ONE wonders what some of the clergy imagine goes on in the heads of their parishioners. Have those who talk so readily about people 'understanding' the new forms of service, and the epistles and gospels in inferior translations, ever reflected on what they are claiming? An elementary examination conducted by some impartial authority would produce some comic results. Never, perhaps, since the Reformation, have congregations been so uninstructed. Where will the ordinary church-goer have got the ideas which tumble around in his head? From the newspapers, from the television and radio and-to a minimal extent-from those ten-minute sermons which are so rarely an exposition of doctrine, and so often no more than an exhortation to entertain more fervently that common stock of vague and politicised morality which is bandied about the world, day in, day out, though rarely enough acted upon, no doubt.

What is actually fed into the minds of the average congregation? There was a time, when Mattins was well-attended, when-sermons apart-there was week by week poured over the heads of the most somnolent, sizeable chunks of the Old and New Testaments, with stories which came round again and again till many had an air of familiarity, and the Psalms, the intonations and many of the phrases of which were part of the furniture of the minds of those who were brought up with them. Vain repetitions? At least the minds of the ordinary Anglican family had some religious furnishing. Everyone will have recognised, in the ordinary conversation of modestly educated people, as well as of the more sophisticated, echoes of phrases which have their roots in the Prayer Book and the Authorised Version. To 'read, mark, learn and inwardly digest', 'to have and to hold', to 'follow too much the devices and desires of our own hearts'; these are not only memorable phrases, but phrases of which the meaning has for generations been deepened by their use in the contexts in which they occur. They are intelligible because they have a context in which a closely-woven web of meaning is bound together with a habit of prayer and worship. This is the web which is being torn to shreds in the name of an understanding so superficial as to amount to 'what you can say in your own words'-not much. And of course this 'understanding' in the language of the Guardian or the Daily Mirror-or whatever the source of current literacy may be-is a sort of hoax, for what is currently meant by 'understanding' is a process which has meaning in relation to scientific and technological fact, but none at all in relation to the mysteries of the Christian faith. 'Understand' too much, and you are out of the Church altogether. Even for the more instructed, there is no current theology which ties what goes on in church to our ordinary, twentieth-century conceptions of knowledge.

The Prayer Book and the Authorised Version were put together in a different world, in which awkward questions were already being asked but in which a theological orientation was still natural and bound to common life so that, for example, neither side in the troubles in the England of the seventeenth century thought of doing otherwise than appealing to religion for the justification of their cause. The Prayer Book as we have it from 1662 still being recognisably that of 1549 and 1552 was the work of men who were willing to give their lives for such things. The current revisions are by comparison the frivolities of people engaged in a public relations exercise- and, understand that modern term and you might think that it is the last thing the Church should be engaging in. Some of the changes introduced in the Lord's Prayer would excite contempt and derision but for the sanctimonious atmosphere in which they were promulgated. Would anyone in his right mind sacrifice continuity and familiarity for the sake of changing 'as we forgive them that trespass against us' to 'those who'? Who ever failed to understand 'them that'?

Familiarity and continuity are what are at stake. With the contempt now showered on the old books-if not by words, then by deeds, which are more telling-one would not think that the whole of the gospels were played out in a milieu soaked in the histories, laws and prophecies of the Old Testament. It was only in this context that the meaning of Christ's life and teaching could emerge. What were Jesus and his disciples doing in the synagogue? Is it to be supposed that their words, among themselves, were free of the past? Would anyone have begun to understand the teaching, however darkly, if there had not been that familiarity with the old books? Is it so different now? Is an empty head the best head to listen to a sermon? Does not the whole effectiveness of this form of discourse depend upon common points of reference, common echoes, in which the memorability of the Prayer Book and the Authorised Version have an irreplaceable part? Certainly the inept formulae of the current revisions and re-translations will not replace them. Perhaps the present confusion is to go on till the Church vanishes into the wilderness, but the present generation of public relations men are hardly the people to lead her there.

For the moment there remains with us a number of clergy smiling over the triumph of mere vandalism. It is an old Puritan story. The smashing of church windows is a mark of sanctity. Or could it be the mark of a self-importance blind to a creation beyond its apprehension? Certainly one has the impression, often, of listening to people who think they can at will replace Cranmer's work of genius by something better- much as Bernard Shaw thought he was better than William Shakespeare.