it would be scarcely decent or proper to devote
to such a service anything less than the half hour the existing
office demands.

What the advocates of shortened services really desire to see
furthered is an increase in the frequency of opportunities for
worship during the week, their conviction being that if the Church
were to authorize brief services for morning and evening use, such
as would not occupy much more time than family prayers ordinarily
do, the attendance might be secured of many who, at present, put
aside the whole question of going to church on week-days as
impracticable. Supposing it could be proved that such a provision
would work to the discouragement of family prayer, it would plainly
be wrong to advocate it; no priesthood is more sacred than that
which comes with fatherhood. But we must face the fact that in our
modern American life family prayer, like sundry other wholesome
habits, has fallen largely into disuse. If the Church can, in any
measure, supplement the deficiencies of the household, and help
to supply to individuals a blessing they would gladly enjoy at
their own homes, if they might, it is her plain duty to do so.
Moreover, many a minister who single-handed cannot now prudently
undertake a daily service, as that is commonly understood, would
acknowledge himself equal to the less extended requirement.

Not a few careful and friendly observers of the practical working
of Anglican religion have been reluctantly led to consider the daily
service, as an institution, only meagrely successful. Looking at
the matter historically we find no reason to wonder at such a
conclusion.

Our existing usage (or more correctly, perhaps, _non-user_) dates
from the Reformation period. The English Church and nation of that
day had grown up familiar with the spectacle of a very large body
of clerics, secular and regular, whose daily occupation may be said
to have been the pursuit of religion.[23] The religion pursued
consisted chiefly in the saying of prayers, and very thoroughly,
so far at least as the consumption of time was concerned, were the
prayers said. What more natural than that, under such circumstances,
and with such associations, the compilers of a common Prayer Book
for the people should have failed to see any good reason for
discriminating between the amount of service proper to the Lord's
Day and the amount that might be reasonably expected on other days?
Theoretically they were right, all