fessor in a German university or a lecturer in a Romish seminary. They have been guided and moulded by the English Prayer-book, with its constant recital of God's Word, its emphasis on human weakness, its "sober standard of feeling," its "soothing tendency,"* its sympathy with high and low, rich and poor. And they have spent half the week-day in visiting the sick and preparing candidates for confirmation; half Sunday, perhaps, in teaching schoolchildren. These influences reach into the study, and leave their mark on all that issues thence, sobering, chastening, uplifting the scholar's work.

But what an extraordinary system it seems if you set yourself to look for encouragements for theological research and speculative independence. Hooker is a parish priest. Butler is "buried" in a Durham village, where they only remembered that he rode a black pony very fast, and yielded to importunate beggars. Year by year an effort is made in the Church of England to produce a new theological treatise; but by the conditions of the trust the Bampton lectures must be delivered as sermons from the University pulpit. When Butler and Lightfoot have obtained fame among philosophers and historians, they must, forsooth, be appointed to bishoprics, and excellent bishops they made. Our theological professors are compelled to lecture to crowds of young men, who are obliged to attend if not to listen. Truly an extraordinary system, such as no one could have devised, and no one attempt to reproduce.

And yet it answers. It answers not only for the parishes, the undergraduates, the dioceses, but also for the thinkers and students of theology. The Anglican divines always speak and write under the stress of a grave sense of responsibility in teaching. They must not advance wild theories, lest they seriously mislead their pupils. They must not be partisan or needlessly controversial, lest by

KEBI E, Preface to the Christian Year.

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kindling wrath and bitterness they thereby injure souls. They must be frank and open and just, for they speak in a critical atmosphere where any falsity will be detected and exposed. They are not secluded in the delusive safety of a seminary, nor are they merely athletes stripping for a public contest that has no importance beyond the victory of the moment. They have always felt themselves-and this is the chief characteristic of the Anglican writers on sacred subjects-the servants of the most ignorant as well as of the most learned, advocates of practical religion as well as pioneers in abstract theology.

VII.

Anglican Worship

BY W. O. BURROWS, M.A.

IT

T is the fashion in some quarters to disparage our Prayer-book, and especially to sneer at that timehonoured phrase, "our incomparable liturgy." And no doubt there is some justice in the mockery; for Anglicans have not commonly had much knowledge of the servicebooks of other countries, so as to compare them justly with our own, and in this as in other matters have been insular and prejudiced. And, moreover, we are biassed in our judgment not only by a somewhat jealous and ignorant patriotism, but by the nobler influence of inherited tradition. Most men, however radical in politics, or revolutionary in social questions, have a tendency in religion to be stiffly conservative. The services and the prayers, the rites and the ceremonies, that we knew as children are to many of us throughout life the standard of perfection. This fidelity to what is familiar has its good side, as it has its bad side; and it is not merely due to unreasoning prejudice, but has its roots deep down in human nature. For what we revered before we understood it has, if it is at all worthy in itself, much more than the glamour of old and dear association. It is not to be compared merely to the table that we love because we played on it and under it as children; but, rather, it is

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like the scenery of our childish home, the same, yet always changing; it is like the face of one whom we have long known and loved. For as the years go by, we are always finding out new meanings in that which is yet so old and familiar; and the delight of the discovery enhances our joy in the sympathy thus freshly discerned. Among all men, that which only gradually discloses its truth, its beauty, its kindliness, its appropriateness, is the more highly prized by reason of that reserve and delay. "Valent ænigmatum latebræ ad amorem veritatis acuendum."* And so it has been for many of us with our English service and Prayer-book. We loved them before we understood them, and as we grow in knowledge of them we love them all the more. And therefore it is almost impossible for us to estimate rightly the merits and defects of other forms of service; and we rashly consider that the best to which we are most accustomed.

Although then the word "incomparable" is better left out, because in truth we are not in a position to compare our liturgy fairly with others, we may still be allowed to substitute some other word of praise, and to thank God for the deep influence our Prayer-book has had on the religious character of England. That influence is more. subtle and profound than is at once realised; and it is more widespread. It is not only that Wesleyans and others constantly and openly use the Prayer-book Collects, or wisely borrow its phraseology in their own compositions. But beyond this the steadfast standard of orthodoxy, earnestness, sincerity, and penitence, set up by the Church. of England, and maintained by daily use of the Prayerbook, has told far and wide among English-speaking peoples. If the Creeds, for example, had not been so well known and so often recited, there is little doubt but that popular divergence from the true faith would have

S. AUGUSTINE, De cat. rud. ix.

been much wider than it is. Again, though people rebel at the reiteration of the "State Prayers," which have now been a feature in English services for about a thousand years, yet they are an effectual witness to the duty. taught in Scripture of consecrating politics, and taking national life religiously. Once more, the Church's recurrent invitations to repentance and confession of sins have probably gone far to check our national heresy of Pelagian self-complacency. For while Puritanism encourages confident assertions of sinlessness (since conversion), and while religious men are constantly tempted to adopt the pharisaic conviction "we are the people, and wisdom shall die with us," and not only wisdom, but virtue and godliness too, the Prayer-book calls on us to ask repeatedly year by year for new and contrite hearts, and bids us acknowledge that we have erred and strayed from God's ways like lost sheep.

The principles of the Prayer-book services are laid down in those admirable, but too rarely read Prefaces, which stand in the forefront of the book. Sometimes a tedious anthem or an inaudible sermon sends us in despair on a voyage of discovery in the unexplored regions of the Prayer-book; and if we have the wisdom to turn to the first pages, we probably end by feeling grateful to the cause that without meaning it did us so good a service. It is to be hoped that these opportunities occur less often than they did of yore; but at any rate it will be worth while to attempt to restate and illustrate these fundamental principles of our public worship, which also in great measure are applicable to our private devotions.

I.

The Priesthood of the Laity. The most obvious of the changes made at the Reformation was the translation of the services into English. Here, as elsewhere, our