The People's Book of Worship Author:John Wallace Suter Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES GROWTH AND COMPREHENSION BY the Principle of Growth is not meant the fact of growth. The fact of growth is unquestioned. Ou... more »r present Prayer Book has grown, through a process covering many years, into the book it is to-day. This fact really reveals a growing principle in the book itself, which makes it a living book. The Principle of Growth is based upon the fact that our American Prayer Book is the result of four processes of revision extending through three centuries. It is based upon the fact that the Book has gathered up, and contains within itself precious treasures out of the experience in worship of past ages. And this very fact is in itself an assurance of new treasures to come out of new experiences, and of formal and deliberate revisions, as in the past, so also in the future. The Prayer Book is not an historical relic. It is not a monument to the manners in worship and pious observance of a defunct religion. It is the continuing hand-book of a living religion. Its revisability, its adaptability, its readiness to absorb new material and to redis- 23 cover old, its inherent principle of growth, this it is which is the pledge of the Prayer Book's vitality. The first of the four great revisions is the Prayer Book of Elizabeth in 1559, the Revision of the Reformation. The outstanding fact about it is that it is a Book of Worship in the English language. Henceforth the Prayer Book is to be the people's book, in their own tongue, and in their own hands. The five books which constitute it had been previously five Latin books. They had been the books of the priests, or of the technically " religious." They are now to belong to all Christ's people, all the Church's children. The first service to become Englished was the Litany, and right...« less