ich the Convention
has laid before the Church for scrutiny, now is emphatically the
time for suggesting the better thing that might be done. Even the
bitterest opponents of _The Book Annexed_ can scarcely be so
sanguine as to imagine that nothing at all is coming from this
labored movement for revision. A measure which was so far forth
acceptable to the accredited representatives of the Church, in
council assembled, as to pass its first stage three years ago
almost by acclamation, is not destined to experience total collapse.
The law of probabilities forbids the supposition. The personal
make-up of the next General Convention will be to a great extent
identical with that of the last, and of the one before the last.
Sober-minded men familiar with the work of legislation are not
accustomed to reverse their own well considered decisions without
weighty cause. The strong probability is that something in the
line of emendation, precisely how much or how little no one can
say, will, as a matter of fact, be done. In view of this likelihood,
would not those who are dissatisfied with _The Book Annexed_ as
it stands be taking the wiser course were they to substitute
co-operative for vituperative criticism? So far as the present
writer is in any sense authorized to speak for the friends of
revision, he can assure the dissidents that such co-operation
would be most welcome.

A. B., a scholar thoroughly familiar, we will suppose, with the
sources of liturgical material, is dissatisfied with the collects
proposed for the successive days of Holy Week. Very well, he has
a perfect right to his dissatisfaction and to the expression of
it in the strongest terms at his command. He does only his plain
duty in seeking to exclude from the Prayer Book anything that
seems to him unworthy of a place in it. But seeing that he must
needs, as a "liturgical expert," acknowledge that the deficiency
which the Joint Committee sought to make good is a real and not
a merely fancied deficiency, would not A. B. approve himself a
more judicious counsellor if, instead of bending all his energy
to the disparagement of the collects proposed, he should devote a
portion of it to the discovery and suggestion of prayers more
happily worded?

And this remark holds good with reference to whatever new feature
is to be found between the covers of The Book Annexed. If
betterment be possible, these six months now lying before us
afford the time of all times in whic