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Canada, not by virtue of ephemeral human law or of accidental rights, but by virtue of the imposition of unseen hands of allegiance and by rights which are too deep and sacred for the pen of passing men to write. He is crowned in Canada in the heart and soul of a freely associated member of the one British Commonwealth. In a very deep sense he is King of Canada by divine right.

Two points remain : Equality cannot endure the perpetuation of appeals to the Privy Council and of the Colonial Laws Validity Act. The Conference deliberately faced the situation and is prepared to arrange for suitable action. In connection with the former matter, there is no organized sentiment in Canada in favour of the abolition of appeals, but there was a recrudescence of illfeeling when the Judicial Committee recently asserted its undoubted right to hear appeals in Canadian criminal cases. Only a facetious mind can claim that the right of appeal to the Privy Council is "a link of empire," and only sheer ignorance can see in it" the immemorial right of the subject to approach the throne." On the other hand one can appreciate Canadian sentiment in favour of maintaining the right, though there is something highly amusing in awaiting decisions from that august body over the liability of the Ottawa Street Railway to a lady who met with an accident; or over the limitation period applying to a passenger's claim for personal injuries incurred on the British Columbia Electrical Railway. The Conference did well to put on record" that it was no part of the policy of His Majesty's government in Great Britain that questions affecting judicial appeals should be determined otherwise than in accordance with the wishes of the part of the empire primarily affected." That policy ought at once to issue in a permissive Act by the Parliament of Great Britain, allowing any Dominion to bar appeals if it wants to. Such an Act would throw the responsibility on Canada. It would preserve the practice if Canada wished, and modify it if Canada wished; and above all it would help to eliminate the political doctrinaire, who irritates without creative purpose, by whining on the meaningless tune "limitations on our autonomy." As regards the Colonial Laws Validity Act, the sooner it is remodelled the better. So far as Canada is concerned it is an anachronism, and sheer commonsense demands change. These two subjects are of importance, as they depend on laws to which appeal may be made any day in court.

Finally, one may say that the Imperial Conference has contributed to Canadian political development more for the future than for the present. The resolution above quoted carries one's mind back to those tragic years from 1763 to 1774, when the best men were seeking a formula to cover realities. James Madison then declared that “ the colonies were co-ordinate members with each other and with Great Britain, of an empire united by a common executive sovereign, but not united by any common legislative sovereign"; Franklin saw "many different governments perfectly independent of one another. Their only bond of union is the king"; James Wilson maintained" that all the members of the British Empire are distinct States, independent of each other, but connected together under the same sovereign in right of the same Crown." This language seems strangely modern, and yet it was an eighteenth-century attempt to state in terms of political realism political developments which had grown up in spite of law. Unfortunately the law was there, and the tragedy of revolution occurred because the law had never been brought into line with political realities. The Imperial Conference of 1926 insures our future. Whatever may lie on the knees of the gods, the day can never come when we shall be torn asunder by the perpetuation of the preamble to an Act of Parliament. At long last we have completed our lesson from the American Revolution.

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THE COMPOSITE BOOK

The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the Church, according to the use of the Church of England, together with the Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. The Book of 1662 with Permissive Additions and Deviations approved in 1927.

THE

HE "Composite Book," presented by the Archbishops to the Convocations in February, can only be fairly understood if the purpose of its compilation and the circumstances in which that purpose was formed are kept in mind. Ninetenths of the hostile criticisms passed upon the book will be found to imply a complete forgetfulness of these conditions of reasonable discussion. The silly clamour of the organized partisans might be ignored if it did not gather a certain strength from allying itself with two widely distributed sentiments, viz., natural conservatism and exasperation against clerical lawbreaking. The circumstance that these sentiments are commonly found to co-exist in the same minds adds greatly to their strength. Yet it will be regrettable if they are allowed to defeat a project commended by the deliberate wisdom and the long-continued labours of the English bishops, who, whatever their individual short-comings, cannot fairly be denied the qualifications of an honest desire to serve the Church of England, an intimate knowledge of the practical problems raised by revision, and a unique responsibility for the Church's discipline.

It is proposed in this article to recall the history of Prayer Book revision, to examine the actual contents of the Composite Book, and to indicate shortly what are conceived to be the inevitable consequences of its rejection.

The Book of Common Prayer is the supreme achievement of the English Reformation, and so long as that book retains its identity, through whatever revisions and enlargements, the Church of England will remain in the number of the Reformed Churches. Gallicanism expired when the Roman use prevailed over the local uses of France. Anglicanism could not survive the abandonment of the local use of England. The spiritual independence of the Church of England, its competence to VOL. 245. NO. 500.

to any

determine for itself the modes of its worship, and its complete equality with every other ordered Christian Church are symbolized by the Book of Common Prayer. "In short (wrote Archbishop Wake in 1718) the Church of England is free, is orthodox; she has a plenary authority within herself, and has no need to recur other church to direct her what to retain or what to do."* The English Reformation demonstrated the maturity of English nationhood in the ecclesiastical sphere, as the “absolute kingship of Henry VIII demonstrated it in the sphere of secular politics. Neither pope nor emperor, it was roundly asserted, had any authority within the English realm. The masterful Tudor gathered both supremacies within his own strong hands. He was not only an emperor within his realm, but also, as Stubbs wrote, "the Pope, the whole Pope, and something more than the Pope.' This exorbitant headship was as little consistent with national freedom as with Christian principle, and its inevitable limitation was disclosed in the very process of organizing the independent National Church.

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It became immediately apparent that a Book of Common Prayer is not merely the symbol of spiritual autonomy. It has another character, and another function. It is the manual of Christian worship, the instrument by which the clergy are to fulfil their ministry to the English people. The full title of the book is significant and suggestive: "The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church according to the Use of the Church of England." It is apparent on the title-page of the book that the Church of England is not a merely insular product, but a part of the Church universal, whose " Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies" it administers in its own distinctive way. It is the union of these two characters, national and catholick, in a single institution, that has been the occasion of sharp and continuing domestic dissidence through four centuries, and contributes now its most difficult element to the problem of Prayer Book revision. Emphasise unduly the national independence, and you will be in danger of breaking with the Catholick tradition; emphasise unduly the Catholick tradition, and you will jeopardise the national independence. In short, the Church of England will be dwarfed into

*Letter to Beauvoir, August 30, 1718, printed in the Appendix to Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History"; ed. Stubbs, vol. iii, p. 643.

a Protestant sect by one set of zealots; and by another it will be brought again under that papal yoke which " neither we nor our fathers were able to bear."

Historically, therefore, the Church of England has been the least united Church in Christendom. Uniformity, its cherished ideal, was precariously secured by persecution, before the Toleration Act, and by liberty of dissent and epidemics of prosecution since. For intelligible reasons it is now universally admitted to be unattainable. The rather squalid controversies which were born of the Tractarian Movement, and found expression in a series of ritual prosecutions, did at least make so much plain. The failure of uniformity may be said to have been officially admitted in the Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1906) :

In the sixteenth century, when the requirement of uniformity in the Church of England received the form which it has ever since retained with little alteration, the ideas of religious liberty and toleration were, in Church and State alike, unrecognized, if not, indeed, unknown. In Church and State alike these ideas have now won their way to undisputed prevalence and in the general life of the nation almost every restriction and disability which was at conflict with them has been removed. Doubtless in the public worship of a national Church the ideas of religious liberty and toleration are rightly bounded by the limits proper to that Church. It is nevertheless incongruous that the precise and uniform requirements which were in harmony with the Elizabethan ideas of administration should still stand as the rule for the public worship of a Church, under altered conditions and amidst altered ways of thought. While a large comprehensiveness in matters of doctrine has grown up, the rigidity of the law as to the rites and ceremonies of the " open prayer "which is for all "to come unto " has been maintained. The result has been a widespread disobedience to the letter of the law, which, though acquiesced in, in quiet times, has made the enforcement of uniformity, when startling innovations rendered appeal to the law inevitable, difficult and invidious. It has proved impracticable to obtain complete obedience to the Acts of Uniformity in one particular direction, partly because it is not now, and never has been, demanded in other direction.—(Report, p. 64.) Together with the continuing domestic dissidence which, as above stated, was inherent from the first in the paradox of a Church which claimed to be both National and Catholick, another factor adverse to the stability of the Reformation settlement has to be reckoned with. Much water has flowed under London Bridge since "the pope over the water" moved in his barge from

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