rro TITII EDITOR Or Till " Srac'roTos..l Sns,—The Vicar of Bow
Church—a theological Ulysses, if he will excuse the sobriquet (we were scholars together in the " sixties ")—has recently attempted to patent an abridged edition of the Decalogue brought up to date for the use of advanced and enlightened worshippers of the twentieth century. But if we are to drop as antiquated the Jewish element in the Fourth and Fifth Commandments, we may as well discontinue reading the Old Testament. Them is a logical sequence, as Hooker observes (Book V., chap. 70), between the restful contemplation of a completed creation on the seventh day (or• period, it " skilleth not") and the beginning of a new heaven and new earth on the first. And rest from ordinary work is a principle of both Sabbath and Lord's Day. We may, then, continue to recite the Fourth Commandment without self-deception or unreality. Why should liturgical revision be any more a principle of a " Reformed" than any other branch of the Catholic Church ? The American and Irish examples are not particularly happy. Doctrinal mutila- tion is far worse than the removal of venerable archaisms here and there, which, by virtue of association, rather help than hinder devotion. How do we know that the very ambiguity of the much-controverted Ornaments Rubric is not a blessing in disguise, so long as neither users nor disusers are allowed to claim the whole field for themselves ? In a word, or words rather, of a venerable Whig statesman, " Why can't you leave it alone ? "-a-I am, Sir, &c.,
Woodeaton Rectory, Oxford. R. HUTCHISON.
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