the movement will have good reason to be satisfied.

That there has been, since the publication of _The Book Annexed as
Modified_, a certain measure of reaction against the spirit of
change must be evident to all who watch carefully the pulse of
public opinion in the Church. Whether this reaction be as serious
as some imagine, whether it have good reasons to allege, and whether
it be not already giving tokens of spent force, are points which
in the present paper will be touched only incidentally, for the
writer's purpose is rather irenic than polemical, and he is more
concerned to remove misapprehensions and allay fears than to seek
the fading leaf of a controversial victory.

LIMITATIONS.

No estimate of the merits and demerits of _The Book Annexed_ can
be a just one that leaves out of account the limitations under
which the framers of it did their work. These limitations were not
unreasonable ones. It was right and proper that they should be
imposed. There is no good ground for a belief that the time will
ever come when a "blank cheque," to borrow Mr. Goschen's mercantile
figure, will be given to any company of liturgical revisers to fill
out as they may see fit. But the moulders of forms, in whatever
department of plastic art their specialty lies, when challenged to
show cause why their work is deficient in symmetry or completeness,
have an undoubted right to plead in reply the character of the
conditions under which they labored. The present instance offers
no exception to the general rule. In the first place, a distinct
pledge was given in the House of Deputies, in 1880, before consent
to the appointment of the Joint Committee was secured, that in case
such permission to launch a movement in favor of revision as was
asked for were to be granted, no attempt would be made seriously
to change the Liturgy proper, namely, the Office of the Holy
Communion.

The question was distinctly asked by a clerical deputy from the
diocese of Maryland,[37] Do you desire to modify the Office of
the Holy Communion? and it was as distinctly answered by the mover
of the resolution under which the Joint Committee was finally
appointed, No, we do not. It is true that such a pledge, made by
a single member of one House, could only measurably control the
action of a Joint Committee in which both Houses were to be
represented; but it is equally plain that the maker of the pledge
was in honor bound to do all in his power to secure th