give it out to the public that we
are a law-respecting communion, and then to whisper it about
among ourselves that our laws bind only those who choose to be
bound by them, may serve as a convenient device for tiding over
a present difficulty, but is, oh the whole, a course of procedure
more likely to harden than to relieve tender consciences.

Take, by way of illustration, the case of a city clergyman who
would gladly introduce into his parish the usage of daily service,
but who is convinced, whether rightly or wrongly, that to secure
even a fair attendance of worshippers he ought to have the liberty
of so far condensing the Morning or the Evening Office as to bring
it within the limits of a quarter of an hour. He seeks relief
through the lawful channel of rubrical revision, and is only
laughed at for his pains. In this busy nineteenth century it is
nonsense, he is assured, to spend a dozen years in besieging so
obdurate a fortress as the General Convention. The way to secure
"shortened services" is to shorten services. This is easy logic,
and applicable in more directions than one. Only see how smoothly
it runs: If you want hymns that are not in the Hymnal, print them.
If you want a confessional-box, set it up. If you want a "reserved
sacrament," order the carpenter to make a tabernacle and the
locksmith to provide a bolt.[55] This is a far less troublesome
method of securing the ends desired than the tedious and roundabout
process of proposing a change at one meeting of the General
Convention, having your proposal knocked about among some forty
or fifty dioceses, and brought up for final action three years later.

And yet, superior as the former method may be to the latter in
point of celerity and directness, the latter has certain advantages
over the former that ought to be evident to men who are not
frightened by having their scrupulousness called scrupulosity.

Moreover, why should this whole matter be discussed, as so commonly
it is discussed, wholly from the clerical side? Have the laity no
rights in the liturgy which the clergy are bound to respect? When
and where did the Protestant Episcopal Church confer on its
ministers a general dispensing power over the ordinances of
worship which it withheld from the body of the faithful?

Heretofore it has been held that when a layman went to church he
had a right to expect certain things guaranteed him by the Church's
law. If all this has been changed, then formal