SIR WILLIAM JOYNSON-HICKS'S MEMOR- ANDUM ON THE PRAYER BOOK

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

Sin, The Memorandum of Sir William Joynson-Hicks showing reasons why the Deposited Prayer Book should not receive the authority of Parliament calls for some comment.

(1.) As was to be expected, Sir William has not overlooked any important point, and his Memorandum does cover the ground thoroughly and presents us in an admirable summary form with a catalogue of the outstanding objections to the New Prayer Book. We must admit (a) that such objections do exist ; (b) that they are, in the opinion of many, weighty objections ; and (c) that they deserve the most careful and sympathetic consideration.

(2.) Do they justify so drastic a step as the rejection of the Prayer Book Measure ? The answer to this question must be sought, not so much in a minute investigation of these objections, one by one, as in an examination of them in a larger context and relative to larger considerations of principle and policy at the present stage of our history. We must remember that Anglicanism is going through a period of transition—the old order is changing, yielding place to new. The modern religious situation is the result of many factors to which the attention of thoughtful people has been directed for many years past. The Church of England, in common with every other institution, has been and still is being influenced by its environment. We cannot hope to preserve a static Church and a static creed in a world of advancing knowledge and discovery in every department of life and thought. Still less can we claim to apply standards of orthodoxy and religious tests of a bygone age to the thought and practice of the modern Church in the modern world.

(3.) The New Prayer Book represents the product of the labours of many minds in the effort to furnish the Church to-day with an instrument better fitted for its immediate tasks than that afforded by the old Book. The revision, in the opinion of not a few, is so " conservative " that to apply the term " New " to the Deposited Book is an anachronism.

To read the list of objections given by Sir William makes some of us wonder whether his duties as a responsible Minister of the Crown have occupied seven, indeed six, of his days in the week, and left him hopelessly out of date in his know- ledge of our Church of England services as these are held from end to end of the country. The " New " Prayer Book in this respect, far from creating anything fresh in the services of the Church, simply regularizes forms of prayer to which many of us have grown accustomed since our childhood. It is unthinkable that any State action or religious agitation could possibly in this respect put back the clock of progress. The Home Secretary will pardon me if I venture to say to one for whom I personally have a great regard, that the reading of his Memorandum left me with the picture of himself as very much in the state of Canute, vainly gesticulating to the advancing tide, in the hope that it might recede.

(4.) Sir William, in his objections to what he assumes to be a change of doctrine in the New Book, argues from a position which is quite untenable. . His arguments rest upon the conviction that in Eucharistic doctrine the belief in a real Objective Presence of Christ in the Sacrament is an illegitimate belief within the borders of the English Church. We can only answer that whilst such a belief is no doubt objectional in pircles outside the Church and unpalatable to certain circles inside the Church, it is none the less part and parcel of the Church's belief and teaching. Mere Receptionism is a belief within the Church which, because it has never been definitely ruled out, is compatible with membership of the Anglican communion and undoubtedly enables some who lean heavily in the direction of Geneva to continue to remain within the

generous comprehensiveness of the Anglican communion.

It needs, however, to be quite clearly stated, in view of the character of the opposition to the New Prayer Book which has manifested itself in Protestant circles, that the Receptionist

view, or, if you will, the thinly disguised Zwinglian view, of the Lord's Supper, is not the maxima»: but the minimum

belief of the members of the Church of England. It is a minimum belief held by some, and tolerated by others in the hope that advance from it to a fuller and deeper appreciation of the Church's Eucharistic Worship may lead to a richer experience of all that is implied in the maximum belief of the Church.

(5.) Let there be no mistake about this point. Were the New Prayer Book to legalize any extra-liturgical eultus of the Blessed Sacrament, this would involve a change of doctrine. Why ? Because it would imply quite definitely the exclusion, once and for all, of the minimum of belief at present allowed in the English Church. It would compel all to accept the maximum. The fact that the Church in this New Book excludes neither Receptionism nor the doctrine of the Real Presence, any more than the old Book at present in use does, is no reason whatever for an attempt, on the part of those who do not rise beyond the minimum of belief permissible, to force the rest to accept that as the norm of belief for all. We in the Church of England rule out both Rome and Geneva.

In our own day we have witnessed and are now enjoying in church after church throughout the whole Anglican com- munion, a great revival of sacramental worship and a corre- sponding deepening of the spiritual life. It is inconceivable that outworn shibboleths and battle-cries borrowed from the controversies of the sixteenth century can in the least degree quench the new spirit of life and hope which animates the younger generation of clergy and laity in their work.

(6.) Space forbids any attempt, in answer to Sir William, to distinguish between what he calls " Romanizing practices " in matters of ceremonial and our claim that in matters of this kind the English Church is free and can and does distinguish between rites and ceremonies which are " Catholic " and legitimate and others which are " Roman " and unhealthy.

(7.) The most plausible point in the whole Memorandum Sir William borrows from the Bishop of Norwich. If the Measure is rejected, so we are told, the Church Assembly might embody in a separate Measure those parts of the new Book about which there is almost general agreement.

I am not a member of the Assembly and have no official standing. I will, however, venture upon a prophecy. If the present Measure is rejected, the Church Assembly will never for a moment tolerate the suggestion of sending any other Measure of Prayer. Book Revision up to the Houses of Parliament. It will do something quite different, not to say startling. " Meanwhile," as Mr. H. G. Wells would