PRAYER-BOOK REVISION.
[To tax EDITOR Or Tax ''Ssarrima."]
SIR, I have read with interest the letters of Mr. Cremer and Mr. Hutton on Prayer-book revision in the Spectator of December 22nd and 29th, 1906. If the Prayer-book is to be thrown, now or at any time, into the melting-pot, I venture, as a layman, to make a suggestion. Mr. Cremer affirms his belief that the ambition of the twentieth-century Prayer-book revisers will surely be so to revise that all Christian people shall be able to use the services supplied with comfort and
profit, whether their family tradition and personal leaning incline them 'to Rome or Geneva. Under the description of Christian people are included, I presume, the laity who .ut present use these services as administered to them in their parish churches. The people's churchwarden in each parish is frequently referred to by Bishops as directly representing the laity in all matters affecting the administration of the services of the church. Why should not a lay Convention of the Church of England, composed of these churchwardens (not necessarily all of them), voluntarily, meet in some suitable centre for the purpose of expressing its views as to the desirability of any alteration in the existing services, and whether such alteration should, if needed, be in the direction of Rome or Geneva, or• elsewhere P These men, it is safe to say, would not be either theologians or revisers, but they would possess certain useful, nay, indis- pensable, qualifications for advisory purposes from a lay standpoint. They would all be church-goers, and as office- bearers they would know better than any one else what the existing Church worshippers really want in the way of services. The result might be illuminating. The supreme power of Parliament to make the services of an Established Church legal or illegal would not be challenged by such a voluntary assembly. But Convocation, which, on the recom- mendation of a Royal Commission, has received Letters of Business inviting it to consider the desirability of change in these services, might on such a momentous question welcome a lay expression of opinion emanating in this way direct from the parishes, and from those in each parish personally who presumably hest know the needs of the lay
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