Q. What is your duty as a Christian?

And, since it is certainly unfortunate to suggest that God need not be worshipped on week-days and holydays,

A. My duty as a Christian is to worship God; to go to Church every Sunday for the fulfilment of my "bounden duty and service;"

(b) Q. How many Sacraments has Christ ordained in His Church?

A. Christ has ordained two Sacraments only, as generally necessary to salvation.

This passage introduces no new teaching and is taken directly from the Catechism. It would, therefore, be most improper to suggest that its omission be made a condition of our accepting the proposed offices. With this understanding, one may still ask if its inclusion here is not likely to thwart one of the objects (brevity with lucidity) which the breaking up of the Catechism into these short offices is supposed to serve. Would not many clergymen interrupt the office at this point with a laboured"explanation"?

(c) Q. What is required of those who come to the Lord's Supper?

The commission has not hesitated to modernize the language of the Catechism elsewhere; why not here, making the question read: 'Q. What is required of those who come to receive Holy Communion?”

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(d) A. The office of a Priest is, to preach the Word of God; to baptize; to celebrate the Holy Communion.

This is new matter, not contained in the Catechism. The order in which the duties are given is certainly not, as the commission seems to claim, in accordance with "the mind of the whole church." If this question and answer are to be included, the duties should be given in their traditional order-perhaps in two lines to distinguish between those offices of which the priest is the necessary and those of which, when he may be had, he is the regular minister. It is advisable that Prayer Book words be employed. Thus:

A. The office of a priest is

(i) To celebrate and offer the Holy Eucharist, to pronounce blessing and absolution. Only a priest can do these things.

(ii) To hold cure of souls, to preach, to baptize. Except in emergencies or special cases, only a priest should do these things (though we should all know how to baptize in case of need).

There is no reason why children should be required to learn what the office of a deacon is. The answer as it stands is scarcely satisfactory and the Q. & A. might well be omitted without loss. III

MATRIMONY

The suggested office is so gravely objectionable that it ought to be rejected, but since present conditions do require that the rite be protected against scandalous misuse, the matter might be referred back to the committee or a new committee appointed.

The title given for this service as proposed is MATRIMONY. If a shorter title than that now in use is desired, why not HOLY MATRIMONY? It is to be noted that the commission has retained THE FORM OF SOLEMNIZATION OF MATRIMONY in its proposed table of contents.

In the charge to the groom and bride in our present FORM, the priest is required to tell them that if they be coupled together otherwise than as God's word allows," the marriage is not lawful." The commission asks us to soften this to "their marriage is not such as the Church alloweth." This proposal alone is ground for an insuperable objection to the entire office, which as a whole, instead of meeting present day conditions with a clear statement of Christian doctrine, caters to modern selfishness and individualism. Such a service is superfluous except, perhaps, for the blessing which the couple might go to church to receive after a civil marriage! If the standards of the Church are to be those of the world, we do not require separate ceremonies. When one talks of "adaptation to present day conditions" it matters a great deal whether one thinks with the (ex-) Jesuit Tyrell that it is Christianity, or with the Anglican Figgis that it is Civilization, which has come to the cross-roads; whether the saints shall judge the world or the world the saints.

The proposed changes in the promises and in the giving away all tend in the same direction. There might be something to be said for making the promises identical if the proposed OFFICES OF INSTRUCTION had been extended to include

clear teaching on Matrimony, but without such teaching, the effect is to exclude from the new Form all reference to the Divine Law which supports marital and parental authority. The plea of similarity to Roman Catholic and Mediæval use convicts many of those who advance it of insincerity and an almost insulting belief to the effect that those who, because they are Catholics cannot be Romaphobes, must be to such an extent of imbecility Romanomaniacs that they will sacrifice Catholic teaching in the province of morals to achieve an outward and meaningless similarity. Roman Catholics give elsewhere the teaching embodied in these promises.

The groom's pledge of support is not, perhaps, so important since it is not part of the Divine Law as contained in Holy Scripture. Yet it should be retained if the Church is to continue to stand for the sanctity and unity of the family. It is true that, under modern conditions, it is sometimes (and increasingly) difficult or even impossible for the husband to discharge this obligation in whole or in part and that it may thus devolve to some extent or completely upon the wife (though both should be content with as great frugality as is consistent with family health before the wife works away from home), but the Church, while never requiring its members to do what is impossible, may rightly pledge them to endeavor to realize, at the cost of self-sacrifice, its inspired ideals.

The proposed service ought, then, to be rejected. But in view of modern American conditions some changes should be made.

(i) The use of the service should be restricted to marriages in which both parties have been baptised and at least one of them is a communicant intending to remain such.

(ii) The publication of Banns both in Church and in a local newspaper (in both places if the residences are different) three weeks ahead should be required except in those cases of grave emergency for which the dispensation of the ordinary is asked and obtained.

(iii) There should be some mention of the procreation of offspring as one of the ends for which marriage was instituted. This might well be done by making the prayer O MERCIFUL

LORD AND HEAVENLY FATHER in the English Marriage service the last collect in the Nuptial Eucharist whose use should be restricted (iv) to marriages where both parties are communicants of the Church.

(v) The nuptial blessing should be pronounced by the PRIEST so specified in the rubric (as is done in the English Book).

(vi) It might be well to order that the ring is to be a plain band of a single metal preferably gold and that it is not to be of a more precious metal.

IV

INSTITUTION OF MINISTERS

Of the proposed changes in this office (which ought all to be rejected) it may be said that it is most appropriate that this service take place (as now ordered) in connection with the Eucharist and consequently (as now ordered) in the morning; that the present Prayer Book does not contemplate evening Communions so that it is ultra vires for the commissioners to suggest that the new book should do so; that those who maintain that the use of the words Altar and Eucharist would disturb the doctrinal balance of the book if inserted elsewhere cannot consistently ask for their omission here; that no one else wants them omitted; that the commissioners are mistaken in imagining that their proposals reflect the mind of the whole church; that one is, therefore, tempted to wonder to what sub-committee this office was assigned, and why.

Education

BY BERNARD IDDINGS BELL, D.D., PRESIDENT OF SAINT STEPHEN'S

T

COLLEGE

HAT the Church should have had, at various times, thirty

one colleges under her control, including such well-known ones as the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, William and Mary College and Racine College, and that she should have retained, on the broadest definition of control, only five of them, that she should have permitted some of them, like Jubilee and Racine, utterly to have perished and most of the others to have become otherwise affiliated in order to live, is not a record to boast about. Our lack of wisdom in this respect has made us the wonder of the other communions of Christians in this country, of the educational foundations, and of educators generally. The less said about the past the happier we ought to be.

Nor ought it to be necessary in these days to enter upon any justification of the small religious college. When almost half of the clerical delegates to General Convention come from one or other of the five Church Colleges; when, few and small as these colleges are, they have produced among them a larger portion of our population of theological seminaries than all the other colleges in America combined, it ought to need no great argument to prove them of some importance to the preservation of the ministry, at least. Everyone in the higher educational world nowadays recognizes that small colleges are needed for the maintenance of proper undergraduate instruction. The man who expresses a disbelief in small colleges per se merely confesses by that statement that he is about twenty years hehind the times. Such a critic may best be referred to the president of any first-rate large university. It is needless to argue with him here. A little more, though, may well be said regarding the Church college.

There are those who claim that such colleges are narrowing to the men who attend them, that they interfere with largeness of sympathy and breadth of mind. That such an objection should emanate from agnostics is not surprising; that it should