PROBLEM OF RECONCILING COMPETING STUDIES. 477

But I must not follow Mr. Johnson further into details, though I should have liked to put him on his defence for his statement that the monstrous fatuities which disfigure Eschylus are condemned by the clear head of an Aristophanes, and can be proved to be bad;' an unmeasured way of talking, from which even Mr. Sidgwick is not quite free. A dissection of an illustration takes up more room than the illustration itself; and the more an essayist has to say, the more a reviewer is obliged to say in answering him. I will only add, then, briefly, that I cordially agree with Mr. Johnson's object, the education of the reasoning faculties of boys, and think that he has been very successful in showing in how many ways it may be done without outstepping the ordinary limits of a classical and literary training. To his plan of teaching French systematically to his classical pupils I incline to demur, for the reason I gave a page or two back in speaking of Mr. Hales's essay. Three languages seem to me the utmost that a boy can profitably pursue at once; and French is not, like German, a language which it is difficult to acquire at a later period.

I should be sorry if it were supposed that I wished the foregoing pages to be accepted as an adequate examination of the contents of this volume. To examine it thoroughly would require a volume of at least twice its bulk, and a writer far more versed in educational questions than I am. All that I have attempted to do is to follow the example of the Parliamentary orator (was it Mr. Cobden?) who said it was his habit to step out and join the debate when he saw it coming by his door. The thread which runs through my criticism is, as I have said already, a belief that the question before us is not how to frame a new theory of liberal education which shall supersede the old, but how to construct a system which shall

give scope for different theories, adapted to different circumstances. We are not likely to convince each other; we have no right to silence or ignore each other; it remains that we should tolerate each other. How a toleration may best be organised is a question which I leave to those who are more accustomed to grapple with details. The adoption of bifurcation in all our larger schools would seem to be a natural way of meeting the want in its earlier stages to satisfy it in a later period it would probably be necessary that the Universities should recognise from the first that distinction of studies which is now conceded, sparingly and with hesitation, in the latter part of an academical career.

The following note is reprinted from the Contemporary Review, April 1868, page 631, where it appeared as a correction to

the article republished Vol. I. p. 479:

On further consideration, I see reason to alter the opinion expressed in pp. 410, 411 of this Review about the meaning of the words in the Prayer of Humble Access. I said there that the revisers of 1552 altered the prayer in one or two verbal points only, from which I inferred that the construction which we should have put on the prayer, as it stands in the Liturgy of 1549, is the true construction now. I have since perceived that one of the alterations, and that occurring in the very clause in question, is more than verbal. In 1549, the clause ran, 'so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink His blood, in these holy mysteries.' In 1552, the last four words were omitted, as is still the case. It has been suggested to me that the reason of their removal was the change made at the same time of the position of the prayer, which formerly stood after the Prayer of Consecration, the expression, these holy mysteries' not being strictly applicable before consecration has taken place. But the friend who makes the suggestion admits that it may be urged, on the other side, that the words 'this holy sacrament' are retained in the Invitation, the place of which was similarly changed in 1552, an inconsistency of practice which he attributes to oversight. It appears to me more likely that the revisers of 1552 omitted the mention of the holy mysteries from a wish not to determine exactly whether the reception of the Body and Blood was involved in the reception of the elements, or generally in the whole act of Eucharistic worship, of which the reception of the elements forms a part. This opinion is strengthened by the fact that the very same omission is made in a later prayer, that which is now the alternative prayer after the Communion. The beginning of that prayer originally stood, Almighty and ever living God, we most heartily thank Thee for that Thou hast vouchsafed to feed us in these holy mysteries with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.' Now we read 'for that Thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, who (which, 1552) have duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food' &c. One reason of making the alteration, of course, was the transfer of the condition of due reception, which, in 1549, was attached to the second part of the sentence, that speaking of the 'virtus sacramenti,' to the first part, where the 'res sacramenti' is spoken of (a point, by the way, which has apparently escaped the annotator, who, in warning us that 'duly' is the English word for 'rite,' and so applies to all who have received, is as inconsistent with the language of the prayer of 1549 as he is consistent with its doctrine); but, taking the changes in the two prayers together, I cannot doubt that the revisers were influenced by a further reason, and preferred, as I have said, to use words not making the

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reception of the Body and Blood absolutely identical, even in the case of worthy recipients, with the act of receiving the elements. I do not say that nothing can be quoted to show the identity of the two acts of reception from other parts of the service; I merely say that, to the best of my judgment, these particular passages seem constructed to avoid the assertion of such identity. If I am right in my present conclusion, it follows that the word 'so' is to be understood in a wider sense than that which I originally thought the true one. It will now merely mean 'so effectually,' a sense which it unquestionably bears in other passages in the formularies (a friend points out 'so fill you with all spiritual benediction' in the first blessing in the Marriage Service, 'so turn Thine anger from us in the prayer towards the end of the Commination Service), and will contain no logical implication of any opposite effect.

It gives me no pleasure to retract a concession which it gave me pleasure to make. As I intimated in my paper, the true interpretation of the several expressions in our formularies is one question, the harmonising of different statements, so interpreted, another. The latter process may be needed to correct the former; but the former is the first step to the latter.

* Compare, also, the words originally occurring in the Exhortation to the communicants, 'He hath left in those holy mysteries, as a pledge of His love and a continual remembrance of the same, His own blessed body and precious blood,' now altered into He hath instituted and ordained holy mysteries as pledges of His love' &c., a passage to which my attention has been drawn by Canon Estcourt's Dogmatic Teaching of the Book of Common Prayer on the Holy Eucharist'; and see the second sentence of the Exhortation, giving warning of the Communion, as it stood in 1549, contrasted with the words (since materially altered) which were substituted in 1552.

THE ANNOTATED BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER ON THE COMMUNION SERVICE.1

THERE are few things, it seems to me, by which theologians can do better service than by commenting carefully and judiciously on our doctrinal formularies. While we have doctrinal standards, questions will constantly arise about the compatibility of particular opinions, held by individuals or sections of the Church, with the true meaning of those standards; and there can be no better way of ascertaining that meaning than by close and scrupulous commentaries, drawing out the sense of the original by the same rigorous method of interpretation which is daily being applied with success to the study of ancient literature. Such works, so executed, would be of the highest use with reference to the legal decision of questions like those which are now vexing the Church: not only would they be quoted by advocates, but they might materially assist lay judges; nay, it is scarcely too much to say that they might contribute greatly to remove the unsatisfactoriness which even persons least inclined to underrate the advantages of lay courts of appeal will admit to be inherent in the decision of theological issues by unprofessional authority. And, putting controversy out of sight,

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may be allowed to say that no class of books would be more interesting to students like myself, who know by experience the value of accurate exposition, and desire to see the work which they are attempting to do for others in one department done for themselves in another.

1 Reprinted from the Contemporary Review, March 1868.