When we seek to find how far this ideal is being carried out within the Christian Church, we may well be saddened by our own failure, and by the way in which organizations intended for the common service have come to be treated as an end in themselves. Yet we must remember that in the ancient liturgies, which seem sometimes hard for the democratic modern mind to under- stand, the priest does not speak or act for himself, but as a representative of the whole fellowship of the Church; the cries and prayers and strivings of long generations of human lives are joined in the words of the prayers that he uses, and the beautiful ritual of the altar is intended to be a living picture of spiritual symbols, full of meaning not only for himself, but for all who worship with him.
This view of prayer finds fitting expression in a sonnet of Hartley Coleridge on The Liturgy, which deserves to be better known.
Oft as I hear the Apostolic voice
Speaking to God, I blame my heart so cold,
That with those words, so good, so pure and old,
Cannot repent, nor hope, far less rejoice. [p.110]
Yet am I glad, that not the vagrant choice,
Chance child of impulse, timid or too bold,
The volume of my heart may dare unfold
With figured rhetoric or unmeaning noise