Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

minded to pray. It is of inestimable value to the poor, who cannot command leisure or retirement in their own wretched or noisy homes. And when supplemented with preaching, it supplies the necessary instruction to the understanding, and gives a healthy stimulus to the feelings. But its special function is to call in the imagination, to assist the will and the judgment in realizing the truths of religion, and to counteract the overwhelming influences of the visible and temporal aspect of human life. To suppose that there is any special virtue in prayer offered in a church, or in company with a congregation, which is withheld from the same prayer offered in solitude, is simply a superstition. It is equivalent to a denial of the actual efficacy of prayer itself, as a direct communion between ourselves and God.

The value of public prayer is this, that it surrounds the worshipper with a combination of external circumstances which impress his imagination with a sense of the greatness, the glory, and the reality of invisible things. Here, in this mysterious existence, we find ourselves so placed, that a perpetual antagonism is carried on between the convictions of our mind and our practical tendencies. We know the eternal existence of God, his universal presence, our relation to Him, and the transcendent importance of the habitual cultivation of a religious life.

We know all this, I say, with more or less degrees

of certainty. But at the same time, the whole course of our outward existence, our business, our pleasures, and every object that meets our eyes, distinctly tends to weaken the practical impression of these religious convictions, and to reduce our belief to a virtual nonentity. Our belief in God and in the eternal life is thus incessantly paralyzed by the operation of the objects of our senses.

To counteract this fatal pressure is the grand work of well-devised public religious services. It is their office to banish for a while the sights and sounds of the temporal life, and to rouse the imaginative faculty to a vigorous realizing of the facts of the spiritual life. The mere act of praying in common with our fellow-men exercises a most powerful influence in this direction. A well-instructed religious man is perfectly well aware that the truth of his convictions as to God and eternity is not dependent upon the acquiescence of his neighbours in his belief. Nevertheless, the sharing in the devotions of his neighbours does practically affect the vividness of those convictions. He cannot help it. He can no more throw off the emotions which result from the hidden common humanity of all men, than he can get rid of his reasoning powers. There are, undoubtedly, many individual exceptions to the ordinary rule. There are persons of unusual powers of abstraction and delicate sensitiveness, to whom the presence of a congregation is rather a hindrance than an aid to communion with God. But with people in general, there can be little doubt that the

presence of fellow-worshippers is a positive aid to their imagination in realizing the momentous truths of personal religion.

But it is in the sights and sounds which meet the eye and the ear in all healthy forms of public worship that its effect upon the mind is most marked. Architectural splendour, soothing, inspiring music, dresses, and ceremonial of all kinds, all these combine to impress upon a congregation the validity of our belief in the unseen world. They come to the aid of the poor, stricken, struggling soul, as it seeks to keep up the fight with its own perverse, unspiritual stupidities, and with the distracting and demoralizing visible world around it. They help, if I may use a very familiar phrase, to give religious belief a fair chance in its competition with the passionate inward worldliness against which it struggles. This operation of external beauty upon the imagination is not, of course, the same thing as the exercise of devotion. But the help which it brings towards the exercise of devotion is in the highest degree important and real. It brings the soul, so to say, into an atmosphere in which it can breathe freely. It predisposes the thoughts to actual prayer. It produces a frame of mind in which faith can more easily pour itself out in hearty and intelligent aspirations towards the source of all spiritual life. To allege that all men ought to be independent of these externals in religion, is to assert that God ought to have made man otherwise than He has made him. It is a matter of fact that the exercise of devotion is not an easy thing, that the thoughts are fearfully distracted by outward objects, and that few people are gifted with powers of thought which can carry their thoughts triumphant over every obstacle. To complain of this, or to charge those who are thus affected with unspirituality, is about as reasonable as it would be to pretend that it is nothing but want of will which prevents a man from flying like a bird, or that it is a sign of unspirituality to be unable to master the differential calculus. And it is the defect of the prevailing theory of the Church services that in themselves they make little or no provision for thus influencing the thoughts of the individual worshipper. They are nothing, if not strictly congregational. If any person who is present does not take his own share in them, he is out of place. The position of a listener, or of those who wish to individualize their own devotions, is not contemplated. Every man and woman is expected to take as much share in the offering up of the actual prayers, as the officiating clergyman himself.

Is there, then, no alternative between futile attempts at thus "following" a lengthy congregational service throughout, and the abridgment of the formal services to such an extent as may bring them within the capacities of the uncultivated majority? Is it really desirable that the ordinary Sunday services, including a ser

mon, should be cut down to about half their present length? Is it not a real gain to the character to be subjected to distinct devotional influences for about the same time that religious people now spend in church on Sundays? The solution of the difficulty is surely to be found in the abridgment of the purely congregational elements of the services, in the development of the musical and other æsthetic elements of divine worship, and in encouraging a considerable liberty of individual devotion.

It is, as it appears to me, a most hopeless and unphilosophical task to attempt to force the devotions of rich and poor, old and young, alike into one rigid mould, to the extent that they are now forced by the Church system. If the services of the Church are to make their way into the hearts of the people, and if the standard of practical religion is to be much raised in the case of the respectable classes who now frequent our churches, that liberty of personal prayer must be introduced among them, which has been hitherto foreign to the Anglican system. I am well aware that the idea is novel, and that to many it will seem revolutionary. But I venture to maintain that it is based upon a sound view of the necessities of human nature; that it is by no means revolutionary; that it has no connection with any one dogmatic school; and that, moreover, it is precisely by the encouragement of this liberty of individual devotion that the Roman Church retains the allegiance of such vast numbers, in all countries, and of all classes. This is just that "elasticity" for which the Bishop of Manchester pleads, and without which the bare shortening of the prayers will produce only disappointing results.

por

What we want, then, is a considerable increase in the musical tion of the services, that increase being of a kind to be listened to, or simply designed to promote a serious and happy mood of feeling, to soothe and sustain the thoughts, to encourage private meditation and aspiration, and generally to calm and strengthen the mind without exciting or fatiguing it. For the same reason, all ceremonial which is not symbolical of objectionable dogmas is valuable, as practically occupying the attention of the lookers-on, suggesting devotional ideas, and, for the time, banishing the absorbing thoughts of secular life. Architectural and pictorial decoration, in like manner, on this view play an important part in the promotion of spiritual worship. They give the mind something to think about without exhausting it, and they act as a species of tonic for imparting vigour and vivacity to the thought when attempting strictly congregational or purely individual prayer. Services conducted on this principle are the very reverse of wearisome or painfully laborious. They ensure the advantages of united worship without destroying that liberty of personal devotion, which it is most important to develop

among people so much given to formal conventionalism as the members of the English Church.

It may seem strange, again, to point to the practices of the Scotch Presbyterians and English Nonconformists as illustrating the value of the principle I am advocating. Anything more utterly opposite than the Roman and the ultra-Protestant ideas of divine service could hardly be conceived, if we look only at the surface of things. And yet it is, in a certain measure, by acting on identically the same principle that the Roman, the Presbyterian, and the Nonconformist Churches have got hold of the masses of the people, to an extent in which hitherto the English Church has utterly failed to rival them. The practical effect of the Presbyterian and Nonconformist system of public worship is to confine within narrow limits the devotions in which the congregation takes a personal share. The long extempore prayers which form the staple of their services, cannot in. sober seriousness be regarded as congregational devotions. They must be listened to, and not employed as the instrument of direct communion with God. In order to use a prayer as one's own it is necessary to know beforehand the words that are about to be uttered by the officiating minister. Hence extemporaneous prayers are, in fact, what Archbishop Whately called them-oblique sermons. They are not the prayers of the congregation, nor are they professedly addressed to them like a speech or a sermon. But indirectly, obliquely, they act upon the thoughts and feelings of the listeners, who, in the case of the more rude and enthusiastic poor, often express their sympathy and approval by inarticulate sighs, or groans, or murmurs. It is in the hymns in which the Nonconformists so much delight, and the metrical psalms which are the cherished treasure of Scotch Presbyterianism, that the individual members of their congregations find their own personal expression of devotion. Here they have the words before them, the actual printed liturgy which they profess to denounce as Popish and prelatical. And thus they are enabled really to unite with one another in a common form of prayer.

And this is precisely, in its rough way, the counterpart of the effect of the Roman ceremonial and music upon the minds of the spectators and listeners. The Scotch and Nonconformist extempore prayers act upon the feelings of the audience. They suggest pious thoughts. They soothe, or elevate, or excite the emotions. The listeners are put into a devout frame of mind, which helps them really to pray when they open their psalm and hymn books for prayer and praise, correctly so called. Such is the influence of the pomp and the music of a Roman High Mass. It kindles the religious sentiment, touches the sensibilities, and assists those who are present to offer their private, individual prayers to God, in such

[blocks in formation]

forms as it may suit them best to employ. If it pleases them to take a distinct, intelligent share in the Latin prayers offered by the celebrating priest, or in the music sung by the choir, they can do so. But if, as is usually the case, they prefer their own silent devotions, they are at perfect liberty to follow the bent of their personal character. And the result is, that participation in the Roman and the Dissenting services is more eagerly sought for by the uncultivated and half-cultivated multitude, than are the stiff, unyielding, and strictly congregational services of the Church of England. former are also unquestionably less fatiguing to the mind.

The

The desire for giving free scope for the peculiarities of individual character is, in truth, at the root of all that fondness for extemporaneous praying in public which finds an outlet in "prayermeetings," and other similar eccentricities. Why should people, it is asked, want "prayer-meetings" when they meet in churches and chapels for the especial purpose of prayer? What is the extraordinary attractiveness of a "prayer-meeting" above that of an ordinary Sunday or weekly service? The source of the attractiveness is, I think, clear enough. In a "prayer-meeting" a good many people offer up extempore prayers. Natural instinct is too strong for traditional prejudice, and the very persons who vehemently protest that the offering up of extemporaneous devotions by a minister is the very beau ideal of Christian worship, are secretly conscious that these effusions are not congregational prayers at all. Accordingly, they have hit upon the singular device of meetings in which not one person, but several persons, offer up these same prayers. The rest of the audience, as it were, take their choice among all this variety of oblique " preaching. But at any rate some few are satisfied, and the idea of individual liberty in prayer is recognised. The Roman system goes upon another principle, though the use of extempore praying is by no means uncommon in Catholic "missions" and "retreats." That principle is to accord the fullest possible liberty of private devotion to each member of a congregation, whatever be the nature of the religious service at which he is present.

[ocr errors]

No shortening or other improvement of the services will, however, enable the Church to win her way into those quarters where she is still a stranger, without another and a kindred reformation. It is an old story, and one that has been continually urged, even by men of the most conservative temperament. Preaching, as an instrument for grasping the ignorant and irreligious intelligence of the country, is as yet employed in the Church of England with a feeble and hesitating hand. Complaints as to the average quality of the sermons of the clergy are, besides, so common, that people have almost ceased to regard them as tending to produce any effect upon a well-known and incurable evil.

« ElőzőTovább »