us be thankful that the amicable struggle
at Philadelphia had for its outcome so large rather than so small
a mass of workable material, and instead of accounting _The Book
Annexed_ to be what one of the signers of the Joint Committee's
Report has lately called it, "a melancholy production," recognize
in it the germ of something exceedingly to be desired. From
the first, there has never been any disposition on the part of
sober-minded friends of Revision to carry through their scheme
with a rush; the delay that is likely to better things they will
welcome; the only delay they deprecate is the delay that kills.

The changes enumerated in the "Notification to the Dioceses," and
illustrated to the eye in _The Book Annexed_ as Modified, may be
broadly classified under the following heads:

(_a_) Clearly desirable alterations, with respect to which there
is practically unanimous consent, and for which there is immediate
demand, _e_. _g_., shortened offices of week-day prayer.

(_b_) Alterations desirable in the main, but likely to be more
cordially acquiesced in, could still further improvement be
secured, _e_. _g_., the new versicles introduced into Evening
Prayer after the Creed.

(_c_) Alterations generally accounted undesirable on any terms,
e. g., the permissive rubrics with respect to the reading of
certain psalms during Lent, instead of the regular responds to
the First and Second Lessons of the Evening Prayer.

The question arises, Is any course of action possible that will
give us without delay the changes which for some fifteen years the
whole Church has been laboring to secure; that will give us, with
a reasonable delay of three years longer, the confessed improvements
a little more improved; while at the same time we are kept from
becoming involved in the wretched confusion sure to result from
putting into circulation, within a brief period, two authorized
but diverse books of Common Prayer? This threefold question it is
proposed to meet with a threefold affirmative.

THE STANDARD PRAYER BOOK OF 1890.

The end we ought to have in view is the publication, in the year
1890, of a standard Book of Common Prayer, such as shall embody
the ripe results of what will then have been a period of ten years
of continuous labor in the work of liturgical revision. To this
reckoning of ten years should properly be added the seventeen years
that intervened between the presentation of "The Memorial" in 1853
and the