that Morning Prayer, Litany and Holy Communion are separate Offices; that on occasions the Clergy might use parts of the Service, and that Bishops might provide Services for other special times. Since then, the Church has grown into greater prominence and influence, and is rapidly coming to be generally known for what she claims to be, in heritage and practice.

At the General Convention of 1880, a Commission of twenty-one-seven each of Bishops, Clergymen and Laymen-was appointed to consider a revision of the whole Book, in the interest of "liturgical enrichment and increased flexibility of use." Twelve years of prolonged and prayerful study and scholarly discussion have followed, four triennial sessions of the General Convention have intervened, and we now have before us, as the deliberate judgment of the American Church, in a generation pre-eminently equipped in liturgical knowledge, her duly authorized formulary for the coming century, in what is known as the STANDARD PRAYER BOOK OF 1892. The decisions by which the new Standard was set forth were harmonious and practically unanimous, and the shrine is worthy of the jewel it contains.

It is the same hallowed volume long so dear to Christian hearts, but with added treasures rescued from the past; its dogmatic standards freshly reaffirmed, and its arrangement and use adapted more effectively to minister to the changed and changing conditions of modern days. The additions comprise twenty Selections of Psalms and Proper Psalms, thirty-one Scripture Sentences, two Canticles, three Collects, Epistles and Gospels, nine Prayers, eleven Versicles and one Litany Suffrage, and one entire Office.

In all matters of painstaking and minute scholarship in the matter of editing a work of such profound significance, in the course of which very many changes and corrections have been made, it leaves nothing to be desired, even to the uniform paging of all but its smallest editions. It bears no imprint of copyright, being the classical heritage of the English-speaking race, and it is burdened with no added expense of royalty or privilege. Indeed, editions are issued without any cost whatever, and freely distributed as a missionary and educational agent, accompanied by printed directions for following the Services.

Among its several previous revisions the (present) English Book, with the First Book of 1549, are frequently cited in comparison with the American Book in the following pages. As it stands, the latter is a volume of several, more or less independent, books of Offices, i. e., The Daily Morning and Evening Prayer with their Tables of Lessons, The Litany, The Holy Communion with Collects, Epistles and Gospels for the round of the Christian Year, The Catechism and The Occasional Offices, The Psalter, The Ordination Services and those succeeding, with The Articles of Religion; to which must be added, as an intimate adjunct, though bound separately, The Hymnal, which has also just received its last thorough and scholarly revision by the same authority. Roughly speaking, the Prayer Book may be subdivided into the Daily Service, the Office of the Holy Communion, and the Occasional Offices, some of which are habitually rendered by the Priesthood; while others are restricted to the Episcopate.

III.

THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE AND RELATIONS.

“The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same."-The Nineteenth Article of Religion.

BEFORE proceeding to an analysis of the Book itself,

it will be well to devote a little time to the subject of the Church's position among religious bodies, suggested by her legal and official name, as set forth on its title-page, i. e., "THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA." It is an unfortunate, anomalous, and misleading appellation; a quasi adoption not formally conferred but forced upon us by outside circumstances, which will not prove to be permanent. Owing to the prejudices and disabilities which confronted the beginning of her independent life, instead of calling her, as elsewhere, The Church (of America), a compromise was unhappily adopted, in the nature of an attempt to define her characteristics by the two words, "Protestant" and "Episcopal." But the former of these adjectives is purely negative, unduly emphasizing the Church's points of difference with the Church of Rome. And the second is tautological and needless (as if the Church belonged to the Bishops, rather than the Bishops to the Church), taking pains to

assert Episcopacy of a body which maintains that government by Bishops is essential to the very validity of Church organization.

The omission of both appellatives would simplify and strengthen the title, and harmonize it with the rest of Apostolic Christendom, by styling ourselves "The Church in the United States." A natural derivative from Episcopal is the word "Episcopalian," a name applied to us originally by other religious folk, as New Englanders were dubbed "Yankees," and the Society of Friends "Quakers," and with about as much significance. So sectarian an appellation as this will speedily fall into deserved disuse if we steadily call ourselves "Churchmen;" members of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Creed, planted in America.

The Church is often called a via media, or middle way, as she stands between Rome on the one hand and ultraProtestantism on the other. This is no doubt true, but not in the nature of a compromise, and is not necessarily a permanent characteristic. She is what she is, regardless of the varying standards of others. She pursues her steadfast way under her divine charter, preserving her Apostolic character, purged of superstitious and man-made additions. This she has possessed from the beginning, and no "Church" not "Episcopal" was ever heard of till the sixteenth century. Then excess of godly zeal led Continental reformers, in cutting away grievous corruptions from the fair body of the Church, to deal a blow at her very corporate life, and substitute organizations of purely human origin; although at least Calvin sought in vain at first to preserve Apostolic order, while Luther, Melanchthon

and Richard Baxter deplored the fancied necessity for an opposite course. But Englishmen, wiser and happier in their generation, divorced themselves from the entangling alliances of Papal tyranny, but clung to that threefold Ministry, which is in itself an abiding guaranty of the Lord's presence with His Church until the end. In England the movement was national and included the Bishops. On the Continent the reformers left the Church; and ordination by Presbyters, defended by them as of necessity, is justified by their children as of right.

On the one side, then, stands the Roman Church, not unqualifiedly Catholic, as she vainly claims, and as is thoughtlessly conceded in common speech, but Papal and Roman" the Holy Roman Church," as her own official titles aver. She stands with her venerable history, her fruitful labours, her godly lives, her Apostolic Ministry in three Orders; but, superadded to it, the fourth Order of her Papacy with its groundless assumptions (and, as far as America is concerned, the unpatriotic allegiance claimed by a foreign potentate), the equally unwarranted and blasphemous articles foisted upon her Creed, her superstitious observances and preposterous claims on our credulity, and her worship in a language not understood by the common people. Her wanton additions to and perversions of pure doctrine, such as Transubstantiation (or the corporal and material presence of Our Lord's Body in the Holy Eucharist), Mariolatry (or the cultus of the Virgin Mary), the Immaculate Conception, the Invocation of the Saints, the Infallibility of the Pope, the denial of the Cup to the Laity in the Holy Communion: these corruptions, all promulgated since the days of primitive Catholic