e observance
of its terms.

Let this historical fact be noted by those who are disposed to
complain that the Joint Committee did not pull to pieces and
entirely rearrange the Anglo-Scoto-American Office, which now
for a long time, and until quite recently, we have been taught
to esteem the nearest possible approach to liturgical perfection.

Under this same head of "limitations" must be set down the following
resolutions passed by the Joint Committee itself, at its first
regular meeting:

_Resolved_, That this Committee asserts, at the outset, its
conviction that no alteration should be made touching either
statements or standards of doctrine in the Book of Common Prayer.

_Resolved_, That this Committee, in all its suggestions and acts,
be guided by those principles of liturgical construction and ritual
use which have guided the compilation and amendments of the Book
of Common Prayer, and have made it what it is.

It was manifestly impossible, under resolutions like these, to
depart very widely from established precedent, or in any serious
measure to disturb the foundations of things.

The first of them shut out wholly the consideration of such
questions as the reinstatement of the Athanasian Creed or the
proposal to make optional the use of the word "regenerate" in
the Baptismal Offices; while the other forbade the introduction
of such sentimental and grotesque conceits as "An Office for the
Blessing of Candles," "An Office for the Benediction of a Lifeboat,"
and "An Office for the Reconciliation of a Lapsed Cleric."[38]

Still another very serious limitation, and one especially unfriendly
to that perfectness of contour which we naturally look to see
in a liturgical formulary, grew out of the tender solicitude
of the Committee for what may be called the vested rights of
congregations. There was a strong reluctance to the cutting
away even of what might seem to be dead wood, lest there should
ensue, or be thought to ensue, the loss of something really
valuable.

It was only as the result of much painstaking effort, and only at
some sacrifice of literary fastidiousness, that the Committee was
enabled to report a book of which it could be said that, while it
added much of possible enrichment, it took away almost nothing that
had been in actual possession.[39] There could be no better
illustration of this point than is afforded by certain of the
alterations proposed to be made in the Order for Evening Prayer.