be more quickly authorized by appropriate legislation according to the theory that the best way to effect the repeal of a law which does not have public opinion behind it is to enforce that law impartially and with rigor. Liturgical reform by lawlessness is a process which has assuredly worked in the past and doubtless will continue to do so in the future. The present shortened daily offices are examples to the point. The Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament if not absolutely prohibited today is certainly not authorized. Yet it is being increasingly practiced. When a sufficient number adopts it then it is safe to say the Church will give the practice its full sanction.

It is naturally in the more constantly used offices that the demand for reform is most insistent and lawlessness most apparent. At Evensong there is to be noted a wide-spread tendency to omit the First Lesson as also to substitute one Psalm personally selected in place of the Psalter for Day, the repetition of the whole of which is in some instances regarded as a burden especially when a choral setting is used. The obligation to say the Ten Commandments every Sunday is also widely evaded while the repetition once a month of the longer Exhortation in the Communion Office has largely fallen into abeyance. In the case of some of the occasional offices it is probably true to say that they are seldom or never used in their full integrity. Sometimes when I have ventured to assert my belief in a company of clergymen that there is none that observes all the rubrics, no, not one, I am met by an indignant denial on the part of one or more present. I then am apt to retort, "Do you in visiting the sick invariably use the office of the Prayer Book set forth for such occasion?" I have never yet met any one who claimed to do so, yet the obligation stands and he who intermits its use or only employs a selected portion is technically a lawbreaker and thus enjoined from throwing stones at his brethren who offend in other and more serious ways.

Let us recall exactly what the Prayer Book provides in this Office. Previous notice having been given to the pastor that a person is sick, on entering the house the salutation is to be

given "Peace be to this house and all that dwell in it." On coming into the sick man's presence the visitor is directed to kneel down and say the Lord's Prayer with versicles and responses and certain prayers. Then the sick man is to be exhorted according to a prescribed form which may be shortened if the person is very sick but which otherwise proceeds at considerable length. This is followed by a rehearsal of the creed in interrogative form and at the conclusion the sick man is directed to say "All this I steadfastly believe." Then comes the examination into the sick man's spiritual condition. The rubric is imperative here. "Then shall the minister examine," etc. This provision would seem necessarily to imply the withdrawal from the room of all save the pastor and the penitent. Here we have all the elements of auricular confession excepting only there is no provision for Absolution. I presume, however, in the absence of any such direction, the minister might use either of the forms as set forth in the Daily Office without laying himself open to any serious charge of unlawful interpolation. After exhorting the sick man to make his will and declare his debts and not forgetting to remind him of the duty incumbent upon him to be liberal to the poor, the service concludes with sundry prayers, the recitation of the 130th Psalm and the Aaronic blessing.

"When the sick person is visited and receiveth the Holy Communion all at one time," the minister is permitted by the rubric "to cut off the form of the Visitation at the Psalm and go straight to the Communion.”

In the Office for the Communion of the Sick the rubric requires that in addition to the priest and the sick man two others at least shall communicate at the same time excepting only "in the times of contagious sickness or disease when none of the parish or neighbors can be gotten to communicate with the sick in their houses for fear of the infection, upon special request of the diseased, the minister alone may communicate with him." In the first instance lacking the two persons prepared to communicate with him the service cannot proceed as also in the second instance unless the sick man bethink himself

of making the "special request." Thus if the rubric is obeyed it is possible in extreme cases the sick may die unhouseled. I need not add that the Church makes no provision under any circumstances whatsoever for communicating the sick by carrying the Reserved Sacrament to them. If there are ten sick persons who desire the sacrament on any one day and who perhaps are "in extremis" the minister must celebrate the Communion ten separate and distinct times, even though those to be communicated all occupy (as is not inconceivable under modern conditions) apartments under one roof. Ten celebrations for the sick in one day may seem like an exaggeration, but I am credibly informed that in a certain large city parish such a thing has not been unknown.

With the Offices for the Visitation of the Sick and the Communion of the Sick and their various rubrics before them, there can be no valid plea made on the part of the clergy of any uncertainty regarding their duties, or the method of performing them. It is all as plain as day. They are told just what to do and how to do it and have no cloak for their lawlessness. We have seen what the pastor's obligations are according to the Prayer Book, let us inquire how they are commonly fulfilled in actual practice. Now this is a matter concerning which every man must speak for himself. I should be loath to accuse my bethren generally of any failure to live up to the exact letter of the law in their pastoral relations. Speaking only for myself I have to confess that I find obedience to some of the Church's rubrics a difficult if not impossible task. My earnest wish is to be loyal so far as may be to the rubrics of the Prayer Book. I have to confess that when visiting the sick I have never made use of the Office set forth for that purpose. Sometimes I read one or more of the prayers, but never have I used the service in its entirety. Neither am I accustomed specifically and at length to examine the sick regarding their spiritual condition, though of course I have done so in general terms many times. I do not remember that I have invariably admonished the sick "to make his will and to declare his debts, what he oweth and what is owing unto him." I fear also I

have in some instances omitted to move the sick "to be liberal to the poor." I have even sometimes communicated the sick when there were not two others ready and desirous to receive with him and this when the person was not suffering from a contagious disease. Moreover there have been times when I have carried the Reserved Sacrament to the sick using such portions of the service as I deemed edifying. From all of which it will be seen that I am a habitual breaker of rubrics though I trust not a despiser of ecclesiastical authority. It may be that others find a way to the observance of the Church's provisions in all these instances in which I confess my dereliction. I am willing to receive in meekness a rebuke for my faults of omission and commission from any of my brethren who themselves are guiltless of like offences. Only he who keeps the whole law himself can rightfully sit in judgment upon his brother. I would gladly infer that others are more successful in complying strictly with the rubrical injunctions than I am, but I am compelled to believe that they are not, because I realize that they are confronted by the same conditions as myself, conditions which render a strict adherence to all the rubrics, if theoretically possible, at least practically unwise and inexpedient.

The moral to be drawn from the foregoing representations which may be termed in legal parlance "A plea in confession and avoidance" on behalf of the clergy, is not that every priest is justified in doing what is right in his own eyes, but rather, assuming that he is conscious of loyalty on broad lines to the spirit of the Prayer Book and faithfully carries out its principles in essential matters, that he is to be adjudged blameless when he exercises his godly if unauthorized discretion in respect to sundry rubrical provisions.

"As free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but serving the Lord."

A

St. Paul and "Dear Brutus"

BY THE REV. ARTHUR WHIPPLE JENKS, D.D.

Ta moment which was a climax in St. Paul's career, when he was fulfilling our Lord's forecast that His Apostles should be "brought before kings and rulers for My sake, for a testimony against them," when he was triumphantly giving a sketch of his life and justifying it as success, he exclaims: "Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision."

Was St. Paul given a second chance and allowed to begin life all over again? Was he thus enabled to avoid the mistake of his first period of life, and by shrewdness and worldly wisdom able to pursue a career which, while in one sense a failure, left his conscience quite clear of any wrong doing, and turned out in the end to be in the highest sense a tremendous success? Is that the meaning of conversion-a turning back to the starting-point whence one has set out and simply taking a fresh start?

The clever playwright whose drama, "Dear Brutus," is drawing the attention of a metropolis on this side of the ocean, as it has the English public, has presented one version of an old story. Whether one has or has not seen the play, the situation can be made clear. A group of people is presented, each member of which has made more or less a mess out of life, because of some weakness in character which has gradually worked out to a most deplorable result. Each individual realizes this fact, but they cannot retrieve themselves. The artist has marred his career by drink. He is just a wreck of himself. His wife, who married him because she was convinced that he would become famous and rich, not from any higher motive, now regrets that she had not married a man of pronounced financial success. The flirting and philandering husband of another regrets having married a woman, of noble qualities, indeed, but who does not respond to his amorous and conceited impulses. He tries to solace himself on the detestable and specious ground of free love. The man who had got no joy out of life wishes he might