tion be put together, each one of which
would in outward appearance differ widely from every other one.
The identical skeleton, that is to say, might be so variously
clothed upon that no two of its embodiments would be alike. But
is it desirable to run very much after variety of such a sort in a
book of prayer designed for common use? Most assuredly, No. To
jeopard the supreme _desideratum_ in a people's manual of worship,
simplicity: to make it any harder than it now is for the average
"stranger in the Church" to find the places, would be on the part
of revisionists an unpardonable blunder.

There are, however, a few points at which the Morning Prayer
might advantageously be enriched, and no risk run. It would
surely add nothing to the difficulty of finding the places if
for one-half of the present opening sentences there were to be
substituted sentences appropriate to special days and seasons of
the ecclesiastical year. We should in this way be enabled to
give the key-note of the morning's worship at the very outset.
Having once departed, as in the case of our first two sentences,
from the English precedent of putting only penitential verses of
Scripture to this use, there is no reason why we should not
carry out still more fully in our selection the principle of
appropriateness. The sentences displaced need not be lost, for
they might still stand, as now, at the opening of the Evening
Prayer.

Passing on to the declarations of absolution there is an opportunity
to simplify the arrangement by omitting the alternate form borrowed
from the Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, where
only it properly belongs. This, however, is a change likely to be
resisted on doctrinal grounds, and need not be urged.

Coming to the _Venite_, we find another opportunity to accentuate
the Christian Year. It may be said that the rubric, as it is already
written, allows for the substitution of special anthems on the
greater festivals and fasts. This is true; but by giving the anthem
for Easter a place of honor, while relegating anthems for the other
great days to an unnoticed spot between the Selections and the
Psalter, the American compilers did practically discriminate in
favor of Easter and against the rest. The real needs of the case
would be more wisely met if the permission to omit _Venite_ now
attached to "the nineteenth day of the month" were to be extended
to Ash-Wednesday and Good Friday, and special New Testamen