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‘O worship the Lord in the
beauty of holiness.' — Psalm xcvi. 9.
I HAVE no scruple, honoured
as I have been by the invitation of the Committee which has cared for the
restoration of this venerable Cathedral Church, to preach to you this
evening,—I have no scruple in turning aside from the ordinary range of the
topics which form, and fitly form, the burden of the faithful preacher’s
message, to think of matters, most worthy of occasional discussion in a
discourse to 3e spoken from the pulpit, which the very look of the •estored
and beautified sanctuary presses this evening jpon my mind and yours. With
the serious remembrance that the house of God in which we are met is a holy
as well as now a beautiful place: amid the thronging associations of the
ages through which, in the most diverse ways, Christian people who are gone
have here worshipped God: with the earnest prayer for the sensible presence
of that Blessed Spirit without whom no ritual, however ornate or however
simple, can be acceptable worship; I desire to lead you to think for a
little while of the point at which we stand in the National Church of this
country in the respect of form and order in the public worship of God :
doing this, as I trust, in a fashion which, not concealing my own strong
prepossessions and convictions, may tend to conciliate and not to offend
good Christian folk who think and feel quite differently: as indeed some few
of my most esteemed friends do.
No Scotchman who has lived to middle age can look round this choir; can
remark its decorous arrangements, so familiar to some of us elsewhere though
so rare here can think of the type of worship (varied, indeed, only in
non-essential details) which has been adopted since the re-opening of the
cleansed and beautified structure, now retrieved from the disgrace of
squalor and gloom that had come through years of neglect and ignorance:
without feeling, as truly we are made to feel in many other ways and places,
what a change has passed and is passing on the Scottish mind in the regard
of Externals in the public service of God. The day was, wherein a confused
but firmly-held belief prevailed, that the inspired declaration that God is
to be worshipped in spirit and in truth was a declaration on the side of a
severe simplicity in worship: I am sure you have heard the ever-memorable
saying of our Blessed Redeemer quoted in that sense. Now, we know better. We
know (a glance might always have shown it) that the famous text simply says
that worship must be sincere and hearty; but adds not one syllable as to
what kind of worship is likeliest to be so. Under the sublime vault of
Westminster: amid the glories and memories of Canterbury: in the
inexpressible loveliness of Wells with its environment of deep southern
green and the enchantment of Glastonbury and Avalon; that text might be
preached from in as good faith as in the homeliest Scotch country church
amid its great trees and green graves this June. Dear to us, through the
remembrances of our fathers and mothers gone, — through the whispering
memories, now in these careworn days when we are wearying in the pilgrimage,
of bright summer Sundays when we went to church as little children, and
watched, the long sermon through, the swaying branches through the opened
windows with little brothers and sisters lost in the growth of years: dear
to our Scotch hearts may be the humble sanctuary with its hearty psalms, as
perhaps no grand cathedral that appeals to the calm aesthetic appreciation
of after-life can ever be. But we will not, ignorantly and insolently,
presume to say that our way is absolutely, and before God, the better way.
It is the better for us, because it suits us and has grown dear to us: That
which suits others is the better for them. And we believe, and are sure,
that amid what surroundings soever, gorgeous or severe, man heartily
worships God through His Son by His Spirit, with that worship God is
well-pleased.
Whoever is moderately read in the history of the Mediaeval Church in
Scotland will never wonder that the Reformation from it should have been
decisive, and should have gone far. The pre-Reformation Church was so
utterly corrupt through and through; it was so bitterly and infamously bad,
both in its system and its personnel; that our Reformers thought they could
not get too far away from it; and Presbytery, both in government and
worship, was a vehement re-action against Popery. And though it has been
made most plain that it was not Knox and his fellow-labourers who ruined our
great churches; though that harm befell us through the parsimony and
dishonesty of those who shammed great reforming zeal that they might lay
hands on the Church's patrimony, which was the patrimony of the poor: though
our barn-like places of worship are such mainly to the shame of the
ancestors of some of those who now upbraid the Church of Scotland for her
bare sanctuaries, and sever themselves for reasons often contemptible and
always unpatriotic from the worship of the vast majority of their
countrymen; and though it has been made most certain, too, that not the
national Presbyterianism of the North, but the imported and alien Puritanism
of the South has to answer for that in our worship which these latter years
have been mending: yet, in practical fact, it is to be frankly admitted that
till within the memory of those who are hardly yet old, all attention to
outward detail in our worship—all external reverence— all regard to what may
without perversion of Scripture be called the visible beauty of holiness and
devotion—was looked at with disfavour. As too much form was admitted to be
bad; as resting in the form to the forgetfulness of the spirit was admitted
to be unchristian ; the tendency was to approach as nearly as might be to
having no form at all. Yet I will not fail to testify, from my own
experience, that an extreme, hard to defend in theory, did oftentimes in
practice work marvellously well. For, after all, the warmest lover of the
pointed arch, the storied window, the long-drawn aisle, will admit that the
grand thing about a church is the living congregation: and there are those
who know that in the ugliest building ever called a church even here,—still
the earnest multitude, the rude but soul-sent praise, the momently-adapted
prayer that was made for just that time and place and people, the
Gospel-sermon giving the whole Gospel to dying men who might never hear it
more, and spoken with the strange warmth so rigorously expected amid a
hard-headed and un* demonstrative race, in all other things so cool and
unimpassioned and little likely to be swept away by the display of feeling;
and then the seldom-coming communion with its earnestly marked deviations
from the order of common Sundays; the white-headed elders, truly ensamples
to the flock; the breathless silence as the sacred symbols passed from hand
to hand, the withered face of age and the fresh features of youth reverently
bowed down upon the Table, holy if there be such a thing in Christendom,
—the Saviour’s Presence, not in the hands but in the heart,—a Real Presence
if there be reality on this side of time,—calming with a wondrous calm,
lifting up the heart to a blessed elevation, high above cart and doubt and
sin and temptation as mid-day sun above summer sea;—I say before God there
are those who know that such things have made sinful souls, yet surely
pardoned and somewhat sanctified, feel as near heaven as they can ever feel
on earth. I recall, fondly and tenderly, even in this grand presence,—you
will pardon it in a son of the manse,— the Communion Sunday evenings of the
West when I was a boy: the great multitude gathered so decorously,—if ever
there was indecorum I never saw it, —under the blue dome that was stretched
out by no mortal architect,—under the setting sun of July: the air sweet
with the fragrance of the clover, borne in by the warm summer breeze: the
mossy headstones and the little swelling graves; and then the great psalm
rising up to Christ in strains never to be exceeded, at least to a Scottish
ear and heart, anywhere in all this world. Surely, surely, if ever there
were hearty and acceptable worship upon earth, you had it there!
You will believe that it is in no grudging spirit I admit the charm there
used to be about our old Scottish worship, specially amid rural scenes and
people : it never had to me that singular fascination amid the streets and
congregations of the city: and you will receive my testimony as given in the
simpler good faith for what I have said, when I now say that for better for
worse the Scottish nation has in great measure grown away from that old
worship with its homely pathos, and looks for other things. Not even in
Ayrshire will you now find the ancient tent-preaching; nor the gathering, at
the infrequent communion, of the Christian-folk and the Christian ministers
of half-a-dozen neighbouring parishes, as it used to be. And as a trimness
has overspread society, effacing the quaint characteristics and sharp
corners of old days, so has the desire grown strong for more decorous and
impressive places of worship than have heretofore been common; and for
greater propriety and dignity in the forms and arrangements of the worship
itself. There has gradually developed itself the conviction that it is not a
good reason for irreverently sitting down to sing God's praise, merely that
in so doing we are able to reflect that we are doing the opposite of what
has been done by most Christian people in most places at most times. I do
not waste time in trying to explain the rationale of the decided change in
taste and liking. It seems to be the rule of God's Providence, that if two
civilizations are set side by side, the more advanced civilization shall
leaven the less advanced: If two systems are set down close together, the
system implying the higher culture shall slowly but surely give tone to the
other: and surely as the Anglican ritual grows familiar to those brought up
in the Scotch, so surely, without any mere aping of ways markedly different
from our own, without any essential departure from our own type of common
worship, will be certain of the beautiful characteristics of that mellower
southern ceremonial commend themselves to us as suggestive of respects in
which onr worship may be made more reverent, orderly, and attractive to high
and low. The English training which many of us give our children has
familiarized no inconsiderable number of the youth of our National Church
with the Anglican ritual and liturgy at the most impressionable season of
their life: and modern facilities of travel have made all educated Scotch
men and women as well acquainted with that worship as with their own. Sure
as that comes to be, the two types will be compared: and unless we strive to
make our worship ever more reverent in its outward surroundings; our prayers
more prayerful and less sermonizing; our praise more worthy of the name of
God's praise; the comparison will be to our disadvantage. I put aside the
contemptible instinct of conformity to fashion: if that has withdrawn any
from the Church of their fathers, they never were worth keeping,—let them
go! But there is something at work that is far deeper and far more
respectable than that. There is a real deep craving—and who can condemn
it?—after a beauty of holiness, a solemnity of order and demeanour, which
have hitherto been, in many places, sadly lacking. And while it is
admitted,— no competent judge could help admitting it,—that our average
standard of preaching is markedly superior, in power, interest, and
thoroughness of workmanship, to the average standard of preaching in the
other National Church of Britain,—it is as sure as anything can be,—it is as
sure as the law of growth or of gravitation,—that as our congregations grow
in intelligence and culture,—as the distance between the congregation and
the preacher lessens, reaches zero, gets to be on the wrong side of the
account,— our congregations will be growingly impatient of being left
helplessly in the power of the preacher for the expression of their needs
and desires and sorrows and experiences in prayer. Do not fancy I am
pleading for an authorized liturgy; though I have heard the ablest, wisest,
and devoutest of our clergy do so: but I am pleading for a clergy mightily
lifted up in spirituality and learning and culture: and for prayers
diligently gathered from the Universal Church's rich stores of devout
thought and expression : coming of abundant study; and themselves the
outcome of many earnest prayers. Nor do I hold myself other than one of the
most loyal and devoted sons of the Church of my fathers, when I say that
worshipping at altars which are not hers (because in a country which is not
hers), I cannot but gather thoughts and suggestions to which (as I think and
am sure) my honoured fathers and brethren in the ministry might well give
heed. For who that has paced the echoing aisles of the sublime Minsters of
the South and reverently joined in a worship worthy of them : grown familiar
(as are most of us) with pealing organ and white-robed choristers,—with the
chanted psalm, and the melodious prayers with their all-but-inspired
felicity, beauty, and majesty: but has turned away with the lingering
thought, Might not the dear old Church, keeping still that Presbyterian
government which we believe to be founded on the Word of God and agreeable
thereto, and specially adapted to the independent, unsubservient,
unhierarchic Scottish race,—and keeping, too, in the main, the type of
worship which has grown familiar,—not innovating, but going back towards
what the fathers of our Church intended,— not breaking at all with old
traditions dear to the nation's heart,—yet gain and keep more of the beauty
of holiness in things outward: more of that reverence, seemliness, and
order, which befit the sinful human creature in the awful though kindly
presence of the beloved Redeemer who yet is God Almighty: which befit the
human worshipper whom the grateful overflowing heart within him impels to
offer to his Saviour his very utmost and best!
And thus desiring that worship were made more of: that praise and prayer be
emphasized, and not (as they have been) thrust as into a comer in what after
all is essentially the house of prayer: that the reading of God’s plain and
powerful Word had its due place (it has it now, but you know that for many a
year it had no place at all); we never dream of depreciating the preaching
of the Gospel,—of degrading from its own rightful dignity the sermon,—
proverbial indeed on irreverent lips and irreverent pages, but oftentimes
owned and blest of the Divine Spirit to convert and console. Least of all,
let me say it earnestly and solemnly, do we seek any deviation, the very
slightest or smallest, from the old doctrines of the Cross in whose faith
our fathers died. I stand here as one of many who, ever mindful of the vows
of our ordination day and ever loyal to them, to maintain the purity and
simplicity of the worship of this National Church, would yet seek, within
the liberty these vows permit us, to make our worship more worthy and
attractive than often heretofore : but with all that, quite content with our
old doctrinal standards; asking no change on these; believing as our fathers
believed, who were better men; and sure that if there be hard things in our
creeds, it is because they are in God’s Word too;—ay, and in the nature of
things, not to be escaped or evaded in this state of being. I should lament,
indeed, if the chanted psalm, and the grand Te Deum in whose use we are
drawn closer to Catholic Christendom,—if the knee bowed in prayer, and the
solemn hush when the parting blessing is over,—should ever become suspect
things through being associated with peculiar and exceptional doctrinal
teaching, with which they have absolutely no link at all.
Neither, in our modest endeavours after a more reverent and cultured ritual,
are there involved (what are called) sacerdotal or sacramental views. We
endeavour after that, because it is in itself a fit and seemly thing that
God's worship be surrounded by reasonable outward circumstances of dignity
and solemnity: because it is right to do all we can, within legitimate
limits, to make God's house and worship attractive: to make these such that
there shall be nothing about either to jar on the right mood of mind and
heart with which we should pray to wait upon them. We would not have it in
the power of even the most regardless to plead as excuse for absence from
church, that really the whole service when he last was there was an offence
against taste and feeling,—was so rude, and uninteresting, and unworthy of
what it claimed to be, that there was no inducement to go back again but
many reasons to stop away. We hold it a fit end,—only one among many fit
ends, some of them doubtless more vital,—that Christian congregations be
enabled to worship not in dreariness and squalor, but in all the beauty of
holiness: remembering, too, that the Christian Church did not begin at the
Reformation: that then it was only that she was purified from accretion of
human error; and that in all which was good and beautiful in the ancient
Church we as much as any have our part. But, having said so much, I am not
ashamed to add that I hold by our venerable standards, as in everything
else, so in their teaching as to Sacraments and Orders: and I venture to say
that such as go there for our Church's doctrine will find it anything but
low: will find our Church's claims are strong and explicit. The Sacraments
do not mean nothing. The Christian ministry has its authority and grace.
Would that Christian people and Christian ministers lived worthier of their
privileges and calling.
Some years since there was somewhat of an uneasy feeling in various
estimable quarters, that though the New Testament do not in any way declare
against even an ornate and stately worship,—far more ornate than any man
among us has ever dreamt of,—yet that at least the clergy of the National
Church were precluded from suggesting or adopting any change whatever by
their ordination vows. And charges of unfaithfulness to these were cast
abroad. I have even heard the word perjury applied with much zeal if with
small charity. Very little consideration of the terms and meaning of those
vows sufficed to show that they do not in any way apply to the improvements
desired; and no reasonable human being will now bring charges of
faithlessness to them. And when I think how many of our very best and
devoutest ministers and elders have in their churches that more dignified
ritual; when I think of the hearty West, the centre of so great a part of
the Church's energy and spirituality and wisdom, — where hardly is a new
place of worship opened that has not all you see here: when I remember that
my revered father, as faithful and worthy a minister as ever stood in
troubles by the Burning Bush, had in his church and left in it the organ and
all that comes with it: I say, Be my soul with such, here and hereafter! And
as for the ignorant and malignant accusations of broken vows and the
like,—still sometimes to be heard,—I fling them aside not with indignation
but with contempt.
Does it need to be said that no wise minister would thrust improvement in
ritual on an unwilling people; or that changes, however much for the better,
should not be pressed until the congregation is substantially unanimous in
desiring them ? Much as I enjoy and approve all I see here, strongly as I
hold it is all within the liberty the National Church permits to her
faithful sons, I never would urge these things upon those who in an
ill-informed conscientiousness object to them. If the rich window, with its
solemn light, and the long-drawn aisle; if the sacred organ, and the chanted
psalm, and the soul-uplifting anthem (which are such helps to some); be
hindrances to the devotion of the flock, in God's name let them be! But
where an enlightened and cultured taste demands all these, and more; and
where patient tact has borne with opposition till it has melted away; let us
be thankful that the law and usage of the Church are now so read as to
suffer us to have them and enjoy them.
And in all this there is no going down to a lower level of spiritual
discernment and life. We are merely opening our eyes to facts in human
nature. There is no looking back to Sodom; there is simply the exercise of
common sense. Why should we go and deliberately set ourselves to worship at
a disadvantage ? Is it not all quite right to hope and pray for pleasant
weather on the communion Sunday, that physical discomfort may not destroy or
abate the enjoyment of spiritual privilege? And to a multitude of men and
women, truly desirous to worship God, the graceless irreverence and ugliness
in too many places characteristic of our worship, are as grievous a
hindrance to devotion, are as jarringly destructive of the peaceful devotion
and calm of holy communion, as any physical discomfort or bodily pain.
Within my own knowledge, they have driven from the National Church those
whom she could ill spare. You may be angry with yourself that you are so
clogged and distracted by these miserable externalities: you may confess it
in your evening prayers as a sin: but unless you could get another nervous
system, you never will wholly rise above these influences while your soul
dwells in the flesh. Half-material as we are,—for it takes soul and body
together to make the human being both here and in the glorified
state,—profoundly affected in our spiritual experience by material
surroundings, often affecting us for the worse: whensoever we can make a
reprisal on the hostile territory,—and get material surroundings and
influences to calm the spirit and lift up the heart,—in God’s name let us
take that help and be thankful.
There is much more I had thought to say and should wish to say: but not the
least helpful rule of our better ritual is that which says that the sermon
shall be short. You know the purpose towards which the contributions of the
congregation are besought. All that you can be asked to give will be but a
drop in the stream towards the heavy cost of this fair and truthful
restoration: but it will be given with a willing mind. Nor do I fear that,
pleading for what I have pleaded for under this roof to-night, I have said
what would go against the grain with the strongest and perhaps the greatest
man who was used to preach here. The mighty Knox, with his hard words but
his true and kind heart, knew human nature better than to blame the plan to
rule it by yielding to it: to make the best of the weak and warped material
with which we have to deal. I am less clear that my sermon would have
pleased the bearer of another name indissolubly associated with this choir:
but for that I care not at all. It suffices, that the ancient Cathedral of
this beautiful and famous city has, at least in part, been made worthier of
surroundings all but unrivalled: that it can no longer be, as it used to be,
the byeword of the passing stranger: that it has been fitted to be, as we
may hope to see it, the home of lonely hearts, the shelter of devout hearts;
the place of daily worship, where, in the larger truth, ‘ rayer is wont to
be made!'
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