The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments

by E. E. Holmes

Or, I hear two sermons on conversion. In one, conversion is almost sneered at, or, at least, apologized for; in another, it is taught with all the fervour of a personal experience. What am I to believe? What does the Church of England teach about it? What does the Prayer Book say? Open it at the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, or at the third Collect for Good Friday, and you will hear a trumpet which gives no uncertain sound.

Or, I am wondering and worried about Confession and Absolution. What does the Church of England teach about them? One preacher says one thing, one another. But what is the Church of England's authoritative utterance on the subject? Open your Prayer Book, and you will see: you will find that, with the rest of the Christian Church, she provides for both, in public and in private, for the strong, and for the sick.

This, at least, is the view an honest onlooker will take of our position. A common-sense Nonconformist minister, wishing to teach his people and to get at facts, studies the English Prayer Book. This is his conclusion: "Free Churchmen," he writes, "dissent from much of the teaching of the Book of Common Prayer. In the service of Baptism, expressions are used which naturally lead persons to regard it as a means of salvation. God is asked to 'sanctify this water to the mystical washing away of sin'. After Baptism, God is thanked for having 'regenerated the child with His Holy Spirit'. It is called the 'laver of regeneration,' by which the child, being born in sin, is received into the number of God's children. In the Catechism, the child is taught to say of Baptism, 'wherein I was made the child of God'. It is said to be 'generally necessary to salvation,' and the rubric declares that children who are baptized, and die before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved'."[[9]] What could be a fairer statement of the Prayer-Book teaching? And he goes on: "In the visitation of the sick, if the sick person makes a confession of his sins, and 'if he heartily and humbly desire it,' the Priest is bidden to absolve him. The form of Absolution is '... I absolve thee from all thy sins in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost'. In the Ordination Service, the Bishop confers the power of Absolution upon the Priest." Nothing could be fairer. It is precisely what the Church of England does teach in her authorized formularies which Archbishop Cranmer gathered together from the old Service-books of the ancient Church of England.

The pulpit passes: the Prayer Book remains.

Discipline.

The Prayer Book deals with principles, rather than with details—though details have their place. It is a book of discipline, "as well for the body as the soul". It disciplines the body for the sake of the soul; it disciplines the soul for the sake of the body. Now it tightens, now it relaxes, the human bow. For example, in the Table of Feasts and Fasts, it lays down one principle which underlies all bodily and spiritual discipline—the need of training to obtain self-control. The principle laid down is that I am to discipline myself at stated times and seasons, in order that I may not be undisciplined at any times or seasons. I am to rejoice as a duty on certain days, that I may live in the joy of the Redeemed on other days. Feasts and Fasts have a meaning, and I cannot deliberately ignore the Prayer-Book Table without suffering loss.

It is the same with the rubrical directions as to ritual. I am ordered to stand when praising, to kneel when praying. The underlying principle is that I am not to do things in my own way, without regard to others, but to do them in an orderly way, and as one of many. I am learning to sink the individual in the society. So with the directions as to vestments—whether they are the Eucharistic vestments, ordered by the "Ornaments Rubric," or the preacher's Geneva gown not ordered anywhere. The principle laid down is, special things for special occasions; all else is a matter of degree. One form of Ceremonial will appeal to one temperament, a different form to another. "I like a grand Ceremonial," writes Dr. Bright, "and I own that Lights and Vestments give me real pleasure. But then I should be absurd if I expected that everybody else, who had the same faith as myself, should necessarily have the same feeling as to the form of its expression."[[10]] From the subjective and disciplinary point of view, the mark of the Cross must be stamped on many of our own likes and dislikes, both in going without, and in bearing with, ceremonial, especially in small towns and villages where there is only one church. The principle which says, "You shan't have it because I don't like it," or, "You shall have it because I do like it," leads to all sorts of confusion. As Dr. Liddon says: "When men know what the revelation of God in His Blessed Son really is, all else follows in due time—reverence on one side and charity on the other".[[11]]

Devotion.

Reading the Prayer Book as it stands, from Matins to the Consecration of an Archbishop, no reviewer could miss its devotional beauty. It is, perhaps, a misfortune that the most beautiful Office of the Christian Church, the Eucharistic Office, should come in the middle, instead of at the beginning, of our Prayer Book, first in order as first in importance. Its character, though capable of much enrichment, reminds us of how much devotional beauty the Prayer Book has from ancient sources. In our jealous zeal for more beauty we are, perhaps, apt to underrate much that we already possess. God won't give us more than we have until we have learnt to value that which we possess.

It is impossible, in the time that remains, to do more than emphasize one special form of beauty in "The Book of Common Prayer"—The Collects. The Prayer-Book Collects are pictures of beauty. Only compare a modern collect with the Prayer-Book Collects, and you will see the difference without much looking.