THE MADISON AVENUE LECTURES
XIII.
CHURCH WORSHIP
by
SAMUEL L. CALDWELL, D.D.,
Pastor of First Baptist Church, Providence, R. I.

For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh—Philippians 3:3.

Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ—1 Peter 2:5.

Worship is the natural offspring of religion, of all religions. Gross or spiritual, they take form and body, they find instruments and expression, a ministry and a ritual, each after its kind. It is a necessity of the religious and of the social nature alike. Religion takes hold of society, and brings men together in the fellowship of worship of a common place, time and service of devotion. There has been no living, perpetuated religion in the world without an outward cultus; without some altar, or sacrament, or pulpit—a visible ministry and service. Worship has been a universal custom, as common as government, as natural as dress. Whatever has ceased among men, this never has. The dead races, the distant times, have left little beside the relics of their worship. Into its structures, the wealth and the genius, as well as the reverence and the faith of mankind have gone. The wondrous stones of Philæ and Pæstum, the spires of Strasburg and Salisbury, no less than Jacob’s rude pillar in Bethel, or Moses’ tent of skins in the desert, the transient or the enduring houses, where men bow to one God or many gods, tell that worship is in man, a necessary part of his nature and his life; that wherever there is a religion there will be a worship corresponding.

And so Christianity being a religion for society no less than for the private soul, falls into the same line, and organizes worship after a law of its own. Having first organized a church, it makes this its primary and proper office. In its spirituality it does not disallow, it has not superseded this constant fact of human nature, but takes it up, spiritualizes it, and converts it to its own spirit and use. Sabbath and temple and priesthood it accepts, to renew them to itself and its service. It does not consist in worship, but it depends upon it, puts itself into it, does not live without it. It is a doctrine and a spiritual life, it is a faith of the soul; but so also, it is a church and a worship; and these all go together and affect each other. Especially does worship grow out of the church, and become its natural function. They are indispensable and ancillary to each other. One of them never goes alone. They are both organic growths of the same spirit of life, simple or artificial, spiritual or formal, scriptural or traditional together. The church exists for many purposes, but for none before this. It is a depository of truth; it is a home and school for religious nurture and education; a society and fellowship of the faithful; a light to lighten the gentiles; a corporate agency, a missionary institute, to preach the gospel and turn men to God; but so, also, is this its calling and function, to perform, to keep and maintain the worship of God. It exists for this end, that there may be a body charged with this obligation, fulfilling this sacred office for society. If worship is not left to chance, and the spontaneous offering of individual souls; if, instead of being the fleeting breath of the hour, it is to be an institution and social custom; if it is to have order and permanence, it must have an organized body, a church, something to sustain, to offer it. And if there is a church, a Divine institution, a spiritual society, a body of Christ, it has little use or power, or even reason to exist, without a worship. Seeing they are so inseparable, seeing, too, I follow in a course of sermons which have been developing the true idea of the church, it is most natural to take up my assigned topic of worship in this relation, and look at it first as a function of the church, as one of the great ends and uses of its organization, as the duty and office with which it is specially charged.

Worship belongs to the church as a part of its priestly character and work: “Ye also, as lively stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable unto God by Jesus Christ.” In Judaism an hereditary priesthood performed all religious offices for the people. When Christ came, the Mediator and High Priest of a better covenant, the priesthood ceased, or rather passed over in spirit to the whole body of Christians, and became the function of all the church of God. Through and under him, as their Chief Priest, passed into the heavens, they here on earth come into a character, place, relation in things pertaining to God, not merely individual, but representative; ordained and anointed of the Spirit to draw nigh to God, and for others as well as for themselves to make their requests known unto him.

They are qualified and separated to this very thing by their personal religious experience. They have found, they know, the way to God. He is in the dark, remote, uncertain, hidden, till he is found in Christ. He does not come near into the field of human knowledge and trust, till he reveals himself in Christ Jesus. But he whose faith is there has open communication, and access by one Spirit unto the Father. He no longer gropes in the dark, feeling after God, if haply he may find him. God is no longer cold, distant, dead under the laws, impersonal beyond the stars. The vail falls; doubt and distrust disappear with all our sin, at the vision of Jesus’ face, at the touch of his blood, and we can speak to God, asking what we will, and know that he heareth us always.

In virtue of their regeneration, also, they have an anointing to this very office. They are made priests unto God, because they have passed from death unto life. Their own personal experiences of want and sin and grace, the prayers, confessions, praises they bring for themselves, prepare them also to stand for others; even as it is the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews for Christ’s priesthood, that he had passed through all human experiences, and knew how to pity the tempted, and plead for the suffering and the guilty. All experience acquired, all the light and power of religion in them, all God’s discipline upon them, all Christ’s tuition in them, that they have been taught by conscious need, by Divine grace to pray, makes them an instructed and qualified priesthood, is a power in them to this very thing. Even as Christ has ascended into the heavenly places, worshiping in the presence of the Father, a Priest forever, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life, so they in their place and under him, stand for others before God; every Christian parent a priest for his household, offering their daily praise, and speaking for little children, who, perhaps, not yet have words to tell their thanks or wants; every Christian citizen a priest for his country—her blessings, her troubles, her evils, all her great hopes and burdens, are on his heart, and he must go into the secret place of the Eternal to plead her case, to hold up to merciful Heaven the tremendous issues of her struggling hour; every Christian church a holy priesthood, keeping its Sabbaths, lifting its hands to heaven in behalf of multitudes who feel or acknowledge no such obligation; the Church of Christ, anointed priest of this sinning, suffering world, appointed to speak in its behalf to God, to give the thanks which it withholds, to implore for it a mercy it never asks, to utter the inarticulate cry of all the wretched nations for light, to keep alive in it God’s constant praise. For all things dear and true; for all men; for the church; for your children; for the poor; for tears wanting a heavenly comfort to dry them; for souls fighting a hard battle anywhere; for the shoulders which hold up the State; for the tongues which teach in church and school; for those who have lost their faith; for the prodigals who are burning up their hearts; for purer manners, nobler thoughts, equal laws; for the Spirit out of heaven, which brings life and bloom and harvest to Christ’s vineyard; for all blessings which the world will not pray for, and yet which must come in answer to prayer, are Christians ordained to make supplication.

And so for praise, even more than for prayer, that God’s mercies may not, unacknowledged, fall upon a world which makes no return. The receivers are often silent. They forget God their Maker. They bend no knee. They sit at a thankless table. They keep no holy days, and from them comes no worship. But shall there be none for them? Shall God have no honor except for such blessings as fall upon the grateful, and not also find those who are ready to remember and praise in behalf of the unthankful and the forgetful?

The generous heart of Paul found inspiration to worship in what God had done for his brethren. “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making request with joy, for your fellowship in the Gospel, from the first day until now.” It is the spirit of Christian love to feel gratitude for all God lets fall into the world, however remote from ourselves. All we see of God’s goodness falling anywhere, in day or night, in the beautiful fields, in happy life, in all that makes men better, in every quiet example of goodness, of meekness under trials, of faithfulness under great responsibilities, in every triumph of religion—all that any creature receives of blessing from God, is an occasion for somebody’s praise. And he has his priests, whose privilege it is and whose office, to take up the neglected duty, and thank him for what he has done even for the unthankful and the evil. Nicholas Ferrar, in the seventeenth century provided, in his house at Little Gidding, for a perpetual service through every hour of the day and night so that whatever might happen, at all hours, in the day and in the dark, the voice of praise might be always ascending; that though everywhere else in the broad earth, there might come times when no praise should be heard, there might be one spot, where it should never cease. And so has God provided that there shall be one place and one people from which amidst the silence of the thankless, his unforgetful praise shall always rise. To the Church he has delegated this duty, that, as his priests, they may gather up and carry to his altar the sacrifices which the world withholds. For prayer, for praise alike, for man, for God, for God’s honor, for man’s sin even, does the body of Christians stand between earth and heaven, does every church stand in a community, holding this priestly and vicarious office. Great and noble, and divine it is. The high priest went into the tabernacle in gorgeous robes. But we go into the holy place of God clothed upon with human wants, bearing in there for our garment the sins and sorrows and wants and blessings, the thanks and prayers of our humanity waiting at the door. We go in representative of the nations that perish, of a race waiting for Christ’s salvation, of children, and neighbors, and our brethren in the faith, and all the household of God. And so, in the very constitution of the Church, as a body of regenerate people, has God provided for his perpetual worship. All tongues may be silent, but they will show forth his praises. Whoever forgets God, here is a church organized and charged with this as its first function, a priesthood called, as was Aaron, to keep always burning the fire upon God’s altars.

Worship belongs to the Church as the bond of its fellowship and the organ of its spiritual development and increase. This is its fellowship—A FELLOWSHIP IN WORSHIP. When the Church comes together in one place it is for this. Nothing is so near a spiritual union, nothing is so productive of it, as that which unites men in the same prayers and praises. Nothing requires them to be of one mind, no creed or establishment can make them one, like coming before the same God, in one service of devotion. Nothing, more than this, promotes the sympathies as well as the religious experiences which are the common bond of unity in the Church. But it is not love only, and the sympathetic sentiments, but all religious life which is nourished by worship. It is the appointed minister to all spiritual edification. It is the grand public ordinance for instruction and for all religious culture and quickening. It touches the spiritual life of the Church on all sides, to purify and strengthen. It not only operates upon it in the way of impression, as external stimulus, but especially in social worship, in which many have part, all religious feeling and thought goes into active exercise.(1) There are more private methods of spiritual culture, and nothing goes before a personal and inward religion. Its secret life is nourished in the soul’s solitary and individual communion with God. But leave all piety to this separate, private, solitary growth, silence preaching, close the churches, let Christians forsake the assembling of themselves together, dry up the streams which take their rise under the altars of God, and where is the Church, or even religion itself? It would exist, it would live, it would make its own sabbath and sanctuaries. In some breasts, in some strong, self-sustaining souls, it might grow and make its power felt. God’s invisible grace would find many channels into the life of Christians. But it is through the “means of grace,” as by distinction we call all services of the Church; through prayers and hymns and sermons, through a day of rest, a house of God, the communion of saints, the influences, conscious and unconscious, of public worship, that this secret life of piety is fed. There much of it was born. There carelessness was touched and doubt convinced. There the world lost its hold for a day, and so by the grace of God forever. Thither, like a sparrow to its nest, the heart, weary and hungry, flies, and shut out from the courts of the Lord is in a desert land. Thither, as the soul to its closet, must the Church go to recruit her power, for comfort, for learning, for all spiritual benefit.

And the power it has within the Church is the power it has abroad. Worship is a part of that larger function to which Christ has ordained it, of evangelizing the world. Through such public service it comes in contact—brings Christianity into contact—with the souls and the life of men. There may be instruction by other methods, and without any worship of the Church. There is the great domestic ordinance of household teaching and religion, “the church that is in the house.” There is a great influence and power of religion, leavening human life, which comes not by observation and through outward ordinances. Christianity is a spiritual power, possessing and using many things, invisibly invading the heart of society through example, through books, through a thousand direct and indirect channels and by mysterious movements of the Spirit of God, which bloweth where it listeth. But it does not seem to be the Divine intention, it does not seem to be even common wisdom, to trust it to work its mighty spiritual results by itself, without some special and public instruments. Religion, in one sense, only wants a soul; it is faith, fear, love, and hope in that. It lives not in wood, though cedar be carved into a temple; nor in stone, though groined into the aisles of St. Peter’s; nor in a worship, though it be venerable with the hoar of centuries; but in the affections of a human soul—and there alone. But how does it get into men’s souls, and keep there? Knowledge is a thing of the mind. But society does not trust to its going in there by itself, through some mysterious contagion in the air. There is the school, and the university, the press, the library, the lecture. These are not knowledge, but the means and creators of it, without which ignorance would be the eternal doom of society. So the house of God, with Sundays, and prayers, and sermons, and hymns, is needful for religion—not for instruction only, but to awaken man, naturally so asleep to spiritual ideas and relations, to beget in his preoccupied heart the consciousness of divine obligation, of guilt, of an immortal existence, to touch it to a penitent and nobler life. Without it, religion might live in scattered bosoms, a sporadic, and, at best, languid existence, but not at all as a social power, impressing itself upon numbers and masses of men, extensive, pervading, abiding in social life. Where there is no house of God, there is no God; none acknowledged, regarded, obeyed; as little of God’s fear as of his worship; and therefore, as much of human selfishness and passion, ignorance, and superstition, and violence, as there is little of God’s praise and God’s truth. The house of God, with its worship, is necessary to religion, therefore, in both ways, and in all ways, to its social existence and power, as it is to its more secret and spiritual life. The Church of God holds this as a great trust for society, as it does for Christ himself, and is ordained to the sublimest office known to human civilization—to order and maintain among men the worship of a living God. For the sake of Christianity, and of society, purified only by its sanative energies; for the sake of souls going all wrong and wretched till they come to God in Christ; for the sake of that kingdom of light and redemption which comes shining through the windows of churches, and heralded by the pulpits which publish salvation; for the sake of him whose blood sprinkles her altars, whose love inflames her praise, whose salvation is her message to all people—is the Church to stand in this great office of worship, the constituted priesthood, “to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God, by Jesus Christ.”

Having now this office laid upon the Church, how shall it be discharged? What is the nature and style of that worship which the Christian Church is to offer? What shape does Christianity give to this institution ancient, constant, universal, as man’s faith in a living God? I seem to open the question which divides Christendom which has been waiting and contending through all the generations for its answer. Whatever minor differences remain, in one point, and that primary and essential, the whole question is settled, and settled forever. It must be in the spirit. Worship, which is not spiritual, is void; which is not in the right spirit, is offensive. The spirit—not the form—the spirit, which builds itself into architecture, splendid or lowly; which goes into the service, simple or grand; which uses ancient words, or the fresh utterances of the hour; which worships in chapel, or cathedral, in a Baptist prayer-meeting, or a Roman ritual—it is the spirit alone which is accepted or rejected. That our Lord settled so summarily at Jacob’s well, that for Christians no question remains. In a breath, in one sublime sentence, he undermines the whole controversy, lifts our relation to God, all worship, up above Moriah and Gerizim, out of time and place, into the spiritual and everlasting. God is a spirit. That one idea, how it goes through the earth, discrowning hill-tops of their sanctity, sanctifying all places rather to him; unclothing religion of its thousand forms; transferring it from the golden altar of the temple to the bosom of a bowed publican; the Jew, the Samaritan, the high-priest in his shining cloth, the poor widow with her slender gift; the well, where a sinful woman smiles to a new vision of God, the mountain, which trembles before the unfolding law—all distinction abolished, all place, all time, all persons, one to him who is a Spirit. From the nature of God to the nature of worship, short, straight, inevitable, the inference goes. They must be alike. God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Standing fast, then, upon the spirituality of worship as its vital law, unless worship remains a wordless thought, an unuttered feeling, private, and only invisibly reaching after God—if it is to be public, associate, a custom—it must take form. Spirituality does not exclude form, and expression. If it does, there is nothing left but to relapse each soul into its own silent, private communion, and let no sign of outward worship be seen in all the world. But does the doctrine of Christ drive, of necessity, to any such ultra-spiritual conclusion—forbid all convocations of Christians, abolish the Lord’s Day, send each man home to the solitude of his own prayers? May not a time, a place, a manner, be subordinate, and yet be needful even, and required, and produced by the true spirit of devotion? May not the spiritual and the external go together, and the one into the other, as thought and language, as soul and body? Indeed, do they not interact; and may not the feeling be repressed or transmitted, choked or stimulated, encumbered or assisted, by the means employed? Worship may be in the spirit, and yet may build its house, and gather its congregation, and sing its hymns, and bow the knee, and so become outward and visible. This, indeed, it must do, that it may serve its purpose. It is to be not only expressive, but also impressive. It is first for God, the offering of the heart to him; but it is also his ordinance for us, and for a purer and higher life in us. It is for the individual, but not for him alone. It is not even for so many individuals. It is for a congregation. The church is not a private oratory. The individual cannot be a law to himself, as if he were the only one—standing when others sit; sitting when others stand; coming, going, singing, praying, after his own caprice, and not according to the order of a common, consenting service. Then worship is dissolved, and confusion comes. It is the Tower of Babel, not the House of God, and God is made the author of confusion, and not of peace, as in all churches of the saints. Worship must have an order, a manner, a time, a place, some form or other, in order that it may be social, and not private. But still, the place, the posture, the act, is not the worship. That must be spiritual, and of the soul.

And, therefore, that it may be spiritual, it must be simple. If spirituality does not exclude some form and outward observances, it puts discouragement, and practically prohibition upon all artificial, ceremonious, ritual worship. It disallows the very principle on which that has always been practiced, namely, that religion, religious feeling, is to be promoted by impressions made on the senses, the imagination by any thing but the action of truth upon the moral nature. It favors and requires simplicity in all rites of worship. It may be asked what is the criterion of simplicity? When do forms become excessive and hurtful? Where is the limit? Is there a line, beyond which spirituality is imperiled; within which it is preserved?

It is safe to say that they exceed, when they attract the mind to the form and divert it from the truth; when they are not natural and spontaneous suggestions and helps of feeling, but sought out and contrived for effect, elaborate, artificial, antiquated, remote from the real and present feeling of the worshipers; when they are fixed, traditional, inelastic; when millinery and gilding and show take the place of the Word which is a fire and a hammer; when they tempt the mind to stop, to rest in them, instead of taking it up to God. There is a line which practically divides ceremonious, ritual, liturgical, formal worship, from that which is free, spontaneous, simple, spiritual; broadly, the Catholic from the Protestant; more closely, the priestly from the congregational, the ceremonial from the puritan, the liturgical from the extemporaneous. And we set our faces against forms and toward freedom, simplicity, spirituality. “For we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.”

In the first place, the gospel prescribes no form. That everybody allows. There is no sign of any order, or ceremonial, or dress, or written and repeated prayer, of uniformity, or establishment of worship—nothing but freedom and simplicity. There are two simple sacraments. There are signs of a Lord’s Day of joyful praise. But no liturgy, no order. Indeed of the prayers of our Lord and of the apostles—none are repeated; but each one sprung out of the occasion. They were not repetitions of previous prayers, nor were they designed to be repeated. What is called the Lord’s Prayer is given in different forms of phraseology; the context indicates that it was a prayer to be offered in secret; it is expressly given as a specimen of that simple spirituality which is opposed to vain repetitions and heartless formalities; and there is no sign that it was in public use, in the age of the Apostles, or of their successors. And as Christ and his Apostles established no form, so the New Testament gives no right to anybody to do this, to fix worship and stereotype it, to prescribe prayers any more than sermons, to lay upon the people of God an unvarying, canonical order. Its whole spirit is against the assumption of a right to fasten upon the Church forms of dress, of action, of prayer, which, however antiquated or outgrown, or unsuitable to new times, and the variable conditions of men and of society, cannot be altered. Indeed, if any form could have been devised which would, on the whole, have been so perfectly adapted to human nature as universally and always to promote pure, spiritual worship, our Lord and his Apostles would not have been likely to leave it unwritten and unknown. The omission is clearly intentional, that the Church might be free.(2) Moreover, if the clergy are competent for any thing, for their office, to preach, why not to pray? If they can be left to teach the people of God, why not to lead their devotions, free to adapt sermon, and prayer, and reading of Scripture to the occasion?

The liturgies of the Church, the written prayers of her fathers and saints, are a rich and blessed legacy, a fund of spiritual impulse and instruction. They can be used freely, wisely, as all other productions of good men. The clergy need to draw from them. But when they are enforced upon the church, and men are obliged to pray after fixed forms, and by a rubric, then there is an assumption of power, an invasion of Christian liberty somewhere, which belongs to none under Christ himself. Neither are they all so scriptural, pure, and edifying. They come from darker ages, and are mixed with much which an enlightened spirit must discriminate or refuse. They were adopted because so many of the clergy were unfit to perform religious worship without a book. The English liturgy, which is one of the best, is an expurgated edition of the Romish missals and breviaries, accommodated to the controversies and half-reformed prejudices of the times of Henry VIII. To use it, to use all liturgies in a wise Christian liberty, is one thing; but to be obligated to use it, and every syllable of it with slavish repetition, is quite different and not reasonable at all.

The tendencies and dangers and effects of ritual worship are not to be disregarded. The tendency, under the simplest form, is to stop in it, and make that worship; to rest and be satisfied with the outward observance, with keeping a day sacred, and going to a place, and even saying words of worship, without gathering and girding up the mind to think, to embrace the truth, to wrestle with the Invisible and Eternal. And this tendency, so natural, so strong, the less spiritual, the more carnal the mind, is of course and inevitably aggravated as forms are multiplied, as they are more elaborate, attractive, impressive. It is a tendency not only to vitiate the purity and sincerity of worship, but to make the religious character of a people superficial and shallow. This is the tendency, not always the result. When religion is a matter of costume and etiquette and ceremonial, it loses dignity and manliness, as it will be likely to lose its nobler and holier qualities. This is history. The Roman Church has carried out to the last and worst results this tendency, and shown, for the warning of all who love the substance rather than the form, to whom religion is not a social appearance, but the life and power of God in the soul, that spirituality is kept only by simplicity, that when the mind of a people is tickled by parades and not fed with truth, and so much of its worship is trivial and gaudy, instead of being an exercise of thought, then it lacks vigor and manly tone, as well as the highest spiritual force. And all ritualism travels the same road, though it may not go so far, and is liable to corrupt simplicity, and enfeeble religious earnestness, and have the same effect that attention to surfaces and shows instead of realities has in every thing else.

Simple, unritual, spiritual worship belongs to an advanced stage of thought and character, to the intellectual and spiritual manhood of the race. Pictures and pageants are for children; men put away childish things. As general education prevails, society drops, in courts, in assemblies, in social life, the elaborate ceremonials, the stately etiquette, the outward and gaudy show of earlier and less intelligent times, when such things had their significance and use. The pageants of chivalry disappear with a more mature civilization. And why keep them in the Church after they are dropped elsewhere?

It is claimed, that taking men as they are, human nature as it is, a simple, naked, austere worship, will not affect them; that as it was with the Jews, so always on account of the hardness of men’s hearts, to accommodate the low, unspiritual nature, there must be a ritual of outward pomp, such as will captivate the senses and the imagination; that with the mass of men with their inert minds, art is necessary, something besides simple truth, prayers made for them, symbols to impress them, outward helps and incentives. But is the race to be kept in childish ways forever? To make the young bird fly, throw it into the air, let it use its wings and help itself. A religion of forms, invented to attract men by display, because simple truth has not enough power, will keep them in intellectual infancy, and suppress when it ought to stimulate. The form will hide the truth rather than reveal it. Like the pagan’s idol, it will take the place of God.

A simple, free, unritual worship belongs to American society, and is most congruous with our republican spirit, with the liberty which is the animating breath of our institutions, with the habits and life of a people brought up as we have been. We have cast away the old clothes of darker ages, and of the life of prescription across the sea. Society here takes a new form and a freer life.

“Here the free spirit of mankind at length casts its last fetters off.”

Why need it retain the rituals congruous to monarchical institutions, which were born of the union and subjection of the church and the state, and put religion into moulds cast for it in times less enlightened, and among people driven and led by rulers, by kings, and bishops, instead of allowing it the freedom and simplicity of our popular institutions, which is the spirit of the gospel itself? The people abroad grow weary of it, and groan being burdened. They sigh for this free air, where religion is not a prescription, but the belief of the voluntary and enfranchised soul. Shall we now turn back, and desire the yoke of bondage? Rather let our religion be like our government, our education, our popular life. Let it be free to cast itself into its own shapes; let its worship be simple, unpretending, fresh with the breath of the present hour, unhampered by tradition, unencumbered with formalities.

To the Church, then, is intrusted this sublime and holy function of worship; and to it also, is committed the unspeakable responsibility of making it worthy, consonant with the gospel, acceptable to God, effective for its divine ends, of keeping it uncorrupt, free, spiritual.

To us, my brethren, according to the light we have, it is given in our day to stand for its liberty, simplicity, and spirituality. Men will, as always, run after a gaudy and taking style of religious manifestation. Causes are at work in our society to draw certain classes of mind after a worship more imposing and ceremonious than that we have received of our fathers, and learned of Christ. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering. “We are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.”

Be not alarmed or discouraged at temporary recessions towards formalism; as if time were turned back towards its immature and childish beginnings; as if mankind were not prepared for higher spiritual attainments, and must be kept under a Judaic discipline. Be not ashamed of the simple, plain way in which we worship God, nor think it best to win men by even doubtful measures or a more dramatic and taking style of Sunday service. Better that men stay away than come to receive stones for bread, or fall under influences false and corrupting to their faith. Do not be afraid that the people will run away from you, and therefore try gilded baits to lure them. Truth has a long run and will win in the end, only hold it fast. It will work itself clear, and show at last that it needs no adventitious adorning, nothing purer, more beautiful, mightier than itself. It will justify itself and you, only be faithful and patient, and hold it in love. Having begun in the spirit, it is not for us to be made perfect by the flesh. After we have known God, or rather are known of God, why turn back to weak and beggarly elements whose use is gone, whose use is bondage?

The style of worship in all the unliturgical churches might be much improved. That is sure. The same thought is not given to the prayers as to the sermon, and therefore, the worship becomes secondary, an unwritten liturgy by repetition. The singing is apt to be too fine and artistic by contrast, while the rest of the service is careless, low, not tuned to the loftiest strain. The congregation is left passive, and the poor preacher has the hard task of playing upon them by his single hand to draw out their emotion, without the accessories of pictured walls, and dim religious lights, and the sensuous appliances of ritualism. It seems as if the Scriptures were more intelligibly read by one man to the congregation, than for the whole congregation to be repeating them together, some in whisper and mumble, some high, some low; now the minister, a verse which is heard, now the congregation, a verse which is not heard. But yet if the congregation could have some part more positive than hearing, it would seem to be of advantage. Giving the service of song to them is right in theory, and ought to be made impressive in practice. There is room for improvement in all the externals of our worship. But it is a purer, larger, warmer religious spirit and life which after all is the greatest improvement, making itself felt as a cleaner, brisker, milder atmosphere does, the nobler feeling making for itself a nobler form, rather illuminating, consecrating, vivifying any form. Without that, the simplest form, the holiest rite, is dead, being alone. It is the letter which killeth, the spirit giveth life. Whether is greater the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? the day, the house, the music, the posture, the congregation, or the reverence, the faith, the aspiration, the communion with God, which makes here or there, any place the house of God, the gate of heaven?

END NOTES

1 The relation of the Prayer-meeting to the life of the Church is close and vital. It supplements its more public service. It diversifies its ministries of edification. It opens a branch of the subject too large for present considerations, but of great practical importance.

2“These omission present a complete moral demonstration that the apostles and their followers must have been supernaturally withheld from recording a great part of the institutions and regulations which must, in point of fact, have proceeded from them—withheld on purpose that other churches, in other ages and regions, might not be led to consider themselves bound to adhere to certain formularies, customs, and rules, that were of local and temporary assignment; but might be left to their own discretion in matters in which it seemed best to Divine wisdom that they should be so left.”—Whately, Kingdom of Christ, d. 29. Am. Ed.

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