Dear pages of ancestral prayer,
Illumined all with Scripture
gold,
In you we seem the faith to share
Of saints and seers of old.
Whene’er in worship’s blissful
hour
The Pastor lends your heart
a voice,
Let his own spirit feel your power,
And answer, and rejoice._
In the present chapter I deal a little
with the spirit and work of the Clergyman in his ministration
of the ordered Services of the Church, reserving the
work of the Pulpit for later treatment.
THE PRAYER BOOK NOT PERFECT BUT INESTIMABLE.
Let me begin by a brief reminder of
the greatness of the spiritual treasure which we possess
in the Book by which we minister. How shall I
speak of it as I would? “The Prayer Book
isn’t inspired, I know,” said an old coast-guardsman
some years ago to a friend of mine, “but, sure
and certain, ’tis as bad as inspired!”
“I find the Liturgy,” said another veteran,
Charles Simeon, “as superior to all modern compositions
as the work of a philosopher on any deep subject is
to that of a schoolboy who understands scarcely anything
about it.” “All that the Church of
England needs to make her the glory of all Churches,”
said Simeon’s friend, the late Rev. William
Marsh, “is the spirit of her own services.”
I am not so blind as to maintain that
our Book is ideally perfect, and that its every sentence
is infallible. It is not quite literally “as
bad as inspired.” After using it in ministration
for nearly five-and-twenty years I own to the wish
that here and there the wording, or the arrangement,
or the rubrical direction, had been otherwise in some
detail, perhaps in some important detail. I do
certainly wish very earnestly indeed that the Revisers
of 1661-2 had expressed themselves more happily in
that Rubric about “Ornaments” which within
recent years has proved little as they
expected it, or intended it, to do so such
a fertile field of discord. But for all this,
my five-and-twenty years’ ministerial use of
the Prayer Book has only deepened my sense of its
inestimable general value and greatness.
If a temperate and equitable revision
were possible at the present time I should welcome
the prospect on most accounts. But it seems to
me plain that it is not at present possible.
And meanwhile I thank God from my inmost heart for
the actual Prayer Book as a whole.
Let me point out a very few of the
claims of the Book on our love and gratitude; and
now specially in view of what we may sometimes hear
said about it by Christians not of our own Church.
i. Observe its profound and searching
spirituality. It is quite true that in
a certain sense the Book takes all who use it for granted;
it assumes them to be worshippers in spirit and in
truth; it does not pray for them, or lead them in
public worship to pray for themselves, as for those
who do not know and love God, who have not come to
Christ. But then what form of public, common
prayer can well do this? And meantime the Book
does, especially in the service of the Communion, and
particularly in that too often omitted part of it,
the “longer Exhortation,” beginning Dearly
beloved in the Lord, throw the worshipper back
upon himself for self-examination. This is just
the method of St Paul in his addresses to the Christian
community. He writes to all as “saints,”
“faithful,” “elect,” “sanctified.”
What does he mean? Does he mean that those glorious
terms are satisfied by the fact that all have been
baptized, or even that all are communicants at the
sacred Table? Not at all. He takes all for
granted as being what they profess to be, when he
greets the community. [Rom. vii; 1 Cor. xv; 2 Cor. xii; Gal. .] But he says also,
“If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he
is none of His”; “If any man love not the
Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema”; “Examine
yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your
own selves. Know ye not that Jesus Christ is
in you except ye be [Greek: adokimoi],
counterfeits?” “In Jesus Christ neither
circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision,
but faith which worketh by love.” Such
sentences throw a flood of holy and searching light
on the sense in which St Paul “took them all
for granted.” And the Prayer Book is in
true harmony with both parts of the Apostle’s
method.
WHAT IT TAKES FOR GRANTED IN THE WORSHIPPER.
And then, think what the Book does
thus searchingly and helpfully “take for granted.”
It assumes a deep sense of sin, such a sense as is
indeed “grievous unto us.” It takes
for granted our deep desire both for pardon and for
spiritual victory. It assumes our desire to be
“kept this day without sin”; to “follow
the only God with pure hearts and minds”; to
“be continually given to all good works”;
to “be enabled by the Lord to live according
to His will”; to have “all our doings ordered
by His governance”; to have “such love
to Him poured into our hearts that we may love Him
above all things.” It assumes our desire
to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest all
the Holy Scriptures.” It assumes our readiness
to “suffer on earth for the testimony of the
truth, looking up steadfastly to heaven, and by faith
beholding the glory that shall be revealed.”
It assumes our adoring devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ,
and that we present “ourselves, our souls and
bodies, a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice,”
to our God.
I heard a few years ago of a remarkable
case of secession from the Church of England.
A thoughtful and conscientious man left us because,
as he said, he could no longer seem to concur in such
words of intense spiritual reality and surrender while
he did not fully mean them. On his principles,
I fear there ought to be a large exodus from our Church.
But that is not the fault of the Church, or of the
Church’s Book. It is the fault of the worshippers,
and it is a solemn call to us not so much to criticize
the Liturgy as to “examine ourselves.”
THE PRAYER BOOK AS A WEAPON.
In this connexion I am reminded of
a characteristic saying of an honoured friend of mine,
now at rest with the Lord after a long and faithful
ministry. He was one of those men who instinctively
speak strongly, perhaps sometimes roughly; but such
roughness is often useful. “The Prayer
Book,” said he, “is always handy to throw
at people’s heads”; figuratively, of course,
not literally. He slung it out in vigorous quotations
from his pulpit, point blank at the unreality, and
formalism, and pharisaism, and love of this present
evil world, which too often underlies the most precise
“churchmanship” and the most punctual
church-going.
My old friend’s strong word
may carry a suggestion to some of my younger Brethren;
though I would advise their deferring a projectile
use of the Book till they are seniors in the Church.
But the youngest Minister of Christ, in all loving
modesty, may reach many a conscience (beginning with
his own) by well-timed words from the Prayer Book,
showing what the Book takes for granted in the worshipper.
SCRIPTURALITY OF THE BOOK.
ii. Next I point to the abundant
and loyal Scripturality of the Prayer Book.
I venture to say that no Service Book in the world
is quite like ours in this. This characteristic
lies on the surface; in the wealth of Scripture poured
out in every service before the people; Psalms, Lessons,
Canticles, Epistle, Gospel, Introductory Sentences,
Decalogue, Comfortable Words. At the Font, in
the Marriage Ordinance, at the Grave, it is still
the same; Scripture, in our mother tongue, full and
free, runs everywhere. And below the surface
it is the same. Take almost any set of responses,
or any single prayer, and see the strong warp of the
Bible in it all.
"THE PREFACE” ON THE BIBLE.
And then go for a moment from the
Services to the Preface of the Book, and see what
the Fathers of our English Liturgy thought and intended
about the place of the Holy Scriptures in worship.
I hope my Brethren have all read that “Preface”
with care; I mean, of course, the whole length of
introductory matter which precedes the Tables of Lessons;
nothing of it later than 1662, most of it (indeed all
but the first section, written by Sanderson) dating
in substance from 1549. I hope it has all been
read by you; but I am not quite certain of it, so little
attention is at present called to those important and
authoritative statements of principle. But however
well you may already know them, they will repay another
reading; and so you will be reminded again that the
really first thought in the minds of the men who gave
us our Prayer Book in English was to let “the
Word of God have free course and be glorified”
in all the worship of the people. [2 Thess. ii.]
Those men were learned in the past, and they reverenced
history and continuity. But they reverenced still
more the heavenly Word, and where they found the ample
reading and hearing of it impeded by even immemorial
usage, the usage had to give way, without reserve,
to the Bible.
Yes, the Prayer Book is, whatever
else it is, searchingly, overflowingly Scriptural;
full of the Bible, full of Christ. Let us drink
its principles and its manner in, that they may come
out in our life and our preaching.
And now for a few simple practical
suggestions on our ministerial use of the Book.
USE THE BOOK WITH DILIGENCE.
i. First, I would entreat my
younger Brother to resolve in the Lord’s name
that his own use of the Prayer Book in his ministration
be to him a thing of sacred importance and personal
reality. We need to form such a resolve
deliberately, and to watch and pray over it. Do
we not know what strong temptations lie in the other
direction? We have to use these forms over and
over again; before many years are over perhaps we could
“take” a whole service, except the appointed
Scriptures, without looking at the book: is it
not too easy under such conditions to read as those
who read not, and to pray as those who pray not?
And all too often the Clergyman, younger or older,
allows himself almost consciously, almost on principle,
to form an inadequate estimate of his Prayer-Book work.
Perhaps he regards the prayers as in such a sense “the
voice of the Church” that he is willing to be
little more than a machine through which the Church
offers them. Or perhaps on the other hand he lets
himself forget their immense importance, under a strong,
and just, sense of the sacred importance of the Sermon.
He is alive and awake in the pulpit, and seeks his
Lord’s presence there, and realizes it as sought;
but in the desk he goes by himself, and
much of his precious time there is spent in thought
which wanders to the ends of the earth while his voice
does its decent but somnambulatory part alone.
USE IT WITH LIVING REALITY.
I can only appeal with all my heart
to my younger Brother not to let it be thus with him.
And the only effective recipe against the trouble is
faith, exercised in prayer and watching, with a full
recollection of the urgent importance of the matter.
For indeed it is all-important that the servant
of God should be “given wholly to” his
work, at the reading desk, at the lectern, at the
Table, at the Font.
PRAY THE PRAYERS.
It is easy to say, as it is often
said, that we “must not preach the prayers,”
must not obtrude our personality in leading the devotions
of the congregation; that our part is to be regular
and audible, and otherwise to “efface ourselves.”
Most certainly we ought not to preach the prayers,
in public any more than in private. But then,
we ought to pray them. Most certainly
we ought not to obtrude our personality upon the thought
of the worshippers. But then, we ought to serve
them with our personality, and we can best do this,
surely, by a spirit and a manner which is unmistakably
that of the fellow-worshipper, who feels himself
to be in the presence of the King, and knows that the
petitions and the promises are for him at least a holy
reality. I am perfectly well aware that it is
not easy to steer between a more or less mechanical
manner and a demonstrative one, and that perhaps of
two evils the former is the less. But I am sure
it is possible to steer the right line, by
using sanctified common-sense, and asking for a little
candid counsel from those who hear us, and above all
by being what we seek to seem true worshippers,
spiritually awake and humbly reverent.
As long as man is man, so long will
the law of sympathy hold good. And by that law
it is certain that the way to promote, so far as we
can, a spirit and tone of true worship in our people
is to possess and to show that
spirit ourselves, as we lead, and also join, their
worship. Never declaim the prayers, but always
pray them, from the soul and with the voice.
“GIVE ATTENDANCE TO THE READING” OF THE
LESSONS.
ii. I spoke just now of what
we should do at the lectern. Let me earnestly
press upon my Brethren the great duty of rightly reading
the Lessons. Do you want to carry out the will
and purpose of the Church of England? As we have
seen, that purpose is above everything to glorify
the Word of God. See then that the Lesson, as
read by you, is as audible, as intelligible, as impressive
as you can make it. Take care beforehand that
you understand its points, its arguments, its emphasis.
Take counsel with yourself, and perhaps with others,
about ways and means for bringing these things out
in your public reading. Remember that for very
many of your people (I fear I am right in saying so)
the Church Lessons are the most solid pieces of Scripture
they ever hear, or ever read. Many years ago
it was not uncommonly said that in “these days
of universal reading” we might perhaps abbreviate
our Church Lessons. But since that time it has
been more fully and sadly realized, by very many of
us at least, that universal reading does not mean
universal Bible reading by any means, but much rather
universal newspaper and novel reading. The heavenly
Book is terribly unfamiliar to multitudes of
churchgoers, as you will find, if you ask, when you
go about your parish; of this we have already thought.
Therefore, make all you can of the reading of the
Lessons in public worship. [Greek: Proseche te
anagnosei], says the Apostle to Timothy, “Give
attention to the reading” [1 Tim. i.];
does he not mean, be diligent in reading the Scripture
to the people? The precept is as much as ever
in point in our day.
OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED BY THE OCCASIONAL SERVICES.
iii. As regards the occasional
services, Public and Private Baptism, Marriage, Burial,
I would earnestly counsel my Brother to put personality
into his reading in them all, in the moderate sense
indicated above. The fact that such occasions
are necessarily more or less special in their
interest for some at least of those present should
never be forgotten; bring the power of a sympathetic
interest and earnestness to bear upon it. In
administering Public Baptism I have often realized
this to a very peculiar degree. Who can feel the
least fondness for little children, and have the slightest
insight into a parent’s heart, and not do so?
Our service is undoubtedly long; very long indeed
when accompanied by a chorus of perhaps several little
crying voices. But let the servant of God “be
in it,” and he will find himself much more touched
than troubled by the babies’ lamentations as
he speaks to the sponsors about the young helpless
souls, and turns to the Lord of all grace to dedicate
them to Him and to invoke His blessing on them for
time and eternity, and then applies the watery Seal
of all the promises to their small foreheads.
I have always found it very hard to get through that
service with a perfectly steady voice; and after all,
why should we be so careful to do so?
Private Baptism is indeed a
special occasion. There are reasons, no doubt,
why it must not be too readily administered; in some
parishes parents, for one reason or another, too often
try to secure “a christening” in private,
on insufficient grounds, with no intention of a public
dedication afterwards. But when the case is clear,
and you are at the little suffering one’s side,
perhaps with a distressed mother close beside it and
you, see to it that you so minister the rite, so read
the few precious words, as both to sympathize and
to teach. Let me add that Private Baptism often
brings the Clergyman into a house where religion is
utterly neglected; and the opportunity may be a priceless
one, if the power of love and spiritual reality is
with you in the work.
And when you officiate at a Wedding,
different as the conditions are from those just remembered,
still do not forget that for at least some there present
the hour is a deeply moving one. And is not the
Marriage Service a noble one to read, to interpret,
with its peculiar mingling of immemorial and archaic
simplicity with a searching depth of scriptural exhortation,
and a bright wealth of divine benedictions? Throw
the power of a true man’s solemnized sympathy
into your reading of that service.
PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF THE BURIAL SERVICE.
Of the ritual of the Grave I hardly
need to speak. I know only too well that there
are funerals and funerals. There are occasions
of unrelieved sadness. There are occasions when
the Minister’s heart is chilled by a manifest
and utter indifference. But the saddest, dreariest
of burials is an opportunity for the Lord. Whether
or no you see your way to give an address, let it
be seen that you are dealing with God in the prayers,
and read the Lessons “as one that pleadeth with
men.”
A brief word in passing on the problem
raised by some of the phrases of our Burial Service.
Let me call attention to the studied generality of
the words, In sure and certain hope of the resurrection
to eternal life. Before 1662 this ran “in
sure ... hope of resurrection, etc.,”
which, as you will observe, expressly applied the “hope”
to that case of burial; the change was evidently
made on purpose to relieve conscience in the matter.
Then remember that the whole service is constructed,
like all our services, for the member of the Christian
community taken on his profession; and that assumption,
unless flagrant facts withstand it, is to be made,
in public ordinance, as much at the grave as elsewhere.
And do not forget that hope, be it ever so
“trembling,” is never forbidden
at a grave-side. I am no advocate of what is
called “the larger hope”; I dare not be.
But I am deeply convinced that mercies of the Lord,
in cases quite beyond our possible knowledge, are
experienced in the very act of departure.
“Betwixt the stirrup and the ground
Mercy I sought, mercy I found.”
That instance has many parallels;
and God only knows their limits. Never should
we say, whatever we may awfully fear, that such and
such a soul is to our knowledge lost.
As regards the practical management
of extreme cases, the young Clergyman will of course
act altogether under his Incumbent. And the young
Incumbent will remember that he can have recourse to
his Bishop for counsel.
THE HOLY COMMUNION.
iv. Let me say one special word
on our administration of the precious ritual of the
Table of the Lord. I am not attempting here any
discussion of its doctrinal aspects in detail.
For myself, as I have said elsewhere, I make no secret
of long-settled “Evangelical” convictions.
I regard the Holy Eucharist as above all things else
the Lord’s way of sealing to His true Israel
the unutterable benefits of the New and Everlasting
Covenant, rather than an occasion on which He infuses
into them His glorified Manhood. His sacred Body
and Blood are, for me, the Body and the Blood as
they were, once for all, at Calvary, and as they
are not therefore literally now; and my participation
in them is accordingly my participation in the virtues
of the Atoning Sacrifice, there once and for ever
wrought and offered. But this is by the way.
I speak now of our spirit and manner in the administration,
in respect of some principles which are little if
at all affected, it seems to me, by even grave differences
of doctrinal theory. Alas, at the present day
it is too often the case that the communicant is fairly
bewildered by the varieties of Communion ritual, or
by the complications of it. Ought this to be
so, on any theory of the Eucharist? Did
I for one believe our adorable and beloved LORD to
be locally present (I use the words not technically
but practically) on the Holy Table as nowhere else
here on earth, I think that all my instinct would go
towards a reverence whose depth was manifested not
by an elaborate ceremonial but by the most solemn
possible simplicity of act. A ritual whose details
must be matter of careful practice, and which suggests
almost the need of a Spanish master-of-the-ceremonies ought
that to be the natural effect of an, as it
were, invisible Presence?
SIMPLICITY AND REVERENCE.
But probably I write for readers whose
inclinations or risks lie little in that direction.
And for them I say, let your administration of the
blessed Communion always combine a manifest reverence
and a restful simplicity. The Lord is
there, the Master of His own Table, the Prince of
His own Covenant, ready to give His people His royal
Seal by your hands. And His people are there,
to have their sacred interview with Him. Do not
obstruct their view, their colloquy; humbly aid it.
Be their servant, as in HIS presence; obtrude yourself
as little as you possibly can.
ADDRESSES ON THE PRAYER BOOK.
As I draw the chapter to a close,
I make one practical recommendation to my younger
Brethren. It is, to do what they can to interest
their people in the Prayer Book, and to promote its
intelligent use, by taking what opportunities they
can to talk to them about it. Many a private occasion
for this will no doubt present itself. But if
now and then a simple lecture on the history of the
Prayer Book can be given, and if possible well illustrated,
it will be very useful; and so will be a series of
week-night devotional addresses on the teaching of
the Prayer Book. And let not the need of plain
matter-of-fact explanation of obsolete terms and technical
phrases be forgotten on such occasions. Of course
the Curate will carefully consult his Incumbent on
the whole matter. But few of my elder Brethren
will not feel with me that such “talks upon the
Prayer Book,” carefully considered and conducted,
whether by Incumbent or by Curate, may be of the greatest
use, under our Master’s blessing.
“MORE CEREMONIAL, LESS WORSHIP.”
One last word, and I have done with
these suggestions. An English Bishop once told
me that he had lately met a gentleman who, after ten
years’ residence abroad, returned to England,
and to his place as a worshipper in our Churches.
“Do you remark particularly any change or advance
in what you see there?” “I observe on
the one hand much more ceremonial, on the other hand,
apparently, much less worship. Fewer kneel, fewer
respond, fewer around me seem devoutly attentive.”
Less worship! Is it so indeed? Let the very
opposite be the case, so far as our influence and
teaching can have effect, with our fathers’ Prayer
Book in our hands, and in our hearts.
“Lo, God is here; Him day and
night
Th’ united quires of
angels sing;
To Him, enthron’d above all height,
Heaven’s hosts their
noblest praises bring;
Disdain not, Lord, our meaner song,
Who praise Thee with a stammering tongue.
“Being of beings, may our praise
Thy courts with grateful fragrance
fill;
Still may we stand before Thy face,
Still hear and do Thy sovereign
will;
To Thee may all our thoughts arise,
Ceaseless, accepted sacrifice._”
J. WESLEY, from TERSTEEGEN