merit of simplicity. Two or three
strikingly ingenious schemes for supplying each of the Eight Sayings
with a proper response of its own have been suggested;[80] but the
objection to them is that, beautiful though they are, their
complexity would embarrass and distress the kneeling worshipper.
In these matters, practical drawbacks have to be taken into account
as well as abstract excellencies, and no matter how felicitous the
antiphonal responses, they would be worse than useless were a
puzzled congregation to refuse to join in them.

There will be found appended to this Paper a plan for recasting
the Office of the BEATITUDES in such a way as to make it coincide
structurally, as far as it goes, with the introductory portion
of the Holy Communion.[81] Were the Office to be thus set forth,
it would be possible on week-days, and with singular appropriateness
on Saints' Days, to substitute the BEATITUDES for the Commandments,
without encumbering the Communion Office with an alternate. Should
this suggestion find acceptance, the two Collects in the present
Office of BEATITUDES, which are far too good to be lost, one of
them being the modified form of a Leonine original, and the other
one of the very best of Canon Bright's own compositions, might be
transferred to a place among the "Occasional Prayers."

RESOLUTION VI.

_The Litany_.

The rubrics prefixed to the Litany are a gain, but except by the
addition of the two new suffrages, the one for the President and
the other for the increase of the ministry, it will probably be
best to leave the text of this formulary untouched. Even in the
case of the new petitions it would be well if they could be
grafted upon suffrages already existing, a thing that might easily
be done.[82]

It would be a liturgical improvement if the Litany, in its shortened
form, were to end at the _Christe_, _audi_, and the minister
directed to return, at this point, to the General Thanksgiving
in the Morning Prayer. This would divide the Litany symmetrically,
instead of arbitrarily, as is now done, and would remove the General
Thanksgiving from a place to which it has little claim either by
historical precedent or natural congruity.

The greatest improvement of all would be the restoration of the
august and massive words of invocation which of old stood at the
beginning of the Litany. The modern invocations have a dignity of
their own, but they are not to be compared for devotional power