Modern Prayer

For the past year, brides married in Protestant Episcopal churches have not had to promise that they will obey their husbands. This was canonical. After 15 years of labor the Book of Common Prayer has been revised. In trial use since October 1928, it was officially published last week.

Other changes have been made. A young man marrying where money is will no longer have to announce that he is endowing his more economically potent bride with all his worldly goods. The newly married couple will no longer be urged by the officiating minister to follow the example of Isaac and Rebecca.

"Jews, infidels and heretics" are no longer to be the subject of prayer because of their "ignorance and hardness of heart."

A shorter canticle is substituted for the Te Deum, lengthy hymn of praise.

High-church priests may now anoint the sick. (This practice, thought to be Romish, was not previously canonical.) To the Burial Service, least Christian of the rites, have been added more selections from the New Testament. The Psalms have been corrected for mistranslations, but still do not conform with the Biblical version. A petition for travelers by air has been added to the Litany.

This is the first revision of the Prayer Book since 1892.* The revisory commission, appointed by the General Convention, is headed by the Rt. Rev. Charles Lewis Slattery, Bishop of Massachusetts, who ranks as a moderate liberal. Rumors that John Pierpont Morgan, Senior Warden of St. John's, Locust Valley, L. I., heavy contributor to the diocese of New York, is to pay the publication costs are unfounded. What Mr. Morgan will pay for is a limited edition, on heavy paper, large type, handset, to be distributed to Bishops and deputies to the General Convention.

*Other revised versions: edition of 1789, based on the English Book of Common Prayer, with few differences, mostly political--e. g., the prayer for, the President was taken from the prayer for the royal family. Revised edition of 1892 contained only minor changes.