 
 it, and their whole-hearted participation in its 
 services, will render it the efficient and compelling 
 instrument it may well be in the great cause of 
 universal Christian fellowship. 
 
 THE END 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
THE following pages contain advertisements of a 
 few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. 
 
Report of the Joint Commission 
 on the Book of Common Prayer 
 
 Boards, i2mo 
 
 This is the second Report of the Commission, the first having 
 been made to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church 
 at St. Louis in 1916. The volume contains the recommendations 
 which are to be made to the Convention of this year, which is 
 to meet in Detroit next October. The book will be of general in- 
 terest, since it contains in addition to the suggested details of 
 revision, many new prayers and new services which are proposed 
 as substitutes for those now in the Prayer Book or as new ma- 
 terial. These services include the Baptismal service, Offices of 
 Instruction to take the place of the Church Catechism, a new 
 order for the Visitation of the Sick, an Office for the Admission 
 of Deaconesses, and forms of Litany, Intercession, and Thanks- 
 giving, as well as a Compline, which are to be placed, according to 
 the recommendation, in what will practically be an appendix at 
 the end of the Prayer Book. While there are numerous sugges- 
 tions for detailed revision, in those services which are used by the 
 people in their worship, these services are left on the whole in 
 their present great outlines. The Occasional Offices, on the con- 
 trary, notably the Office for the Burial of the Dead, show radical 
 changes and helpful enrichment. 
 
 The present Report goes considerably beyond the Report of 
 1916 in the variety and extent of its recommendations. The 
 proposals which concern the amendment of the text of the Psalter 
 are of special interest. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
DR. EDWARD S. DROWN'S NEW BOOK 
 
 God's Responsibility for the War 
 
 By Edward S. Drown, 
 
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CHURCH PRINCIPLES FOR LAY PEOPLE 
 
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 find prayer of intimate and significant value in their daily lives. 
 " A little volume of unusual power and insight. . . . The mean- 
 ing of prayer, its value and results in life and character are very 
 practically and helpfully explained." — Independent. 
 
 The Episcopal Church: Its Faith and Order 
 
 By GEORGE HODGES, 
 Dean of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 Cloth, i2mo, $1.00 
 This present volume is a concise statement of the doctrine and 
 discipline of the Episcopal Church. 
 
 " The author writes for humanity, and no better book for re- 
 ligious study, for clergy, laity, and for the younger members of 
 the churches has appeared in some time." — Review of Reviews. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
Princeton Theological Semlnary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 01022 0368 
 
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