In the second place, a certain amount of variety would be secured by the proposed method which under the existing system we miss. There is, of course, such a danger as that of providing too much liturgical variety. Amateur makers of Prayer Books almost invariably fall into this slough. Hymn-books, as is well known, often destroy their own usefulness by including too many hymns; and Prayer Books may do the same by having too many prayers.[25] To transgress in the compiling of formularies the line of average memory, to provide more material than the mind of an habitual worshipper is likely to assimilate, is to misread human nature. But here, as elsewhere, there is a just mean. Cranmer and his colleagues in the work of revision jumped at one bound from a scheme which provided a distinctive set of services for every day in the year to a scheme that assigned one stereotyped form to all days. Now nothing could be more unwise than any attempt to restore the methods of the Breviary, with its complicated and artificial forms of devotion; but so far to imitate the Breviary as to provide within limits for a recognition of man's innate love of change would be wisdom. By having a distinctive service for week-days, and a distinctive service for holydays, Ave might add just that little increment to the Church's power of traction that in many instances would avail to change "I cannot go to church this morning" into "I cannot stay away." It will be urged as a counter-argument to these considerations that the thing is impossible, that such a measure of enrichment is entirely in excess of anything the Church has expressed a wish to have, and that for reviewers to propose a plan so sweeping would be suicide. Doubtless this might be a sufficient answer to anybody who imagined that by a bare majority vote of two successive General Conventions new formularies of daily worship could be forced upon the Church. But suppose such formularies were to be made _optional_; suppose there were to be given to parishes the choice between these three things, viz.: (_a_) the normal Morning Prayer; (_b_) a shortened form of the normal Morning Prayer; and (_c_) such a special order as has been sketched--what then? Would the Church's liberty be impaired! On the contrary, would not the borders of that liberty have been most wisely and safely widened by the steady hand of law? This is perhaps the right point at which to call attention to the present state of the "shortened services" controversy, for wearisome as the story has become by frequent repetition, the nexus between it and the subject in hand is too important to be left out of sight.