of the
national life do not demand certain alterations in the Book of
Common Prayer in the direction of liturgical enrichment and
increased flexibility of use."[6]

In the present article the writer proposes to inquire, in connection
with this measure:

(1) What motives may fairly be supposed to have actuated the
Convention in allowing so important an initiatory step to be taken?

(2) What measure of authority was conferred on and what scope given
to the Joint Committee then constituted?

(3) What reasons exist for considering the present a happy moment
to attempt liturgical revision, within certain limits, should such
a thing be determined upon?

(4) What serious difficulties and obstacles are likely to be
encountered in Committee, in Convention, and in the Church at large?

(5) What particular improvements and adjustments of our existing
system would be, in point of fact, best worth the effort necessary
to secure them?

I. The interpretation of motives, difficult enough in the case of
individuals, becomes mere guess-work when the action under analysis
is that of a large body of men. Which one of many considerations
urged upon the Convention carried with it the supreme weight of
persuasion in this particular instance it is impossible to say.
Two or three arguments, however, from their frequent reappearance
in the debate may fairly be judged to have exercised a controlling
influence. One of these was hinted at in the language of the
resolution itself, namely, the call for revision that has grown
out of "the changed conditions of the national life." Shrewd and
far-seeing as were William White and his coadjutors in their
forecast of nineteenth century needs made from the standpoint of
the Peace of Versailles, they would have been more than human had
they succeeded in anticipating all the civil and ecclesiastical
consequences destined to flow from that memorable event. Certainly
it ought not to be held strange that this "new America" of ours,
with its enormously multiplied territory, its conglomerate of races,
its novel forms of association, its multiplicity of industries not
dreamed of a generation ago, should have demands to make in respect
to a better adaptation of ancient formularies to present wants, such
as thoughtful people count both reasonable and cogent. That a Prayer
Book revised primarily for the use of a half-proscribed Church
planted here and there along a sparsely inhabited sea-coast, should
serve