DESK

This is the name usually given to the pulpit or pew in which morning and evening prayers are sung or said in the English churches. The using of this pulpit for prayer is peculiar to the English Church, and has a very unpleasant effect. The First Prayer Book of Edward VI. ordered “the priest, being in the choir , to begin the Lord’s Prayer, called Pater Noster, (with which the morning and evening services then began,) with a loud voice:” so that it was at that time the custom for the minister to sing or say the morning and evening prayer, not in a desk or pulpit, but at the upper end of the choir or chancel, near the altar, towards which, whether standing or kneeling, he always turned his face in the prayers. This gave great offence, however, though it had been the custom of the Church of England for many hundred years, to some superstitious weaker brethren, who so far forgot their charity as to call it anti-Christian. The outcry, however frivolous and vexatious, prevailed so far, that when, in the fifth year of King Edward, the Prayer Book was altered, the following rubric appeared instead of the old one, viz. “The morning and evening prayers shall be used in such places of the church, chapel, or chancel, and the minister shall so turn him, as the people best may hear. And if there be any controversy therein, the matter shall be referred to the ordinary, and he or his deputy shall appoint the place.” This caused great contentions—the more orthodox kneeling in the old way, and singing or saying the prayers in the chancel, and the innovators, or ultra -Protestants, adopting new forms, and performing all the services in the body of the church. In the reign of Elizabeth, the rubric was brought to its present form: “that the morning and evening prayers shall be used in the accustomed place in the church, chapel, or chancel,” by which was clearly meant the choir or chancel, which had been for centuries the accustomed place; and it cannot be supposed that the Second Book of Edward, which lasted only one year and a half, could establish a custom. A dispensing power, however, was left with the ordinary, who might determine it otherwise, if he saw just cause. Pursuant to this rubric, the morning and evening services were again, as formerly, sung or said in the chancel or choir. But in some churches, owing to the too great distance of the chancel from the body of the church, in others owing to the ultra-Protestant superstition of the parishioners, the ordinaries permitted the clergy to leave the chancel, and read prayers from a pew in the body of the church. This innovation and novelty, begun first by some few ordinaries, and recommended by them to others, grew by degrees to be more general, till at last it came to be the universal practice; insomuch that the convocation, in the beginning of King James the First’s reign, ordered that in every church there should be a convenient seat made for the minister to read service in. In new churches, where there can be no complaint of the size of the chancels, there seems to be no reason why the ordinaries should not now remove the desk, and send the clergy back to their proper place, to sing or say the prayers in the chancel. At all events, they might get rid of that unsightly nuisance, a second pulpit instead of a reading pew. If the prayers are to be preached to the people, as well as the sermon, one pulpit might suffice. It is gratifying to know, that since the article was written in the first edition of this work, this disfigurement of our churches has been very generally removed. It is to be observed, that the word does not once occur in the Prayer Book.