“O, papa!” said Connie, in a tone of injury, from the sofa.
“What is it, my dear?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t it be as good for us as for Mr. Turner?”
“Quite, my dear. Well, I will keep it for the evening, and meantime Mr. Turner and I will go and see if we can find out anything about the change in the church-service.”
For I had thrown into my bag as I left the rectory a copy of The Clergyman’s Vade Mecum—a treatise occupied with the externals of the churchman’s relations—in which I soon came upon the following passage:
“So then it appears that the common practice of reading all three together, is an innovation, and if an ancient or infirm clergyman do read them at two or three several times, he is more strictly conformable; however, this is much better than to omit any part of the liturgy, or to read all three offices into one, as is now commonly done, without any pause or distinction.”
“On the part of the clergyman, you see, Turner,” I said, when I had finished reading the whole passage to him. “There is no care taken of the delicate women of the congregation, but only of the ancient or infirm clergyman. And the logic, to say the least, is rather queer: is it only in virtue of his antiquity and infirmity that he is to be upheld in being more strictly conformable? The writer’s honesty has its heels trodden upon by the fear of giving offence. Nevertheless there should perhaps be a certain slowness to admit change, even back to a more ancient form.”
“I don’t know that I can quite agree with you there,” said Turner. “If the form is better, no one should hesitate to advocate the change. If it is worse, then slowness is not sufficient—utter obstinacy is the right condition.”
“You are right, Turner. For the right must be the rule, and where the right is beyond our understanding or our reach, then the better, as indeed not only right compared with the other, but the sole ascent towards the right.”
In the evening I took Henry Vaughan’s poems into the common sitting-room, and to Connie’s great delight read the whole of the lovely, though unequal little poem, called “The Retreat,” in recalling which I had failed in the morning. She was especially delighted with the “white celestial thought,” and the “bright shoots of everlastingness.” Then I gave a few lines from another yet more unequal poem, worthy in themselves of the best of the other. I quote the first strophe entire: