Prologue: Our Aim

"We hope to be of help to the young Christian minister who aspires to prepare himself to lead his people in worshipping of Almighty God. First, to make a simple pattern growing out of the basic principles, Scriptural and psychological, underlying the experience, and then to suggest helps in developing material suited to promote the Experience, such as Orders of Service, the construct of prayers, and conduct of the “Service.” Emphasis will be laid constantly on the abundance of liturgical material found in Holy Scripture—and in prayers of the ages. The content rather than the form is emphasized. It is our belief that the simplest form can be made to carry heavy freight of spiritually uplifting matter if the sources available are used by one who knows the basic pattern of worship. Simple and useable helps are here recorded that give assistance in formulating public prayer and making Worship “real.” No criticism is implied of classical or standard liturgies, they are drafted for our own purposes and to those in the tradition of a liturgical communion these helps will be unnecessary."

--Dr. Jesse Halsey, in an unpublished, draft introduction to the 1946 revision of the Book of Common Worship

Literature of Devotion

Jesse Halsey | 1935

Mr. Editor—

The enclosed may serve as a book review in The Advocate. If you use it kindly mail me a copy of The Advocate, if not return MS.

Jesse Halsey

The Literature of Devotion is rapidly growing. Its sources are in no one denomination. A Catholic like von Hugel, a Churchman like Inge, a Quaker like Rufus Jones—they speak for all of us and to us all. There is one Lord and one faith—whatever the baptism.

Other middle walls of partition have broken down, also; for two Presbyterian come to us from the Methodist press* which may well augur good things to come, for the Brotherhood of the Spirit.

Hubert Simpson, a Scot, now preaching in London has the flavor of the best Scottish imaginative exegesis in his reverent study of The Seven Words. “The fierce blast of Calvary shook his soul but could not alter its prevailing bent . . .” “Faith may seem to waver, hope to be at a low ebb; but love is always at full tide in the soul of Jesus.” This is a sample of the quality. It is deep spiritual insight expressed in high diction. There is illustration from the secret places of the soul—and from the seven seas. Human stuff gets a divine suffusion, from the Three Hours—and The Christ. Dr. Simpson is a good companion in the darkness—you forget him and see Our Lord.

And Richard Roberts; that good Scribe with things new and old! “Raw human nature is much the same in New York as it was log ago in Jerusalem”; and “it is raw human nature that sets us our problems still!” Palestine was cosmopolitan, not the backwater; it was small but a world highway; in a word, their situation and ours are much alike. On this basis he makes “The Cross” and “The Strange Man” our contemporaries. And he does it well, no man equally, except Coffin (and with a different aspect of Jesus’ life, Stanley Jones in “The Man of the Mount”).

The Gospel in compelling form is in these books as it is in these men and their ministries. Devotion can take wings and leave the earth, but in these it climbs the Hills (and the Hill Golgotha) as it keeps its feet on the earth; most divine when it is most human, as is our Lord.

·      “Testament of Love,” Hubert Simpson, Abingdon

·      “That Strange Man His Cross,” Richard Roberts, Abingdon

Book of Common Worship

Minutes, General Assembly  | May 25, 1951, p. 51| Committee Reports

The Report of the Special Committee on The Book of Common Worship in the absence of any member of the Special Committee was presented through the Recording Clerk. The Report was received and approved as follows:

During the ecclestical year, your Committee lost the leadership of its Chairman, Rev. Hugh Thomson Kerr, whose death occurred June 27, 1950, at the age of 79.

Dr. Kerr succeeded Dr. William Chalmers Covert in 1943, and under his efficient chairmanship, the Committee undertook the revision of The Book of Common Worship, Revised, and published in 1946. Dr. Kerr was peculiarly fitted for this important undertaking of our Church by his long interest in liturgics, his familiarity with the literature in this field, and his unusual literary gifts.

The 162^nd General Assembly adopted certain Overtures which called for the insertion of a new first question in connection with all ordinations. This required corresponding changes in the forms for Ordination in The Book of Common Worship. These changes were approved by the Office of the Stated Clerk, and for the convenience of those who have the edition of 1946, slips were prepared by the Board of Christian Education, as publishers, for insertion at the proper places in The Book of Common Worship.

The Committee has thus been continuing to render such service as is required of it as a Special Committee appointed “to act in collaboration with the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly.”