t it is more likely that half a dozen
patchings at triennial intervals would shatter it. After twenty
years of this sort of piecemeal revision, a _variorum_ edition of
the Prayer Book would be a requisite of every well furnished pew.

The late Convention has been twitted with inconsistency on the
score of having negatived outright the proposal for a Commission
to overhaul the Constitution of the Church while consenting to
send the Prayer Book to a committee for review. Discernment would
be a better word than inconsistency, for although on grounds of
pure theory the Constitution and the Prayer Book seem to stand in
corresponding attitudes as respects methods of amendment, in
practice the difference between the two is very wide. Triennial
changes in the letter of the Constitution (and these have often
been made) involve no inconvenience to anybody, for the simple
reason that that document must of necessity be reprinted with every
fresh issue of the Journal. Old copies do not continue in use,
except as books of reference, but old Prayer Books do hold their
place in parish churches, and the spectacle of congregations trying
to worship in unison with books some of which contained the reading
of 1880, others that of 1883, and still others that of 1886 would
scarcely edify. Theoretically, let it be freely granted, the
"driblet method" of amendment is the proper one for both Prayer
Book and Constitution, but the fact that the Convention had eyes
to see that this was a case to which the maxims of pure mathematics
did not apply should be set down to its credit, rather than its
discredit.

[10] Reprinted together with a supplementary Letter in the Journal
of the Convention of 1868.

[11] Dr. Coit's Letter of 1868, also reprinted in Journal of that
year.

[12] See _Book of Common Prayer according to the use of King's
Chapel, Boston_. Among the rhetorical crudities of this emasculated
Prayer Book (from the title-page of which, by the way, the definite
article has been with praiseworthy truthfulness omitted) few things
are worse than the following from the form for the Burial of
Children, a piece of writing which in point of style would seem
to savor more of the Lodge than of the Church: "My brethren, what
is our life? It is as the early dew of morning that glittereth for
a short time, and then is exhaled to heaven. Where is the beauty
of childhood? Where is [sic] the light of those eyes and the bloom
of that countenance?" . .