In fact, it is just as possible, if men will only think so, to use our language with effect for any good purpose to-day as it was three hundred years ago. All that is necessary is a willingness to submit to the same restrictions, and those mostly moral, that controlled the old writers; and our work, though not identical with theirs, will have the proper similarity. True, a modern author may not be able to reproduce, without a palpable betrayal of affectation and mannerism, the precise characteristics of a bygone style. Chattertons are not numerous. It is easier to secure for the brass andirons and mahogany dining chairs of our own manufacture the look of those that belonged to our grandfathers than it is to catch the tones of voices long dead; and just as good judgment dictates the wisdom of repeating the honest and thorough workmanship of the old cabinet-makers in place of slavishly imitating their patterns, so it will be well if the compilers of devotional forms for modern use seek to say what they have to say with sixteenth century simplicity rather than in sixteenth century speech. In letters, as in conduct, the supreme charm of style is the absence of self-consciousness. "Say in plain words the thing you mean, and say it as if you meant it," is good advice to any seeker after rhetorical excellence, be he young or old. The Reformers, that is to say, the men who Englished the Prayer Book, in seeking to meet the devotional needs of the people of their own time do not seem to have been at pains to tie themselves to the diction of a previous generation. They dared to "call a spade a spade" whenever and wherever the tool came into use, and they have their reward in the permanence of their work. Sweetnesses and prettinesses they banished altogether. Indeed, in those days it seems not to have occurred to people that such things had anything to do with religion. It was not that they did not know how to talk in the sweet way--never has sentimentalism been more rife in general literature than then, but they would not talk in that way; the stern traditions of Holy Church throughout all the world forbade. Religion was a most serious thing to their minds, and they would speak of it most seriously or not at all. Never since language began to be used have severity and tenderness been more marvellously blended than in the older portions of the English Prayer Book. This effect is largely due to an almost entire abstention on the part of the writers from figurative language, or at least from all imagery that is not readily recognized as Scriptural. Bread and beef are what men demand for a steady diet. Sweetmeats are well enough, now and then, but only now and then.