It is a graver matter to speak of infelicities of diction in a book so justly famous as the Prayer Book for its pure and wholesome English. Wordsworth's curse on One who would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave seems, in the judgment of many, fairly earned by the critic, whoever he may be, who ventures to suggest that in any slightest instance the language of the formularies might have been more happily phrased. But there are spots on the sun. In the prayer already referred to, that for use "at the meetings of Convention," the petition, "We beseech thee to be _present_ with the council of thy Church here assembled in thy name and _presence_" does seem open to the charge of tautology if nothing worse. It would be well if wherever the word occurs in the Prayer Book in connection with Deity the anthropomorphic plural "ears" could be replaced by the symbolic singular "ear." Considering also the great evil of having in a formulary of worship too many things that have to be laboriously explained, it might be well if in the Litany the adjective "sudden," which ever since Hooker's day has given perpetual occasion for cavil, were to yield to "untimely," or some like word more suggestive than "sudden" of the thought clumsily expressed in the "Chapel Liturgy" by the awkward phrase, "death unprepared for."[12] It must be again remarked that these are not points for the sake of which word-fanciers would be justified in disturbing an existing order of things; they are simply instances of lesser improvements that might very properly accompany larger ones, should larger ones ever be seriously undertaken. With so many pegs upon which controversies might be hung staring us in the face, can we think of it as at all likely that any considerable number of Churchmen assembled in committee (to say nothing of Convention) will be able to agree upon a common line of action with reference to an amendment of the formularies? That is the very point at issue, and how it is to be decided only the event can show. Certainly in the roll of the victories of charity, a favorable result, were it achieved, would stand exceeding high. This reflection naturally leads up to the inquiry whether there is any special reason to consider the present a happy moment to attempt within the limits already defined a revision of the Prayer Book. III. The argument for timeliness has been, in part, already stated. A revision will be timely, if the times imperatively demand it; and the main reasons for thinking that they do are before the reader. Something, however, is still left to be said in evidence that the movement now begun is opportune--not rudely thrust upon the Church. "To everything," saith the preacher, "there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven," and among the categories that follow this statement we find reckoned what answers to liturgical enrichment, for "there is," he observes, "a time to build up."