Meantime, beloved, remember that we are all brethren, saved from the same destruction, redeemed with the same precious blood, sanctified by the same spirit, called with the same calling, and to the same service, inheritors of the same heaven, worshippers of the same God. Strive not, then, with one another. Judge not, that ye be not judged. Do not exaggerate differences; try rather to lay aside differences. Seek each one what may edify others, and all what may honour God. Endeavour to take, each and all of you, your due part in common worship. Ask God’s Spirit to show you out of His own Word, illustrated by the testimony of His Church, what is common worship; and soon, if you do so, you will come to agree with and to join fervently and profitably in all that is really essential to the right adoration of our ever and all-glorious God.
“When to Thy beloved on Patmos. [13]
Through the open door in heaven,
Visions of the perfect worship,
Saviour! by Thy love were given,
Surely there was truth and spirit,
Surely there a pattern shown,
How Thy Church should do her service
When she came before the Throne.O the censer-bearing Elders,
Crowned with gold and robed in white!
O the living creatures’ anthem,
Never resting day or night!
And the thousand choirs of Angels,
With their voices like the sea,
Singing praise to God the Father
And, O victim Lamb, to Thee!Lord, bring home the glorious lesson
To their hearts, who strangely deem
That an unmajestic worship
Doth Thy Majesty beseem;
Show them more of Thy dear Presence,
Let them, let them come to know,
That our King is throned among us,
And His Church is Heaven below.Then shall faith read off the meaning
Of each stately ordered rite,
Dull surprise and hard resistance
Turn to awe and full delight;
Men shall learn how sacred splendour
Shadows forth the pomps above
How the glory of our altars
Is the homage of our love.’Tis for Thee we bid the frontal
Its embroidered wealth unfold,
’Tis for Thee we deck the reredos
With the colours and the gold;
Thine the floral glow and fragrance,
Thine the vestures’ fair array,
Thine the starry lights that glitter
Where Thou dost Thy light display.’Tis to Thee the chant is lifted,
’Tis to Thee the heads are bowed;
Far less deep was Israel’s rapture
When the glory filled the cloud.
O our own true God incarnate,
What should Christians’ Ritual be
But a voice to utter somewhat
Of their pride and joy in Thee.What but this? yet since corruption
Mars too oft our holiest things,
In the form preserve the spirit;
Give the worship angel’s wings,
Till we gain Thine own high temple,
Where no tainting breath may come,
And whate’er is good and beauteous
Finds with Thee a perfect home.”
SERMON II.
I Corinthians xiv. 40.
“Let all things be done decently and in order.”
I endeavoured last Sunday to exhibit the principle and rationale of Christian ritualistic service. I reminded you that God had Himself prescribed for Israel an elaborate and splendid ritual, and that, moreover, He had shown in vision to the eagle-eyed Apostle, either what should actually be His worship in heaven, or what would, in figure, most fitly represent it to us, and stimulate us to an interest in it, and a desire and aim to prepare ourselves for a share in it. I further urged, that man’s natural feeling, rightly enlightened as to its relationship with God, would spontaneously have prompted him—has, in fact, prompted him—to make such a manifestation of inward devotion, such an external homage and worship, such an use in God’s honour of the things which the senses approve as costly, excellent, beautiful, edifying, joy-inspiring, joy-proclaiming, glorifying. Hence I deduced the rule, that—God being always quite the same, and man being always much the same—in the absence of any Divine reversal or modification; or, on man’s part, of any realised unsuitableness to altered times and circumstances; the same kind of ritual and service of body and offering of substance, must, to speak generally, be upheld and used by us as was actually imposed upon the Jews by God or by themselves, and has been foreshadowed, whether in figure or letter, of the Church triumphant in heaven. It had to be conceded that God has made a charge in the details by the absolute repeal of some service, and by modifications and substitutions affecting Christians generally; and, moreover, that the service of different nations by reason of their various temperaments, and their peculiar ways of estimating and using some of the things of which sense takes cognizance, must, to be natural, differ in particulars from somewhat of that which Eastern people actually did and offered. Making these concessions, I endeavoured to maintain that such ritual as is prescribed in the Jewish law and pictured in the Apocalypse is to be regarded as appointed or approved by God for Christians; that its observance is necessary to the due expression and offering of intelligent hearty and acceptable common worship, and that it is very serviceable to the worshippers in kindling, guiding and sustaining the spirit of true devotion.
Christendom at large has so judged, and has acted upon the judgment from the very first Whit-Sunday; using these things with the Jews as long as it was allowed to do so, and providing them for itself as soon as it had liberty and means of providing them. I need not occupy your time in proving this statement. All of you probably are aware that at least as soon as the Roman Emperors gave their protection and encouragement to the Christian Church, and ever since then, in east or west, in north or south (till some 300 years ago, when the rule began to be departed from in practice by the Anglican branch), the Scriptural rule and pattern have been followed. Everywhere, when possible, men have erected stately and costly Houses of Prayer; they have adorned them with all the skill which art could exercise; they have furnished them with all the magnificence that the worshippers could afford; they have observed in them a grand and elaborate ritual, whose outline, whose main features are to be found in the Pentateuch and the Apocalypse. They have employed the same symbols and furniture; the lamps or lights representing the Divine presence; the altar of memorial sacrifice; the holy incense, originally compounded after God’s own proscription and significant of that meritorious intercession of our Great High Priest which alone makes acceptable and carries up into heaven our poor and unworthy service on earth; the white albs or surplices of the officiating ministers—the outward sign of the purity and righteousness which the worshippers, whose leaders these ministers are, should possess; the splendid robe of the Celebrant, who is the representative, in all his acts of intercession, absolution, consecration, oblation, benediction, of our great and glorified High Priest. Read Church history from the beginning, and where do you find (save among insignificant sects) anything different from this? Go into any place of worship (out of England) belonging to the body Catholic, whether of the east or west, and though it will possibly be among many additions, many perversions from their original purpose, many corruptions, and, alas! that it must be owned, often among many abominations, you will still be able to discern all the leading features of the same one rule and pattern of Divine worship.
I have said “out of England.” You know that this would not be the case in England or in English dependencies. Many of you rejoice in the difference; you think you can give a good account of it; you are able to justify its origin; you are disposed to maintain, if you can, its continuance. “The Reformation did away with all that.”
The Reformation did away with all that! Is it possible that worshippers of Jehovah, men who owe all their peace, their privileges and blessings to their membership of Christ’s Church, can for a moment allow and do not rather with horror shout down the fearful assertion, that their community has abolished for itself the ritual of Scripture, and has cut itself off from all the Church that went before it, and all that lies around it? That is what the statement “The Reformation has changed all this,” implies! Which of you my brethren would not repudiate and thrust it away thus nakedly exhibited? Which of you would not feel that if it were true the Reformation was a curse, and not a blessing, and that no effort must be spared to undo it? Which of you would not sink to the earth beneath what would then be the righteous taunt of the Romanist:—that we have no covenanted part or lot with Christ’s Church?
Do not start away from such a statement of the case. I am not misrepresenting the argument. I am not exaggerating minor matters. I am not denying, I freely own and stoutly maintain, that each branch of the Church has authority and power to change and change again and again many of her rites and ceremonies—the details, perhaps, of every one of them—so long as all be done in accordance with God’s word: above all I am not foolishly alleging that altar lights, or incense, or chasuble, or any such thing is of such importance as to make or unmake a Church, or is really necessary in the Christian Church at all. I have mentioned these things only as particular illustrations of a system of Ritualistic Service, much of which was taught us by God, and which has been adopted by the universal Church and used everywhere and in all ages. And I say that if the Reformers had deliberately rejected all God’s pattern and all Christendom’s use, and had prescribed for themselves and for us things altogether not only different but opposite, then they would have inflicted a curse upon us, and it would be our bounden duty to repudiate them and to undo their work.
I have spoken thus plainly and openly in the earnest desire to awaken, to a sense of what they are countenancing, those who carelessly, or it may be deliberately, out of honest and zealous prejudice, represent the Reformation as having made all things new. If once men can be brought to feel that it would have been wrong to make all things new, they will be at pains to inquire with all anxiety whether they have not misconceived the Reformation, and so inquiring, they will come to see what it really did or aimed at, and hence to believe that the Ritual movement of the present day—I am not, of course, speaking of the extravagancies and eccentricities of individuals—so far from ignoring, contravening, and overturning the principles of the Reformation, is the very carrying of them out.