With God in the World: A Series of Papers

by Charles Henry Brent

Nor is public worship a device for rousing in people a devotional frame of mind, which will enable them to pray better by themselves. Doubtless one indirect effect of the great dignity and beauty of liturgical worship, is to stimulate those who participate in it to a deeper devotion at home. But public worship is a climax, not a mere means to an end; it is the culmination of private devotion, not its starting point. Without hidden spiritual effort, it is a phantom of the real thing; with it, it is the matchless consummation of adoration, prayer and sympathy. Under the least satisfactory conditions the congregation gathered in God's house has marvellous dignity; the unity of movement, the rich variety and the rhythm of liturgical expression characterize it as the most august of human assemblies.

But the possibilities of the Church in prayer rise to their supremest height, when the congregation is rich with the fruits of personal religion. So closely woven are the public and the private phases of devotion that they are of a piece. The power of the former is due to the hours of secret prayer, the struggles with self, the nerving of the will—in short, all that hidden discipline and training that lie behind the veil of private life. Out of this, corporate worship emerges as effect rises out of cause. However great, then, the private life of devotion is in which men pray to God in the guarded secrecy of their homes, it is only preparatory, leading up to the service of the sanctuary.[19] Private prayer is the lesser, public the greater; the former is the exercise of the individual members with special regard to their own development, the latter is the stately movement of the whole body in beautiful unison. Each member contributes to the whole what has been gained in private efforts; each comes to give rather than to receive, or, if it may be so put, to receive through giving; and of course a man can give only what he has gathered.

The glimpses we have of heavenly worship[20] reveal nothing but common worship. We see no individuals standing apart from the throng, absorbed in their own little expression of praise. The ranks are unbroken, and one united and uniting impulse thrills the whole. The visions recorded by S. John are visions not merely of ideal worship in its restricted sense of spoken prayer and praise, but of the ideal life. The fundamental idea of common worship consists in dependence upon God and fellowship with man, and when all life is filled to the full with this twofold spirit, all life will be worship, and let it be said here with firm emphasis, that if we do not lift up our life to the level of our prayers, eventually our prayers will be dragged down to the level of our life. Life in heaven is something more than one long Sunday service; it is the use of all powers and faculties in the spirit of worship, worship representing the highest and finest temper of mind of which we have experience. So when we read the figurative language of S. John, we must remember that he is declaring under the symbolism of worship what the features of heavenly life are—the conscious service of God in a harmonious human society.

Similarly here on earth common worship is a symbol of true life as well as a means of sustaining it. The attention of the congregation gathered before the altar is fixed upon God, and no stronger indication of the reality of brotherhood could be conceived than the visible assembly occupied in a common exercise. When all our activities become saturated with the consciousness of God in His perfection, and with the fact of the oneness of Christ's mystical Body, formal worship will be no more a necessity. But that will be when heaven is reached, for which day there must be some little waiting yet. In the meantime it is vital that worship, as we know it, should not be an excrescence on life but a real part of it, part of it as truly as the deep, silent tide flowing between narrow banks is part of the same river which above and below is worried by rocks or widened into a lake. Public worship should represent perhaps the most concentrated part of life, but nothing unnatural, nothing out of gear with work-a-day moments. Work should flow into worship as easily as the stream into the ocean. There should be, in all the business of life, the steady application of God's laws, and that underlying consciousness of His Person and Presence which, so far from detracting from the efficiency of our work or preventing full devotion to it, will intensify every energy. The melody of the song is emphasized and supported by the accompaniment, not lost in its multitude of sounds. Given this attitude of mind, and what a simple, natural thing praise with the lips becomes! And how sublime the uprushing flood of hymnody from an assembly of men of like mind!

Again, public worship ought to be the highest and not the only expression of parochial family life. The assembled congregation is the symbol of an enduring Christian brotherhood, where mutual consideration, love and service form the unalterable watchwords. To-day this thought is much obscured by the parochial family having so little reality outside the church walls. This is especially applicable to city churches, where congregations gather from the remotest localities. The parish seems to be fast dying out and the congregation is taking its place. The people who worship in the same building neither know one another nor, in many instances, desire to. This is simply fatal to ideal public worship, one purpose of which at any rate is to quicken and seal the sympathy that already exists as the result of intercourse in the outside world. It is a grave responsibility for any one, for the sake of what he may deem to be larger spiritual privileges, to leave the church of the locality in which he lives and where his natural duties and friendships lie, to go to some distant place of worship where fellowship is impossible. Ideally the worshippers belonging to the parochial family are all known to one another and in frequent personal contact; they do not look to their clergy alone for spiritual help, but also to their fellow laymen. All too often the clergy are supposed to have the sole responsibility of spiritually aiding the members of a parish, whereas, the laity, whether they recognize it or not, have almost an equal responsibility. The clergyman does spiritual work, not because he is a clergyman, but because he is a Christian; though his special vocation determines the exact form his work should take. If there were more intelligent sympathy among the members of the congregation one with another, what strength would come to the penitent struggling to his feet, what added power to the faithful! Many fail, not because the clergy have been negligent, but because those who are termed the brethren have never extended a helping hand to support, to comfort, to cheer. If a congregation were alive to these responsibilities outside of the church, what a glorious time would be the gathering within its walls—inspiring, thrilling! Indeed, any one who tries to be unselfish and to act in the common concerns of life with reference to his neighbour's interests, any one who has elsewhere learned ever so little about intercession, cannot be unmindful when he comes to church of those who worship by his side, strangers though they be. By the exercise of sympathy, sympathy which he has learned to kindle with less at hand to quicken it to life than that given by the living, breathing forms near by, he can bring close to him his fellow-worshippers, moving into the shadow of their intercessions as well as calling them in to share his own. It will be noticed that the usual order has been reversed in the foregoing. Usually men are urged to worship well that they may live well;[21] the proposition that has been made here is that men must live well if they would worship well. It makes little difference which way the thought is expressed, the mode of expression depending on the part of the circle at which we begin our course. Life runs up into worship and worship runs out into life. Each leads into the other.

The use of a liturgy is an added power to public worship. It is only by liturgical aids that public worship can become common worship. A liturgy delivers a congregation from the spiritual idiosyncrasies of a minister as well as disciplining those of the worshippers themselves. The comprehensiveness and symmetry, the saneness and dignity of the Book of Common Prayer are educative forces of enormous value. Left to themselves men lose the true perspective of things; they dwell too much on matters of secondary importance, and become insular in their outlook. A liturgy comes in as a corrective of these constitutional failings; it confronts us with all that is vast in the realm of truth; it calls us away from the consideration of those things over which we have pondered until morbidness has seized upon us; it ministers that grateful rest which comes from the mind being freed from the contemplation of one set of interests, by being caught away by and absorbed in new and wider interests; it rounds out the devotional life; it invites us to lean upon the prayers of others as we desire them to lean on ours.

All who aspire to worship well in the congregation must note that the liturgy sets the tone for all devotions. Those who in private affect spiritual exercises foreign to the character of the Prayer Book of the Church, may get a certain emotional satisfaction for the moment, but they purchase the luxury at the cost of weakening their power for common worship. Their private prayers form no preparation for their public prayers. The clergy have it as a grave responsibility to see that the books of private devotion which they put into the hands of their people are such as fit into the Church's system.

Demeanour in the congregation is a small thing to think of after the great central theme that has been holding our attention. But nothing is unworthy of consideration which bears on the perfecting of common worship; and with two simple observations on demeanour this chapter will be closed. First, regarding the self-consciousness that both distresses the soul and weakens its devotional power. The sense, while in the act of prayer, of being observed by others, is distracting. But is it not a piece of conceit to imagine that we are being observed, widely at any rate, as well as something akin to an insult to those about us? Are we not implicitly charging them with neglect of duty and with irreverence? After all they are probably occupied with their devotions as we ourselves should be. The simplest way of conquering the distraction when it arises is to take the person or persons concerned into our prayers by a conscious act. Then in the second place, as to our own behaviour, it is only common charity to avoid singularity of conduct. Most of the ordinary acts of reverence which the individual may practise, can be so unobtrusively performed as not to attract notice. But when there is a danger of causing distraction to others, as in a strange parish for instance, it is more conducive to real reverence to omit than to observe them. Sometimes the best way to be loyal to a principle is deliberately to break a rule, and if this suggestion be reasonable then why should not a person, unaccustomed to ornate ritual, fall in with any legitimate customs observed, if he finds himself at any time in a church where such customs obtain?

FOOTNOTES:

[19] The writer does not hesitate to advise persons who are temporarily residing, as is often the case during the summer, where there is no Episcopal Church, to attend public worship, once a Sunday at least, at the representative Evangelical place of worship of the community. Reading the Church service at home by one's self is no substitute for public worship.