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tures, as a miraculous intervention" to save the church from the superstitious adherence to which men are inclined. "No such thing is to be found," he says, "in the Scriptures, as a catechism, or creed, or set articles of faith; nor do they supply us with a liturgy for ordinary public worship, or with forms of administering the sacraments, or for conferring holy orders; nor do they even give any precise directions as to these and other ecclesiastical matters; anything that at all corresponds to a rubric or set of canons. These things were supernaturally withheld, that churches in other ages might not be led to consider themselves bound to certain formularies, customs, rules of temporary appointment, but left to their own discretion in matters in which it seemed best to Divine wisdom that they should be so left. They would have exerted no influence on character. They would have had the form of godliness, but remained only as the corpse of a departed religion."

These are very good witnesses to the fact that the New Testament and the earliest churches had no liturgies.

Leaving the simplicity of apostolic worship, and passing through what may be called the legendary epoch of the history of Ritualism, we soon find the Christian world divided into. four great divisions, families, or classes. They had their respective liturgies. There was the Oriental liturgy, which prevailed from the Euphrates to the Hellespont, and thence to the southern extremity of Greece. Then the Alexandrian, which took in Egypt, Abyssinia, and the countries along the Mediterranean to the West. Then again the Roman liturgy, which prevailed throughout Italy and Sicily and a portion of Africa. And, finally, the Gallican, which was used in Gaul and Spain.

The oldest of these seems to be the Oriental, that now used in the Greek church; although, doubtless before the schism, the East and the West were one in their worship.

The Romish liturgy, running back to the fifth century, and improved by Gregory the Great in the latter part of the sixth, is the one used in the Papal church now. It is the genial mother of daughters also, for it was from this that the service

book of the English church was mainly taken—the same which is used by the Episcopal church in this country to day. The Book of Common Prayer, in particular, was taken out of the Popish mass-book. The liturgy was a translation of the Romish manual. Some things were left out, to be sure; the practice of adoring, the wood of the cross, and the host, or sacramental bread; all masses, all prayers to saints, all blessings of inanimate things, bells, candles, fire, water, salt, etc., these were skipped. The mass was changed into the common service. But the living spirit of the thing remained. The sensuous power of the Romish service, the appeal to the senses which constitutes the strength of Pagan religions, underlay and pervaded the forms of Edward VI., as truly as those of Gregory I. or Gregory VII. Not that there was no good thing here; doubtless there was much that was pious and devotional. So there was in Greece so there is in Hindoostan. And yet, fact is better than theory; just in proportion to the overshadowing presence and imposing sway of a ritualized religion, has the spiritual nature of man gone down and a spiritual Christ disappeared.

Nor do we say that the liturgy is confined to the Greek, Romish, and Episcopal churches. There was the liturgy of John Knox, recommended to such Presbyterians as were not able to pray for themselves. The Moravians use a liturgy, and the Swedenborgians, and, to some extent, the Unitarians, and perhaps others.

These, however, are not rigid; they do not constitute the main feature and part of the service, as in churches characteristically termed liturgical. All worship or church service has some form or order; and yet they may not be called liturgic, as they are not stereotyped, or the staple of religion.

Beginning, then, with the fourth and fifth centuries, perhaps the third, possibly a germ of them in the second, we find that liturgies grew up gradually, as many other things grew, as prelacy grew, monasticism, celibacy, candles, and fish on Friday- out of the circumstances of the world and the principles of human nature. We regard a liturgy as the most natural

form of religion, into which man, not yet perfect, may gravitate. Why not? Adam and Eve made one of figleaves. Man is a creature of sense, as well as sin; and would not only seek to propitiate the offended Deity, but hide behind the virtue of the "oblation," and the ado of the way in which he makes it. Nothing but a supernatural religion and life will stay man up from this chicanery with his Maker. Look at all the heathen world, from the artistic charm of classic lands to the rude orgies of the Bushman - it is full of religions. They have their altars and their priests, their temples and their ceremonies. Could religion, as an objective institute, save men, or stay their degeneracy, or even keep the idea of the true God in the world, men had been better than they are; and there would have been less need of the revelation of God as a Spirit, and of a spiritual Christ as a Saviour. No verdict of history is more emphatic than that just in proportion as the moral and spiritual substance of religion slackens, or is wanting, the sensuous aspects of it multiply. Ceremonies increase, service is more complicated, worship is more scenic, imposing and mechanical. Now rituals begin, liturgies are brought out, rubrics come into vogue. There is more solicitude about the style of an altar-cloth than the grace of the heart; about the priest's robe than the spiritual raiment of holiness. Rosecolored prayer-books take the place of brokenness and contrition of heart; responses and antiphonals that of sighing in secret; saints' days, and genealogies and architectural effects predominate over self-denial and the edification of the word. Successions replace the spiritual lineage of the heart, and the fine arts the beauty of holiness. When this point is reached, the Holy Ghost lies in the tips of a bishop's fingers, and the church is the saviour of the world.

On the other hand, as the moral and spiritual life of the gospel thrives in the soul, the plethora of this external paraphernalia collapses; worship becomes more simple, less mechanical, artificial, sensuous, more spontaneous and spiritual. The corners of the street retire into the closet, the altar gives place to the heart. Rituals are curtailed, liturgies are aban

doned as cold stiff forms, parade is offensive, and the pomp and jingle of poor human nature sickens the sinner standing upon the verge of eternity! Now Christ is the Saviour, and the Holy Ghost his fire and inspiration. Beauty is purity; salvation, grace; and the church the sacramental host of God's elect. The liturgy now is the prepared rebound of the heart the imprints of Christ in the new tongue.

When we compare the simplicity of primitive worship, the severe and divine simplicity of the New Testament, with that growth of formalism which, after the apostolic spirit had essentially waned, sprang up and overshadowed the Middle Ages, and loads down a portion of nominal Christianity to-day, it is well, in our own minds, at least, to keep fresh the inquiry, Whence this great change, and what the primal causes in which the fact has its roots?

We think, first of all, we should accept the fact that it is the tendency of man to run to sense, to "observation." He loves show; he takes to fig-leaves. Matter, that which is palpable, and appeals to sensuous apprehension, has more power over him directly, than thoughts, sentiments, principles. Externals sway him, and he is prone to represent himself "of the earth, earthy." And it was to counteract the dominion of this, that the second Adam, the Lord from heaven-a living spirit— came. Nothing is older with the world than this truth: its proneness to rely upon "things seen;" to "walk by sight" instead of faith; and to substitute its own devices and disguise its sins instead of confessing them and forsaking them.

Next to this, it is submitted, rivalry operated as a strong agency in introducing liturgies into the worship of the Christian church. That must have been a bald and strange spectacle, which the worship of the primitive Christians presented to their pagan cotemporaries. The heathen worship was a public show. Its victims adorned with garlands, its incense and music, and lustral waters, its priests arrayed in gorgeous robes, its marble temples, and statues and pictures, and withal, its dramatic impressiveness, were suited rather to fascinate the senses than improve the heart, or expand the intel

lect. Even the Jewish ritual, in the days of its glory, bore this character pre-eminently. The Hebrew worshiper felt himself to be standing in a scene of extraordinary splendor.

Now in the presence of all this, the extreme simplicity of the Christian worship must have felt the contrast; and it were no violent supposition, especially as the apostolic days receded, to conclude that it felt the overshadowing disadvantage of inferiority in the eyes of men, very much as some Puritans feel sometimes, when they see white robes, and gilt prayerbooks and lenten herbs conspicuous, and damask cheeks withal. The Christians began to emulate the circumstance, the display, and thus to vie with their neighbors in the sensuous impressiveness of their service. "The addition of rites," says Mosheim," was designed to remove the opprobrium which the Jewish and pagan priests cast upon the Christians, on account of the simplicity of their worship, holding them in disparagement because they had no temples, altars, vestals, priests, or anything of that external pomp in which the vulgar are so prone to place the essence of religion." They felt, doubtless, very much as the Israelites did when they desired. a king that they might be as the other nations. Ambition, rivalry, the pride of display, have cut no small figure in the history of the church. They have brought the trappings of the court to the sacredness of the altar, and hidden the chaste beauty of Christ beneath the tawdry taste of the world!

Compromise is another sponsor for ritualism. Not only did Christianity propose to rival paganism, but to make peace with it. She said: "I will take your fruit, if you will take my name;" and so these were baptized into each other, and Christ and Belial were reconciled. Here was the great marriage of Christianity and the world the beginning of that harlotry whose mixed offspring remains with us to this day. But in the compromise, Christ, as usual, got the worst of it. the conversion of Constantine," says the author last quoted, "in the fourth century, when Christianity was taken under the protection of the State, this sinful conformity to the practice of paganism, increased to such a degree that the beauty

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