PRAYER-BOOK REVISION

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIII, Issue 14349, 15 November 1910, Page 5

PRAYER-BOOK REVISION

Press Association—By Tol. —Copyright, LONDON, Nov. 13

The Archbishop of Canterbury 111 a statement to the Convention, indicates thai a revision of tho Prayer Book will be steadily pressed on.

ARGUMENTS OF RITUALISTS AND EVANGELICALS.

UNIFORMITY RELAXED

The most absorbing topic of discussion at the Ohlii'cti Congress, which met last monoii ut was tine project to revi.;<3 tnc Look oi OvJiiunoii Praver. The Bishop oi Ely presidedProfessor iiwete (Cambridge) urged thafc a book whioh ia its present form belonged to tho time of Charles 11. must call for naiany modifications if it was to continue to ax>poal to the b.ngiish race.

The Bishop of Sodor -and Man said social life had greatly changed siiKO 1662, and the Prayer Book would lose much of its "educative value" in thesa days of quickened social movement i nless it w;ts brought into touch with modern life. Severe uniformity had been relaxed by common consent, tat the changes brought about by this liberty of administration ought now, in the interests of liberty itself, to be codified wherever they had received general assent. Otherwise an increase of liberty might be dangerous, and an unfair locus standi be given to irregularities which the mass of Churchmen condemned.

Archdeacon Burrows (Birmingham) expressed the hope that they were not to have -the Prayer Book thrown tke an apple of discord before Parliament, or to have their sacred things discussed and voted upon by Roman Catholics. Nonconformists, Jews, and oiliers who openly disowned the name of. Christian. What they had 'to-day was not a Prayer Book unchanged, but a Prayer Book revised independently in each parisii. Clergy were breaking the rubrics, md the laity, even were insisting on their doing so. The Church ought to show herself a living society capable of selfgovernment and reform, relying not on the -enactments of 1662, but on the Holy Ghost within her.

Canon F. E. Warren declared himself against any alteration of the Prayer Book whatever, ait the present time. Each of tlie three parties in the Church wanted revision because it had its own axe to grind. (Laughter). The Broad Church Party wanted pre-emin-ently to get rid of the Atbanasinn Creed, the Low Church Party wanted alteration in the form of absolution in the Service of the Visitation of lhe Sick—(cries of "No, no") — and the High Church Party wanted a. restoration of th® Service of Obligation, such as was co'ntained in the American Prayer Book.

Prebendary Webb-Peploe - remarked that a greater danger could not assail their beloved Church than- an alteration of the Prayer Book which wo'iV! readmit Rome. (Cheers.) The Rev. H. Marston said many of the clergy could .not possibly submit to be bound by regulations "which by common confession were obsolete, r ischievous, and hampering to their besi, activities.