1878.

One generation passeth away; and another generation cometh.--Eccles.
i.4.

Against the background of this sombre fact of change, whatever
there is in life that is stable stands out with a sharpness that
compels notice. Just because the world is so full of variableness,
our hearts' affections fasten with the tighter grip upon anything
that seems to have the guarantees of permanence. The Book of Common
Prayer appeals to us on this score, precisely as the Bible, in its
larger measure, does: it is the book of many generations, not of
one, and there is "the hiding of its power." We have received the
Prayer Book from the generations that are gone; we purpose handing
it on when "another generation cometh"; we hold it for the use and
blessing of the generation which now is.

Our thoughts about the book, therefore, if we would have the
thinking rightly done, must take hold upon the past, the present,
and the future, a breadth of topic covered well enough perhaps by
this phrase, The Permanent and the Variable Characteristics of the
Prayer Book.

I make no apology for asking you to take up the subject in so grave
a temper. Now, for more than three hundred years, the Common Prayer
has been the manual of worship in use with the greater number of
the people of that race which, meanwhile, in the providence of God,
has been growing up to be the leading power on earth. Everywhere
the English language seems to be going forth conquering and to
conquer, and whithersoever it penetrates it carries with it the
letters and the social traditions of a people whose character has
been largely moulded by the influences of the Prayer Book. Africans,
Indians, Hindoos are to-day, even in their heathenism, feeling the
effects of waves of movement which throb from this centre. Men in
authority, the world over, are living out, with more or less of
consistency and thoroughness, those convictions about our duty
toward God, and our duty toward our neighbor, which were early
inwrought into their consciences through the instrumentality of
these venerable forms. Surely no one can afford to think or speak
otherwise than most seriously and carefully with regard to a book
which has behind it a history so worthy, so rich, so pregnant with
promise for the future.

Look first, then, at the power which the Prayer Book draws from
its affiliations with the past. It is a common remark, so common
as to be commonplace, that our liturgy owes its excellence t