by the Southern Presbyterian Church. This was even more startling in light of the fact that in 1899 the Southern General Assembly had declared:There is no warrant in Scripture for the observance of Christmas and Easter as holy days, rather the contrary (see Gal. 4:9-11; Col. 2:16-21), and such observance is contrary to the principles of the Reformed Faith, conducive to will worship, and not in harmony with the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.23Apparently the intervening 33 years and the obvious influence of the 1906 edition of the Book of Common Worship had made a world of difference in Southern Presbyterian Attitudes. It is important to note however, that the original declaration of the 1899 General Assembly was never repealed.As the Book of Common Worship continued to be revised, subsequent editions indicated that Presbyterians continued to become more and more comfortable with the observance of Holy Days. The 1946 edition included prayers for Maundy Thursday, Ascension Day, Trinity Sunday, and thirteen Sundays after Trinity.By 1955, when Northern Presbyterians were once again considering another revision of the Book of Common Worship, it had become painfully obvious that the Directory of Worship of 1788, which was still technically in force, had little or nothing to do with the actual worship of Presbyterians. Indeed it was questionable whether the Presbyterian practice could even claim to follow the Regulative Principle of Worship outlined in chapter twenty-one of the Westminster Confession, especially now that the gap between Presbyterian and Anglican worship was rapidly closing. The solution, of course, was to revise the Directory for Worship of 1788 and to produce a modern edition that would finally put an end to the need to give lip service to the principles that had guided the worship of the Puritans. Accordingly, the new Directory, published in 1961, stated that worship should draw its order and content not only from Scripture but also from the historical experience and resources of Christianity. At last the Northern Presbyterian Church (UPCUSA) had altered its theological foundations to allow for what they had already been officially practicing for over 55 years.This new directory was not accepted by the Southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS) however, and the directory they produced was far closer to the content and format of the Directory of Worship of 1788. It differed markedly from these documents however, in that it too gave a notable prominence to the Christian year, but without clearly admitting, as the Northern Directory had, that the new worship model followed by the PCUS was not strictly scriptural.In 1973 many conservative Southern Presbyterians faced with the prospect of the union of the body they belonged to (the PCUS) with the more liberal Northern UPCUSA opted instead to withdraw and form a new theologically conservative Presbyterian Church. This new church, the Presbyterian Church in America, opted not to adopt the liturgically oriented Book of Common Worship of the PCUS, its revised Directory of Worship, or any of the alterations that had been made to the Presbyterian Standards since adoption in 1789. Instead the PCA adopted the 1789 revision