HOLY UNCTION.*
Timm seems no particular reason why the Unction of the Sick should not have been preserved in the Church of England. The principle of the English Reformation was conservative it was desired to retain as much of the old ritual as could be kept in use without prejudice to religious and political interests ; and this rite—which has scriptural parallels, and is has open to misconception than the late form of absolution in our Office for the Visitation of the Sick—comes to the relief of those called upon to face the great passage, i.e., at an emergency when no consolation which religion can afford is either excessive or superfluous. It is, indeed, as unreasonable to interpret James v. 14 as an enactment as it would be to take the injunction of the preceding verse, " Is any merry ? Let him sing psalms," or St. Paul's " Greet ye one another with a holy kiss," as legislation. The Unction of the Sick was a Jewish custom— hence, probably, the reference to it in this particular Epistle— and it does not seem to have been in use in the Church at large till the fourth century. It was on this ground that the Lambeth Conference of 1908 refused to recommend it. Bu that of 1920 proposed a characteristically ad libitum course : "a laying on of hands, with or without Unction, as may be desired." This pious optionalism may raise a smile ; but we are a political • Holy Undies : a Dogmatic Treatise on the Undion of the Sick. By Archdale A. King. London : to: sty of SS. Peter and Paul. I'ubllsheni to the Church at Fnglao.l 111. ed. net.]
nation, and have a political Church. The fact is that it is more difficult to restore than it would have been to retain the practice. Where it exists, it is useful as a nucleus round which emotion and association gather. But it does not follow that this would be so with its revival after a lapse of nearly four centuries ; though it may be hoped that the cruder supersti- tions connected with it in the Middle Ages have passed away, at least in their original shape. These are referred to in the Roman Office for the Blessing of the Oils on Maundy Thursday, in which the Bishop jubet Presbyteros attente ut, juxta Cantmum traditionem, Chrism et Olea fiddlier custodiant, et nulli sub pradextu medicinae vel maleficii tradere pro,esurna,nt.
If the disuse of the Unction of the Sick was little resented, the reason probably is that, though it was prescribed, it was not in general use in the Pre-Reformation Church ; when " such an extortionate price was demanded for its bestowal that people were anointed only as a last resource ; and even then it was only accessible to the rich, so that the Waldenses called it the Wilma superbia."
The author of this treatise, who is described as " Priest of St. Saviour's, Poplar," must be presumed to be a serious person ; and, as the claim of the Society of SS. Peter and Paul to the title of " Publishers to the Church of England " has never been officially contradicted, it may be taken to have a certain founda- tion in fact. But, if Mr. King's purpose is to promote the restoration of the rite, he " moves in a mysterious way " ; it is difficult to imagine anything more calculated to discredit it than both the substance and the manner of his work. The names of the authorities quoted recall the famous list of casuists given by Pascal in the Fifth Provincial Letter. We read of Do Castro, Catharinus, Mariana, Sainte Beuve (not the author of the Causeries of John Mandakuni, Catholicos of Armenia, of Symeoa of Thessalonica, of Thomas Waldensis, " known as
Malleus Wickliflitarum," of Vermeersch, Tanqueray, Gury- Ballerini, and Dr. O'Kane. " 0 mon Pere," lui disais-je tout
effrayb, " tous ces gens-la, etaient-ifs chretiens ? " Pascal, it has been suggested, arranged the names so as to increase their cacophony ; Mr. King has, perhaps, followed his example.
While he would improve, it seems, upon the Corinthian custom of baptism " for the dead." For he tells us that :-
" It is possible that life is latent until decomposition has set in ; and Father Feijoo (end of eighteenth century) said that a person is alive for half an hour after apparent death. Father Hanley suggests that a healthy person can be anointed twenty or twenty-five hours after."
When nonsense of this kind is talked in the pulpit, can we wonder that our churches are empty, and that, in particular, persons of education are conspicuous by their absence from the pew ?
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