The Evening Star SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1928. THE PRAYER BOOK.

Evening Star, Issue 19788, 11 February 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1928. THE PRAYER BOOK.

Thk Anglican Church Assembly at Home, ns was to be expected, is not finding it an easy task to agree to the amendments proposed by the bishops to be made to the new Prayer Book ior the purpose ot : commending it to Parliament. Every clause of the revised book had been discussed and re-dis-cussed before in the church courts, and it is unlikely that any change could bo proposed now which had not been before rejected. The discussion on the new amendments is proceeding as we write in the Houses of Clergy and Laity. Conflict of opinion so far has been most in evidence, and the feelings of members evidently have been profoundly moved by the issues at stake. If the issue is to be considered as one between revision and no revision, an impartial view must feel most sympathy with the supporters of tho Revised Book Cor a variety of reasons. Tho book was approved by the church itself by very emphatic majorities. That, and tho fact that tho opponents of it in the church courts were drawn from the extremists of both sides—extreme AugloCatholics as well as extreme Protestants —makes tho strongest suggestion that there was nothing very “ Romish ” about it. Tho language which was objected to in tho Consecration Prayer lor Holy Communion has been held, in fact, to be less susceptible of a Roman Catholic interpretation than that of tho old service. Reservation of the elements was allowed, but reservation had been practised before in no small number of churches—it lias been practised, it has been said, in the Scottish Episcopal Church for two hundred years — and it promised much that the limits of that custom should be precisely defined. A rubric proposed to be added in tho latest revision expressly forbids any adoration of the elements.

So much lor the doctrines at stake. Apart from doctrine, it seems absurd that the forms of worship of the Church of England should bo regulated not by the church itself, and not oven by members of the House of Commons representing English constituencies, but by the votes of members representing Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. In England, in the adverse division, 199 members voted for the measure and only 175 against. Lord Birkenhead described the effect of the vote when ho said: “Everything, it seems, is to bo stereotyped in the year 1662. A 1662 man could be hanged for the larceny of ten shillings, a witch could be drowned or burned, and a doctor of medicine knew little except that his patients ought to be blooded. It would be as sensible to suppose that the painstaking, conscientious, but very imperfectly educated theologians who prepared the Prayer Book in 1662 said the last word on the ceremonial of worship in the church as to suppose that Shakespeare was not less unfitted for Ids particular task, and had said the last word in development ol the English language.” Parliament may pass the book when it is again amended, or it may refuse once more to pass it. But it is improbable that any clergyman who desires to use it will he deterred from doing so, oven il it is not passed. He will respect the opinion of 95 per cent, of his bishops more than the opinion of “Irish, Scottish, and Welsh voters, reinforced by the moral.authority on such points of Saklatvala ” ( the Communist member for Battersea, who is a Parsec). And his bishop would be a hold man if ho ventured to prosecute him.