Chapter 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.