The revisers seem to have a glimmering of what was the right thing to do . . . but they should have swept away the undevotional and unliturgical plan of beginning with certain detached texts, which has no fitness whatever, and has never even seemed to answer any useful end. This is stronger language than most of us are likely to approve. A Church that directly takes issue with Rome, as ours does, with respect to the true source of authority in religion has an excellent reason for letting the voice of Holy Scripture sound the key-note of her daily worship, whether there be ancient precedent for such a use or not. At the same time, the reviewer's averment that "the only proper opening is the Invocation of the Holy Trinity" is entitled to attention; and it is worth considering whether the latter portion of the nineteenth verse of the twenty-eighth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel might not be advantageously added to the list of opening Sentences, for optional use. In speaking of the new alternate to the Declaration of Absolution, the reviewer suggests most happily that it would be well to revive the form of mutual confession of priest and people found in the old service-books.[45] This proposal would probably not be entertained in connection with the regular Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, but room for such a feature might perhaps be found in some optional office. After a grudging commendation of the steps taken in _The Book Annexed_ to restore the Gospel Canticles, the reviewer next puts in a strong plea for a larger allowance of versicles and responses after the Creed, contending that this is "just one of the places where enrichment, much beyond that of replacing the English versicles and responses now missing, is feasible and easy," to which the answer is that we, who love these missing versicles, shall think ourselves fortunate if we succeed in regaining only so much as we have lost. Even this will be accomplished with difficulty. It is most interesting, however, to notice that this stout defender of all that is English acknowledges the coupling together of the versicle, "Give peace in our time, O Lord," and the response, "Because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God," to be "a very infelicitous _non-sequitur_." For correcting this palpable incongruity, the authors of _The Book Annexed_ have been sharply criticised here at home. What were they that they should have presumed to disturb ancient Anglican precedent in such a point? If we could not understand why the God of battles, as the God of battles, should be implored to "give peace in our time," so much the worse for our intelligence. But here comes the most acrid of all our critics, and shows how the collocation of sentences in the English Book has, from the beginning, been due to a palpable blunder in condensing an office of the Sarum Breviary. Of the American substitute for this "unhappy response" the best he can