PRAYER BOOK REVISION.

Putaruru Press, Volume V, Issue 175, 10 March 1927, Page 3

PRAYER BOOK REVISION.

BLATCHFORD’S EARLY PROTEST In view of the controversy respecting the proposed revision of the Prayer Book, tile following from Robert Blatchford’s “ As I Lay A-think-ing,” written before the battle had really commenced, may be of interest;— “ I have heard, here in the seclusion of my leafy retreat, as it were a faint hello, coming down the wind, a rumour that bold men are about reforming the Book of Common Prayer. Now, I was brought up on that lordly book, and I am moved devoutly to pray that it may not be revised too much. It is a book, as it stands, of. tender thought and delicate feeling, a book of sweet humility, of wise and all-embracing charity, and it is expressed in English ‘ sweeter than blown air.’ “Since the spacious days.of Elizabeth the language has grown more copious ; it may, perhaps, have become more flexible and amenable to the common pedestrian uses of prosy and hurried journalists and men of affairs ; but I am unable to perceive that it has gained as much as it has lost in grace, in dignity, in euphony, or in force. “ Whatsoever changes may be thought necessary in the rubric of our Prayer Book, I hope no sacriligious hand will be laid upon its peerless language. Many of us have gazed • shudderingly upon ‘ restored ’ churches ; may we never be shocked by a similar ‘ restoration ’ of the most English book in our possession—the Book of Common Prayer.”