of many make it a standing point for further development of the Church.

I have dwelt at length on the origin of the present movement of liturgical reform. It is well to remember that the same interest that occupies us is felt throughout the Christian Church. It has its roots very deep in history. It is a part of the progress of our race. And it is not a spent force.

There have been several great eras of liturgical reform. Perhaps the first was when the simple Service of New Testament time, such a Service as the Didache or Justin Martyr tells of, became such as that of the earliest Greek written liturgies that have come down to us. The adoption of the dramatic principle, the secret discipline, the growing distinction between a clergy and laity, the transference to Christian worship of Old Testament forms, the development of a priesthood and a Sacrifice, are elements of it; there are evidences of hesitation and criticism; and we are not yet able to say how much of this early form may have been borrowed in Alexandria from Egyptian rites and in the Greek world from the Mysteries.

A second period of liturgical reform of the greatest importance was that of the formation of the Latin Service. How strange that so momentous a change should have taken place somewhere in the 3d Century, and yet there should be no record of it; strange enough if it had been a mere translation of the venerable Greek form; but stranger as manifesting a critical and creative spirit guiding it, so as to form a distinctive Western Service, which shall be the old Service, yet a new, simpler, no less majestic, and lucid; without the invocation of the Holy Ghost upon the elements, though there is evidence that there was a question about this omission; but with the marvellous addition of the Collects, for which we should ever be grateful, and the skilful and suggestive variation of the liturgy at every Service of the Christian Year.

He

The next great period of liturgical reform is marked by the name of Charlemagne. How I wish we knew more of him! was the first great German. The Roman Service took the place of the particular liturgies which had maintained themselves in Spain, for instance, and in France. Among many other reforms we owe it to Charlemagne that the reading and inculcation of the Scriptures in the Service were arranged and enforced; an endeavor that early to make the Roman Liturgy something else than an opus operatum.

The fourth great period was the era of the Reformation. Before the Lutherans began it for themselves, the movement to liturgical reform had begun in the Roman Church. In 1525 the

Pope took steps for the reformation of the Breviary, and the work was completed and published by Cardinal Quignonez in 1533-6. The debates between Roman and Protestant theologians showed how unsettled was the doctrine of Sacrifice which was held by many adherents of the old order. Charles V. attempted a reformation at Augsburg in 1548. And finally the Council of Trent instituted a reformation of the office of the Mass. In this, of course, the conception of Christian Worship as a Sacrifice offered to God, in which our Lord is immolated in the Holy Supper, and which reaches its culmination in the consecration and oblation of the elements, was established. This was the Roman liturgical reform. The opposite conception and the uncertainties about the matter were condemned and cast out. The work of liturgical reform did not then come to an end in the Roman Church. It was merely confined within a narrow channel. But, besides the addition of new festivals and new forms of devotion, hymns in the vernacular have been admitted, the Scriptures are read in the language of the people, a sermon is made customary at Mass, a translation of the whole service is published for the use of worshippers, and there have been teachers to urge the use of the whole Mass in the common tongue.

The reformation of worship which Rome condemned, took two opposing lines. One set of teachers would have brushed away the whole structure of worship which had grown up in the history of the Church, to reconstruct it anew on the principles of the Scriptures and perhaps after the example of the Churches in the time of the Apostles. This tendency has gone so far as practically to deny the possibility of any common worship: if there is to be any public prayer, it is to be only the occasional outpouring of an overcharged soul; and the Word of God is not presented as God's Word, but never without comment, and always addressed as the word of man to the minds of men and subjected to the private judgment of every hearer. On the other hand the vast majority of the Protestants against Rome acknowledged a certain right and authority of the traditional order of worship. They might criticise or reshape it or try to purify it or seek to give it another explanation than that which Rome canonized; they might accept or reject more or less of it; but the Order of the Mass was there, to be reckoned with like the Scriptures and the ancient Creeds and the decrees of Councils and the Hierarchy. In the course of time there has been a deep difference between the principles of liturgical reform which have guided different communions. Roman Catholic writers will tell you that Luther was not honest in his reformation of the Service. They say that he left the forms of the old worship, so that all appear

ed to simple folk as it had hitherto, and skilfully slipped out of it all that was of moment, and thus furtively changed the faith of the people while he amused their ears and eyes. The very objection betrays its groundlessness. It was the change of faith, which was of moment. Doctrine was at the heart of the Lutheran reformation of worship and governed every part of it. And while addresses to the saints, for instance, were lopped off, and the Scriptures were read to the people in a tongue they could understand, and in the hymns they were given a voice in worship, and gradually all the parts were translated with much study and anxious attention to form as well as meaning, the heart of Luther's reform is that God gives us all and we bring Him nothing but open mouths and empty hearts,-that Word and Supper are primarily and essentially Sacrament not Sacrifice, the impartation of complete redemption and sufficient grace, and that our Sacrifice is only the other side of it, begotten by it, included in it, subordinate to it. This is the centre and focus of the Lutheran reform. It casts out the whole doctrine of a propitiatory Sacrifice in the Mass, which the Roman Church made to be the whole of worship. And it starts the question whether Luther and his coadjutors in so many German cities had a theory of Christian worship which demanded and justified their retention of the old Order and constituents of worship after they had cut the Canon of the Mass out of it. There are those who say he had none. There are German scholars who say that his work was incomplete, but was not meant to be incomplete; that he set up the principle which was destined to be the solvent before which the whole of the old Order should crumble; and that therefore the disappearance of the traditional order in the German Churches in the last century was the result of the persistence of the good leaven, and that it is the duty of the adherents of Luther in the present age not to go "back to Father Luther," as the king of Prussia essayed to do, but to construct a new Order of fresh materials, the original utterance of an emancipated age. This is one of the issues of liturgical reform to which I shall revert. I allude to it to show two of the lines of liturgical reform which the movement of the era of the Reformation has taken,-Luther's reconstruction of the Service on the Sacramental principle and the demand for a modern revision of his work. But there was aiso another line, which must be taken into account. It is represented in the history of the Book of Common Prayer. The varying currents of the English Reformation need not be described again. But it will not be too much to say that the Church of England has received the liturgical reform of the Protestants-the order of the old Service with the distinctive Roman and mediæval

Sacrifice taken out of it--but is unwilling to supply the Lutheran content. She wonders at and prizes the ancient relic, but cannot explain it; and goes about to invent other sacrificial theories to take the place of the central immolation of our Lord in the Mass. -Here we have five theories of Christian worship, all represented in the movement of liturgical reform in the life of the Christian Church today.

Let us turn to the Problems of liturgical reform. It is clear that men may engage in the work of liturgical reform from very different interests. Let us classify them as æsthetical, historical and practical. A taste for ritual or for extreme simplicity in worship might be without any appreciation of the historical questions involved and might lead to steps hurtful to the congregation. On the other hand a scholar might take great delight in historical study of Christian worship and yet be entirely careless of the Service in his own Church. Many a practical man wishes uniformity and order, but has no taste, and violates the historical meaning of the Service ruthlessly.

What authority has taste? If taste had been consulted, we could not have secured the Common Service. It was by the exclusion of personal preference and common submission to the norm, that agreement was reached. Yet taste had play. There were minor parts of worship which taste ruled out. The Nunc Dimittis is retained in our Communion Service because the taste of all agreed on this point rather than because it belongs to the normal Lutheran order. Taste had much to do with the original Lutheran reform. Luther's sympathetic preference for rhymed verse, his keen musical perception, caused him to hesitate to receive translations of texts which were at hand, and to spend a long time perfecting his Service, and, no doubt, this had a good deal to do with his retention of the Latin and of many of the songs. Even his taste was sometimes at fault, as witness his German Sanctus, Isaiae dem Propheten dies geschah! And some of his cotemporaries made a clumsy work of the Collects. To eminent delicacy and courage in liturgical composition we owe the English form of parts of the Service. But while we wonder at the marvellous skill and taste of German and Eng lish reformers, there was much in the 16th Century Servicebooks which does not suit the taste of this age. This suggests a question which the scientific liturgist must meet. What are the canons of liturgical taste? In how far can the subjective and the temporary be allowed to alter that which belongs to the whole Church of all ages and times?

It is somewhat annoying to one whose interest in liturgical reform is largely historical to meet with men and women who have

a taste for ritual and would change our churches and pass judgment on our usages and manner of worship from the standpoint of fashion. They think they are "liturgical" because they sing Amen at the end of hymns. They would require us to kneel in prayer, against the custom of our fathers and the Nicene rule. They declare it is essential to kneel in the Holy Supper, against the castom of the Early Church. They add a song instead of the Offertory Sentences. They subordinate ecclesiastical symbolism to adornment. But another question has to be met here. Liturgical taste is set among us principally by the English Church; and its canons, when not arbitrary, are derived from the Roman. Why are these to be preferred to those of the German Churches? Why is that to be called churchly or liturgical which agrees with English or Roman usage, rather than that which has the sanction of the churches from which we sprung? It will therefore be the task of the æsthetic liturgist to compare these uses, and trace them to their real origin, and detect their real worth. There are canons of taste in every art. There should be such in liturgical reform.

There is a large body of Churchmen in Germany who have no sympathy with the repristination of the Reformation liturgies. I believe they would even deny the possibility of the maintenance of such a Service as we have. But they are not without liturgical taste and zeal. They are eager for what they call the enrichment of worship. They publish journals. They collect information. They propose the employment of the most diverse elements. For instance, some of them urge that the organ and choir be put behind and above the altar; they censure the erection of Gothic churches with the old arrangement of chancel and altar; they clamour for the development of a modern and evangelical style of architecture; they advocate the recension of venerable forms, for instance, of the Gloria in Excelsis and the Formula of Consecration; they abandon the historical and claim everything and hold that they have a right to adopt it. There is a good deal of this in our American churches. It is the assertion of "taste." And what do we mean when we say it is "unliturgical"? Smend says Zwinglie had more liturgical genius than Luther. What right have we to say that taste must be limited, governed, subjected by any rule; and what shall the rule be except the consent, that is the common taste, of the worshippers? This is an issue in the movement to liturgical reform.

And so we come to another question-What is liturgical progress, and what is liturgical decay? We look upon the effect of Pietism and the final triumph of Rationalism over the Reformation liturgies as steps of decay. But in their time they