THE REVISED . PSALTER.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In your article of March 81st on this'subject you write :— "As the Parochial Church Councils can always have their say in the conduct of church services there should be no possibility• of having the revised Prayer Book or the revised Psalter sprung on unwilling congregations."
This was, no doubt, the intention of the Bishops, and at the back of their whole scheme of Prayer Book Revision. But they were defeated by the clergy. The Parochial Church Councils have no voice at all in the regulation of the services, and practically no voice in the choice of their minister. The whole discretion between such a service as Mr. Kensit would approve and such as would commend itself to the most extreme Anglican rests with the minister and with him alone. The Ecclesiastical Courts remain as powerless as ever.
The only change is that the Church will have two Prayer Books instead of one, and these two repugnant one to the other in doctrine and ritual. The autocracy of the parson will- impose one or other on the congregation, and, if he so chooses, other variants of his own. • If the result is peace and harmony, the ecelesia Anglicana will indeed be stupor mundi.
18 Beckenham Grove, Shortlands, Kent. • [But surely the Councils do frequently express their opinions on such subjects, even though they have no legal right of decision.—En. Spectator.]
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