18 PROGRESS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF CEREMONY.

monies. It is held by act of parliament; by an act of parliament prescribing the terms and conditions on which it is held, and the circumstances under which it is declared to be forfeited. With this then should a ceremonial correspond. It should not bear upon its brow the old mark of feudalism. It should not keep up forms of vassalage, of which the substance in most respects has passed away; or where any of it remains, remains only to show itself in a state of ceaseless warfare with what must become the predominant principles of our political constitution. There should be nothing whatever of such ceremonial that savours of servility, but a spirit of freedom diffused through the whole, breathing and brooding over it as the Spirit of God did upon the waters of chaos, to call forth the order, grandeur, and harmony of creation. Under the inspiration of such influences might words and forms be constructed into a ceremonial worthy of the august temple which has been properly chosen for its celebration; worthy of the occasion, the solemn investiture of an individual with the power of the supreme magistracy, to be exercised over millions and millions of human beings; and worthy of the parties now concerned in that ceremonial, the youthful and promising representative of a long line of kings, and the representatives of a great nation, to whose might and majesty all the regality that ever existed or can exist is but as a feather upon the wind.

LECTURE II.

HAVING thus endeavoured to trace the progress of religious ceremony, and, in tracing its progress, at the same time to analyse its nature, it now remains to apply these principles to the religious service incorporated with the recent solemnity of the coronation.

The first section is entitled "The Entrance into the Church." It commences with this anthem :

"I was glad when they said unto me, we will go into "the House of the Lord. For there is the Seat of Judg"ment, even the Seat of the House of David. O pray for "the peace of Jerusalem. They shall prosper that love "Thee. Peace be within thy walls, and Prosperity within thy Palaces.

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Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the "Holy Ghost:

"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall "be: world without end. Amen."

I do not object to this anthem, that it is couched in oriental phraseology, widely remote in its literal meaning from all existing circumstances. It has been good for the world that by means of the Scriptures something of oriental phraseology, of oriental imagination and feeling, has been grafted upon the cold roughness of our northern stock. It is not at all amiss that a religious language which is figurative, provided we perceive the meaning, the truth, the beauty of the imagery, should be habitually employed. This practice tends to sustain the common mind in a poetical condition, and to associate that condition with religious feeling and observance. Let Jordan's stream be the river of death; and heaven the "promised land" that lies beyond; and spiritual worship, when numbers join in homage that mounts from the

common heart of humanity to the common Father, be our Jerusalem Temple; and Christ, the pure and meek teacher of wisdom and the victim of persecution; let him be "our passover." Still, in using such phraseology, it is necessary that we do perceive an analogy; that we bear in mind that although oriental and figurative, it is still not to be inappropriate or unmeaning. I do not cavil here at the use of the phrase, "House of the Lord." Let that splendid edifice, so fraught with the symbols of eternal duration, so massive in its structure, and so light and graceful, and yet at the same time enduring in its ornaments; that building, containing the dust or the monuments of so many of our greatest men; men whose names make the glory of our nation, and of our nature: poets, statesmen, philosophers; that building, so rich in the multiplied influences of architecture, of statuary, of associations suggested by immediate impressions upon sense, and of those which derive their power from historical and antique recollections; let that building be, and if ecclesiastical dignitaries and those who construct services like this, so please, let it be called, the "House of the Lord;" few buildings raised by human hands have better deserved the glorious appellation; but then, let those who bestow the name, justify its appellation. Let it not, while called so, be made the seat of extortioners or a den of thieves. Let it be as the House of the Lord, open to his children, open to mankind, there to feel his influences, and to resort at will when they would subject their minds to the power of its manifold associations, and trace and worship God as they trace and worship him amid those works of nature in whose attributes edifices of such sublimity and magnificence seem to have most participation. It is the "House of the Lord;" or thus it would be, in the same sense as that in which the humblest barn where two or three meet together in the name of Christ, and the spirit of Christ, to offer their worship, is also a House of the Lord; in the same sense as the starry heavens are the dome of his house, the adornments of a

temple not made with hands, where his glory may be seen and his presence felt: in the same sense as the solitary wilderness is his house, where the wandering shepherd may rest his head upon a stone, as Jacob did of old, and dream of the ladder that ascends from earth to heaven, and on which angels of God pass and repass with their messages of beneficence; or as that in which the crowded city is the House of the Lord too, where all the multifarious beatings of the human heart, the countless combinations of human thought and feeling, passion and interest, are working out the designs of his Providence and are promoting his glory in the advancement of his rational creatures. In such a sense well may that edifice claim so dignified an appellation. But it is with less propriety, and with no such perception of truth or analogy, that we go on with the description of it as containing "the Seat of Judgment, even the Seat of the House of David." Our judicial tribunals are elsewhere, and far hence is the sepulchre which is now the only earthly seat of the House of David; although there may rest under its venerable shade the ashes of monarchs great as David, and of poets whose strains breathe a kindred inspiration with those which were accompanied on the Harp of Zion.

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The theological abuse of oriental phraseology consists in its being pursued, by mere verbal association, until all analogy and propriety are lost sight of: and such seems to be the case here; for, starting with the "House of the Lord," we are led onwards to a description that only belongs to the Jewish monarchy, and then are exhorted to pray for the peace of Jerusalem," and are promised prosperity if we love Jerusalem. And now what glimmering of sense is discernible? To speak literally, the peace of London and Westminster was that for which the parties concerned had much more reason to pray. What, literally or figuratively, had they to do with Jerusalem; with Jerusalem, now resting in the peace of slavery under the sway of the Turk; or the Jerusalem of old, whose temple was

reduced to dust and the dust scattered to the winds? But thus it is when language is used conventionally; when, however poetical in itself, for want of a perception of analogical truth, the soul of its poetry is evaporated; and from that which might be most beautiful and touching, we are led into a world of unreality, a tangled wilderness of words, an interminable waste of meaningless phraseology.

But if we pass with little objection the Jewish language of this anthem, what shall we say to the doxology, the sectarian doxology, by which it is concluded? What a combination is here! The anthem itself comes from times, language, feelings, that belong to the religion of old Judea. The doxology comes from the dim speculations of the middle ages of nominal Christianity. It is a relique of the race of saints that spent their lives in darkening the world by words without knowledge, until they resolved all religion into dogma, and all dogma into unintelligible mysteries. What an incongruity is presented in this combination! David and St. Athanasius, the persecuting word-monger of the dark ages and the sweet singer of Israel, side by side, harnessed to draw the triumphal chariot of a British coronation! This appendage sectarianizes the whole service. "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: As it was in the beginning"-it was NOT so in the beginning: the doxology has no claim to the remoteness of antiquity here assumed: no such phraseology was employed, no such thoughts were entertained, according to any traces in history, by those whose wisdom, whose speculations, whose emotions, and the wonders of whose lives, are recorded to us in the books of the Old Testament Scriptures. Its "beginning" was only a beginning in the season of mental darkness and degradation and that it "shall be" so "world without end" is a bolder prophecy than even episcopalian arrogance can challenge inspiration for. The absurdity of sectarian exclusiveness in a ceremony belonging to the British people is glaring. This is not national worship; this is