Part 6 (2/2)
it is recommended that at the close of the Consecration Prayer the minister recite the ”Apostles Creed” as a brief summary of Christian Faith, and when the Lord's Prayer is used, as advised before or after the prayer of intercession, the people may be invited to join audibly or to add _Amen_.
Worthy of more extended notice than the limits of this chapter will permit is ”The Book of Church Order” of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. As early as 1864 a proposal was made in a.s.sembly to revise the Westminster Directory of Wors.h.i.+p for the purpose not only of rendering it more suitable to the requirements of the time, but in order also to so modify and improve it as to increase its suggestiveness and helpfulness to ministers. The work was undertaken by a committee appointed in 1879, and in 1894 this committee presented its formal report, which was adopted, and the revised Directory was ordered to be published. It contains sixteen chapters, treating of all the matters treated in the original Directory, and containing in addition suggestive chapters on ”Sabbath Schools,” ”Prayer Meetings,”
”Secret and Family Wors.h.i.+p,” and ”The Admission of Persons to Sealing Ordinances.”
Respecting the public reading of Holy Scripture the revised Directory declares it to be ”a part of the public wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d,” and that ”it ought to be performed by the minister or some other authorized person.”
Of public prayer, after indicating its different parts, and suggesting the place that it should occupy in the service, the mind of the Church is thus expressed: ”But we think it necessary to observe that, although we do not approve, as is well known, of confining ministers to set or fixed forms of prayer for public wors.h.i.+p, yet it is the indispensable duty of every minister, previously to his entering on his office, to prepare and qualify himself for this part of his duty, as well as for preaching.” In the chapters on the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper particular directions are given, and questions suitable to be asked of the parents of children presented for baptism are suggested, while in the directions for the admission of persons to sealing ordinances, an important distinction is drawn between the reception of baptized children of the Church and that of those who, on confession of their faith, are at that time first received. To the Directory there are added optional forms for use at a marriage service and at a funeral service. The book is not elaborate, and may be thought by many to be far from comprehensive as a Directory, but it is suggestive and helpful, and, while true to the principles of Presbyterian wors.h.i.+p, it gives no evidence of disregard for the beauty and appropriateness that should characterize the public services of the Church. Among books of Church order it is well worth study by those who desire in wors.h.i.+p to combine simplicity with dignity.
It is evident from these recent and simultaneous movements in so many branches of the Presbyterian Church, that there exists a feeling on the part of many that there is need of improvement in the important department of wors.h.i.+p in our public services. It is probable that there will be found few to deny this, or to confess absolute satisfaction with the wors.h.i.+p of the Church to-day. The question on which many will hold widely divergent opinions is as to the means to be adopted for its improvement. Some there are, as in the Church Service Society, who advocate a prescribed liturgy for at least certain parts of public wors.h.i.+p; others, who desire a liturgy, but who are content to leave to congregations or to ministers freedom to use it or to disregard it; still others are loyal to the spirit of the age which produced the Westminster Directory, while they are at the same time willing to revise that work, which was found so serviceable to the Church for so long a period, and so to render it more suitable to the demands of our own age.
If a judgment may be formed from the movements that have just been reviewed, it is probable that at least for some time to come, the Presbyterian Church will continue to walk in the paths that have become familiar through long usage. The age, it is true, is past when dictation on this matter, either favoring or condemning a liturgy, would be suffered; and, therefore, it is to be expected that congregations will exercise liberty in the matter. Yet, so far as the general sentiment of the Church is concerned, a sentiment that will doubtless from time to time find expression in official declarations, it appears evident that the preponderating feeling is still strongly in favor of a voluntary wors.h.i.+p, unrestricted even by suggested forms.
Conclusion.
”A constant form is a certain way to bring the soul to a cold, insensible, formal wors.h.i.+p.”--BAXTER.
Chapter X.
Conclusion.
The foregoing brief review of public wors.h.i.+p within those influential sections of the Presbyterian Church whose att.i.tude on this question has been examined, affords a sufficient ground for the a.s.sertion that those bodies have shown, until recently, a uniform and steadily growing suspicion of a liturgical service, even in its most modified form.
The Book of Common Order, the first official service book adopted by the General a.s.sembly of the Church of Scotland for the regulation of its wors.h.i.+p, marked a distinct advance towards a freer form and greater liberty on the part of the minister in conducting Divine service. As compared not only with the English Prayer Book of the time, which was used in Reformed parishes in Scotland, but even with Calvin's order of wors.h.i.+p, which had been so generally adopted by the Reformed Churches on the Continent, this Book of Common Order was characterized by a spirit of larger liberty in wors.h.i.+p and less reliance upon forms either suggested or imposed.
In the period of struggle through which the Church of Scotland pa.s.sed in the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, the conflicts, civil and religious, only served, so far as they had any effect upon the views of the Church concerning wors.h.i.+p, to strengthen the already strong opposition to prescribed forms of prayer and to ritualistic observances. Accordingly, when it was proposed to subst.i.tute for the Book of Common Order a Directory, in which there should appear no prescribed forms for any part of public wors.h.i.+p, the Scotch a.s.sembly gave a ready a.s.sent to the proposal, and, although some words of regret at parting with an historic symbol were spoken at that time by leaders in the Scottish Church, they were only such as it was natural to expect should be spoken in view of the strong attachment for that symbol fostered by its use during many years, but they were not such as indicate that those who so spoke felt themselves called upon to surrender any principle in laying aside the order to which they had been so long accustomed. Indeed the hearty and cheerful adoption by the Scottish a.s.sembly of the strongly worded preface to the Westminster Directory, exposing as it does so vigorously the weakness as well as the dangers resulting from the use of a liturgy in public wors.h.i.+p, plainly indicates that in the judgment of the Church of that day the use of liturgical forms was not only not helpful, but was positively perilous, as well to the best interests of the congregation as to the most efficient service of the minister.
Again in a third epoch of the Church's history, in the days following the ”killing time,” and marked by the succession to the throne of William of Orange, and later by the union of England and Scotland, the Presbyterian Church of the latter country not only rea.s.serted her loyalty to the principles of liberty in wors.h.i.+p which she had so long defended, but she also succeeded in having secured to her by legislation, freedom from the imposition of ritualistic forms.
It is at least allowable to a.s.sert that the leaders in the Scottish Church in the days of the Westminster a.s.sembly and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, regarded the perfect liberty in wors.h.i.+p allowed by the Directory not only as scriptural, but as suitable for the attainment of the great ends of public wors.h.i.+p, for on no other grounds would they have consented to its adoption in Scotland. And if Presbyterians of to-day desire to imitate the spirit and methods of their ancestors, it is reasonable that they should study the example of the men of the second Reformation. There is good ground for claiming that in no period of the Church's history did it give evidence of a deeper spiritual life and a more aggressive energy than in the age in which those heroic spirits lived. The leaders in that day also, such men as Henderson, Gillespie, Rutherford and Baillie, understood the spirit of Presbyterianism and the need of the Church quite as fully as did any leaders of either an earlier or a later day. It is not to be forgotten that, in an age that produced men whose names must never be omitted when the roll of Scotland's greatest sons is called, the Presbyterian Church stood firmly for absolute liberty in wors.h.i.+p from prescribed forms.
It should, therefore, be considered by those who would have the Church return to the bondage of forms or even to their optional use, that they are advocating not a return to the practice of any former period in which the Church was free to exercise its own desire in this matter, but rather that they are urging her to a course that will be wholly antagonistic to the spirit of Presbyterianism as indicated by the trend of its practice during a stirring and eventful history of three hundred years. The spirit of Presbyterian wors.h.i.+p has been consistently and persistently non-liturgical and anti-ritualistic, and to advocate the adoption of liturgy and ritual to-day is to depart completely from that historic att.i.tude.
A few words on the subject of liturgies in general may not inappropriately close this sketch of the history of Presbyterian wors.h.i.+p since the Reformation.
It is now generally acknowledged that the introduction of liturgies into the wors.h.i.+p of the Christian Church was not earlier than the latter part of the fourth century. Not until the presbyter had become a priest, and wors.h.i.+p had degenerated into a function, did liturgies find a place in Christian service. Even the earliest Oriental liturgies were sacramentaries, the Christian sacrifice being the central object around which the entire service gathered. So long as the life of the Church was strong, and in its strength found delight in a freedom of approach to G.o.d, so long the Apostolic practice was followed and wors.h.i.+p was unrestricted and simple.
During the middle ages, as religion became ever more formal and less spiritual, as the priesthood deteriorated intellectually and spiritually, liturgies flourished; and it is not too much to a.s.sert that just in proportion to the growth of the liturgical service in any Church, in that proportion the power of its ministry has declined.
Indeed the whole history of liturgies in their origin, development, and effects, should make the Church that rejoices in freedom from their binding forms most careful ere submitting in any degree to their paralyzing influence.
It is argued in favor of the introduction of forms of prayer that their use would tend to the more orderly and dignified conducting of public wors.h.i.+p by the minister. It is not a difficult matter to take exception to methods to which we have long been accustomed, and to compare these, sometimes to their disadvantage, with ideal conditions.
As a matter of fact, however, it may in all fairness be asked, does disorder or irreverence characterize Presbyterian wors.h.i.+p in general, or indeed to any noticeable extent? Whatever lovers of another system, within our own Church, may say, it cannot be denied that the impression in the minds of men of all denominations (an impression that has not gained strength without cause) is that, compared with the wors.h.i.+p of any other denomination, that of the Presbyterian Church is characterized by reverence, dignity and order. The conduct of any average congregation in the Presbyterian Church, and the heartiness with which its members join in every part of public wors.h.i.+p will appear at no disadvantage when compared with that of a congregation wors.h.i.+pping with a ritual. Whatever other blessings a liturgy may secure for those devoted to its use, it has never been able to develop in the Churches where it is employed a spirit and conduct in public wors.h.i.+p as reverent and devotional, and at the same time so marked by understanding, as that which has uniformly characterized the Presbyterian Church, and that Church would have to gain very much in other directions to compensate for the opening of the door to the formal and careless repet.i.tion of holy words so often a.s.sociated with the use of a liturgy.
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