Page:The Parson's Handbook - 2nd ed.djvu/11

 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

like to take this opportunity of making clear two points, which have been missed by nearly all those who have criticised this book. As these criticisms have been unexpectedly fair and kindly, I feel that the failure to understand my meaning must have been due to an insufficient insistence on these points in the Introduction. Yet I tried to anticipate them on page 36, and indeed in other places also.

The first point is that this Handbook is not meant only for the extreme, still less is it meant to hound any parsons on to extravagances, or to provide a 'ritualistic' manifesto to swell the discordant noises which the newspapers are just now calling 'the crisis'. It would have been written, in the same way and at the same time, if the Philistine giant had never uplifted his head and shouted the warcry of persecution. The reason why The Parsons Handbook contains as much ceremonial as it does is because I have tried to make it suitable for all parsons. It is, like the Church of England, comprehensive : therefore it had to include the extremest amount of ceremonial which is in my opinion (and it must be a matter of opinion) compatible with loyalty