nt thing
it is now; books were scarce; popular education, as we understand
it, was unknown; there were no means of supplying service-books to
the poorer classes (no Prayer Book Societies, like this of yours),
nor could the books have been used had they been furnished. And yet
in the face of these seemingly insuperable obstacles, the leaders
of religious thought in the England of that day had the sagacity
to plan a system of worship which should involve participation by
the people in all the acts of divine service, including the
administration of the sacraments.

Here was genuine statesmanship applied to the administration of
religion. Those men discerned wisely the signs of their own times.
They saw what the right principle was, they foresaw what the art
of printing was destined in time to accomplish, and they did a
piece of work which has bravely stood the wear and tear of full
three hundred years.

No Churchman questions the wisdom of their innovations now. Is it
hopeless to expect a like quickness of discernment in the leaders
of to-day? Surely they have eyes to see that a new world has been
born, and that a thousand unexampled demands are pressing us on
every side. If the Prayer Book is not enriched with a view to
meeting those demands, it is not for lack of materials. A Saturday
reviewer has tried to fasten on the Church of England the stigma
of being the Church which for the space of two centuries has not
been able to evolve a fresh prayer.

If the reproach were just it would be stinging indeed; but it is
most cruelly unjust. In the devotional literature of the Anglicanism
of the last fifty years, to go no further back, there may be found
prayers fully equal in compass of thought and depth of feeling to
any of those that are already in public use. Not to single out
too many instances, it may suffice to mention the prayers appended
to the book of Ancient Collects edited a few years since by a
distinguished Oxford scholar. The clergy are acquainted with them,
and know how beautiful they are. Why should not the whole Church
enjoy the happiness of using them?[97] Why is there not the same
propriety in our garnering the devotional harvest of the three
hundred years last past that there was in the Reformers garnering
the harvest of five times three hundred years?

"One generation passeth away, another generation cometh." I have
spoken of the present and the past, what now of the future? We
know that all things co