230 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [1785 



Cathedral service, may safely be omitted by the American Church. Per- 

 haps such an opportunity never occurred since the days of the Apostles 

 of setting a rational, unexceptionable mode of worship. 



He adds in another : * 



If no alterations in the liturgy are to be made but such as the Revo- 

 lution requires, there is little need to think much upon the subject, unless, 

 perhaps, omissions be not deemed alterations. My decided opinion is 

 that our prayers are too numerous as well as the repetitions. I shall 

 draw up a motion on this head which I mean to make at the Conven- 

 tion, if you should approve it. 



However, though a sound thinker in the main ; a very finished 

 scholar, a true and elegant gentleman, and an able controversial 

 writer, Dr. Wharton was no debater at all, nor, unless provoked, 

 was his spirit in the least militant. The habits of the cloister clung 

 somewhat about him all his life, and his part in the Convention I 

 do not suppose to have been very active. f 



We hardly pardon him — who lived long at Worcester, England, 

 and must have often enjoyed the service at its fine Cathedral — 

 writing : 



Whatever was retained (in the English liturgy) as suitable to Cathe- 

 dral may safely be omitted by the American Church. 



Why? were not services exactly those of the Cathedral and 

 differing from the humblest parish church only in their choirs, to 

 be performed in America ? And were not Cathedrals themselves 

 — the Bishop's Church — soon to be demanded by the voice of the 

 Church throughout our dioceses? J 



* Perry's "Half CenUiry of Legislation," Vol. I., page 108. 



fSee Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit," Vol. V., page 335. 



\ On this very 26th of May, 1879, ^s I write, I open the Livvig Church, a journal 

 of Illinois, and read from the Western Church, a journal of Chicago, this passage : 



" The American Church longs for the constitutional fatherly government of its 

 Fathers in God. In manifold w^ays the heart of the Church demands it. It wants a 

 true Bishop's Church in the See city, in which the educational, charitable and mission- 

 ary work of the See is to centre. It needs for its cathedral chapter, a body in which 

 every diocesan interest shall be represented, the diocese at large, the institutions, the 

 missionary work, the city parishes, the cathedral clergy, the laity as well as the clergy. 

 It needs the Bishop at the head of the chapter, the informing factor, the guiding prin- 

 ciple, the Father of his Flock, the Bishop in the truly ordered See." 



This would have been the language of Dr. Smith; and his pen, I should think, 

 would never have stricken out that ancient rubric of our mother Church — 



"In choirs and places where they sing, here followelh the anthem." 



