THE TEACHING OFFICE OF THE CHURCH.
[To THE Emma OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—In thanking you heartily for your admirable article on " The Teaching Office of the Church " in your issue of October 19th, may I be allowed to add that churches sometimes teach as effectually through services as through sermons ? It is this fact which has led me, and probably others also?, to support the Bishop of Manchester in his efforts to resist all changes in our Communion Service which would remove it farther from Refor- mation ideals and restore it to closer fellowship with mediaeval notions of the sacrifice of the Mass. Personally I should belittle concerned about the precise position of the prayers in the Com- munion Service, which it is -now proposed to put back to the place they occupied in the Prayer Book of 1549, if the change stood by itself, and were unconnected with a wider movement. But as things are, surely the whole Church is, or ought to be, deeply concerned about the purpose which may possibly be implicated in this " putting back." The Prayer Book of 1552 was a distinct advance on that of 1549 in its Scriptural allegiance to the meaning and methods of administration of the Lord's Supper. Is it, or is it not, intended by the proposed transposition of these prayers to reintroduce into the administration of the Lord's Supper those mediaeval conceptions of sacrifice which are destructive of Christian conceptions, and from which the Prayer Book of 1552 is more free than that of 1549 ? The Church is entitled to a clear answer on this plain question, for in the arrangements of their services Priests may teach as powerfully as prophets teach by their voices. While, therefore, I am thankful for the Report of the Archbishops' Committee and for your illuminating article on its significance and value, I am persuaded that no reformation of the prophetic ministry can be effectively spirithal which is not accompanied by increasingly spiritual, as distinguished from mediaeval and non-spiritual, conceptions of the Christian priest-
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