[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,--Your leading article on
December 24th,headed "Parlia- ment and the Prayer Book," is frankly a disappointment_ We Church-members and Church-lovers are all grieved at what has happened and the aged Primate has our heartfelt sympathy. But is the slight change in the Communion Service really the question at issue, or, indeed, is it the com- pilation of another set of formulae—for that is what the New Book amounts to--that can conceivably save the dangerous situation in which the Anglican branch of the Protestant Church finds itself to-day ? I am one, probably, of many thousands who believe that it cannot.
You say that the nation, through Parliament, said to the Church in 1906: Put your house in orderand bring your regime up to date." Very good ; but has not the regime per- sistently drifted from bad to worse since then, and can this New Book or any other Book possibly mend matters ? Can it possibly arrest the continual shrinkage of congregations and of Confirmation candidates ? No, sir. I interpret Par- liament's action as the withholding of a vote of confidence pure and simple, and consider that the action was right and honest. It 'Is not a new Book we need but a new spirit, a new viskn, and that simply and solely of Christ ; and those in Parliament who do . not happen to belong to our particular denomination are, if anything, more likely to be able to realize this than we Anglicans are.
Can we honestly as Christians expect them to vote for the continuance of a Church which, if it has not officially refused them the right to receive Holy Communion at its hands, has certainly never denounced the practice of such refusal at the hands of hundreds of its clergy ? I interpret Parliament's action as a demand for a root-and-branch reform, and rejoice thereat, grieved though I am at the position into which our branch of the Church has allowed itself to drift.—I am, Sir; &c.,
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