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 worship in our public services. It is probable that there will be found few to deny this, or to confess absolute satisfaction with the worship 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 worship; 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 worship, unrestricted even by suggested forms.
Conclusion.
"A constant form is a certain way to bring the soul to a cold, insensible, formal worship."—BAXTER.
Chapter X.
Conclusion.
The foregoing brief review of public worship within those influential sections of the Presbyterian Church whose attitude on this question has been examined, affords a sufficient ground for the assertion 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 Assembly of the Church of Scotland for the regulation of its worship, 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 worship, 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 worship and less reliance upon forms either suggested or imposed.
In the period of struggle through which the Church of Scotland passed 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 worship, to strengthen the already strong opposition to prescribed forms of prayer and to ritualistic observances. Accordingly, when it was proposed to substitute for the Book of Common Order a Directory, in which there should appear no prescribed forms for any part of public worship, the Scotch Assembly gave a ready assent 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 Assembly 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 worship, 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.