Title: The Ritual Movement - Three plain sermons preached at St. John the Evangelist's, Hammersmith
Author: Cowan, James Galloway
Language: English
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Transcribed from the 1866 William Skeffington edition by David Price.



                                   THE
                             RITUAL MOVEMENT.


                           Three Plain Sermons

                               PREACHED AT

                        ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST’S,

                               HAMMERSMITH,

                                * * * * *

                                    BY

                        JAMES GALLOWAY COWAN, M.A.

                           _Perpetual Curate_.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

      “Let all things be done decently and in order.”—1 Corinthians xiv.
                                     40.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:
                   WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163 PICCADILLY.

                                  1866.



SERMON I.


                            1 CORINTHIANS xiv. 40.

               “Let all things be done decently and in order.”

THESE words are a general precept about Church order following up a
particular remonstrance.  The Corinthian Christians, divinely
distinguished by the number and excellence of the spiritual gifts and
privileges bestowed on them, had, alas! distinguished themselves by
anarchy, lawlessness, pride, self-will, self-sufficiency,
uncharitableness, ecclesiastical and moral laxity of various forms and
kinds.  The Apostle deals with all these offences severally and
particularly, and then he gives a general rule—a rule which was to cover
and guide all their practice, and the practice of every other church:
“Let all things be done decently (decorously) and in order” (according to
system and appointment).

Without further preface, I would, in all solemnity, read this precept as
addressed to us, brethren, to the clergy and laity of the Anglican Church
of this present day, and as one which for the glory of God, and the
edifying of ourselves, it is most needful to fix in our remembrance and
to observe with all strictness.  And did I design my teaching to be
merely general, I know no more useful theme to which to address myself;
for as like the Corinthians we Anglicans have been distinguished by God,
in that He has poured out upon us conspicuous and super-excellent gifts
and privileges, so like them are we constantly distinguishing ourselves
by strifes, irregularities, and miserable assertions of self’s importance
and self’s wilfulness unparalleled, I believe, by Romans, Greeks, or
dissenters.

But I have a special purpose, as you have probably anticipated, in
selecting the subject for consideration at this time.

There is just now a great agitation throughout the land about what is
called “The Ritual Movement.”  After many years of sluggish indifference
to the Apostle’s precept—it would hardly exceed the truth to say of
perverse opposition to it, in doing all things indecently and against
order—men on all sides are waking up to a sense of their neglect, and to
a desire to repair it; and, by consequence, those who have not gone with
the movement have found themselves surrounded by what wears the
appearance of strange and even dangerous innovation, and those who have
gone with it—both teachers and disciples—have in some cases been hurried
along without due care to consider, perhaps without time to consider,
whither they were tending.

To both these parties—the standers still and the hurriers along—how
wisely speaks the precept, “Let all things be done decently and in
order”!

And first to the first—the standers still—the “old-fashioned,” the
contented with things as they were.  Consider, my brethren, what mean ye
by the service of God in the sanctuary, the assembling of yourselves in
Church from time to time.  Why do you come?  Who bade you come? what to
do?  You come to worship God in a building set apart for His worship; a
place in which He may meet you by appointment.  And who is God?  The
great and glorious Jehovah, in Whose sight the very Heavens are not
clean; Who asks, asserting His dignity, “What place will ye build Me”
(that is worthy of Me)?  My brethren, if you duly regarded His Majesty,
if you, in any adequate degree, appreciated His amazing condescension,
would you consider any edifice too grand for His localised presence, any
expenditure on its furniture and ornament too lavish, any care for its
arrangement and for the reverent honour of its All Holy Tenant too
elaborate, too scrupulously particular?  You know what provision you
would make, what anxious care would possess you to fit your house, to
array and order your household, for the due entertaining of an expected
guest _only just a little_ above yourselves in dignity and in claim to be
respected.  You can hardly imagine _what_ you would do if your Queen
condescended to be for a while your guest; but you know that at least you
would not err on the side of niggardliness, slovenliness, and
indifference; that your provision would be as magnificent as possible,
your service particular and constant, your reverence profound.  This
being the case—and you know it is the case—a lively belief that God does
wondrously vouchsafe to dwell with you, that the Church is indeed His
local habitation, that when you enter within its walls, you are in His
available, His very tangible presence; that what you do or neglect there,
is done or neglected to Him, would spontaneously beget in you the desire,
and quicken the effort, to make the edifice worthy of Him, according to
your natural notions of worthiness, to provide due accessories of
worship, to order yourselves as real and most reverential worshippers.

But you are not left to spontaneity.  When God chose for Himself a people
to honour and serve Him, to be witnesses for His honour, to bring in due
time all nations to serve and worship Him, He taught that people what
kind of House they should build Him, and with what kind of ritual they
should serve Him; treating the matter of such importance as actually to
inspire the architects, to prescribe each article of furniture and every
detail of ornament, to appoint precisely the ceremonies and observances.
And what did He require?  That the material of house and ornament should
be of the best and costliest and most splendid; that every act, every
feeling of worship should have its corresponding sign in some ritualistic
observance; that among the accessories of worship should be attractions
for means of enlisting men’s various senses; colour, and pattern and
ornament for the eye, music for the ear, fragrant perfume for the scent.

This is God’s pattern of what is decorous: His prescription of order.

But you object: “No, this _was_ God’s pattern and order: but it was all
appointed under a different dispensation from Christianity, for a rude
and childish people, as pictures and types and carnal ordinances, to be
exchanged when men were fit, when the Messiah should come, for inward and
invisible realities, for purely spiritual things, which heart and mind
alone could apprehend, which outward sense would rather obscure than
discover.”

Now, of course, Judaism was in some respects a different dispensation
from Christianity, and some even of its divinely appointed observances
were merely temporary, and had a significance and use for Jews which they
would not have for us.  But it is quite an error to suppose that these
Jews were a rude and childish people; they were rather the civilised and
cultivated and most spiritual of the earth.  Albeit, if we might dare to
say so, for them more than for us, or for any other people whom God has
since drawn near to Himself, an elaborate outward and sensuous worship
(if it were not the right, the necessary, the permanent accompaniment of
inward realities) was unsuitable and fraught with danger.  They had just
come out from the home of idolatry; they were going to dwell among the
observers of carnal and idolatrous rites; they were themselves hankering
after visible objects of worship; they would again and again make
stumbling blocks for themselves out of the very things which God
appointed for their edification in His worship.  Now ascribing to God, as
we must always do, perfect wisdom and clearest foresight, is it
presumptuous to say that He would have kept these snares from the Jews,
that he would have drawn off their minds from the external and the
naturally magnificent, and rather would have _forbidden_ than _enforced_
minute ritual and much worship of the body, as things through which they
were sure to err, unless there were in the things themselves intrinsic
good, unless, in fact, they were not merely useful accessories of
worship, but a very integral and essential part of the worship itself?

And then, again, my brethren, where are we told that Christianity is a
_purely spiritual religion_; that its functions are all such as can be
performed by mind and heart, without body; that, in fact, the body has no
real part in them?  The worship of the body is indeed no worship by
itself, for: “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him
in spirit and in truth.”  But is it not Christianity that has redeemed
and consecrated the body?  Has not the second Adam taken away from it all
but its _form_ of mortality?  Has not the LORD purchased it for Himself,
imposing upon it much work in His service; commanding by His inspired
Apostle that it should glorify Him; promising it great excellencies and
rewards in its future state; appointing for it a glorious worship in
heaven?  Assuredly, my brethren, as man is three-fold and has been
redeemed in his three-fold nature, mind, heart, and body, so has each
part of him its appointed, its bounden part, to take _on its own account_
in the positive worship of God.  And were it not so, were the body merely
the case of the soul—its link with the material; its tabernacle in the
temporal; its agent among the natural and outward—still, is it not in
these respects part of its office to exhibit what is in the soul?  Does
not the soul naturally move it when it is moved itself?  Is not the body,
as it were spontaneously, affected by all that passes within, and, unless
unnaturally restrained or physically disabled, does it not always betray
and manifest the inward affection?

The soul may worship God sufficiently (for the whole being) when the body
is taking no part by reason of paralysis or prostration, or because the
man, deeming it inexpedient at that time that sound or sign should escape
him, is curbing and binding it down; but in health and left unrestrained,
the body is such a spontaneous sympathizer and persistent co-operator
with all within, that we are justified in saying of him who does not
speak to God with his lips, and bow his head before Him, and clasp his
hands, and kneel upon his knees, that he does not worship God in spirit
and in truth!

We have reached thus far, brethren—if you have gone with me—that God has
prescribed much ritual, and that man from his very nature must use much
ritual in divine worship.

Of course God’s prescription is liable to much modification when it comes
to be applied, not to one people, but to all the nations of the earth;
not to a tabernacle in the wilderness or a temple at Jerusalem, but to
every place in which men ask him to record His name and come unto them
and bless them; not to dim and imperfect types, but to the glorious and
perfect anti-types; not to Judaism, which was local and temporary, but to
Christianity, which is universal and eternal.  Of course, too, the
_details_ of men’s spontaneous worship will, necessarily, be different
according to the truth which they have to express by outward signs,
according to their natural characteristics in a warm or cold climate,
according even to individual temperament.

But this principle assuredly holds good for all time and for all men:
that God having once pronounced Himself in favour of a certain kind of
ritual, and His Church having consented to express its doctrines and its
feelings by certain outward signs and rites of its own, the general rule
and form of decent and orderly worship has been set and established,
which should only be departed from by Divine sanction and appointment,
unless, indeed, the doctrines and feelings which we have to express are
so diverse from those of the elder Church that they cannot find an
intelligent and real expression in the same ritual.

You will hardly need, brethren, that I should prove to you that our
religion is substantially that which God gave to the Jews; that under the
old dispensation as under the new, salvation is offered to mankind only
through Jesus Christ, and that the general ways of seeking and keeping
hold of that salvation—humbling ourselves before God, initiation into His
covenant, constant prayer, supplication and praise, constant pleadings of
His sacrifice, constant feeding on His grace, are the same for us as for
them, unless God Himself has changed them.  Now this we know that He has
done in some respects, taking away circumcision, the daily sacrifice of
animals, and the Passover, and various rites and ceremonies which, from
the nature of the case, could be only temporary; or, at least, had real
use and significance only for the nation of the Jews, or for an
_expectant_ Church.  But then He has given us other ordinances _in the
place of those withdrawn_, and these we _naturally_ observe in the same
spirit, and, as far as suits them, with the same form as He appointed for
the older ordinances.  God is still the same: man is still the same.  The
expression of worship which He once required, is that which He must
surely still require in all its essentials, all its characteristics.

That the Christian Church accepted at once this rule of worship is
evident from the fact, that the apostles and first disciples continued to
take part in the temple and synagogue services as long as the Jews would
let them; yea, and that they even still observed those ordinances which,
in their necessary observance, God had abrogated; instead of which He had
appointed other things.  This, my brethren, is most worthy of note,
because it shows that these men, full of the Spirit, discerned that they
had still the same God to worship, and that, as far as circumstances
would let them, the natural way—the right way—of worshipping was that
which their fathers had followed; so much so that they might even still
retain—as long as it could be done without injury, with edification—those
very ordinances which, in their binding, their sacramental character, by
God’s declaration, belonged not to Christianity!

But God left it not to this pious, conservative feeling to maintain the
dignity and splendour of His worship.  As in the Mount He had given Moses
a pattern and a law of all things that men should make and do for His
worship in the Church on earth; so in Patmos to the beloved disciple, to
him who had drunk in most deeply the spirit of Christ, to him who was to
teach men more than any other prophet of the real, the abiding, the
spiritual, the heavenly—to him, I say, God opened a door in heaven, and
showed the things that must be hereafter, the worship that is to be
celebrated and perpetuated in His fullest Presence; and lo! it was full
of visible glories and ceremonial observances.

“Yes,” men say: “but surely that must be allowed to be figurative—to be a
mere pictorial way of describing inward and invisible truths and
feelings.”  We are not so sure of that, brethren.  Heaven must be a
substantial and tangible place; because those who are to inhabit it will
have bodies to rest in it, and eyes, and ears and other senses to find
gratification in it.  And if it is such a place, and is full of objects
which affect the body, and which the body may employ, then I see not why
much of what the Apostle saw in vision may not be a literal
representation of what shall actually be.  But concede that it is only an
image, a pictorial representation, nevertheless it is God who has chosen
these things to symbolize His perpetual worship; and are we best
preparing ourselves for that worship—best rehearsing it, best professing
it, best honouring Him, doing all things decently and in order, if we set
aside in His worship all that He once enjoined in letter upon His early
Church, all that He has used—figuratively, if you will—as fittest to
represent to us His perfect worship in the Church triumphant, and, I
suppose, to enlist our present interest, and to kindle a hearty
intelligent desire for a full share in it hereafter?

But here, again, men object.  They will concede that, perhaps, there may
be _something_ literal in this prophetical description; at any rate that
it symbolizes faithfully and precisely the spiritual homage, the joy and
adoration of souls which shall be in heaven.  But they assert that it
does not symbolize—that, in fact, it is in very contrast with all the
state and feeling which belong to us poor wandering and afflicted
pilgrims and prodigals on earth.

My brethren, if there were no other argument in favour of maintaining or
of restoring where it has fallen into decay such a ritual as I am
advocating, this one objection would furnish a most cogent reason for
it,—a very necessity; for what does it show but that men have lost the
truth which this ritual embodies and expresses—namely, that while indeed
_in the world_ they are still pilgrims, still prodigals distant from
home, though sighing for and seeking that home, beholders of promises
_afar off_, yet in the _Church_ they are _at home_, having _obtained_ the
promises.  The Church is the ark of salvation, which God has provided to
keep us safe in the drowning of the world.  It is the kingdom of heaven,
whose King is now in the midst of it.  It is the bosom of the Father
whereon each penitent prodigal now rests accepted, the Everlasting arms
whose felt embrace assures of present peace and joy.  It is the wedding
feast whereat all the friends of the King’s son are decked with glories
and feasted with good things; nay, it is the Bride herself, adorned for
the Bridegroom, the King’s daughter, all glorious and full of joy!

What present comfort in the troubles of this lower life, what cheering in
despondency, what stimulus in toilsome effort do we not miss, my
brethren, by not realizing that in the Church we are come unto Mount
Zion, unto the heavenly Jerusalem—unto the very throne, into the very
presence, within the enfolding arms of the God who has saved us, Who
loves to fill us full of peace, and joy, and benediction _now_.

And, alas! what do we not in our blindness or misconception withhold from
God—of that most reasonable, that greatly due, that loudly-demanded
service—the perpetual sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for the past
mercies of our redemption, for our continual sustentation through the
intercession of our Great High Priest, by the grace which He continually
gives us; for the coming glory which, being promised, is sure on His
part, and most certainly needs to be acknowledged with grateful, hearty,
and adoring lives!

If, my brethren, it is the aim of “the ritual movement” to express all
this grand truth, and to help men to live by it, then surely they are
doing a great work who have originated and are carrying on the movement;
and we are inconsiderately depriving ourselves of much that is helpful
and edifying—that, I say, not withholding from God due and most
acceptable worship—if we allow our prejudices to oppose the movement, so
far as it is lawful, and either insist upon prescribing for ourselves a
ritual, or labour to uphold and stereotype one that has no likeness in
the Old and New Testament, in the Church of any age, in our own Book of
Common Prayer.

Some of you may think, my brethren, that I have not chosen the fittest
theme for Lent sermons.  But recollect that this season is specially
appointed for the self-discipline and growth in grace and in all
godliness of those who are already in some sense religious; and then put
it to yourselves whether the rooting out of you of stubborn prejudices,
uncharitable and unworthy suspicions (with the many bitter, unchristian
fruits that follow them), and that miserable spirit of formalism which
delights in finding objections to a form and in refusing conformity,
would not greatly help you to worship God in spirit and in truth.

There are dangers inherent in high ritual, it is being greatly abused,
and of those who desire it many are wholly misconceiving its spirit and
its use.  To these I shall speak in turn, if God will, with the same
affectionate boldness and desire to be faithful, which have influenced me
in all that I have now said.

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.

Were I not convinced that it is so, God forbid that I should stand here
as a vindicator of the movement.  For I am persuaded that the Reformation
was most righteous and necessary, and that God Himself specially wrought
it for us.  However gently we should always speak in controversy, however
charitably we should think of and construe the acts and motives of
others, we must not hide from ourselves that the unreformed Church of
this country, in the sixteenth century, was in a very corrupt and ungodly
state.  The _form_, indeed, of all the essentials of Christianity was
maintained, but it was overlaid by man’s idle, or even false traditions
and man’s corrupt practices.  The power of the priesthood was abused; the
word of God was withheld from the people; the Holy Eucharist was
mutilated and perverted from the purposes of its institution; in worship,
the creature was set side by side with the Creator, if not exalted above
Him; the substitution of _form_ for spirit and substance, and in many
cases of a wrong form, too, was generally sanctioned and encouraged.
From all this the Reformers were stirred to rescue us, and by the grace
of God they did it.  But theirs was no hot-headed indiscriminate work.
They laboured, with all the calmness that men in their trying
circumstances could command, to distinguish between right and wrong.
They wished to retain all that seemed edifying, or even merely harmless,
though it were of recent growth.  They sought to restore all things to
the primitive rule and pattern.  They would have counted it sin to have
rejected anything that God had suggested to His Church or that the Church
in former ages had adopted.  Let any one acquaint himself with the
doctrine, ritual, and practice of the unreformed Church, and then compare
with them the first Prayer Book of Edward VI., and he will find that
there is no unnecessary deviation from them; that there is a strict
maintenance of everything that it was possible to retain without
fostering error or obstructing Christian edification; that the Reformers
even went beyond, and revived and enforced what had been disused and
forgotten—if it had early sanction—leaving nothing unrestored that had
primitive authority, save only the godly discipline of Penance; and how
they thought of that, how they wished to restore it, how they hoped that
the time would come when it would be restored, let the Commination Office
testify!

This was the principle of the Reformation.  And how was it carried out in
the matter of ritual?  Why! everything that was Scriptural or primitive,
or, though recent, edifying, was retained.  There were the same Churches,
the same altars, the same symbols and furniture, the same vestments.
Even the same services and the same ways of offering them were preserved;
only they were cleansed from corruptions, divested of things doubtful or
unedifying, simplified by making prayers and lections more continuous,
and by discountenancing those minutiæ of bodily worship—numerous bowings,
genuflections, and the like—which, however natural they may have been to
the foreign Priests who had ministered at our altars, however useful to
the people when, by reason of all being performed in an unknown and
muttered tongue, much dumb show and bell ringing were necessary, were
distracting to true worship by their multiplicity, and were unnecessary
in an audible and intelligible service.

I do not say that everything which this ritual movement seeks to restore
is distinctly by name approved and retained by our Reformers; but in its
general features, in almost all its items, in the kind of worship and
confession of faith at which it aims, I am sure that it has their
sanction and is the taking up of their work.

How is it that this ritual has never been the generally used ritual of
the Reformed Church?  Why should it now be revived?—these are questions
which, if God will, I will answer in detail in my next sermon.

Meantime, my brethren, strive to make profitable and personal use of what
has been said, by carefully informing yourselves as to the real state of
the case; by trying to root out of you prejudices, and to keep yourselves
from uncharitable suspicions of ritualists and rash and profane speech
about ritual; by cultivating respect for the motives of those who, in
their labour to be loyal to the Church of the Reformers and useful to
you, have come under so much obloquy; by praying earnestly that those in
authority may have wisdom given them rightly to deliberate and determine
in this matter, and that those under authority may have grace to render
all due submission: that each and all of us may be animated by the pure
desire to enforce and observe the Apostolic rule, “Let all things be done
decently and in order.”



SERMON III.


                            I CORINTHIANS xiv. 40.

               “Let all things be done decently and in order.”

BY the good Providence of God, the Reformation was effected in this
country with the sanction, under the immediate direction of the highest
authorities in Church and State; by men of sound faith, sober judgment,
and calm temperament; on the righteous principle of maintaining as good
and necessary whatever of doctrine or practice had universally prevailed
among Christians, and of not differing unnecessarily, even in
non-essentials, from the mediæval Church.

The conservative and Catholic feeling which animated the Anglican
Reformers very soon, however, came into conflict with a radical and mere
Protestant spirit.  I desire not to repudiate “Protestantism” as an
attribute of the Anglican Church.  Our Reformers did most stoutly
protest—by speech, by deed, by enactment, by suffering—against prevailing
corruptions and superstitions; specially they protested against the
tyrannical assumption of universal dominion by the Bishop of Rome, and
the capricious and lawless issuing by him of ecclesiastical prohibitions
and indulgences.

But their Protestantism only asserted _what they were not_; and certainly
they never prided themselves in or contented themselves with the mere
assertion of the _negative_ and the _diverse_.  In that they put away
what was wrong, or corrupt, or unedifying or distracting or burthensome,
they were Protestant; but in their maintenance of the one faith in its
integrity and the due proportion of its several parts, in their strict
adherence to the principle which had ever guided the service and ritual
of Christ’s Church, they were true Catholics—much more worthy of the name
than those who henceforth claimed the exclusive right to it.

But growing up all around them, and fostered and strengthened by
importations from the Continent, (where the Reformation had unhappily
been brought about in a very different spirit, and was in fact almost
another thing,—not the reforming of the Church but the abandoning of it)
was a revolutionary and indiscriminate Protestantism which sought to
destroy, root and branch, whatever was old, and was intolerant even of
the most harmless conformity to the Church against which it was a
reaction.

Let us speak with all charity and fair allowance of those earnest and
holy men.  Almost all the doctrines of the faith had been perverted or
leavened with corruption; almost all the ordinances and ceremonies were
associated with gross abuses.  In the intensity of their awakened feeling
against these things, it was natural that many among our own people,
unable to distinguish between the truth and the corruption, the use and
the abuse, should think that their rulers had not gone far enough in the
way of change; while the foreign Protestants, left to act as individuals,
driven to form communities of their own (as their Church would not reform
itself) unguided by Catholic influence, directed by no intelligent
principle (save that which would _anyhow_ get rid of false traditions and
gross abuses) in the construction of their creed and the ordering of
their services, determined, as the easiest and most congenial course, to
reject the whole system from which they had come out, and to make all
things new for themselves.

What wonder that such men were dissatisfied with the First Prayer Book of
Edward VI., that they regarded it as a base compromise with Rome, that
they were horrified by the mention in it of “priests, altars and
sacrifices,” that they scorned as “badges and rags of popery” the
vestments which it prescribed; that they were loud and urgent in
demanding its immediate revision!  Not only had they no sympathy with,
they had no comprehension, no idea of the principle on which its
compilers had acted.  Their notion was that the only true and pure
religion was such an one as differed _in toto_ from what they had
repudiated.  They had been misled by _some_ traditions; therefore they
would henceforth recognise _no_ traditions.  The word of God had hitherto
been withheld from them: therefore now that they were able to possess it,
they would handle it as freely as they pleased.  The priests had
domineered over them: henceforth they would have no priests.  Sacrifices
had been offered amiss; they therefore abhorred all sacrifices!  Such
were the feelings with which our Reformers had at once to deal.  Should
it be a matter of much surprise or reprehension that they dealt very
indulgently with them, that they re-cast the service which was objected
to as “so like the mass,” that they dealt expressions which were
injuriously misunderstood, that individual Bishops ordered the removal of
the altar lights, that the celebrant was required to wear a surplice
only?  Recollect: it was a time of violent re-action; moderation was
interpreted as “compromise;” names, ceremonies, and vestments represented
to Protestant minds not the things to which they really belonged, but the
abuses which had so long been associated with them.  In vain was it
argued that the abuse does not take away the use.  In vain was it
protested that the Book of Common Prayer, as it stood, contained nothing
that was contrary to the word of God or to the teaching of the primitive
Church.  In vain was it maintained that the Christian Church has and must
have an altar, a priesthood, a continual sacrifice to offer; that, while
it is most true that Christ’s _one_ sacrifice was _once_ offered for
ever, and cannot be repeated, and that He is such a priest as knows no
equal, no successor, no partner, as alone in fact answers to the name of
priest; still, as the Jewish Church had its _prophetic_ memorials of His
sacrifice—in its slaying and offering of bulls, and goats, and lambs—and
its priesthood representing in the various acts of its office what Christ
would do—so have we, and by His own command, a _historical_ memorial of
His sacrifice: “This do in remembrance of me.”  “As oft as ye eat this
bread and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord’s death till He
come”—and must have a so-called priesthood, performing sacerdotal acts as
His representatives.  In vain I say was all this urged.  Doubtless many
of the dissentients would have readily admitted much of it if they had
calmly considered it, if they could have believed that a _memorial_
sacrifice and a _representative_ priesthood were what the Reformers
claimed to retain.  But they could not be persuaded to listen; they could
not calm themselves sufficiently to listen; the spirit burned within them
to root out and destroy popery; and every theological term, every
religious ceremony, every ornament or vestment that had been used by
papists, was regarded as of the very essence of popery itself!  I believe
that the reformers were justified in making temporary concession to this
state of feeling, particularly in modifying ritual and ornament, which
could only be useful so long as they were edifying, which were in fact
doing harm to the Church’s cause and to individual souls while they were
taken as representing and recommending the very things which had been
repudiated.  They doubtless justified themselves by considering that
their second Prayer Book still contained the doctrines which the
offending rites and vestments were meant to adorn; they hoped that men
might come to understand and hold those doctrines when their prejudices
were disarmed; at any rate they feared, lest, by a stubborn maintenance
or violent enforcement at that critical time of anything not really
essential, they should endanger the best interests of the Church; or even
provoke and perpetuate among us a mere Protestant reformation.  It seemed
well then that they should make such concessions as the second Prayer
Book of Edward VI contained.  You know what followed; how within a year
popery was established under Queen Mary, and how both Churchmen and
Protestants had to flee the land and seek a home among German or Swiss
reformers; or, if they remained, were savagely persecuted to the death.
It might have been expected that the fact of Churchmen being treated as
capital offenders against Rome would have disarmed the prejudices against
them and their ritual which had hitherto existed, or at least that common
misfortunes would have begotten common interests and sympathies and so
have led to a truer appreciation of one another.  This was not exactly
what resulted.  The Protestants retained and even strengthened their
prejudices: the Churchmen who had lived in exile among them first of all
fell in with their habits, their modes of worship, and their disuse of
all vestments—or the substitution for them of a black gown—and presently
they also contracted their prejudices.  Accordingly when, soon after the
accession of Queen Elizabeth, the old law about vestments was re-enacted,
it remained except in a few solitary cases a dead letter; men either
hated such things, or they were too indifferent to the way of performing
divine service to trouble themselves to wear them; or, if they had right
notions and right feelings about them, they were too poor to provide them
for themselves; and their parishioners did not care, perhaps objected, to
provide them.  I cannot but believe that it was the knowledge of this
fact—the adaptation of law to necessity—which led to the framing in 1603
of that Canon, (so often quoted of late) which requires parochial
ministers to wear the surplice only in their ministrations, but directs
that a cope shall be worn by the celebrant in cathedrals.  The
Convocation, it would seem to me, knowing how generally the vestments had
been destroyed, or rapaciously seized for the sake of the gold and
precious stones that adorned them, and how difficult it would be for the
clergy generally to provide them afresh, appointed—what had long been the
practice, and could in fact quote something like authority for itself in
the Royal advertisements—that as a _minimum_ of vestment in ordinary
churches a surplice should be worn, but in cathedrals, whose endowments
could provide it, the most costly and splendid of all vestments—the
cope—should be retained.  Surely it could never have been intended to
_insist_ that there should be a difference between the cathedrals and the
parish churches of the same communion; far less to forbid as
superstitious in the latter, what is positively enjoined in the former!
But if it were so, the Canons, though in their spirit a rule to the
Clergy and faithful laity, have no force by the law of this realm, and
moreover they were almost immediately followed by a revised Prayer Book,
which contains the rubric ordering all the ornaments which were in use in
the second year of Edward VI.  While at the very last revision of the
Prayer Book, nearly sixty years afterwards, when our Church was only just
lifting her head above the politico-religious revolution which had so
nearly overwhelmed her, when so many reasons cogently pressed her to
eliminate from her Book of Common Prayer all that was unnecessary, all
that was questionable, all that she did not use or intend to use; when
the Puritans put their finger on this very rubric, and required that it
should be left out—for if it were retained it might bring back copes,
albs and such like;—it was nevertheless deliberately determined that the
rubric, made by verbal alteration more explicit than it had been before,
should continue to be the written rule of our Church!  _And_, _brethren_,
_it is still the written rule_, _confirmed by Convocation_, _enjoined by
the Act of Uniformity_.

It is at length very generally being admitted that this is so; that the
ritualists have the written law on their side for much of their practice:
but then it is urged that precedent as to the observance of that law is
utterly wanting, that in fact there has been a general consent of bishops
and parochial clergy (for 300 years) that the law was not to be observed.
I have shown you my brethren why it could not be observed, why it had to
be repealed in Edward VI.’s time.  If you know anything of the Marian
persecution, and the bitter animosity against suspected Romanism which it
naturally begat; of Puritanical infatuation and its superstitious horror
at the sight of a surplice, its general disuse of the Holy Ordinance to
which “high-ritual” and glorious vestments peculiarly belong, its
perversity in wearing black, simply because others wore white, in fasting
(as on Christmas day) when others were feasting; if you know anything of
the worldliness, the apathy, the deadness to Evangelical truth, the utter
ignorance of it or utter indifference to it, which characterized the last
century and the early part of this—then you will surely be able to
explain to yourselves, why the Rubric in question has not been generally
observed, you will be surprised to find that any one has at any time
observed it.

I could easily show that it has been, here and there, in part observed,
almost to our own time; that it was designed by those who first inserted
it in the Prayer Book, by those who restored it, and by those who
deliberately confirmed and continued it, to be actually used, as soon as
circumstances would allow.  (Surely it is vain to argue on the other
side, in the face of the repeated discussions about it, and the
persistent maintenance of it; in the face, too, of the fact, that those,
by whom it was defended and preserved at the last revision, were among
the men who have most distinctly taught the doctrines which it embodies!)
But were it otherwise; were they one and all, from first to last, in
their own private judgments and by consent among themselves, against its
actual use, or at any rate deliberately acquiescent in its disuse, are
_we_ to be bound by their personal tastes and their private judgments, so
as to yield up what at least they have preserved and solemnly handed on
to us, what we have seen to have such full Scriptural sanction, so to
harmonize with the dictates of true Catholic devotion, so to express _in
act_, as, thank God! our Liturgy does many times _in word_, that we
believe and confess that we have no way of access to God but through the
Veil which Christ has consecrated for us, even His own flesh; that He is
our only Sacrifice and the only sustaining Food of our souls; that He
condescends ever to plead for us that Sacrifice and to give to us that
Food; that on the altar He makes for us, by the hands of His
representative, the Memorial of that Sacrifice and by the same hands
gives us of the heavenly Food—He Himself Priest and Victim both?  This is
the great, the glorious, the soul-thrilling truth which “high ritual” is
intended to picture to the eye, and so to bring home to the mind and
heart; nor only nor chiefly this, but rather to express it in worship,—in
intelligent, open, adoring, thanksgiving, splendid worship, to the Lamb
that was slain, that sitteth upon the Throne!

If, my brethren, we believe this to be the rationale of such
“high-ritual” as our Church by rubric or service sanctions, then how can
we be patient under its non-observance, unless we feel ourselves to be
hampered, like our ancestors, by surrounding prejudices and perversities?

Now of course there are prejudices and perversities still existing and
many of them.  There are men who for the love of opposition resist and
cry down ritualists.  There are others, who in their inmost soul are
smitten with a great fear, lest they should be beguiled of their reward
in Christ, and turned into formalists and idolaters!  It was to be
expected that each of these classes would strenuously oppose itself to
the ritual movement and even that, though they really have little in
common, they would readily make common cause against ritualists.  And
were it not so, did neither of them show any outward sign of resistance,
misconception, dislike, distrust or contempt; yet the righteous dread of
causing weak brethren to offend, of shaking their confidence in those who
should be their spiritual guides, of alienating their affections from
their Church and their Prayer Book and of driving them into schism, would
make all wise and loving reformers very cautious and slow to introduce
even the most desirable changes and to revive the most important
practices, very painstaking in removing prejudices and enlightening
ignorance, very patient to wait long, if need be, for what they
themselves so much appreciated and so eagerly desired.

Nevertheless it is easy to see that there has never been a time since the
Reformation when men have been so able as they are now to discriminate
between what is Catholic and what is Roman, when they could venture to
confess that they had made the discrimination, yes and to act upon it
without inevitably leading themselves or others back into the bondage
from which we have been delivered.  Wherever the experiment has been
fairly tried it has thoroughly succeeded: it is only those who have not
tried it who doubt of, or deny the hope of its success.

And as there never has been a time when the ritual movement could be so
easily effected, so has there never been a time when it was so loudly
called for as it is now; first, by so many of the worshippers, who have
come to appreciate beautiful churches, musical services, frequent
celebrations, devout ceremonies and symbolizing acts and ornaments,—and
so to crave the perfect development of the system to which these things
belong; next, by the circumstances around us, the bold denial—alas! that
it must be said even by ministers of the church—of the precious Sacrifice
and alone-availing Intercession of the Incarnate God, which this ritual
in its every part and phase asserts and exhibits; next, by the anxious
looking towards us of Eastern and Western Christians, yearning for the
re-union of Christendom, expecting that somehow the re-union is to be
brought about by us; yet hesitating to give themselves into our hands,
because they see not in us the due recognition of the Catholic doctrine
of the Eucharist, the due rendering of objective worship to God.

I have endeavoured my brethren in these sermons to set before you in the
very simplest way such a statement of the case as may disarm prejudices,
and predispose to right thoughts about ritual and earnest endeavours to
use it duly where it is offered you.

It remains to say a few words to those whom at the outset I called
“hurriers along;” to those who have gone with the movement without
considering whither it was carrying them, or what would be the effect on
others who are being left behind; to those who in their conformity to
“high-ritual” are rather indulging their taste, than exercising their
judgment, or are regarding as the _soul_ of worship, that which is but
the accessory, the expression, the body and clothing of worship.  As I
have warned you before, there are great and peculiar dangers inherent in
“high-ritual;” its abuse became a snare to the Jews and led them into
formalism and idolatry, even when they had inspired prophets and the very
audible voice of God to teach them; it became a like snare to our
forefathers, from which they escaped only by giving up the use as well as
the abuse; it is a snare now to millions of eastern and western
Christians; yes, and it is evidently a snare, a very dangerous snare to
many of yourselves.  Exaggerated in importance, regarded as an end
instead of a means, followed out into very minute detail,—its forms and
expressions unduly repeated and multiplied—it obscures the very truths
which it was meant to exhibit; it distracts the attention which it should
fix; it begets formalism, it mocks God with a worship which is not
spiritual and true, and therefore is no worship at all; it leads its
votaries to a pitiable self-ostentation, which confirms in their
prejudices the anti-ritualists, which retards the restorers of ritual
(who fear to give looser reins to those who are already running wild),
yea and well-nigh frightens them, in their concern for souls, out of the
continued observance of what they have already restored!

My dear brethren, this is sober, necessary warning.  I pray you try to
receive it and to regulate your worship by it.  Take heed lest, being
cumbered about many things you neglect the one thing needful; lest,
following right observances in a wrong spirit you incur the Pharisees’
condemnation; lest, by an indiscriminate performance of all the bowings,
genuflections, and crossings invented in mediæval or modern times, you
destroy the emphatic teaching of pure and dignified Catholic ceremonial;
lest indulging your own fancies and carrying out your own ritual, in the
face of that which the responsible officers of the congregation by
precept and example enjoin, you offend grievously and culpably against
the apostolic precept: “Let all things be done decently and in order.”

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                            GLORY BE UNTO GOD.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

        C. W. REYNELL, PRINTER, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.



FOOTNOTES.


{13}  Reprinted, by permission, from ‘Hymns and other Poems,’ by W.
Bright, M.A. (Rivingtons).





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