AND is it really come to this? All the boasted attractions of the English Liturgy, its adaptation to all wants, the ease with which it can be followed-(as contrasted with extempore prayer),-is found to be an unintelligible farrago for the masses, impossible for an uneducated. mind to follow.
(* 1866. Third Edition. London Longman and Co.)
The Roman Catholics (where the writer of this paper has known them well), manage the matter better. The service is histrionic, no doubt. But it is in Latin, and the worshipper has nothing to follow. But he is furnished with prayers for himself in his own tongue, which he can say while the priest is saying his, and which are not what the priest is saying at all; a curious form of public worship,, indeed, but the priestly distinction is fully carried out. But, taking the English Liturgy as it is, what is the remedy? A worship in spirit and in truth, such as the Lord God requires from spiritual worshippers, such as the Father seeks? Nothing of the kind. That must besought for, if we believe the Tractarians, neither at Rome nor Canterbury,-neither at this Mountain nor at Jerusalem. Spiritual worship is not sought, nor the object desired. In that they would have to do with God; that is not their object; they seek influence over the masses for themselves, to regain numbers, the many who have slipped away from their influence; and if the end do not justify the means, the means betray the end. Worship is to be histrionic, they tell us; that is, the acting of a play so as to attract the imagination by theatrical spectacles, and secure an unintelligent crowd, pleased with what is acted before them. Let it not be for a moment supposed that this is a harsh accusation. It is their own statement (p. 37).
"Hence a lesson may be learned, by all who are not too proud to learn from the stage. For it is an axiom in liturgiology, that no public worship is really deserving of its name, unless it be histrionic."
Can Christians who know what spiritual worship is believe this?
"To adopt another principle, whether it be that of sermon hearing or meditation, may be salutary enough in its proper time and place, but it is not worship, with which alone ritualism has to do."
Surely neither sermons nor meditation is worship; but neither is histrionic ritualism. The writer only proves that what is worship has never entered into his mind;- but to proceed. The writer then speaks of gin palaces (p. 39)-" so widely and so universally popular amongst the London poor "-these, he urges, are lighted, ornamented, etc., but-
"Many landlords have found even all this insufficient, without the additional attraction of music; and the low singing-hall is sure to indicate the most thriving drinking-shops in the worst quarters of the metropolis. If, then, painting, light, and music are found necessary adjuncts to a trade which has already enlisted on- its side one of the strongest of human passions, it is the merest besotted folly to reject their assistance, when endeavoring to persuade men to accept and voluntarily seek an article for which they have never learned to care, even if they are not actively hostile to it-to wit religion."
"`The fact is seized on by secular bodies, whose aim is to gather as many members as possible from the lower orders. Societies like the Odd Fellows and the Foresters " have found this, " and consequently elaborate processions, with badges, music, and banners, are found needful appliances for attracting numbers; and keeping them together," etc.
" The Tractarians alone, of all the schools in the Church of England, have recognized this truth, and appraised it at its true value," p. 40.
Is it possible! Is it possible to conceive anything more degraded, or more degrading, or more contrary to Christianity? In true Christianity we see the power of the divine word, through the Holy Ghost, bringing light and grace into the soul, revealing God to the heart and conscience, and so leading men through redemption to worship God in spirit and in truth, knowing the grace of the Father which has sought such to worship Him. Instead of this unutterably blessed and holy worship, fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, the aim of the Tractarian is to substitute what one is ashamed to mention in the same sentence, the attractions of a gin palace, and the singing halls of the worst parts of London, the processions and banners of the Odd Fellows and Foresters, to win the masses by pleasing their tastes as they are. They have told their Own tale. The persons they attract to worship, mark it well, not to Christ as a Savior or to salvation, are persons who do not care for-or who hate religion, and they are to be won, not to God or to eternal life, but to outward worship, by that which attracts the fleshly nature, as it would to a gin palace or a society of Odd Fellows! It is not the degradation of the thought in connection with such a subject which (offensive as it is) most strikes one here, but the evidence of the total absence of divine life, spirituality, or thought of spirituality, in those who can take such views. The masses are to be drawn by attractions like those of a gin palace, to see a histrionic spectacle; and that is worship! But we must not therefore suppose that there is not a diligent, and, for its own purposes, efficient system at work. By all human means-means calculated to act on men's wants and natural feelings, and the influences of priest-craft, which are very great-they would exercise universal influence. They would have their agents nurses at all hospitals; guilds of females, made respectable and religious by the patronage of " Sisters," to keep them from mischief in manufacturing towns; confraternities in parishes to get amongst men whom the parochial ministers cannot reach, deferring to influential classes, who might resist such as physicians, but getting their ear so as to be their instruments and carry on their own purposes, and carefully excluding, only one thing, from getting access, as to all they can -the truth of God. The clergy and upper classes need some means to hold the poor under their influence. But the clergy must have the lead, as is natural if of God, yet by service to the poor, by which they may be gained, but the effect is priestly power. If it be a work of Satan (and likening worship to a gin palace and to the processions of the Odd. Fellows is certainly not of God), we must not fancy that Satan does not know what suits and acts on human nature; He knows it well. He cannot stem the power of God, nor love the truth, nor give true spirituality or holiness; but he can, where these safeguards are not, gain human nature and take the form of godliness, and change himself into an angel of light, and thus gain masses of men, and, in this form still more, women; and that is what they want. Of the truth, or the power of the truth, they know nothing, and care nothing. Priestly influence is the object. Take a statement from another paper in the same volume, in which there are many truths, as to the effect of various practices, and whose tone is not so offensive as the one I have quoted above, as that from which my first quotation was taken. There I read:-
," And, it must not be forgotten, that the godless in a parish have to be brought to the consciousness of the existence of a. God, a Heaven, a Hell, and the value of their immortal souls, before they come to Church. Their consciences must first be roused, and then they may be brought to the parish Church to learn the details of their duty to God and their duty to man." (p. 96).
Now is it not a very striking thing that in the case of a godless man, who has to learn the existence of a God, a Heaven, a Hell, and the value of his immortal soul, it never occurs to the writer to think of salvation, or a Savior, of Christ or the truth. Yet so it is. Let it riot be said: But it is assumed he will hear of it at Church.'. No; there he is to learn the details of his duty to God and his duty to man. He will find histrionic spectacles to engage his imagination, but he is not to learn salvation or a Savior; and in truth, with such teachers, he never will. But is not such a statement a striking display of the system? " Thy speech bewrayeth thee." One paper brings him to a theatrical display, the other to learn his duty; neither to God. What a contrast is apostolic simplicity. " Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." But let it be noted, this display is not to win to hear the truth, no catching with guile, as people have falsely applied the text, nor even what Dissenters and Presbyterians do, or are anxious to do, viz., have organs and good singing to attract, and then present Christ, (itself an unholy and evil practice, and savoring of priestcraft), but they are to be attracted thus to worship. It is the worship which is histrionic-to the worship they are to be brought.
Now, I will speak seriously of worship, and Tractarian worship by-and-bye. There are a great many points in which, as to form, though not as to substance, the Tractarians are right, just as Romanists have kept up the name of the unity of the Church. Worship is that for which Christians should meet, and, I add, the Lord's Supper is the center of worship. But to bring persons who do not care for religion or are hostile to it, to worship by histrionic displays, could never have entered into the mind of any but a Tractarian; nor have been invented but by priestcraft and the seekers of priestly power. It is not Christianity. That, and we have the authority of the divine founder of it for saying so, looks for worship in spirit and in truth, and reveals the grace in which the Father seeks such to worship Him. IT IS NOT CHRISTIANITY. Christianity is the activity of God's love towards sinners, and the joying in and worship of God by those who have been reconciled to Him, with all the fruits which flow from it through the presence of the Spirit, and the display of the life of Christ which is imparted by it, wrought, all of it, by the Spirit of God, and the fruit of the accomplishment of redemption, eternal redemption, by Christ. If it is not Christianity, what is-it?
Nor is this insensibility to divine truth or divine objects shown in a casual passage, treating of some collateral subject, or in view of some particular difficulty. There is no other thought presented to us. It is generally known that clergy and laity of all classes hired several of the lower class of theaters to preach in, with the hope of reaching the masses who never go anywhere, and they were successful. The means may have been desirable or not. It is not needful to decide that question here. Speaking of the Liturgy, our Tractarians say (p. 41):-
" There is nothing to impress the eye, nothing to quicken the attention, nothing to make the breath come short, or the pulse beat quicker."...... " It is all very sedate, very decorous, very good, no doubt, for those who like it; but it is not in the very least degree missionary." -
One hardly is aware how worship in itself can be properly so, but (p. 42):-
" The evangelical school has practically admitted this truth by its adoption of theater-preachings, thereby confessing, on the one hand, that it is hopeless of making the Church service attractive to outsiders, and on the other that some fillip of excitement in the way of novelty is needful as a lure."
A lure! Is that the object of worship, that which the Spirit of God can propose to itself in prayer and adoration? and a lure to what? That the zeal which sought the outcasts of London in their own haunts, and
found a response because these outcasts were cared for, may have been mixed with excitement and the attraction of novelty, is possible. But they were allured to God, at least, to salvation, not to " our Church," even if it were Anglican or Catholic. A vast number of preachers, even not ordained by man, and if they were, nobody knew to what denomination they belonged, and a service in a theater was not, and could not be to win them to go there or to belong to any body of Christians. This is evident, be it an evil or a good. It was to win their souls to God, but of that, while declaring that people do not know the existence of a God, nor the value of a soul, a genuine Tractarian has no idea. It does not enter his mind. He can only see a plan to win partisans by novelty and excitements. Again:-
" The Prayer Book, with its somewhat antique phraseology and high spiritual level, is, to the mass of uneducated worshippers, like the score of a piece of music, simply unintelligible. Put the score into the hands of a band of musicians for execution, and all will benefit from the harmony. So, too, let the dramatic aspect of Common Prayer be manifested, and every one can join, however uninstructed." (p. 42).
Join in what?
I close this part of my remarks with one more quotation, leaving the historical part for further consideration.
"Take two Street Arabs, perfectly ignorant of Christianity. Read to one of them the Gospel narrative of the Passion, and comment on it as fully as may be. Show the other a crucifix, and tell him simply what it means. Question each a week afterward, and see which has the clearest notions about the history of Calvary." (p. 50).
Now, to say nothing of the utter Pelagianism of this, the total leaving out of preventive grace, as is the case indeed in the whole of the statements furnished by this article, and, to speak only of means used, I ask what is declared by the Lord and his apostles to be the means of quickening, saving, edifying? Is it the word of truth, or pictures and crucifixes? Let not the objector talk to me of sacraments; they are not in question here. In the alternative put by the writer, he has chosen what God has not chosen;-and God has chosen (what he condemns) the word written and the word ministered by men. But still, though this article be low and degraded, the same fundamental principles characterize it which are insisted on in others.
"The constant appeal to antiquity, the tenets of the dignity of the human body, and of the superiority of prayer over preaching, the appreciation of symbolism, the magnifying the Sacraments as spiritual agents, could not otherwise be practically brought within the observation of the mass of Christians, which has neither taste nor leisure for abstruse research, and this is one of the reasons why, as has been said before in this paper, simplicity, that is, bareness and poverty in the externals of worship, is unsuited for a national, much less for a universal religion." (p. 36).
Gathering for worship by a dramatic display which magnifies the Sacraments (and it is carried even to the adoration of the Eucharist), so as to gather the whole nation or be even universal in its effect, such is the system. But it must be added:-all are not supposed to be communicants; there are to be "non-communicating attendance," or better " non-communicants," to be put indeed out of the choir, but stay in the nave and look on (pp. 500-503); so that in this center of Christian worship (for such the Lord's Supper is, as far as rites go), which ought to be accompanied with the holiest Christian affections, we are to find a drama enacted within the rails, to win by stage effects; and spectators without, kept there by what is now intelligible to all, but not taking any part in it.
Such is Tractarianism-not worship by saints, but religion for the nation, to keep them together! How totally contrary this is to antiquity, it is not needful for one who is the least acquainted with it to say. The word " mass " is simply the corruption of the words " lte, missa est," by which all who did not communicate were sent away. Primitive antiquity had not such a thought as missionary dramas in worship. It did magnify the holy mysteries, as they were called, but it did so by removing all who were not about to communicate. To insist on the. word "mass," as is done by these Tractarians, and provide for a non-communicating attendance, is imposing on the ignorance or inattention of the reader.