the
Church of England needs to make her the glory of all Churches," said
Simeon's friend, the late Rev. William Marsh, "is the spirit of her own
services."

I am not so blind as to maintain that our Book is ideally perfect, and
that its every sentence is infallible. It is not quite literally "as bad
as inspired." After using it in ministration for nearly five-and-twenty
years I own to the wish that here and there the wording, or the
arrangement, or the rubrical direction, had been otherwise in some
detail, perhaps in some important detail. I do certainly wish very
earnestly indeed that the Revisers of 1661-2 had expressed themselves
more happily in that Rubric about "Ornaments" which within recent years
has proved--little as they expected it, or intended it, to do so--such a
fertile field of discord. But for all this, my five-and-twenty years'
ministerial use of the Prayer Book has only deepened my sense of its
inestimable general value and greatness.

If a temperate and equitable revision were possible at the present time
I should welcome the prospect on most accounts. But it seems to me
plain that it is _not_ at present possible. And meanwhile I thank God
from my inmost heart for the actual Prayer Book as a whole.

Let me point out a very few of the claims of the Book on our love and
gratitude; and now specially in view of what we may sometimes hear said
about it by Christians not of our own Church.

i. Observe its profound and searching _spirituality_. It is quite true
that in a certain sense the Book takes all who use it for granted; it
assumes them to be worshippers in spirit and in truth; it does not pray
for them, or lead them in public worship to pray for themselves, as for
those who do not know and love God, who have not come to Christ. But
then what form of public, common prayer can well do this? And meantime
the Book does, especially in the service of the Communion, and
particularly in that too often omitted part of it, the "longer
Exhortation," beginning _Dearly beloved in the Lord_, throw the
worshipper back upon himself for self-examination. This is just the
method of St Paul in his addresses to the Christian community. He
writes to all as "saints," "faithful," "elect," "sanctified." What does
he mean? Does he mean that those glorious terms are satisfied by the
fact that all have been baptized, or even that all are communicants at
the sacred Table? Not at all. He takes all for granted as being what
t