REVIEW OF PRAYER BOOK

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4366, 16 January 1922, Page 1

REVIEW OF PRAYER BOOK

BISHOP WELLDON’S VIEWS. Addressing the members of the Readingroom Society at Nottingham last October, the Dean of Durham (Bishop Welldon) remarked that a good Churchman, however anxious he might be for a revision of the Prayer Book, could not look with any other sentiment than admiring gratitude upon the Book of Common Prayer as it now is. But excellent as the liturgy of the Church of England was, it had never been modified since 1662. It had remained immovable in a rapidly moving world of thought, and faith, and emotion, and conviction. Ho did not think that a Book of Common Prayer dating back over more than 250 years could be expected to ; satn isfy the present age. It was not too much to say that the Book of Common Prayer assumed three facts, of which two were true only in relation to a small minority of the people and the third was not true at all to-day.. It assumed the small size of parishes, the .ample leisure of the people who lived in them, and then general ignorance of public affairs. There were extreme instances of tacit assumption which permeated the whole Book of Common Prayer. How alien it seemed to be, how impossible of practical effect, in a day when the population w,as crowding into great cities, when parishes of 15,000 to 20,000 souls were not extraordinary phenomena, and when the Residents in a parish, as sometimes happened so far from being parishioners in the true sens 3, were little more than temporary visit tors, passing from one parish to another, and from one city to another with such rapidity that the third part of a parish might have wholly changed within a single year. The Prayer Book, so far as it took for granted the personal acquaintance of .every clergyman with every one of his parishioners, had become and must remain impracticable in modern life. With regard to the OrderSfor the Burial of the Dead, the only change he would wish to make was the omission of the first of the two prayers after the actual interment, or, if .it remained, to modify the unnatural expression “We give hearty thanks that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our brother (or sister) out cf the miseries of this sinful world,” and to add a prayer for the soul of the departed and also a prayer for the mourners. ’ Bishop Welldon pleaded that the Church should provide some simpler prayers, or .alternative or subsidiary, to those in the present Book ofi Common Prayer, and allow under due episcopal sanction the introduction of extempore prayers in divine worship. He’ could not refrain from throwing out the suggestion that a good deal of the lanugage of the Book of Common Prayer sounded a little artificial upon the lips of worshippers to-day.

THE MARRIAGE SERVICE. The preface in the form of solemn.-) isation of matrimony was painfully distressing to many bridegrooms and brides in the hours of their marriage. Why should they be told that holy matrimony was “ not tp be taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly, tp satisfy man’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have -po understanding 2” Our forefathers might have spoken so, but who could speak to-day ? It was simply the laws of historical perspective which excused such language on such an occasion. He hoped it would disappear from the revised Prayer Book. With it perhaps might disappear the passage which says that holy matrimony was “ordained for a remedy against sin and to avoid fornication ; that such persons who have not the gift of contingency might marry and keep themselves undeflled members of Christ’s Body.” The Book of Common Prayer reflects some feature of a society which had passed or was tending to pass away. It contained too many prayers for the King, and those prayers were couched at times in such language as wholly misrepresented the present relation of the King to bis people. Whatever tended to support the theory of the divine rights of kings was, or ought to be, as alien from ths mind of the Church as of the State. If there were too many prayers fo r the King there were too few for the people. We were living tn a democratic age. Nearly the whole world had become republican. It was essential to pray for the wisdom, justice, truth and righteousness of the people.

Bishop Welldpn complained that little or no account was taken in the Prayer Book of Empire or of Christian missions. He further urged that the clergy should be careful not to slur over the prayers by their rapid, unintelligible delivery and expressed the opinion that every clergymen should be taught elocution.