I 
 
 BV 10 .H85 1911 c.l 
 
 Hoyt, Arthur Stephen, 1851 
 
 1924. 
 Public worship for non- 
 
 liturQical churches 
 
 Cj^ 
 
 n 
 
V 
 
 
 PUBLIC WORSHIP 
 
 FOR NONLITURGICAL 
 
 CHURCHES 
 
 JAN 30 1912 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR S. HOYT, D. D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HOMILETICS AND SOCIOLOGY IN ' 
 AUBURN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE WORK OF PREACHING" 
 AND " THE PREACHER " 
 
 HODDER & STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1911, 
 By George H. Doran Company 
 
 Worship 
 
To 
 
 Charles Frederick Goss 
 Playmate^ Chum, Friend 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The book has not been made: it has grown, 
 and so it is sent forth in the hope of life. 
 
 It has grown from the writer's own need, in 
 the effort to seek guidance and inspiration in the 
 most important and difficult ministry to other 
 lives. 
 
 It has grown from the attempts to help young 
 men weigh the meaning of words and acts of 
 worship; to interpret aright the difficulty and 
 the dignity and the worth of their spiritual 
 leadership. 
 
 It has grown from an increasing sense of the 
 need of the age to deepen its devotional life, to 
 be cured of glibness and flippancy, to be taught 
 how to reverence and adore and praise. 
 
 There are many admirable books on the special 
 phrases or parts of worship; there are almost 
 none on worship as a whole, viewed in the light 
 of present conditions and with practical sug- 
 gestions for its conduct and development. 
 
 And so the book is sent forth in the hope that 
 it may serve the ministry of the non- litur- 
 gical churches, especially the young men who 
 stand upon the threshold of their work with such 
 trembling and yet with such praise. 
 
 Auburn, N. Y. 
 
 June, 1911 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 I. Worship in Religion and Life . 1 
 
 II. The Form of Worship .... 17 
 
 III. Doctrine and Worship .... 33 
 
 IV. Liturgical or Free Worship . . 49 
 
 V. Public Prayer 71 
 
 VI. The Preparation for Public 
 
 Prayer 93 
 
 VII. The Use of Scripture in Worship 105 
 
 VIII. The Worship of Sacred Song . . 119 
 
 IX. The Development of Free Wor- 
 ship 141 
 
 Public Worship 
 
LECTURE I 
 WORSHIP IN RELIGION AND LIFE 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 Reason for Worship 
 The fact of God. 
 The religious nature of man. 
 The social nature of man. 
 The example and teaching of Christ. 
 
 Neglect of Worship 
 The materialistic spirit. 
 The critical spirit. 
 The extreme individualism. 
 The broader conception of religion. 
 
 The Influence of Worship 
 The witness and proclamation of the Gospel. 
 Promotes and conserves the rehgious life. 
 Forms the higher life, personal and social. 
 
 Conclusion 
 The responsibility of the Ministry as leaders of 
 worship. 
 
WORSHIP IN RELIGION AND LIFE 
 
 The churches of the Reformed and Con- 
 gregational order in America have always exalted 
 the pulpit in the service of the house of God. 
 The weekly sermons have been the attraction 
 for the people, the strength and comfort of their 
 lives. The church buildings have been con- 
 structed for the purpose of public instruction, 
 the acoustic qualities governing the artistic form. 
 The training of the ministry has had the work 
 of preaching clearly and chiefly in view. The 
 lines of ministerial toil have converged upon the 
 pulpit. These churches have been noted among 
 their sister churches for an educated ministry 
 and for the attractiveness and efficiency of 
 their pulpit work. The training has not been 
 too severe and the sermons never too good. 
 But it is certainly a fair question to ask — 
 whether the non-liturgical churches, in mag- 
 nifying^the pulpit, have not too often minimized 
 the importance of worship. 
 3 
 
4 Public Worship 
 
 The saying of Pastor Harms of Germany that 
 "Preaching is only an accidental adjunct of 
 worship" has never been admitted by the non- 
 Episcopal churches of this country and is felt 
 by us to be hostile to spiritual life. Neither is 
 it a sound view to speak of worship as "the mere 
 concomitant of preaching," to use a phrase from 
 a recent writer on homiletics. 
 
 It is certainly important for us to have definite 
 views of the nature of worship, of its need and 
 use in the higher life of man. 
 
 The Reason for Worship. — We begin 
 with the fact of God. As for ourselves, 
 the world cannot be understood without God. 
 And human life cannot be understood without 
 God. We say with the author of "The Right 
 to Believe": "The best men through the ages 
 have been convinced that there was a God, or 
 have been profoundly unhappy because they 
 were not so convinced. The best moments of our 
 life are when we consider His existence the most 
 probable, and we have the witness of the higher 
 moments of others as well as of ourselves. 
 
 "Man as a whole is to be trusted. If a man 
 is just, can he not be trusted to live by his larger 
 faith, and not by a foolish or fragmentary one? 
 If the body of just men as a whole has united in 
 
Worship in Religion and Life 5 
 
 one great hope, that of itself puts it beyond the 
 range of the foolish or the irrational. The world 
 as a whole knows what it wants." (P. 54.) 
 
 The religious nature of man is the comple- 
 ment of the fact of God. Before the mystery 
 of the universe and of life — man has the sense 
 of wonder and awe — the beginnings of rever- 
 ence and adoration. It is deepened by the 
 sense of dependence upon forces beyond and 
 mightier than self. Man stands in humility 
 before a power he cannot attain or comprehend. 
 And when that power takes the conception of 
 the personal God, Creator, Ruler, Helper, and 
 the kinship between God and man is recognized, 
 reverence and humility inevitably grow into 
 communion and aspiration. 
 
 Worship rises from the very nature of man 
 as a religious being. It springs from the very 
 constitution of the human soul. It is not merely 
 a peculiar sensation or state of emotion, a non- 
 intellectual condition, but a frame of mind and 
 a direct act of the will. It is the expression of 
 personal fellowship with God. "Religion em- 
 braces the whole life of a man in personal 
 communion with God. Worship is the outer 
 expression of this life in some sacred and solemn 
 form." The religious nature of man is seen 
 in the history of worship. Men may grope 
 
6 Public Worship 
 
 in the twilight, they may wander ceaselessly, 
 but they cannot wholly forget the fact of the 
 vital relation to God. Nature may do all she 
 can to make her foster child forget the glories 
 he hath known. The earth may furnish all 
 things beautiful in their season, but "eternity 
 is in man's heart." And whether prompted 
 by rational knowledge and grateful love, or 
 superstitious and slavish fear, the impulse to 
 adoration rises almost universally. In igno-'V-^ 
 ranee of their own nature men may say "There 
 is no God," but moments of sharp pain or con- 
 test will bring out, like chemicals upon an old 
 palimpsest, the handwriting of God. The 
 primal, universal nature of man is finely ex- 
 pressed in the verse of Mrs. Browning, "The Cry 
 of the Human!" 
 
 "There is no God the foolish saith, 
 
 But none there is no sorrow. 
 And Nature oft the cry of faith 
 
 In bitter need will borrow; 
 Eyes which the preacher could not school. 
 
 By wayside graves are raised; 
 And Hps say, 'God be pitiful,' 
 
 Who ne'er said, 'God be praised.' " 
 
 Worship then is rational and inevitable; it 
 is born of the nature and needs of the human 
 soul. 
 
Worship in Religion and Life 7 
 
 Furthermore man is a social being and he 
 cannot be satisfied with the solitary worship of 
 God. Each life is found in relationships and is 
 trained and used by these social bonds. "A 
 man alone is no man." He is the member of a 
 family, a society, a community. For his highest 
 joys, he seeks fellowship. Charles Kingsley 
 tells of the demand for fellowship in the sense 
 of beauty. He stood before a window of the 
 Strand in London filled with birds from the 
 Brazilian forests, wondering at the prodigality 
 of God in thus creating millions of beautiful 
 creatures with no human eye to see. He in- 
 stinctively turned to share his joy of beauty 
 with another, and met the gaze of a grimy stoker 
 filled vfith like joy and wonder. It is true of 
 all the joys that come from the deep experiences 
 of the soul. Bunyan wished the very birds 
 and flowers to know of his new peace. 
 
 The deepest convictions and desires of men 
 seek united expression. Life seems larger, 
 freer, more sensitive and aspiring when con- 
 scious of social relations. Common hopes and 
 fears are strengthened and made dominant when 
 they find common choice. This is the law of 
 social worship. And so we have public and 
 social worship, false or true, the condition 
 expressed in the well-known words of Plutarch: 
 
8 Public Worship 
 
 "You will perchance light upon cities without 
 gates, without a theatre, and without a palace; 
 but you will find no city without a temple." 
 
 Christian worship springs from the same 
 ground, the religious and social nature of man. 
 Christianity elevates and sanctifies human wor- 
 ship. God's command has its reason in our 
 nature: Christ's invitation is the divine answer 
 to our need. 
 
 The divine law of worship written on the very 
 heart of man gets its strongest assertion and 
 authority in the example and teaching of Christ. 
 He fulfilled all law. The temple was His Father's 
 house. The supreme example of private prayer, 
 he failed not to observe the public worship of 
 His people, however formal and imperfect it 
 might be. He ever taught that spirit was more , 
 than form, but never that worship should be 
 formless. Fearless, independent, spiritual, He 
 laid emphasis upon two social rites of the King- 
 dom, baptism and the Lord's supper, the germs 
 of public. Christian worship. These public, 
 social forms gain increased authority from the 
 personal, spiritual character of His teaching. 
 So anxious does Christ seem that His friends 
 should maintain the simple form of social worship 
 that after His resurrection He made Himself 
 known in the breaking of bread and years after 
 
Worship in Religion and Life 9 
 
 gave special revelation and command to St. 
 Paul. The Apostolic Church knew the mind of 
 Christ as to worship. The instincts of faith, 
 the law of the new life, the demand upon the 
 new society, brought groups of Christians to- 
 gether at stated times for worship and instruction. 
 It was the need and law of the new religion. 
 "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in 
 all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one 
 another with psalms and hymns and spiritual 
 songs, singing with grace in your hearts unto 
 God." (Col. 3 : 16.) Public worship has marked 
 every form and age of the Christian Church 
 and has been held essential to the preservation 
 and growth of the religious life. 
 
 The Neglect of Public Worship. — Why 
 is public worship lightly considered or widely 
 neglected? It requires no prophet's eye to 
 see the fact. Multitudes, not irreligious, do 
 not feel the obligation and privilege of public 
 worship. And members of churches often hold 
 their vows lightly. 
 
 Let us acknowledge the defects of our public 
 worship: prayers that do not voice the deepest 
 needs of men and worthy conceptions of God, 
 praises that have the spirit of the concert hall 
 and not aspirations after God, sermons that 
 
10 Public Worship 
 
 fail of the sense and authority of message. If 
 our worship could be worthy, it would make a 
 stronger call to men and more would respond 
 to it. 
 
 But the spirit of our age, especially its Amer- 
 ican form, is not helpful to worship. 
 
 The passion for life, seen in work and play, is 
 the chief obstacle. Business and industry make 
 increasing inroads upon the Sunday and so 
 exhaust life that rest and recreation seem the 
 first demand of the day to the ignoring of the 
 religious nature. 
 
 The increased interest in the earthly life, the 
 rapidly multiplied means and ways of pleasure, 
 have given a fascination to sport and recreation 
 that for the time eclipses the glory of religion. 
 The extreme individualism of the American 
 spirit tends in the same way. Personal taste 
 and inclination ignore custom however good and 
 ancient. Men are narrow and provincial in 
 their individualism, looking only at one side of 
 life and forgetting the whole life, and not able 
 to rise out of themselves into the social good. 
 
 Then a smaller number are affected by the 
 critical spirit that questions religious claims 
 and, so, forms of worship. In older lands there 
 are positivists who believe in maintaining the 
 Church as the support of the State. But in 
 
Worship in Religion and Life 11 
 
 the democratic society of America, the question- 
 ing minds will make feeble and fickle contribution 
 to worship. The offices of religion present diffi- 
 culties that will only be met by a genuine faith. 
 There is a far more subtle and pervasive foe 
 to regular worship in the broadening conception 
 of religion. It has a noble side and it makes a 
 strong appeal to people of feeling and imagina- 
 tion. I shall let another express it: "When Charles 
 Kingsley uttered that most virile and suggestive 
 sentence, 'Worship is a life, not a ceremony,' 
 he conceived of worship as a permanent state 
 of consciousness. Such does it become to the 
 soul thoroughly alive unto God; a life, not a 
 ceremony. The operations of the God ward 
 sense cannot in such a life be limited to the pre- 
 scribed functions of certain days and of certain 
 places. Love, casting out fear, beholds God in 
 the face of Christ, glorifying all life, and co- 
 ordinating in the unity of the spirit and in the 
 bond of peace all ties, places, duties, and rela- 
 tionships. The knowledge of redemption sheds 
 upon life an almost eucharistic gladness. Prayer 
 verges toward companionship, and the humble 
 things that grow by the wayside gleam with 
 the unconsuming fire of new and nobler mean- 
 ings. Worship becomes a permanent state of 
 consciousness." ("Worship,'* p. 5.) 
 
12 Public Worship 
 
 No doubt an increasing number of lives realize 
 this. The description of the New Jerusalem 
 reads, "And there shall be no temple there." And 
 lives may reach that point of vision and feeling 
 where they do not seem to need the imperfect 
 forms of the Church. But even such lives can 
 never get beyond the social bond, the need of 
 their fellows. And any conception or attain- 
 ment of life may be questioned that rises superior 
 to the common need. The spiritual life can 
 never be a "lordly pleasure house" for the soul's 
 satisfaction. And practically it is found that 
 where men make the spiritualizing of all life 
 as their reason for ignoring the sacredness of the 
 Sabbath and the obligation of public worship, 
 they are really the successors of the idolaters 
 satirized by Isaiah. They use life to satisfy 
 their earthly wants and tastes, they cook their 
 food and warm their bodies, and the small re- 
 mainder they devote to religion. 
 
 "That worship may be a life, not a mere 
 ceremony, does not invalidate the thought of 
 times when the individual consciousness is moved 
 to seek formal and concrete expression of its 
 emotions toward God. In this worship and love 
 are alike. Love may be a life, involving the 
 entirety of a man's being, and sweeping like a 
 tide *too full for sound or foam' beneath all his 
 
Worship in Religion and Life 13 
 
 thoughts; but love has its times of demonstration, 
 its resistless moments of the heart's outpouring, 
 its sacramental hours and deeds wherein the 
 inward passion fulfils itself in outward and 
 visible signs. The heart of Christ was a shrine 
 of perpetual worship. Yet Christ knew and 
 obeyed that psychic law which accentuates the 
 devout life with occasions of formal and concrete 
 expression. Therefore we speak of worship as 
 the expression of the devout life, when in the 
 solitude of the closet, or in the companionable 
 loneliness of Nature, or at the family altar, or 
 in the house of prayer, the heart which believes 
 that God is, and that He is the rewarder of them 
 that diligently seek Him, pours itself forth before 
 Him with the consent of the will and the eagerness 
 of the affections." ("Worship," p. 6.) 
 
 The Influence of Worship. — Public wor- 
 ship is the witness of the Church to the truth 
 of Christianity. Christ said of the Sacra- 
 ment of His table, "As oft as ye eat this 
 bread and drink this cup ye do show the Lord's 
 death till He come." It is the most simple and 
 eloquent witness to the entire truth of the 
 Gospel. Every church spire that points heaven- 
 ward, every bell that calls to prayer, every lifting 
 of hands of imperfect faith, is a testimony to the 
 
14 Public Worship 
 
 generation of the supreme fact of the religious 
 life and of the supreme revelation of Christ. 
 And in this time of transition, when the bonds 
 of social and religious habit are loosened by the 
 incoming of new peoples, new customs, new 
 ideas, it is all important that the Church hold 
 fast the testimony of Jesus. No matter how 
 large or small the congregations, public worship 
 should be maintained with consistent devotion. 
 
 This function of the Church is likewise con- 
 nected with the proclamation of the Gospel and 
 the extension of the Christian life. Gratefully 
 acknowledging all the new providential forms 
 by which truth and life are propagated, public 
 worship is the chief occasion and the generator 
 of the chief power. The body of believers met 
 for worship, the visible unity of faith, furnishes 
 the chosen atmosphere for the hearing and 
 receiving of the truth, and in this atmosphere 
 are formed the plans and quickened the spirit 
 that makes the Church a missionary force to all 
 the nations. 
 
 Public worship educates and conserves the 
 higher life of the individual and of society. 
 
 It keeps alive the thought of God. It cul- 
 tivates the spirit of reverence. It helps to 
 make character supreme over circumstances. It 
 tends to maintain the worth and dignity of the 
 
Worship in Religion and Life 15 
 
 individual life. In the practice of the presence 
 of God the artificial distinctions and barriers 
 of dress and taste and custom vanish, and man 
 stands revealed a living soul, and the relations to 
 God and to man are recognized and felt. Men 
 have gone forth from the conscious presence of 
 God subdued and purified in spirit, and they have 
 walked more humbly and they have loved mercy 
 more and dealt with truer principles of justice. 
 The worship of the Church sustains and inspires 
 the graces and forces of the spiritual life. 
 
 The place of worship in religion and in life 
 brings thought of our own leadership. Here 
 is the true priesthood of the ministry. We 
 should take off our shoes, for the place is holy 
 ground. We should walk with uncovered heads 
 in the presence of the living Lord. They that 
 handle sacred things should have pure hands. 
 They that have the vision of God and lead men 
 into its light must have pure hearts. A reverence 
 for God from a sincere and humble heart, a 
 love for men that shall see and feel their deepest 
 needs, an aspiration for life and form that shall 
 worship in the beauty of holiness — such must 
 be the men who lead the people in the highest 
 and holiest of all endeavour. 
 
LECTURE II 
 THE FORM OF WORSHIP 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 Principles of Worship. 
 Expressive of religious life. 
 Diversity of form. 
 Simplicity. 
 
 Methods of Worship. 
 Old Testament: 
 
 Joyousness, community, and splendour. 
 New Testament: 
 
 Simplicity and freedom; edification and order. 
 
 The New Testament Elements of Worship. 
 The reading of the Scriptures. 
 Preaching. 
 Prayer. 
 Singing. 
 The Creed. 
 The offering. 
 
 The Sacraments: Baptism and the Lord's Supper. 
 Special discussion of the offering and the Creed, 
 and the relation of the sermon and worship. 
 
 18 
 
II 
 
 THE FORM OF WORSHIP 
 
 Worship is essentially of the heart. It cannot 
 consist of mere outward form. It has two 
 elements or factors, the human and the divine. 
 We offer to God, we contemplate His character 
 and His providence, we love Him, aspire after 
 His perfections and vow to do His will. God 
 gives to us His truth. His forgiveness, the quicken- 
 ing and purifying power of His Spirit. 
 
 While worship is spiritual, not formal, the 
 spiritual worship of an assembly will naturally 
 assume an outward form. In this way unity 
 of thought, feeling, and purpose is secured, the 
 fullest expression of worship and the fullest 
 blessings to spiritual life. 
 
 Principles of Worship. — Are there any 
 simple and universal principles to govern the 
 form of worship .f^ 
 
 Forms of worship should be the truthful 
 expression of the religious life, worthy concep- 
 tions of God and sincere interpreters of religious 
 19 
 
20 Public Worship 
 
 experience; product of the spirit of man under the 
 light and power of the truth. The process is 
 vital, not mechanical, from within to the outer 
 life. It is what the soul demands to express 
 what God has done and can do for it. All the 
 Godward experiences of life may find voice. 
 "The Christian's worship is not merely the cry 
 of a perishing soul, but is also the rapturous 
 recognition of the Lord and Light of heaven 
 within his human reach. All pure affections, 
 emotions, sensibilities, are exercised in that ex- 
 perience and find expression in the acts and 
 words that try to utter it." The familiar words 
 of the poet Montgomery concerning prayer 
 truly voice the possible range of worship: 
 
 "Prayer is the simplest form of speech 
 That infant lips can try. 
 Prayer the sublimest strains that reach 
 The majesty on high." 
 
 If worship is to be the true voice of a people, 
 expressive of various natures and experiences, 
 it follows that forms of worship cannot always 
 he the same. Some diversity is inevitable as 
 there is diversity of experience and condition. 
 Temperament, training, experience, call for wide 
 variation within the limits of reverent form. 
 "It is not necessary," says the Augsburg Con- 
 fession, "that human traditions, rites, or cere- 
 
The Form of Worship 21 
 
 monies instituted by men should be alike every- 
 where." Living worship flourishes the best in the 
 atmosphere of freedom. 
 
 The nature of forms should be simple. Sim- 
 plicity is a relative term, but nothing should 
 be used that is not demanded by the nature of 
 God and the need of the soul. Whatever has 
 its source in love of display more than love of 
 truth is not in harmony with religion. A highly 
 articulated service will not harmonize with a 
 worshipful spirit. The form of worship must be 
 easily understood and bring quick and spontane- 
 ous response from the worshippers. It is a super- 
 ficial view of worship to lay too much stress 
 on the outward act. The soul is the important 
 matter. Historically, worship has lost in spirit- 
 uality as it has gained in elaborate form. 
 
 Methods of Worship. — The new his- 
 torical view of the Old Testament makes it 
 difficult to characterize as a whole the nature of 
 Jewish worship. It is a history of development, 
 and it is not always possible to tell whether the 
 changes are those of growth or decay. In the 
 preexilic period the worship was affected by 
 the corrupt thought and practice of the nature- 
 worship of neighbouring peoples. 
 
 Taught by the prophets and by the bitter 
 
22 Public Worship 
 
 experience of captivity the unity and holiness 
 of God, the worship grew more sacrificial and 
 formal after the exile, and Jerusalem and the 
 temple became the centre of the priestly system. 
 While the exile destroyed idolatrous worship 
 and strengthened the priestly code, it also gave 
 rise to the synagogue. The spirit of prayer grew 
 and the temple was pictured as the "house of 
 prayer." Songs became a part of congregational 
 worship and the Psalter the national hymn-book. 
 So there was a twofold development of worship.'^ 
 in the Jewish Church; the sacrificial system and 
 the stately priestly ceremonial, with the freer 
 and more spiritual congregational worship of 
 the synagogue. 
 
 Three characteristics mark the history as a 
 whole: joyousness, community, and splendour. 
 The joyous spirit of praise was always a note 
 of the public worship, from the joy of harvest 
 to the joy of forgiveness. "The mercy of 
 Jehovah is everlasting and His truth is to all 
 generations." Then the people as a social and 
 national unit expressed their life in worship. 
 The national capitol was the focus of religious 
 thought and expression and the synagogue was 
 the rallying point of the local community. And 
 worship had that formal splendour of rites and 
 place and persons that expressed its importance 
 
The Form of Worship 23 
 
 in the national life. The formal elements are 
 exalted. Truth had its dramatic representation 
 for the training of the race. The temple service, 
 the typical persons and rites, the mediating 
 priesthood, the significant vestments, the altars 
 and sacrifices, were all powerful appeals to the 
 senses, truth in bold object-lessons. 
 
 The New Testament makes a great change 
 in worship. Spiritual service takes the place 
 of the ceremonial. There is no sacerdotal idea 
 of the muiistry. We are ministers, not priests. 
 Not the temple ritual, but the synagogue, with 
 its simple and free worship, becomes the type 
 of the Christian Church. "There is in the New 
 Testament," says Jacob, "no trace of Christian 
 worshippers turning to the east in their prayers 
 or other parts of their service; though this prac- 
 tice appears at the beginning of the third century 
 and was probably begun much earlier. Neither is 
 the use of incense nor lamps nor candles, as sacred 
 or symbolic accompaniments in any Christian 
 ceremony, to be found in the Apostolic Age; nor 
 iocs it appear that Christian ministers then 
 wore any peculiar dress or official vestments 
 in any of their ministrations. All these came 
 in at a later period, and were derived from 
 Jewish or heathen practices, as the Church, 
 having lost the fulness and freshness of Apostolic 
 
24 Public Worship 
 
 truth, learned from such objectionable sources 
 to affect a more elaborate ceremonial and to 
 court an aesthetic display quite foreign to the 
 devout simplicity of the Apostolic Age." 
 :i-^ V ^^ cannot find in the New Testament any 
 
 definite instructions as to the form of worship 
 any more than we can as to the form of Church 
 organization. Certain facts as to worship and 
 life are there, but the inference is wholly un- 
 warrantable that these facts are laws to govern 
 the entire expression of the Church. Christ 
 gave the disciples a simple and brief prayer and 
 established the sacrament of His table and 
 commanded baptism as the initial act of the 
 new life, the norm it might be said of a liturgy; 
 and yet we have no evidence that He made even 
 these simple forms essential to correct worship. 
 He left the Church entirely free in the develop- 
 ment of its life and its forms of worship. 
 
 We have a right to say, however, that Christv 
 had no sympathy with mere form. He was a 
 reformer in worship as well as in life. A spirit- 
 ual service of God should supplant a priestly 
 and ceremonial. Both in doctrine and worship 
 He recurs to fundamental principles. While 
 He took part in the Temple services. He rec- 
 ognized their temporary character. With the 
 mechanical piety that consisted in the scrupulous 
 
The Form of Worship 25 
 
 observance of external rites — the tithing of 
 mint, anise, and cummin, the washing of pots 
 and cups, the arrangement of robes and tassels 
 and straps — Jesus had no sympathy. His cleans- 
 ing of the Temple is best interpreted as a sym- 
 bolic act, prophetic of the end of the sacrificial 
 system of worship. 
 
 Christ gave the single universal principle of 
 worship to the woman of Sychar: "God is a 
 spirit and they that worship Him must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth." That is clear 
 and far-reaching. We intuitively recognize its 
 simplicity and breadth. It shows the vanity 
 of all form that is not the outgrowth of spiritual 
 needs or the development of truth and life given 
 of God. And so simplicity and freedom are 
 noted in every glimpse of the New Testament 
 Church. There is no trace of the sacerdotal 
 idea or of prescribed forms. 
 
 What will best express the religious life, be 
 the worthy voice of our faith, add to the number 
 of true believers and strengthen them, in fact, 
 edification, seems to be the first law of early 
 worship. So Paul urges in his letters to the 
 Ephesians and to the Corinthians that all things 
 be done unto edification. It is the chief end of 
 congregational worship. 
 
 Worship must be free if it is sincere, but free- 
 
26 Public Worship 
 
 dom is not irregularity and fanatical confusion. 
 And so the Apostle urges that all things be done 
 decently and in order. Order seems the second 
 law of early worship. And under this principle 
 Paul condemned the wrong love and use of the 
 gift of tongues, and in the Church of Corinth at 
 that time the public speech of women. 
 
 The New Testament Elements of ^Vo^- 
 ship — As the embodiment of these simple 
 principles in the New Testament we have the 
 seven elements of worship; nowhere found to- 
 gether as a definite and prescribed form, but seen 
 in hints or glimpses of the early Church in nar- 
 rative or letter: 
 
 1 . The reading of the Scriptures. 
 
 2. The exposition of the Scripture; teaching or 
 
 preaching. 
 
 3. Prayer, holding a prominent place, both a use 
 
 of sacred and venerable forms, and free and 
 spontaneous in expression. 
 
 4. Singing; the peculiar expression of the de- 
 
 votional sentiment, the use of both old and 
 new hymns. 
 
 5. The Creed; the public confession of the faith 
 
 of Christians and the testimony to the es- 
 sential facts and truths of the new religion. 
 
 6. The offering; a practical expression of gratitude 
 
 to God for His great gift, and to men of the 
 new love that was to control human relations. 
 
The Form of Worship 27 
 
 7 , The Sacraments — two ; Baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper; baptism, the outer sign of the inward 
 change of hfe and the formal entrance into 
 the new Society; the Lord's Supper, with 
 the Agape, used at first with every service 
 of pubHc worship, and with no fixed ritual. 
 
 As the use of Scripture in worship, public 
 prayer, and sacred song will have separate 
 treatment, it is well here to have a further 
 word concerning other parts of New Testament 
 worship. 
 
 Giving is called a grace in the New Testament. 
 It is a particular mark and proof of Christian 
 love. The source of giving and the controlling 
 principle of it is found in Paul's account of the 
 offerings of the Churches of Macedonia: "First 
 they gave their own selves to the Lord, and to 
 us by the will of God." The Christian has a 
 master who is the Lord of life because Redeemer. 
 And the bond is love which is to control all 
 life. Watts has best expressed it in his great 
 communion hymn : 
 
 Were the whole realm of Nature mine \ 
 That were a present far too small; \ 
 Love so amazing, so divine, ) 
 
 V Demands my soul, my life, my all.'* 
 
 And this new principle of life found ready 
 and spontaneous expression in worship. The 
 giving of substance was a natural and necessary 
 
28 Public Worship 
 
 sacrifice of love. The suggestion at least is 
 found in Paul's first letter to the Corinthian 
 Church. "Upon the first day of the week let 
 each one of you lay by him in store, as he may 
 prosper." Such giving is to be systematic, pro- 
 portionate and on the Lord's day. It is a sign 
 that religion is life, that it is God's blessing that 
 maketh rich, that genuine faith must fulfil the 
 law of Christ in bearing the burdens of others, 
 and that gifts are necessary to maintain the 
 Church and its work in the world. The financial 
 side of the Church must be lifted out of the com- 
 mercial spirit into a spiritual service. It is 
 rightly and nobly a part of worship. Our gifts 
 are offerings to God, and should be sanctified by 
 prayer. 
 
 The Creed. — It is fitting that some united 
 expression of faith should be voiced by the 
 people. The tradition of the Apostles' Creed, 
 however uncertain, is in accordance with the 
 truth that "with the mouth confession is made 
 unto salvation." No doubt some statement of 
 faith was early a part of worship. The words 
 in First Timothy seem such a creed, "He who was 
 manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, 
 seen of angels, preached among the nations, 
 believed on in the world, received up in glory." 
 
The Form of Worship 29 
 
 Creeds may be divisive and polemical and tem- 
 porary. But faiths born of the heart, from the 
 rich experience of God's grace, are the fit ex- 
 pression of the worshipful spirit, and go beneath 
 passing fashion of mood and thought and take 
 hold of the unchanging verities of religion. 
 
 The Sermon. — The sermon is not something 
 separate, but is an important part of worship. 
 Luther's words are hardly too strong: "Where 
 the Word of God is not preached, it is better 
 neither to sing nor read, nor, for that matter, to 
 come together at all. A Christian ought to 
 know that on earth there is no greater sanctuary 
 than God's Word." 
 
 Every true sermon is the preparation of the 
 soul for worship. I cannot conceive of any 
 preaching worth the name that does not in some 
 way uncover the heavens and make God real, 
 or uncover life and make the soul real. If it 
 does either, it makes the hearer conscious of the 
 soul's kinship to God and gives the impulse of 
 adoration. The best preaching is in the highest 
 sense worshipful. The sermon aims at th« 
 instruction of the believer, at the fuller knowledge 
 and appropriation of the nature and purpose ai 
 God in Christ, and so to a more perfect worship. 
 
 The spirit of Christian worship is outreaching. 
 
30 Public Worship 
 
 Its horizon is not the Uttle company of beUevers, 
 but the larger vision of the divine compassion. 
 "Other sheep I have, not of this fold; them also 
 I must call that there may be one flock and one 
 shepherd." And every faithful proclamation 
 of the Word joins with the fervent prayer of the 
 Church for the coming of the Kingdom. 
 
 I think this should be said: that the purest 
 worship has been accompanied with the purest 
 teaching of the Scriptures. Surely no song of 
 praise, no word of thanksgiving has been more 
 acceptable to the Father than that raised in 
 the hills of Scotland, hiding places of the Cove- 
 nanters, or in the rude log meeting-houses of 
 the colonies, or from the groups in heathen 
 lands, everywhere gathered with the hunger for 
 the Word. And the spiritual eras of the Church 
 have been marked by the growing simplicity 
 and freedom of worship. 
 
 On the other h nd, the worship of the Church 
 has no little influence upon the sermon. It is 
 the best spiritual preparation for the preacher. 
 The effort to realize and express the manifold 
 wants of the people in public prayer should 
 make his heart tender, and fill it with a great 
 longing, and give to his teachings the very tone of 
 voice and manner, the directness and sympathy, 
 to make the word powerful. No formal and 
 
The Form of Worship 31 
 
 lifeless preaching from a man who fervently 
 worships! Many a preacher has felt the power 
 of sacred song to quicken the finer sensibilities 
 and start holy aspirations! 
 
 The praise of the Church may be inspiring: 
 God may be in it. It parts the heavy pall of 
 the senses, and the spirit life seems supreme. 
 One preaches better after such worship. Happy 
 the pastor who can always be borne to his sermon- 
 work by such a breath of God ! 
 
 And not less truly is worship a spiritual prepa- 
 ration for the hearer. All that makes men 
 conscious of spiritual nature and need, that 
 awakens longings for better things, that lifts 
 mind and heart out of the dead round of secular 
 interests and doings, is making the heart sen- 
 sitive to divine impressions. True prayer and 
 true praise will invariably have this effect. 
 The prayers and praises of the London Taber- 
 nacle or Plymouth Church were like a gentle 
 rain that made the soil soft for the divine seed. 
 You felt in the very presence of God while Mr. 
 Spurgeon prayed. And the volume of song 
 that swelled from thousands of voices made 
 you feel the glorious company of the redeemed, 
 and brought from your heart its tribute of grate- 
 ful, adoring praise. While you were praising, 
 the hunger of the Word was growing. "He 
 
32 Public Worship 
 
 looked upon music as the preacher's prime 
 minister," says Doctor Barrows of Henry Ward 
 Beecher, "inciting to emotion through the 
 imagination, through the taste, through the feel- 
 ing. He said of Zundel's handling of the organ, 
 " It has brought tears to my eyes a hundred times. 
 I have gone in jaded and unhearted, and have 
 been caught up by him and lifted so that I saw 
 the flash of the gates! I have been comforted, 
 I have been helped." And in following the 
 public words of adoration, thanksgiving, petition, 
 more than one heart has been led for the first 
 time in faith to adopt the Word as its own 
 expression. 
 
 Surely then it is right to suffer no separation 
 in thought or service between preaching and 
 worship: never to put apart what God has 
 joined. The sermon may be the centre of the 
 service of the Church, but while there is temple 
 and minister, the sermon can never say of the 
 song or Scripture or prayer, "I have no need 
 of thee." 
 
LECTURE III 
 DOCTRINE AND WORSHIP 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 The Simple Worship of the New Testament Developed 
 
 into Elaborate Forms. 
 
 Growth of the ascetic spirit. Efforts to attract the 
 pagan world. Growth of the hierarchy. Chris- 
 tianity a state religion, so imitating the splendour 
 of the court. The Lord's Supper as a sacrifice 
 the central act of worship. 
 
 The Worship of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Worship expanded into an imposing dramatic and 
 
 symbolic ritual. 
 The lights and shadows of the Church. 
 The triumph of the sacerdotal idea. 
 
 Worship Since the Reformation. 
 The principles of the Reformation. Luther*s 
 teaching as to worship. Difference between the 
 Lutheran and the Reformed churches. The litur- 
 gies of Calvin and Knox. 
 
 Later Movements in Worship. 
 Influence on worship, of the orthodoxy of the 
 seventeenth century. Pietism. The Rationalism 
 of the eighteenth century. The Methodist and 
 the Oxford Movements. The Puritan party and 
 its influence on the worship of the American 
 churches. 
 
 34 
 
Ill 
 
 DOCTRINE AND WORSHIP 
 
 The truth suggested, that worship is the 
 exponent of the thought and life of the Church, 
 and so the forms, if truthful, must change with 
 the changing forms of creeds and conduct, is 
 verified by the history of worship. 
 
 Take a single relation — doctrine and worship. 
 Worship exactly registers the growth of doctrine. / 
 
 What developed the simple worship of the New 
 Testament into the stately and splendid cere- 
 monials of the pre-Reformation times? 
 
 The simple character of worship in the Apostolic 
 Church was largely maintained, well into the 
 middle of the second century. The growth of 
 the ascetic spirit in the latter part of the second 
 century affected the simplicity of worship. 
 Separation from men and the effort to deny the 
 natural desires led to fasts and prayers and 
 vigils, and fixed the thought upon forms, and so, 
 ere long, multiplied the ceremonies of the 
 Church. And to this must be added the desire 
 to attract the heathen world by the increased 
 35 
 
36 Public Worship 
 
 impressiveness and splendour of worship, and so 
 the imitation of both Jewish and heathen forms. 
 
 The hierarchical tendencies of the fourth and 
 fifth centuries still further developed the formal- 
 ity of worship. Cyprian of Alexandria who at- 
 tempted "to set up a merely religious empire, 
 independent of human relationships and civil 
 laws," taught that bishops derived authority 
 not from the people but directly from God, that 
 they were the successors of the Apostles by 
 virtue of transmitted grace and so the ministry 
 became a sacerdotal class. 
 
 Under Constantine the Great, Christianity 
 became a state religion and partook of the pomp 
 and splendour of the state. Elaborate ritual 
 marked the service. Augustine complained that 
 the yoke once laid upon the Jews was more 
 supportable than that laid upon many Chris- 
 tians. And Mosheim writing of the period 
 declares that "there was little difference in 
 these times between the public worship of the 
 Christians and that of the Greeks and Romans." 
 
 The Lord's Supper became the chief feature, 
 as we learn from the Clementine liturgy, de- 
 veloped through the liturgy of Chrysostom into 
 the worship of the Greek Church. The Supper 
 was made a mystery and enveloped in great 
 ceremony. It was made the priestly oblation 
 
Doctrine and Worship 37 
 
 of the body and blood of Christ. The correlate 
 of the priestly idea is found in the sacrificial 
 idea. Worship was regarded as a sacrifice. It 
 was not so much the expression of spiritual fellow- 
 ship as a meritorious act. 
 
 So we have the Church a hierarchy, the min- 
 istry a priesthood, taking the natural expression 
 of elaborate worship, in which the Lord's Supper 
 as a sacrifice was the central act. 
 
 The Worship of the Middle Ages.— The 
 relation of doctrine to worship is easily 
 traced in the history of the Church since the 
 time of Constantine. Unevangelical doctrine 
 perverted spiritual worship. The centralizing 
 tendency culminated in Leo the Great, who 
 imposed a single liturgical form upon a large part 
 of Christendom. With the increase of the ma- 
 terial power and form of the Church, unworthy 
 men sought her offices, the sacred became not a 
 matter of spirit and life, but of churchly persons 
 and places and acts, and the unscriptural dis- 
 tinction between the sacred and the secular 
 was lodged in the popular thought. Religion^ 
 became an outward ceremony apart from the 
 character and the life. A people thus trained 
 had no hunger for the Word and the Church no 
 message to give, and the sermon became a small 
 
S8 Public Worship 
 
 incident of the service and at last generally 
 given up. The worship expanded into an im- 
 posing dramatic and symbolic ritual. 
 
 This is true of the Eastern Church, and there 
 has been little change and no progress in worship 
 since the days of Leo the Great. 
 
 The Western Ch rch witnessed a further 
 development of hierarchy and ritual. 
 
 The Church of the Middle Ages (600—1517) 
 is full of lights and shadows. The lights are 
 the missionary zeal that pushed its way into every 
 part of the known earth, the heroic efforts of 
 reform within the Church in such lives as Wyclif 
 and Huss, the romantic faith that drove the 
 multitudes to the Far East to rescue the holy 
 sepulchre, the lofty conceptions that took form 
 in cathedrals and madonnas, the music of great 
 souls that found their voice in ^'Dies Irce'^ and 
 "Stabat Mater'' and the "Celestial Country." 
 
 The shadows are in the worldly ecclesiasticism 
 that made the Church not the fellowship of 
 saints, but the outward organization, and the 
 priestly power that reduced John of England to a 
 papal vassal, and brought Henry IV of Germany 
 in penitential garb to Canossa. These centuries 
 saw the triumph of the sacerdotal idea. "Accord- 
 ing to this the priesthood is distinguished from 
 and raised above the laity in four particulars: 
 
Doctrine and Worship 39 
 
 (1) The priest mediates between God and the 
 people. (2) He has power to change the bread 
 and wine of the Sacrament into the body and 
 blood of Christ. (3) He offers the sacrifice of 
 the mass for the sins of the living and the dead. 
 (4) He has power to forgive sins.'* 
 
 The influence of such doctrine on worship is 
 very evident. It tends to take worship away, 
 from the people, and to make it wholly by the 
 priest. The subjective elements of worship are 
 no longer the praise and prayer and thanksgiving 
 of the people, but celebrations and pageants and 
 gifts. The Scriptures were practically with- 
 drawn from the people in favour of tradition. 
 No new translations were made as the area of 
 the Church was enlarged; new nations were 
 left without the Word of God in their own speech; 
 and the service of the Church was everywhere 
 held in a single and to most an unknown tongue. 
 Preaching was neglected. The mass in its 
 fundamental idea was an offering to God. Tran- 
 substantiation completed the sensuous worship. 
 The priest represented the people in worship, 
 and the people rendered divine honours to the 
 elements. 
 
 Worship Since the Reformation. — The 
 three principles of the Reformation are: (1) 
 
40 Public Worship 
 
 the authority of the Word of God; (2) justi- 
 fication by faith; (3) and the authority of con- 
 science. These principles had immediate effect 
 upon worship. The people were priests and 
 needed no worship done for them. Worship 
 became once more the expression of the people's 
 faith and life. The Bible was put in the ver- 
 nacular, and publicly interpreted to the people. 
 Religious feeling found voice in song, and praise 
 took its place again in the worship of the Church. 
 
 Luther taught that: (1) preaching and teaching 
 the divine Word is the centre of worship; (2) that 
 worship is not a meritorious act by which man 
 obtains the grace of God; (3) that forms of 
 worship must be adapted to times and circum- 
 stances, since uniformity of ceremonies is no 
 proper mark of the unity of the Church. 
 
 Luther did not wholly cut loose from former 
 associations of worship. He believed in vener- 
 able use; he loved the stately and beautiful 
 expressions of truth that had come down the 
 centuries. He took the Roman mass and 
 reformed whatever he thought interfered with 
 Scripture doctrine and kept the rest. And the 
 Lutheran Church, while holding to the freedom 
 of use and the non-essential character of forms, 
 has always been liturgical in its worship. 
 
 The Reformed churches have been somewhat 
 
Doctrine and Worship 41 
 
 different. The Lutheran has emphasized the' 
 objective elements in worship; the sacraments, 
 the creed, the united expression of the people. 
 The Reformed has put stress upon the subjective 
 elements, prayer and praise, and upon preaching. 
 Calvin, Zwingle, and others of the Reformed 
 churches were less conservative of ancient 
 usages; they were not renovators of the Romish 
 mass, but producers of new forms, going directly 
 to the New Testament simplicity. Calvin, 
 Zwingle, and Knox all composed liturgies, but 
 very simple in form. 
 
 CALVIN'S SERVICE 
 
 1. 
 
 Scripture lesson with Ten Commandments. 
 
 2. 
 
 Confession of sin. {Fixed.) 
 
 3. 
 
 Singing Psalm. 
 
 4. 
 
 Free prayer. 
 
 5. 
 
 Sermon. 
 
 6. 
 
 Prayer, or Lord's Prayer. 
 
 7. 
 
 Apostles' Creed. 
 
 8. 
 
 Benediction. Num. 6 : 23. 
 
 1. 
 
 Invocation. 
 
 2. 
 
 Apostles' Creed. 
 
 3. 
 
 Exhortation. 
 
 4. 
 
 Consecration of elements. Communion, 
 
 5. 
 
 Distribution — Psalm singing. 
 
 6. 
 
 Prayer of Thanksgiving. 
 
 7. 
 
 Nunc Dimittis. 
 
 8. 
 
 Benediction. 
 
42 Public Worship 
 
 KNOX'S SERVICE (1556) ADOPTED BY 
 THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1560 
 
 1. 
 
 Confession of sin. (Fixed.) 
 
 2. 
 
 Scripture lesson. 0. and N. T. 
 
 3. 
 
 Singing Psalm. 
 
 4. 
 
 Prayer for S. S. (Fixed.) 
 
 5. 
 
 Sermon. 
 
 6. 
 
 General prayer. Lord's Prayer and Apostles' 
 
 
 Creed. 
 
 7. 
 
 Singing Psalm. 
 
 8. 
 
 Benediction. 
 
 1. 
 
 Preface. 1 Cor. 11:23-30. 
 
 2. 
 
 Exhortation. 
 
 3. 
 
 Consecration of elements. 
 
 4. 
 
 Distribution. 
 
 5. 
 
 Prayer and Thanksgiving. 
 
 6. 
 
 Singing Psalm. 
 
 7. 
 
 Benediction. 
 
 The English Prayer-book. — The first 
 Prayer-book of Edward VI (1549) was an adapta- 
 tion of the Roman Missal used in the diocese 
 of Salisbury, known as the Sarum use. Receiv- 
 ing the criticism of Calvin, Bucer, and other 
 reformers for its unscriptural views, it was revised 
 in 1552 under the influence of Cranmer and 
 Latimer. It passed through later revisions 
 under Elizabeth, James I, and last Charles II, 
 1662. The American Prayer-book, taken from 
 
Doctrine and Worship 43 
 
 the English, has passed through two revisions, 
 the last within recent years. 
 
 Later Movements in AVorship. — The' 
 dead orthodoxy of the seventeenth century, 
 spending itself in creed discussions, led to cold 
 and formal worship. Then Pietism deepened 
 spiritual life, enriched the hymnology of the 
 Church, made prayer free, and restored practical 
 preaching. 
 
 The Rationalism of the eighteenth century had 
 for its counterpart sentimental and ethical 
 preaching, and the revival of liturgical forms. 
 
 The Methodist movement in the middle of the 
 century, beginning in the prayer band of Oxford 
 students, made for a free and simple and fervent 
 worship. The Oxford or Tractarian movement 
 (1833) was anti-liberal in state and religion, 
 marked by appetite for antiquity and d sire 
 for outward authority. It was not only a reac- 
 tion against the forces of social reform, philo- 
 sophic inquiry and Biblical criticism that were 
 demanding a new world; it was a creative con- 
 servatism, leading to a fresh organization of the 
 Church. We cannot doubt that the Oxford (/ 
 movement led to the deepening of the spiritual 
 life of the Church. 
 
 Its direct action upon worship was to magnify ^^ 
 
44 Public Worship 
 
 its importance; to increase all that belongs to 
 the visible form of the Church; and so to mul- 
 tiply forms and rites and vestments, and lead to 
 modern ritualism. 
 
 Indirectly it has been a more unquestioned 
 blessing. It has called universal attention to 
 the history of worship, compelling all churches 
 to consider its importance. It has developed'*^ 
 the spirit of reverence, and added nobility to 
 feeling, showing us how to be emotional without 
 being vulgar. It has led to the fine school of 
 modern English composers, that have so greatly 
 dignified and enriched our worship. And some 
 of our sweetest and strongest hymns have come 
 from the same source. Faber alone wrote one 
 hundred and fifty; many of them have the true 
 note of universality, the finest expressions of 
 certain states of the soul, as sweet trust, adoring 
 love, and expectant joy. 
 
 The Reformation produced in some quarters 
 an extreme reaction from formal worship. The 
 iconoclastic spirit that condemned all art in 
 the service of religion equally condemned beauty 
 in worship. 
 
 As we have found fixed liturgical forms were not 
 wholly discarded by the reformers. John Knox 
 used the Prayer-book of Edward VI. Richard 
 Baxter was not opposed to a liturgy if not 
 
Doctrine and Worship 45 
 
 too vigorously imposed; and the Presbyterian 
 Church of England and America barely escaped 
 adopting the Book of Common Prayer as finally 
 corrected under Charles II. 
 
 It was left for the extreme Puritan party id 
 protest against "human prescriptions and for- 
 malism in religious matters." Some of their 
 leaders went to prison for their opposition to 
 the Prayer-book. The ministers who in the 
 time of Elizabeth tried to lay the foundations 
 of Presbyterianism in England "desired a 
 simplified service of prayer, greater liberty of 
 preaching and prophesying, and exemption from 
 various usages characteristic of the old Roman 
 worship. To all such demands the queen was 
 inflexibly opposed. She thought the Refor- 
 mation had already gone too far, and dreaded 
 the growth of Puritanism as an element of dis- 
 turbance in the kingdom. Any variation from 
 the requirements of the act of uniformity, even 
 the slightest, was punished by fine and imprison- 
 ment. For neglecting the sign of the cross in 
 baptism, or the ring in the marriage service, 
 devout and laborious pastors were torn from 
 their families and flocks and left to pine for 
 years in filthy dungeons." ("Church Polity" 
 — Hopkins.) 
 
 The Puritan party largely influenced the 
 
46 Public Worship 
 
 history of our American worship. The early 
 New England churches tried to found their 
 polity and their worship on the New Testament, 
 and whatever they could not find there, they 
 termed "mere will worship." Cotton Mather 
 declares that the New England churches " have 
 no liturgy composed for them, much less imposed 
 upon them; our Saviour and His Apostles never 
 provided any Prayer-book but the Bible for 
 us." Our fathers brought to New England / 
 a version of the Psalter made by Ainsworth of 
 Amsterdam and this was sung without instru- 
 ments to a few tunes that were in use in the 
 English churches. The "Bay Psalm Book" 
 (1640), a rude versification of the Psalms, was 
 in use for a century and passed through seventy 
 editions. The great awakening in the eighteenth 
 century was attended with a new interest in 
 the worship of praise. Watts's " Psalm Book" 
 was introduced, singing schools were commenced, 
 and sacred music taught by competent teachers. 
 Church choirs were formed and the objections 
 to instruments were gradually overcome. After 
 the American Revolution, at the request of the 
 General Association of Connecticut and the 
 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, 
 President Timothy Dwight of Yale College 
 completed the work of Watts by versifying a 
 
Doctrine and Worship 47 
 
 few omitted Psalms, and adding a few original 
 hymns. ''I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord," marks 
 an era in our American church worship. 
 
 But the liturgical history of the American 
 churches is a meagre one. The Puritan worship 
 was simple and bare. As far as audible expres- 
 sion, the worship was done for the people as 
 fully as in the splendid rituals of the Catholic 
 Church. The choirs did the singing. The 
 minister alone had part in Scripture and prayer. 
 No '' Te Deums'' were sung. No confessions of 
 faith were uttered. To a lamentable extent 
 the people were shut out from active part in 
 the worship. The ideals of worship in Congre- 
 gational and Presbyterian Churches have been 
 largely a transmission from Puritan New England. 
 
 The simple and beautiful forms of the early 
 Reformed liturgies, such as Calvin's and Knox's, 
 were curtailed, robbed of their worshipful spirit 
 through the reaction due to Archbishop Laud's 
 attempt to force the English Prayer-book 
 upon Scotland. The Reformed churches passed 
 through the fire, and so they hated everything 
 that had the slightest savour of Romanism. 
 
 "If a man dislikes to use a liturgy and you 
 crop his ears and slit his nose to encourage 
 him, human nature is so constituted that he is 
 apt to grow more obstinate and to conceive a 
 
48 Public Worship 
 
 quite unreasonable prejudice against the book." 
 (Dr. John Watson.) 
 
 The time has come, however, when the 
 question of liturgical forms can be decided 
 not by traditional prejudices, but by candid 
 investigation. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 LITURGICAL OR FREE WORSHIP 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 The Demands for Liturgical Growth. 
 The religious use of the senses. The aesthetic 
 spirit. The movement toward church unity. 
 
 Recent Facts in Liturgical Growth. 
 The movement in the Reformed churches. 
 Individual experiments. The Church service socie- 
 ties of Scotland and America. 
 
 The Advantages of Liturgical Worship. 
 
 Uses the riches of past religious life. Cultivates 
 the sense of historic Christianity. Is a worthy 
 and attractive expression of worship. 
 
 The Disadvantages of Liturgical Worship. 
 Historic rather than present. Does not meet the 
 need of all natures. Tends to elaborate form 
 and the possible loss of spirituality. 
 
 50 
 
IV 
 LITURGICAL OR FREE WORSHIP 
 
 The habits of worship in the non-liturgical 
 churches of to-day are largely a transmission 
 from the Reformed churches of Europe and from 
 the fathers of New England. 
 
 We are not compelled to do as our fathers did, 
 if we can jfind a better way. The form given in 
 our Directory for worship must be tested solely 
 by its usefulness: it cannot claim special divine 
 authority. Each congregation is left free to 
 develop its own worship. 
 
 There is the conviction in many minds that 
 the plain and bald simplicity of the olden days, 
 still maintained in many churches, is lacking in 
 attractiveness, fails adequately to express the 
 religious need and sentiment of our age, and is 
 not in harmony with the majesty of God and 
 the glorious nature of His Kingdom. 
 
 The most vivid impressions are received 
 through the senses, it is urged, and there must 
 be a more sensible expression of the great facts 
 51 
 
52 Public Worship 
 
 of the spiritual life. It is hard for the best of 
 us to see the spiritual, and we need the help 
 of more devotional form. "Profound reverence 
 and realism such as no page of a book and no 
 passage in a sermon can ever evoke," testimony 
 of a Scotch Presbyterian minister concerning 
 the influence of the "Passion Play" upon visitors 
 of many lands and creeds, suggest the secret 
 of power of the Catholic worship over the people. 
 A distinguished English lawyer has made a plea 
 for the use of visible objects, as pictures and 
 statues, as an aid to faith. 
 
 The service of beauty in religion is the ground 
 for further argument. There has been a rapid 
 development of civilization, especially of the fine 
 arts and of the popular taste. There is no 
 stronger proof of this than our church buildings 
 and the love and care that go into their adorn- 
 ment. And the aesthetic growth will be felt in 
 worship. The people demand beauty, not as 
 the ruling, but as the serving element. The 
 highest beauty must have some kinship with 
 holiness. 
 
 And then a mighty movement is setting in 
 toward the expression of the unity of the Chris- 
 tian life. It is set in motion by God's spirit, 
 we must believe, the beginning of the answer 
 of the prayer of our Lord, "that they all may 
 
Liturgical or Free Worship 53 
 
 be one." It seeks the best of other churches 
 and ages; it seeks to flow in the channels of ven- 
 erable use. It would have some common and 
 beloved forms for the expression of the essential 
 oneness of religious life. It is sheerest folly to 
 raise against such sentiments a Protestant preju- 
 dice. Is it best to say to such Christians (and 
 there is a growing number of them), "You will 
 find what you wish in the liturgical churches." 
 They are not disloyal to their own communion. 
 They believe in its faith, its polity, its spirit, 
 and essentially in its worship; but they would 
 have the latter developed and enriched. In 
 the words of one who had thought long on this 
 subject: "Is there no way, in harmony with 
 its own history and spirit, by which the unlit- 
 urgical system of worship may supply its 
 deficiencies, enrich its barrenness, round out 
 and complete its simple ritual, give unity, fulness 
 and vitality to its public worship of God, not 
 in an sesthetic sense merely, or as lending out- 
 ward attractiveness, but as affording a true 
 medium to the spiritual devotion of the people? 
 In other words, the question is, whether in an 
 essentially unliturgical form of worship, the 
 elements of power, truth, and beauty, that a 
 liturgical form may possess, cannot be equally 
 secured, and the evils which are wrapped up 
 
54 Public Worship 
 
 in a prescribed form be, at the same time, 
 avoided?" (Hoppin.) 
 
 In an address before the Presbyterian Union 
 of Philadelphia in 1892, Mr. E. B. Comegys 
 uged the development and enrichment of our 
 worship. "The object of the church service is 
 prayer and praise, and the Presbyterian Church 
 will never accomplish her mission until along 
 with her well-equipped pastors, she carries a 
 people who express their devotions in well- 
 ordered prayer and praise. . . . There is 
 an unmistakable tendency toward liturgy in 
 all churches. We cannot shut our eyes to it, 
 we cannot prevent it. Let us meet it, and 
 provide for it, and control it by the enrich- 
 ment of our own services. What we want is 
 improvement in the dignity, the comfort, the 
 spirituality, of the devotional part of our 
 public services." 
 
 It can hardly be denied that the present 
 movement in many Protestant churches is 
 toward liturgical worship. However, certain facts 
 of modern life will tend to limit the tendency; 
 the practical spirit that tests every theory and 
 practice by its use, the missionary activity of 
 the Church, at home and abroad, incom- 
 patible with the undue emphasis upon form, and 
 the critical temper of the age that refuses 
 
Liturgical or Free Worship 55 
 
 to admit sacerdotal claims without the best his- 
 torical proof. 
 
 Notice the movement in the Reformed 
 churches, since the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, toward more fixed form in worship. 
 In 1855, Mr. Charles W. Baird, a minister of 
 our church, published "Eutaxia or Presbyterian 
 Liturgies,*' a book that awakened wide interest 
 in worship both in this country and in Great 
 Britain. To many of our people it was a sur- 
 prise to be told that the Reformed churches 
 were committed by their earliest and best tradi- 
 tions in favour of liturgical uses in public worship. 
 About the same time discussions were in progress 
 in the German Reformed churches advocating 
 a revival of the liturgical service of the Refor- 
 mation period, but modified to existing wants. 
 
 In 1857, Mr. Baird published "A Book of 
 Public Prayer," compiled from the formularies 
 prepared by the reformers. In 1855, St. Peter's 
 Church, Rochester, published its "Church Book," 
 prepared by Mr. Leonard W. Bacon, notable 
 chiefly for its use of the Psalms in responsive 
 reading. Experiments in greater dignity or 
 attractiveness or popular participation in wor- 
 ship rapidly followed by individual congre- 
 gations, but experiments without counsel or con- 
 cert and with no definite and intelligent ideal. 
 
56 Public Worship 
 
 The increasing number of them proved at 
 last the seriousness of the movement, and has 
 led to organization and concerted study and 
 enterprise. The Church Service Society of 
 Scotland, organized in 1865, has a membership 
 of more than five hundred ministers and has 
 published a "Book of Common Order" that 
 has already passed through six editions. A 
 similar society took form in the Free Church of 
 Scotland in 1891, that led to the issuing of the 
 most serviceable manual, " The New Directory for 
 Public Worship." The Church Service Society of 
 the Presbyterian Church of this country was 
 organized in 1895, to make inquiry as to the 
 present conduct of public worship, to study the 
 modes of worship in the different branches of the 
 church, and to do such work in the preparation 
 of forms of service in an orderly worship "as may 
 help to guard against the contrary evils of con- 
 fusion and ritualism, and promote reverence 
 and beauty in the worship of God in His Holy 
 House, unity and the spirit of common praise 
 and prayer among the people." It was no 
 doubt the influence of this society that led the 
 General Assembly to appoint a special com- 
 mittee on a book of worship, and to the official 
 approval of their work, "Common Worship," 
 published in 1906. 
 
Liturgical or Free Worship 57 
 
 Any question of worship resolves itself finally 
 into liturgy or free worship. 
 
 A liturgy in its simplest meaning, as some 
 fixed form of worship, is almost universal in the 
 Christian Church. The Westminster divines 
 in preparing an order of worship recognized the 
 liturgical idea. But this is not the common idea 
 of liturgy. It is the question between elaborate 
 and fixed worship or simple and free; especially 
 between a fixed form of prayer and free prayer. 
 We ought to be in the condition to examine the 
 question fairly and thoroughly by our reasons 
 and not by our prejudices. 
 
 The present tendencies in the Church and the 
 evident defects of our worship call upon us to 
 take some intelligent position, some earnest 
 action. Such position in regard to worship 
 can only be taken after a knowledge of historic 
 worship and the present spiritual life of the 
 Church. 
 
 What Are the Advantages of Liturgical 
 Worship? — It makes use of the riches of past 
 religious life, the collects and litanies and 
 hymns of the ages. The Psalms have been 
 the voice of the race in religious aspiration, 
 and other forms, the voice of single souls or 
 the slow accretion of ages, have in a lesser 
 
58 Public Worship 
 
 degree performed the same oflSce in worship. 
 For fifteen hundred years the Church has ex- 
 pressed her adoration of the Trinity in the ''Te 
 Deum Laudamus,'' teaching in all these ages with 
 almost unequalled majesty of expression the 
 truths of the Godhead, the Incarnation, the Atone- 
 ment, and the unity and triumph of the Church. 
 The Litany, at least one thousand years old, no 
 more belongs to the Church of England than the 
 Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed. "We 
 know of no human composition," said Dr. 
 Charles Hodge, "that can be compared with 
 it." We could far better spare some of the 
 treatises of the Institutes than Calvin's Con- 
 fession of sin beginning: "Almighty nd most 
 merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from 
 Thy ways like lost sheep." We could better 
 spare some whole works of the Fathers than 
 the prayer attributed to Chrysostom closing 
 with the words: "Fulfil now, O Lord, the 
 desires and petitions of Thy servants, as may be 
 most expedient for them: granting us in this 
 world the knowledge of Thy truth, and in the 
 world to come life everlasting. Amen." We 
 use the hymns of the ages; why should we not 
 use the forms that fittingly express the confession 
 and praise and adoration of the Church through 
 so many ages? 
 
Liturgical or Free Worship 59 
 
 A liturgy cultivates the sense of historic Chris- 
 tianityy connects us with the universal Church, 
 and corrects the evils of isolation and division. 
 
 How shall the little band of believers over which 
 you are the leader be made to feel the dignity 
 and glory of their position? How shall the 
 commonness and even pettiness of life be made 
 to sink before the possible grandeur of sonship? 
 It is by connecting this little company of wor- 
 shippers with the Church universal, making 
 them feel that they are the sentinels or pioneers 
 of a great host, making them feel that they are 
 connected with the unseen world and the great 
 army of saints, *'who from their labours rest." 
 
 Some stately memorial of the past subdues the 
 mind and puts us under the spell of the 
 
 " Dead but sceptred Kings 
 Who rule us from their urns." 
 
 The Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, the 
 Gloria in Excelsis, are the voices of the Uni- 
 versal Church and to the devout sense the wor- 
 shipper stands not simply in a little local church, 
 with its narrow walls, and its too narrow life, 
 but in a world-temple, and feels the touch of 
 hands long gone and hears the accent of voices 
 long-hushed. 
 
 Such forms are often majestic. They lift 
 up the soul. They give elevation of mind and 
 
60 Public Worship 
 
 heart in worship. They deal with essential 
 and universal truth and not accidental, and 
 so they purge the mind from narrowness, and 
 give strength to the longings for the unity of 
 the faith. They train in reverence, and in the 
 sense of kinship with other minds, they are the 
 educators of social worship. 
 
 A liturgy may always be a worthy expression 
 of worship. 
 
 It is a consensus of opinion and feeling; the 
 voice of the Church and not the voice of an 
 individual, and so it is more apt to be adequate 
 in the expression of truth. Some of the liturgies 
 of the Church have preserved the truth through 
 dark and perilous times. If the Reformed Church 
 of France had clearly expressed in liturgy the 
 Divinity of Christ, it is claimed by some that 
 unbelief had not so easily swept away the founda- 
 tions of so many of her churches. 
 
 Scriptural in doctrine, the liturgy has a dig- 
 nity and stateliness of style that suggests some- 
 thing of the majesty and glory of the Eternal 
 One. It is free from the commonplaces and 
 disconnected petitions and unholy familiarities 
 that sometimes mar extemporaneous prayer. It 
 is in keeping with the growing taste of thought- 
 ful religion. A cultivated heart is offended at 
 the irreverent use of the names of God, at the 
 
Liturgical or Free Worship 61 
 
 familiarity of speech in addressing God, hardly- 
 using the respect of an earthly court; at the 
 egotism with which the subjective states of the 
 preacher are rehearsed before the people for 
 their petitions; at the partial and narrow views 
 of 'the soul's need too often voiced in extem- 
 poraneous prayer. Such minds believe with 
 Coleridge that prayer is the highest and noblest 
 exercise of the human spirit, and that no single 
 mind out of its own state or knowledge can 
 adequately represent the hearts of a congre- 
 gation. Fitting forms must be the work of 
 groups of men and of ages of approved use, use 
 blessed of the Holy Spirit. At least, they say 
 that the personal views and inconsequent think- 
 ing and crude speech that sometimes go for 
 public prayer cannot represent us before God. 
 And the Church should be saved from such 
 misfortune. Whatever be the qualifications of 
 her ministers, her worship should be expressive 
 of her life and of her God. 
 
 We profess to believe in the restoration of 
 the whole man by Christianity. We must not 
 proscribe the sense of form and fitness. We 
 must consecrate all beauty of truth and speech 
 in the worship of God. Professor McFadyen in 
 his "Prayers of the Bible" makes the discrimi- 
 nating comparison between free and liturgical 
 
62 Public Worship 
 
 prayer. " In free prayer, not only the speaker's 
 education, but even his temperament and the 
 condition of his health, will affect the nature 
 of the prayers he offers. He will not always 
 be able to say the thing he would. He may 
 be dull or depressed, and this mood may be 
 reflected in his prayers; or — especially in 
 his earlier efforts — he may suffer from nervous- 
 ness or temporary loss of memory, and this may 
 easily disturb the devotional tempe if the 
 congregation. Public prayer is attended bj' 
 all the difficulties that beset public speech gener- 
 ally. Only men of great natural gift, wide 
 reading, and much experience, can address their 
 fellows extempore in language that is really 
 noble and graceful; and though, in the moment 
 of prayer, feeling may be exalted, and a man 
 may express a better and deeper self than he 
 can in the more critical atmosphere of a public 
 meeting, it does not follow that his exaltation 
 will exempt him from idiosyncrasies and errors 
 due to inexperience, temperament or the state 
 of his health. 
 
 "A liturgy affords an absolute safeguard in 
 cases of this kind. The speaker may be de- 
 pressed, but the prayer will not suffer; for it is 
 not so much he that prays as the Church that 
 prays in him, and her noble words may cheer 
 
Liturgical or Free Worship G3 
 
 and strengthen not only the congregation, but 
 himself. He may be nervous when he faces 
 the people, and his thoughts may swim away 
 from him; but the prayer is not impoverished, 
 for he says the thing that needs to be said. As 
 a protection against the eccentricity, the frailty 
 and the inexperience of the individual, the service 
 of the liturgy is inestimable." (P. 227.) 
 
 And once more it is claimed that a liturgy is 
 attractive. It is objective and yet spiritual. 
 It arrests attention and calls for participation. 
 The responses of the people are the natural 
 recognition of the priesthood of believers. It 
 is the worship of the people; children can be 
 trained in it, and it is greatly loved by those 
 familiar from childhood with its forms. 
 
 Does this seem to any one an over-statement 
 of liturgical worship.? It will seem less than 
 truth to those trained in its use. 
 
 The Disadvantages of Liturgical Wor- 
 ship. — Such worship is historic rather than present. 
 It admires the past and dwells in venerable use, 
 and may ignore the present need. Its very state- 
 liness of form may help to take it out of the 
 present life, and make it only a far-away echo. 
 The religious life passes through progressive stages, 
 and a liturgy may be only a monument, not a living 
 
64 Public Worship 
 
 voice. It does not allow the spontaneous expres- 
 sion of devotion. It does not cultivate the grace 
 of personal and fervent petition. " If religion is a 
 real and living thing, the individual can hardly 
 help feeling at times the impulse to express his 
 emotion in words of his own, and he ought not 
 to be deprived of this liberty which is his birth- 
 right as a son of the Heavenly Father. In the 
 prayers of the Bible, pious men speak as they 
 are moved by circumstance; out of the depths 
 each man cries in his own way. And this great 
 lesson of the Bible must never be forgotten or 
 repudiated. We are often told that Jesus 
 prayed, but seldom what He prayed. He does 
 not bind a yoke upon the neck of his disciples; 
 He wishes us to be ourselves." (McFadyen, 
 p. 234.) To the Church Congress at Providence, 
 Phillips Brooks spoke for the formal recognition 
 in the Prayer-book of the liberty of extempora- 
 neous prayer. Says Doctor Allen in his life 
 of Bishop Brooks : " The paper on 'Liturgical 
 Growth' shows that he keenly felt the restriction 
 which made it impossible to pray with an open 
 heart at critical moments, when the freedom of 
 the soul should be granted. Thus he was indig- 
 nant, and also amused, that, when the city of 
 Chicago was in flames, the General Convention, 
 then in session, showed its sympathy and asked 
 
Liturgical or Free Worship 65 
 
 for the divine aid by reciting the Litany, while 
 the name of the city and the awful occasion 
 were passed over in silence.'* (Vol. II, p. 317.) 
 
 A liturgy does not meet the need of all natures. 
 It is a matter of temperament and training and 
 conviction. Some natures crave the elements 
 found in liturgies. Their reverence, their deli- 
 cacy of feeling are satisfied in no other way. 
 Others equally demand freedom and spontaneity 
 and are offended by unchangeable form. Simi- 
 larity or uniformity in worship is not a mark of 
 spiritual unity. It is possible that through 
 training there may be a gradual approachment 
 in the different forms of Christian worship. But 
 the fact remains now that we must have a 
 variety of worship to express the life of the 
 Church and meet her needs. 
 
 Liturgy tends to elaborate form, to the over- 
 estimate of organization and ritual, and so to 
 a possible loss of spirituality. "Where the 
 same words are repeated week after week, the 
 spirit may easily grow insensible to their mean- 
 ing." A simple and free worship is the easiest 
 to maintain in sincerity and spiritual fervour. 
 
 "We must be content with simplicity, direct- 
 ness, pathos, reverence, fervour, and if we are 
 less vividly conscious than those who use a lit- 
 urgy that we are walking in the footsteps of 
 
66 Public Worship 
 
 the saints of other centuries, we may find com- 
 pensation in a closer and more direct relation 
 to the actual life of the men, women, and children 
 who are waiting with ourselves for the mercy 
 and pity and help of God. We lose less than 
 we may gain. But we shall gain nothing and 
 lose everything, if we do not remember the true 
 purpose for which prayers are offered. They 
 are not intended to afford a special form of 
 gratification to men of taste who feel no awe in 
 the presence of God's greatness, no distress at the 
 remembrance of their sins, no strong desire for 
 forgiveness and for strength to live a holy life, 
 no deep sympathy with the sorrows and perils of 
 mankind. They are intended to express to God 
 the trouble and fear and trust of hearts which 
 have learned that their only hope for themselves 
 and for all men is in Him, and to obtain from 
 God those blessings which He has promised to 
 bestow. Prayers are not works of art; they are 
 great spiritual acts." 
 
 Robert Browning in a notable passage of 
 "Christmas Eve," and no doubt from the mem- 
 ory of his boyhood in York Street Chapel, South 
 London, has nobly expressed the worth of free 
 worship. 
 
 "I, then, In ignorance and weakness. 
 Taking God's help, have attained to think 
 
Liturgical or Free Worship 67 
 
 My heart does best to receive in meekness 
 
 That mode of worship, as most to his mind. 
 
 Where earthly aids being cast behind. 
 
 His all in all appears serene 
 
 With the thinnest human veil between. 
 
 Letting the mystic lamps, the seven. 
 
 The many motions of His Spirit, 
 
 Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven." 
 
 In the present condition of our churches, it 
 would be a mistake to have any form, however 
 simple, imposed upon the single congregation by- 
 external authority. It is not that we so much 
 object to a liturgy as to the fact of its being fixed. 
 It is well to have such a book as " Common Wor- 
 ship" provided for special cases, as our navy and 
 army, and groups of people separate from the 
 Church. The honour of religion demands that 
 there should be some fixed forms for Baptism, 
 the Lord's Table, and the Burial of the Dead. 
 These common and universal experiences of the 
 Church should be voiced in something of a 
 common language. 
 
 Moreover, certain liturgical elements can be 
 introduced into our ordinary worship without 
 danger to doctrine or spirit, and to the great 
 help of the loyal, reverent, and social spirit of 
 our churches. The Commandments, the Psalms, 
 the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, are 
 the germs of all liturgies. The abuse of 
 
68 Public Worship 
 
 liturgy is no argument against its wise use. Sim- 
 plicity may be combined with form pure and 
 beautiful. 
 
 However, the highest ends of worship in our 
 churches demand that prayer should be for the 
 most part free. At the same time, fixed prayer, 
 breathing the vows and lives of saints, is far 
 preferable to the stereotyped formulas of a 
 single soul. 
 
 "The free churches have something to learn 
 from the dignity, beauty, and order of the lit- 
 urgical churches; while these, in their turn, have 
 to learn from the freedom, the initiative, the 
 versatility of the others. The ideal church 
 would combine the excellencies of both, the 
 dignity of the one with the fervour of the other. 
 Some of her prayers would be fixed, and some 
 would be free. The leader of a congregation 
 which believes in free prayer should not be 
 deprived of the right to express his thoughts in 
 a way more beautiful and dignified than any 
 expression of his own is ever likely to be; the 
 leader in a liturgical church should not be de- 
 prived of the right to speak to God as a man to 
 his friend. The past may be an inspiration, but 
 it must not be allowed to become an incubus. 
 We shall cherish and perpetuate all that is best 
 in it, but we too will create something which 
 
Liturgical or Free Worship 69 
 
 posterity would not willingly let die; and so 
 the religious instinct, as ancient as humanity 
 and as fresh as the morning, will continue to 
 enrich the world forever." (McFadyen, p. 
 234.) 
 
LECTURE V 
 PUBLIC PEAYEE 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 Prayer the Highest Form of Worship. 
 The Spirit more than form. 
 Our freedom to attempt improvement. 
 
 The Content or Matter of Public Prayer. 
 
 Reverential, representative, and comprehensive. 
 Special emphasis upon representative and com- 
 prehensive prayer. 
 
 The Form of Public Prayer. 
 
 The language simple and direct, dignified and ele- 
 vated. Marked by brevity. 
 
 Free from unhallowed familiarity. 
 
 No needless repetition of the names of God. Prayer 
 not a speech. 
 
 The wise union of familiar and new forms. The 
 emotional element. 
 
 The utterance of prayer. 
 
 72 
 
PUBLIC PRAYER 
 
 The highest form of worship is prayer. " When 
 He calls His temple the * house of prayer,' " 
 says Calvin, "God declares that prayer is the 
 chief part of His service." We shall not differ 
 from this estimate of the value of public prayer. 
 We know its supreme importance; we have felt 
 its peculiar difl&culties. 
 
 It is well for us to remember, in this dis- 
 cussion on prayer, that spirit and desire are 
 everything, and that form has its place in de- 
 votion purely and solely as a means of uniting 
 and voicing the people's sentiment and need; 
 that form is to be valued solely on the ground 
 of its utility; that when any particular form 
 or method has ceased to bring forth the best 
 results, the old order must change, giving place 
 to new. 
 
 With no undue respect for form, there ought 
 to be a zeal among us for an increasing perfec- 
 tion in our worship. No churches are so free 
 73 
 
74 Public Worship 
 
 or so capable as our own, the non-liturgical, of 
 perceiving the devotional need of the generation 
 and giving it worthy and noble expression. 
 There is nothing of value in the past which we 
 may not claim, nothing of promise in the present 
 that we may not attempt. "The world of 
 prayers, anthems, responses — the whole range of 
 Scripture — the vast stores of sacred music, sim- 
 ple or embodying the highest art, the rich treas- 
 ures of hymnology, besides those spontaneous 
 outbursts of unwritten thanksgiving, praise, and 
 prayer, which are sometimes grander and more 
 pathetic than any written forms — these all lie 
 open to our choice." 
 
 In attempting the improvement of our part 
 in worship, in seeking the enrichment of the wor- 
 ship of our church, we will not forget the part 
 taken by the pulpit in this matter. Crudeness 
 there has been, careless words, partial views, 
 and imperfect forms; but with all the faults of 
 extemporaneous prayer, the ministers have 
 often led the people with skill and correct taste 
 and devotional spirit. It is a tremendous drain 
 upon spiritual force to attempt to lift a people 
 into conscious communion with God. And if 
 any criticism is made of present tendencies, or 
 any suggestions of defect or ways of betterment, 
 it is in the hope that we may have the clearest 
 
Public Prayer 75 
 
 view and the loftiest ideal of our work and priv- 
 ilege in the holy place, as the leaders in the 
 worship of God's house. 
 
 The nature of public prayer, as the lifting of 
 the hearts of the people unitedly into communion 
 with God, indicates the matter, form, spirit, and 
 preparation of such worship. 
 
 The Content or Matter of Public 
 Prayer. — In general, it is to be reverential, 
 i. e., elevated in thought; representative, for the 
 people, expressive of their life and need and not 
 that of the minister; outreaching and compre- 
 hensive, and not burdened too much with personal 
 and local requests. 
 
 The thought of God comes first and not of 
 man. In this matter the Master has given us 
 the example in the Lord's Prayer. Adoration 
 is the first attitude, praise for the glory of God's 
 nature and the riches of His gifts. Thoughts 
 should be dwelt upon that set forth the character 
 of God, and make Him sensible to the human 
 spirit; all that quickens the memory and shows 
 the past bright with mercies, all that reveals 
 the present and leads the grateful heart God- 
 ward in thanksgiving. Confession should have its 
 jjlace with adoration and thanksgivmg. The 
 thought of God brings knowledge of human 
 
76 Public Worship 
 
 sin. The ideas of penitence should be simple 
 and personal, free from any trace of exaggeration, 
 to which the people will honestly say Amen; 
 but such as also to awaken the deeper conscious- 
 ness of weakness and ill-desert. There should 
 be petitions for forgiveness, for renewal of life, 
 for growth in love and service. 
 
 The prayer of intercession can never be omit- 
 ted. It will include special cases of need in 
 the congregation and the community, special 
 classes and conditions of men, special interests 
 of work, education, charity, society, and govern- 
 ment, the spiritual life and work of the Church, 
 all the questions that touch the Kingdom of 
 Christ among the nations. 
 
 One prayer cannot contain all these subjects. 
 All these interests cannot be mentioned in a 
 single service. But without having a fixed order 
 of topics, it is possible to make such a note of 
 prayer from week to week that, in the course 
 of two or three months, the people have been 
 led to ask for their various needs and for the 
 larger necessities of the race. 
 
 Further emphasis should be given the two 
 statements that public prayer is to be repre- 
 sentative and comprehensive. 
 
 The minister feels a strong temptation to 
 express his personal need, aspirations, desire, 
 
Public Prayer 77 
 
 in prayer, and forget that prayer is the worship 
 of the people, and that he is to be simply the 
 leader of that worship. Here the priestly idea 
 of the ministry comes in, if ever. He goes to 
 the pulpit from moments of meditation and 
 devotion; he may be exalted in his own spirit; 
 he feels the immediate relation of his soul to God; 
 the message with which his heart is full will 
 unconsciously shape and colour petition. His 
 prayer may be truly devotional in spirit. The 
 people may recognize its sincerity and fervency. 
 But they will listen rather than join in it. Such 
 prayers run in the grooves of the minister's 
 individuality; they are for private use and not 
 for the pulpit. They are subject to individual 
 moods of feeling, or phases of religious thought 
 and experience. They may even voice mor- 
 bidness or eccentricity, so that the congregation 
 not only do not unite in the prayer, but feel it 
 wrong thus to pray. 
 
 Such subjective prayers, as they may be called, 
 are the easiest to offer, but in the best sense they 
 are not public prayers; they fail to touch and 
 express the need and desire of the congregation. 
 
 This is not a fanciful picture. Whether the 
 failure of the pulpit to make prominent the 
 intercessory character of public prayer is due to 
 the scientific and critical thought of the day, that 
 
78 Public Worship 
 
 leads to the view of prayer as devout aspiration 
 and valuable solely for its reflex influence, it 
 is certain that there has been a marked tendency 
 in cultivated pulpits to forget the wants of the 
 multitude. 
 
 A few years ago a devout American entered 
 the American Chapel in Paris on Sunday and 
 thus describes the prayer of the pastor, who was 
 a true representative of the higher order of 
 American Congregational ministers, intellect- 
 ual, spiritual, and refined. "His prayer lifted 
 the souls of the hearers to the portals of heaven. 
 There were in it devout adoration, holy med- 
 itations, fervent aspirations, a positive if not 
 pronounced confession of sins and prayer for 
 forgiveness; but all moved upon the plane of 
 the suppliant's own experiences. A lofty plane 
 that was; no one could truly follow him without 
 feeling the divine touch; but there was little or 
 no attempt to present the objective wants even 
 of the congregation, much less of the great 
 world." 
 
 The prayer should touch now and again the 
 varied interests and wants of the people. Toils 
 and burdens of daily life, the anxieties of parents, 
 the hopes of children, the temptation and battle 
 of solitary souls — the pastor must put himself 
 in the place of the people; this marvellous picture 
 
Public Prayer 79 
 
 of human sin and conflict, of toil and reward, 
 of hope and fear, must be in his heart, and then 
 self will be forgotten in the wonderful and trying 
 privilege of praying for men. 
 
 "Doctor CandHsh of the Free Church of 
 Scotland in prayer made himself the mere mouth- 
 piece, mind, and heart of that great multitude, 
 and the overpowering burden became to him 
 such a burden as wings are to an eagle. The 
 very first syllables, heard in that large, melodious 
 utterance by the most distant gallery, recalled 
 and reunited all present on the broadest platform 
 of their common presence and their common 
 need. The voice became a river of supplication 
 which filled and flooded the church and lifted 
 every soul with it on a God ward wave." 
 
 "The most sacred function of the Christian 
 ministry is praying. I can bear this witness: 
 that never in the study, in the most absorbed 
 moments; never on the street, in those chance 
 inspirations that everybody is subject to, when 
 I am lifted up highest; never in any company 
 where friends are the sweetest and dearest — 
 never in any circumstances in life is there any- 
 thing that is to me so touching as when I stand, 
 in ordinary good health, before my great con- 
 gregation to pray for them. Hundreds of times, 
 as I rose to pray and glanced at the congregation. 
 
80 Public Worship 
 
 I could not keep back the tears. There came 
 to my mind such a sense of their wants, there 
 were so many hidden sorrows, there were so 
 many weights and burdens, there were so many 
 doubts, there were so many states of weakness, 
 there were so many perils, there were such 
 histories — not world histories but eternal- 
 world histories — my soul so longed for them, 
 that it seemed to me as if I could scarcely open 
 my mouth to speak for them. And when I 
 take my people and carry them before God to 
 plead for them, I never plead for myself as I do 
 for them — I never could. It seems as if God 
 permitted me to lay my hand upon the very 
 tree of life, and to shake down from it both leaves 
 and fruit for the healing of my people. And it 
 is better than a sermon; it is better than an 
 exhortation. He that knows how to pray for 
 his people, I had almost said, need not trouble 
 himself to preach for them or to them; though 
 that is an exaggeration of course." (Beecher's 
 "Yale Lectures," II : 46.) 
 
 Such prayer will make the worship properly 
 attractive. The social element will be powerful. 
 The people will be drawn to the ministry that 
 understands their needs and voices them in 
 worship. The worship is theirs and theirs the 
 blessing. 
 
Public Prayer 81 
 
 Another wrong tendency is to make the public 
 prayer too narrow and local in its range. And 
 the evil lies close to a virtue. It is the temptation 
 of an earnest and devoted ministry. The parish 
 is his world. The spiritual work of the church, 
 his particular church, is the consuming passion 
 of his life. And the prayers, direct, specific, and 
 personal, voice the earnest sincerity of the life. 
 Prayers of this nature are to be desired, as far 
 as they go, but they do not go far enough. They 
 lack Gospel breadth. And they fail of the 
 larger blessings of prayer because their desires 
 are not large enough. The late Doctor Clark 
 of the American Board of Foreign Missions said 
 that if he were a pastor in Yokohama he would 
 pray every Sunday for Christian work beyond 
 the Mississippi, for the sake of Yokohama. You 
 cannot afford to turn the chief devotional thought 
 of the people in upon themselves; it means the 
 shrivelling of spiritual life. The small and 
 feeble churches especially, whose wants are press- 
 ing and horizon narrow, need to be taught to 
 pray, "Thy Kingdom come." We are to help 
 men in prayer to see the spiritual significance 
 of forces and events, to feel the sacredness of 
 common life, and the oneness of all races and 
 lands in the purpose and work of the Gospel. 
 This gives a wealth of material and breadth of 
 
82 Public Worship 
 
 spirit to public prayer, as rich and broad as the 
 Kingdom of Christ. And the Kingdom of 
 Christ covers broadly the entire range of human 
 action and endurance. Not a vital interest 
 of the immediate community, nor a great con- 
 cern of the remotest people; not a department 
 of human activity, the home, the school, the 
 shop, the Church, the government, that escapes 
 the eye of such worship, because such belongs 
 to the spiritual realm as means of its develop- 
 ment and final expression. 
 
 "The prayers of the Universal Church must 
 be inspired with the chief of all prayers, *Thy 
 Kingdom come,* the undertone of which must 
 be heard through every special petition. They 
 must lead the worshippers to forget self as much 
 as possible by bringing the general interests of 
 men before their minds. They must pray not 
 only for the rulers and the laws, but for the 
 elevation of the poor, for the progress of knowl- 
 edge and art and literature, for union among 
 the nations of the West, and for their influence 
 over the weaker races of mankind. Worship 
 must be, to be brief, a bringing before God of 
 the real needs of the whole community; the 
 hallowing of life in all its branches must be con- 
 ducted here in the way of aspiration." (Free- 
 mantle. "Bampton Lectures,'* p. 302.) 
 
Public Prayer 83 
 
 It has been finely said that such public peti- 
 tion becomes the cry of a world. "Listeners 
 are made to feel themselves a part of that 
 humanity, whose minutest and apparently least 
 spiritual wants are under divine observation 
 and care." 
 
 Particular cases of need in the parish will not 
 be omitted in the prayer of the wise pastor. 
 Petitions for help in sickness and sorrow and loss 
 are the peculiar and necessary expressions of 
 communion of faith and love. And yet the 
 most pressing and personal needs will find their 
 richest answer in the prayer for the larger world. 
 Richard Baxter testifies that he was unable to 
 comfort his people at a certain time in his min- 
 istry, until he led them to think of and love and 
 pray for the work of Christ in heathen lands. 
 This ideal of comprehensiveness in public 
 prayer was largely realized in the ministration 
 of the late Dr. W. M. Taylor of New York. It 
 is said of his prayers that "their richness of 
 spirit is matched by their compass. He passes 
 from one concern of Christian love to another 
 until you feel yourself partaking of the mind 
 of Christ in its regard for human brotherhood." 
 
 The Form of Public Prayer. — The nature 
 of prayer as pure address to God will direct 
 
84 Public Worship 
 
 us as to the form of public prayer as well 
 as the subject matter. It is proper that the 
 individuality of the minister should be felt in 
 the choice and arrangement of words, in the 
 tones of voice and the manner of prayer. He 
 must be heard and felt to be a true leader. But 
 even here the subjective element will be so con- 
 trolled by the spirit and purpose of worship as 
 not unduly to intrude, not to call attention to 
 itself and prevent the united participation of 
 the congregation. 
 
 The language of prayer should be simple and 
 direct, yet dignified and elevated. Simplicity 
 and directness are demanded by sincerity of 
 worship, and something of elevation by the 
 nature of God, to whom we go. Heart-felt 
 adoration and desire can never dwell needlessly 
 upon the language in the way of rhetorical 
 finish or ornament. The paper describing a 
 certain prayer as "the most eloquent ever 
 addressed to a Boston audience" was no doubt 
 accurate. It was addressed to an audience. 
 It could not be spoken to God. The prayers 
 of the Bible are marked by directness. Sim- 
 plicity is the form of true feeling and pure taste. 
 "The use of soaring polysyllables, of exaggerated 
 expressions, of poetic quotations, of lengthy 
 sentences, of complicated syntax, of antiquated 
 
Public Prayer 85 
 
 forms of language or thought — all this goes to 
 defeat the end for which prayer is offered." 
 
 This does not prevent the use of imagination 
 in prayer, and the forms of highest beauty. 
 Imagination must be used to break the dulness 
 of worldly states and lead the soul to apprehend 
 God. And strong feeling expresses itself in 
 symbols of beauty. The Bible prayers are 
 direct, but full of suggestion. And they some- 
 times take the forms of the highest poetry. 
 "But it does not follow th^t such language should 
 be imitated. When a prosaic mind expresses 
 itself thus, there is always the suspicion of 
 artificiality; and better a thousand times that 
 prayers be unadorned, even clumsy, than arti- 
 ficial. The garnishing of prayer with quotations 
 from the poets and the hymn writers is a breach 
 of literary taste as well as of religious propriety. 
 . . . A child does not quote poetry when 
 he talks confidentially to his father." (Mc- 
 Fadyen, p. 202.) 
 
 At times, however, under the exaltation of 
 heart and mind in worship, the imagination will 
 speak in beauty of word and suggestiveness of 
 symbol that will be in the highest form devo- 
 tional. Such style should not be sought, but take 
 form spontaneously from spiritual fervour. 
 
 *'How constantly through his prayers he 
 
86 Public Worship 
 
 brought them into sympathy with God, reveal- 
 ing the divine sympathy to them, and how he 
 pictured, as if he saw it, the company of the 
 redeemed in glory! Thou art gathering these 
 multitudes which no man can number. From 
 every age Thou hast garnered there; for us 
 there is this hope and this joyful antici- 
 pation. We beseech of Thee that we may 
 be able to live this life in the body with a 
 constant faith of the great life of the Spirit; 
 that we may never be discouraged nor beaten 
 down; that we may know that we are the King's 
 sons; though exiled, in disguise and poverty, 
 and even cast into shame, may we remember 
 our birthright, the pleasure that awaits us, the 
 crown, the throne, the sceptre, the glory of im- 
 mortal and perfect youth where Thou art. 
 When the former things shall have passed away, 
 when sorrow and dying shall have fled, when 
 Thou shalt have wiped the tear from every eye, 
 and when Thou dost comfort us even as a 
 father comforts his child, then, in that blessed 
 land where Thou dwellest, what will be the 
 memory of the trouble that we have had on 
 earth." (Barrow's "Beecher," p. 130.) 
 N Prayer should be marked by brevity. Need- 
 less phrases, mere rhetorical repetition and 
 amplification, all should be avoided that makes 
 
Public Prayer 87 
 
 the prayer dull and prolix. The minds of the 
 people will wander, and so ends the spirit of 
 worship. The longest prayers of the Bible, such 
 as the confession of Ezra and the prayer of Solo- 
 mon at the dedication of the Temple, can be 
 spoken in eight minutes, and most prayers take 
 but two or three minutes. Directness demands 
 brevity. If we have definite desires and are 
 intent upon them we shall be brief. Our public 
 prayers are too long. Their weary length is 
 often a sign of haziness and listlessness. The 
 large subject-matter of prayer, that often fills 
 the heart of the pastor, can be covered by wise 
 choice and proportion on different Sundays. 
 
 We should avoid all unhallowed familiarity 
 in public prayer. 
 
 Through Christ we may come in confidence, 
 pleading a Father's love, but never without 
 reverence. The democratic spirit of America, 
 regardless of position and authority, is some- 
 times seen in the careless spirit of prayer. The 
 colloquialisms of common speech cannot voice 
 the deepest needs of the soul. Words of endear- 
 ment that may be used in secret are irreverent 
 in public prayer. Such names applied to Jesus 
 are weak and sentimental. We have no right 
 to speak to God as to an equal. If we do, it is 
 not worship. 
 
88 Public Worship 
 
 We should avoid needless repetition of the 
 names of God, as our Heavenly Father, at the 
 beginning of each request, and a mechanical 
 uniformity of phrase as, "Ever living and blessed 
 God," "Grant to us we beseech thee," and the 
 like. Such monotony is mechanical and not 
 the natural expression of the soul's own life. 
 Epithets of God should be used appropriate to 
 the thought. Bible prayers are rich in such 
 suggestions, and a proper study of such phrases 
 will give variety without hindrance to reality 
 and simplicity. 
 
 We shall not preach in our prayers, if we 
 remember the nature of prayer, and our place 
 as leaders of worship. Some men are tempted 
 to unfold their system of theology, their per- 
 sonal and ecclesiastical likes and dislikes, or 
 make a political confession of faith. 
 
 "Prayer is speech, but it ought not to be a 
 speech. It is the speech of the heart to God, 
 but it must not be a speech to men in the form 
 of prayer. This is one of the dangers of public 
 prayer, where the presence of other men can 
 hardly be altogether forgotten — an especial 
 danger for one whose profession is preaching." 
 (McFadyen, p. 207.) 
 
 While public prayer should never degenerate 
 into a sermon or historical narrative, might 
 
Public Prayer 89 
 
 there not be a review of well-known facts of 
 personal or public life? Some Biblical prayers 
 are largely narrative. "Goodness and loving 
 kindness," were not allowed to degenerate into 
 empty phrases; they were filled with radiant 
 and indisputable historical facts. And if our 
 prayers are to be personal and particular, sincere 
 voices of the heart, they must dwell upon 
 specific facts of inner and outer experience. 
 Only thus can the true spirit of gratitude and 
 penitence, and aspiration be awakened. How- 
 ever, we shall avoid vain repetitions and remem- 
 ber that God knows before we ask. 
 
 There ought to be a wise union of familiar 
 and neiv forms of prayer. 
 
 There are certain standing wants, old as 
 humanity, which ought to be voiced whenever 
 men come together to worship. The best ex- 
 pression of such wants is not in novelty of lan- 
 guage, but in terms familiar and sacred from 
 long use and association, the language of 
 Scripture or the prayers of the Church. The 
 devotional parts of the Bible are often the 
 inspiration of our desires, and the best expression 
 of them, but they should not be quoted care- 
 lessly, so as to make prayer incongruous, and 
 destroy the spirit of free and living men. There 
 are ever-present needs that have new origin or 
 
90 Public Worship 
 
 relation that will demand new and personal 
 forms of speech. Exact fitness to thought and 
 feeling, and not novelty should be the aim of 
 the pulpit. 
 
 The emotional nature should be felt in all 
 worship. Not in the reason but in conscience 
 and feeling are the finest organs of spiritual 
 vision. He that loveth knoweth God. And 
 he that loves most knows best the unspoken 
 depths of the human heart and can best awake 
 the sense of God. Prayer is preeminently the 
 language of the heart. 
 
 The utterance of prayer should be suited to its 
 nature, in a natural and dignified tone, not with 
 the rapidity that suggests trifling and irrever- 
 ence, nor with the loud and boisterous voice 
 that magnifies too much the physical element. 
 Earnestness is never synonymous with noise. 
 
 "Two things may be mentioned in particular 
 as desirable to be avoided in prayer," says 
 John Angell James in "An Earnest Ministry." 
 "One is quickness and rapidity of utterance, a 
 fault young preachers are very apt to fall into; 
 and objectionable both because it has an irrever- 
 ent appearance, and also because the people 
 cannot intelligently follow. The other is 
 boisterousness, which is not to be confounded 
 with earnestness. Such vehemence, like a violent 
 
Public Prayer 91 
 
 blast of wind, puts out the languid flame of 
 devotion, when a gentle breeze would fan it 
 into greater intensity." 
 
 The sum of the matter is that public prayer 
 should be spirihial and sympathetic, true and 
 tender, dignified and devout. 
 
 Such was the prayer of Brainerd, the saintly 
 apostle to the Indians. He addressed God, 
 " not with florid expressions or studied eloquence, 
 not with an intemperate vehemence, or indecent 
 boldness. It was at the greatest possible dis- 
 tance from any appearance of ostentation, and 
 from anything that might look as though he 
 meant to recommend himself to those that were 
 about him, or set himself off to their acceptance. 
 It was free from all vain repetitions. He expressed 
 himself with the strictest propriety, with weight 
 and pungency; and yet what his lips uttered 
 seemed to flow from the fulness of his heart." 
 ("Puritan Preacher," p. 219.) 
 
LECTURE VI 
 THE PREPARA.TION FOR PUBLIC PRAYER 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 General Helps to Public Prayer. 
 The habit of private prayer. 
 
 Famiharity with the devotional parts of the Bible. 
 Study of the prayers of the Church. 
 Books of worship, and collections of individual 
 
 prayers. 
 The reading of devotional classics. 
 Knowledge of men and sympathy with human 
 
 interests. 
 The proper attitude toward life and work. 
 
 Immediate Preparation for Public Prayer. 
 
 Survey of the immediate needs of the people. 
 The forming of a definite and progressive plan. 
 Reasons for frequent writing of prayers. 
 Helps to the devotional spirit. 
 
VI 
 
 THE PREPARATION FOR PUBLIC 
 PRAYER 
 
 Enough has been said to give prayer its true 
 place in our conception of public worship. And 
 we must feel that it calls for the exercise of the 
 highest powers of the trained mind united with 
 the deepest religious emotions. While the hum- 
 blest child of God may teach us how to pray, the 
 service of the largest knowledge and the most 
 skilful expression may properly be demanded in 
 voicing the devotions of a people. 
 
 If we have the proper conception of this exalted 
 service, the petition will daily be upon our lips, 
 "Lord, teach us to pray." The answer of Christ 
 will come through appointed means; His blessing 
 will rest upon use of helps provided in His 
 providence, and suggested by the experience of 
 devout men. 
 
 General Helps to Public Prayer. — We 
 must cultivate the habit of secret prayer. It 
 95 
 
96 Public Worship 
 
 may seem trite to repeat such a primary matter 
 as this, one that all know and confess, but our 
 chief lack will surely be here. We shall not 
 escape the temptation to limit our devotional 
 life in the interests of an active, aggressive 
 Christianity; to be much without in plans and 
 methods and societies, in preachings and visitings; 
 and too little within, in that intense, strenuous 
 exercise of the whole man before God, the wres- 
 tling that brings to every servant of God, as to 
 Jacob of old, the new name, symbol of the new 
 power. The people can tell instinctively whether 
 the prayers of the pulpit are from the lips out- 
 ward, or a breathing of the inner life. The 
 chief secret of the recovery or the development 
 of the devotional element in public service is 
 easiest to find. We have but to enter the secret 
 place and shut the door and ask God for it. 
 And it would be well in our private prayers to 
 cultivate definite thoughts and desires and to give 
 oral expression to them. Too much of our private 
 devotion is lifeless routine or listless reverie, and 
 this would be corrected by vocal prayer. The 
 daily exercise of praying aloud would concentrate 
 the mind, lead to the quick perception of need and 
 the appropriate language of it. There can be no 
 better help to pulpit prayer than the daily inter- 
 cessory prayer of a pastor for his people. 
 
The Preparation for Public Prayer 97 
 
 We are to make ourselves familiar with the 
 thoughts and language of devotion. 
 
 The devotional parts of the Bible minister to 
 the devotional spirit. The language of Prophets 
 and Psalmists and Apostles is the very speech 
 of worship. How rich the variety of this lan- 
 guage! It is universal in its sympathies, mani- 
 fold in its expression of human want. So it is 
 often a true medium of fellowship between the 
 pastor and the congregation. The people respond 
 to these timeless voices of need and aspiration. 
 The language of Scripture, both by its poetic 
 quality and its sacred associations, often saves 
 the expression of commonplace wants from 
 vulgarity, and lifts them into a spiritual atmos- 
 phere. Would we make men conscious of the 
 presence of God.? What thought or language 
 is more thrilling with divinity than the nineteenth 
 or the one hundred and fourth Psalm.? Of the 
 latter Humboldt has said: "In the compass of 
 a small poem, the universe, the heavens and 
 the earth are drawn with a few grand strokes." 
 They are no less fitted to voice the deepest 
 spiritual necessities. Even in the short Psalms 
 we sometimes find the greatest variety, "All 
 the compass of the gamut described, from the 
 groan to the psean, from the deep self-accusa- 
 tion to the transport of gratitude." Hence 
 
98 Public Worship 
 
 there is a singular completeness in them, and 
 an adaptation to the feelings of mixed assem- 
 blies. To be at home, heart and soul, in the 
 devotional thought and speech of the Bible is 
 a direct preparation for pulpit prayer. Commit- 
 ting the Psalms to memory would be a culture in 
 high thought and pure feeling. 
 
 Next to the prayers and devotional language 
 of the Bible, we may well study the prayers of 
 devout men that by their singular spiritual 
 quality and felicity of language have commended 
 themselves to the consciousness of the Church. 
 God speaks to us through such souls. And by 
 the proper use of these prayers of the Church, 
 we shall gain a finer spiritual sight and a truer 
 fervour. The "Book of Common Prayer" may 
 well be a vade mecum for the minister who would 
 learn to pray for his people. "Common Wor- 
 ship'* and the books of the Scotch churches 
 contain prayers associated with the worship 
 of generations. The prayers of Plymouth 
 pulpit were as significant as the sermons, and 
 cannot fail to enrich the life of the pulpit. The 
 prayers of Alexander Maclaren were as Biblical 
 as his expositions and had the interpretive 
 power of a prophetic spirit. 
 
 We shall be helped not only by the study 
 of the prayers of great souls and worthy 
 
The Preparation for Public Prayer 99 
 
 liturgies, but by the frequent reading of books 
 that have become devotional classics, books 
 that deal with the inner life, meditations upon 
 truth. The names of many such writers are 
 familiar, Herbert and Jeremy Taylor, Vaughn, 
 and Goulbourne, and Phelps. A helpful list 
 of such books is given in the Andover Re- 
 view^ vol. II. No single book is more helpful 
 than Goulbourne's, "Thoughts on Personal 
 Religion." 
 
 There is a danger that the older devotional 
 classics may cultivate a type of other world- 
 liness so removed from the thought and need of 
 present life that religious experiences may seem 
 unnatural and prayer vague and unreal. There- 
 fore it is necessary for us to cultivate a balanced, 
 normal piety, and put beside a Kempis and Taylor 
 the poets and essayists and preachers who deal 
 with life largely and profoundly and make us 
 conscious of the ever-present and working God. 
 
 The preparation for public worship is not all 
 in the closet or the study. It is not complete 
 without that 'practical knowledge of men and 
 sympathy with all human interests that come 
 from the touch of men on the side of their deeper 
 natures and needs. "Communion with God," 
 said Robertson, "is not to be gained by abstrac- 
 tion and asceticism, but by the development 
 
100 Public Worship 
 
 of Christian sympathies." The pastor who 
 daily touches the lives of his people, who puts 
 himself in their place by a sympathetic expe- 
 rience, will have the greater desires born in his 
 heart; he will be the man who prays. 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small.'* 
 
 And we must not forget that there is a still 
 broader preparation. The minister's habits of 
 work and thought, the elements that go to make 
 him a thorough or shallow man, a devoted 
 servant of Christ or a selfish seeker for place 
 and fame — all these determine the quality of 
 his worship. No truer words have ever been 
 written than these: "To prepare for public 
 prayer, the minister must seek a right attitude 
 both toward God and toward men. To the 
 former of these ends all his Christian experience 
 will contribute. Whatever deepens his character 
 will equip him also for this serious duty. Grap- 
 pling, for the sake of the Master, with disagree- 
 able parish work, endeavouring to spend his hours 
 at the desk in hard study instead of in loitering 
 or over light literature; in a word, every act 
 that gives him nearness to God increases his 
 fitness to conduct the worship of the Sanctuary." 
 {Andover Review, 12: 619.) 
 
The Preparation for Public Prayer 101 
 
 Prayer, the highest and hardest exercise of the 
 human spirit, is no easy attainment. The deep- 
 est culture and experience of the years come 
 to Hfe in the "fruit of the Hps." "When I was 
 a boy," said Theodore Parker, "I heard men 
 pray great prayers and deep ones. To me it 
 seemed as if an angel sang them out of the sky, 
 and this man caught the sound, and copied it 
 easily on his own string. I wondered all men 
 prayed not so; that all could not. Before I was 
 a man, I learned that such inspirings come not 
 thus, but of toil and pain, trial and sorrow — 
 here spread over many days, there condensed 
 into a few; that it was not by gathering flowers 
 in a meadow of June they got their treasures, but 
 by diving deep into a stormy water that they 
 brought up with pain the pearl of the twisted 
 shell." ("Life of Parker," by Frothingham, p. 337.) 
 
 Immediate Preparation for Public Prayer. — 
 On Saturday evening or Sunday morning, 
 after the preparation of the other parts of 
 the Sunday service has been made, there 
 should be a thoughtful and careful prepara- 
 tion of the public prayers. A picture of the 
 parish in its present and personal need should 
 be brought before the mind. As the mental 
 vision must ever see the audience in the prep- 
 
102 Public Worship 
 
 aration of the sermon, the marvellous picture 
 of human sins and conflicts and hopes, to give 
 directness and sympathy and fitness, so rep- 
 resentative prayer cannot be formed without a 
 vivid consciousness of the life of the parish. 
 The stricken households will not be forgotten. 
 The tempted and burdened souls will not be 
 unknown. The wayward will be followed. The 
 spiritual pulse must be felt And the minister 
 who is not enough of the pastor to feel the beat 
 of this life, or have the frequent self-revelation 
 to him of this life, must signally fail in his duty 
 of intercession. It is this subtle perception of 
 present need, this voice of to-day that will find 
 the heart and give to his prayers, freshness and 
 adaptability and upward attraction. 
 
 Knowing the needs of the people, there will 
 be careful thought upon the particular subjects 
 of the prayers and their proper expression. At 
 least the order of topics should be formed and 
 thoroughly held in mind and doubtless to some 
 extent the very words of the prayer will be 
 framed. "A prayer should have a definite and 
 progressive plan — a beginning, a middle, and — 
 most important of all — an end.'* ("The Way 
 the Preachers Pray," p. 44.) Such thoughtful 
 care will not hinder the freedom of the mind 
 and the fervour of the spirit. 
 
The Preparation for Public Prayer 103 
 
 A practical question comes to every young 
 minister: Should he ever write his prayers? 
 Like the method of preaching, it is a personal 
 matter. There is no best way for all. Yet there 
 are notable examples in favour of such a practice. 
 John Calvin was so deeply impressed with the 
 supreme importance of prayer that he not only 
 wrote his prayers, but formed a liturgy for the 
 church of Geneva. 
 
 And an eminent minister of our own land, who 
 always prepared for worship pen in hand, is said 
 to have had, "A liturgy of his own which he could 
 use, without any danger of promoting a lethargy 
 of piety in himself or any one else." 
 
 The writing will lead to definite petitions. It 
 will lead to a proper proportion between the 
 subjective and objective elements in prayer. 
 And it will secure from week to week a proper 
 variety of subjects, so that in proper time the 
 great themes of prayer and the special and 
 general wants of the people will be expressed. 
 The writing will help to secure the simple and 
 reverent expression of direct address to God. 
 The momentary restraint of written form will 
 be more than balanced by the certainty and 
 reverent preparation of mind, and of language 
 in a certain sense worthy of the act of worship. 
 
 Having made the preparation of the thought 
 
104 Public Worship 
 
 and language of devotion, the minister will lay- 
 hold of the helps to a devotional spirit. He 
 will secure the moments of quiet before entering 
 the pulpit. He will seek earnestly the aid of 
 the Holy Spirit and recall the fact of his place 
 and privilege as the leader of the people in the 
 hohest service. Thus prepared by honest effort 
 and quickened by the Spirit he cannot fail to 
 pray with the spirit and the understanding and 
 will lead the people in truth in the most spiritual 
 act of worship. 
 
LECTURE VII 
 THE USE OF SCRIPTURE IN WORSHIP 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 The Expressive and Impressive Use of Scripture. 
 
 The Expressive: The use by pastor and people. 
 
 The responsive use of Scripture. 
 The growth in such use. 
 Reasons for responsive use. Impresses the memory. 
 
 Fitted to portions of the Bible. Accords with a 
 
 free, congregational service. 
 The parts fitted for responsive worship. 
 The use of the Psalter in the church. 
 The manner of responsive use. 
 
 The Impressive: The Minister's Use of Scripture. 
 Call to worship and instruction. 
 Argument for the orderly reading of the Scriptures. 
 Selection of the lessons. Study of the lessons. 
 Suggestions as to reading. 
 
VII 
 
 THE USE OF SCRIPTURE IN 
 WORSHIP 
 
 The Bible contains the best literature of 
 devotion; many parts have been used in 
 worship and come freighted with the aspira- 
 tions of devout souls. The unity of faith, 
 the highest uses of instruction, and the fit- 
 ting expression of the Church's life in God 
 call for the generous use of the Scripture in 
 public worship. 
 
 There is the expressive and impressive 
 use of the Scripture: The expressive when 
 minister and people use the Scripture as a 
 direct act of worship; the impressive when 
 the minister alone uses the Scripture for 
 instruction or to cultivate certain states and 
 acts of worship. 
 
 The Use by the Minister and Congregation 
 or the Responsive Use of Scripture. — There 
 is a growing use of the Scripture by the congre- 
 gation in the non-liturgical churches. A report 
 
 107 
 
108 Public Worship 
 
 in 1886 from four hundred and twenty-two 
 Congregational Churches of Massachusetts 
 showed that nearly one third had adopted the 
 responsive use of Scripture. And since then the 
 tendency has been gaining strength. The Church 
 Service Society of the Presbyterian Church found, 
 in 1899, out of one hundred and thirty-five larger 
 churches of Pennsylvania forty-three using re- 
 sponsive services; and one hundred and twenty 
 using such forms out of the one hundred and 
 eighty-one churches heard from in New York 
 and New Jersey. While the Presbyterian Church 
 shows less interest in the development of worship, 
 is more conservative in the plainness of form, the 
 reports show a growing desire of the people 
 for an active part in worship. 
 
 The question of the Scriptures is to be tested, 
 like other parts of worship, not by church law 
 (for we are absolutely free in this respect), but 
 by the highest usefulness. Mechanical partici- 
 pation by the congregation, the increase of the 
 volume of sound or the mere decoration of the 
 service are not sufficient grounds for the attempt. 
 If nothing more than these are to be gained, 
 better the reading of the Word of God by the 
 pastor alone. But the demand for the Con- 
 gregational use of Scripture seems to spring 
 from true reasons and motives. 
 
The Use of Scripture in Worship 109 
 
 Why is the responsive element a natural 
 expression of Christian Sentiment in a Con- 
 gregation I quote from "Parish Problems," 
 
 p. 463: 
 
 (1) Responsive utterance aids to impress on the 
 memory certain most instructive and edifying portions 
 of Holy Scripture. These, if only falling from the 
 pulpit upon the ears of the young or the unthinking, 
 may easily be unheeded; but if all voices be called 
 forth in their utterance, they will be more likely to fix 
 the attention; or in default of that, a lodgment of the 
 mere words may be effected in the memory, there to 
 await the time for their resurrection into living power. 
 
 (2) The responsive form is the most fitting for 
 the presentation of large portions of the Word; indeed 
 for some portions the only proper form since they are 
 well known to have been composed for antiphonal 
 use in the ancient public services of God. Thought 
 answers thought, the words by a natural law fall into 
 balancing periods; voice echoes voice; rather a multi- 
 tude of voices, called forth by the inspiring sentiment 
 reduplicate and reinforce it, and by their multiplied 
 testimony the words of truth are established in majesty, 
 
 (3) Responsive exercises, bringing the whole 
 assembly into audible utterance, accord with the whole 
 idea of a free, unpriestly, congregational service; 
 while also they fulfil the natural law that the rendering 
 of worship by the hearts of an assembly is greatly 
 aided by the joining of all voices in such selected 
 parts as are intrinsically fitted for that method. 
 
110 Public Worship 
 
 ^Vhat Parts of Scripture Are Intrinsically 
 Fitted for Responsive Worship ?— Only such 
 parts as were composed for such public worship, 
 where thought answers to thought, and words 
 fall into balancing phrases, and where a certain 
 poetic thought and devotional fervour quickens 
 the sentiment and makes itself felt in the move- 
 ment. This would exclude the narrative and 
 didactic parts of the Old and New Testaments. 
 It would include the Psalms, portions of Job 
 and the prophecies and an occasional lyric 
 passage in the histories and the New Testament. 
 Only responsive thought should have responsive 
 utterance. The Psalter is the chief treasury. 
 *'No single book of Scripture, not even the New 
 Testament, has perhaps ever taken such hold 
 on the heart of Christendom. None, if we may 
 dare judge, unless it be the Gospels, has had so 
 large an influence in moulding the affections, 
 sustaining the hopes, purifying the faith of 
 believers. With its words, rather than with 
 their own, they have come before God. In 
 these they have uttered their desires, their 
 fears, their confessions, their aspirations, their 
 sorrows, their joys, their thanksgivings. By 
 these their devotion has been kindled and their 
 hearts comforted. The Psalter has been in 
 the truest sense the Prayer-book both of 
 
The Use of Scripture in Worship 111 
 
 Jews and Christians." (Perowne on the Psalms, 
 chap. 2.) 
 
 What Should Be the Manner of Respon- 
 sive Use ? — It is not best for the Psalter or other 
 parts of Scripture to be read by verses, thus cover- 
 ing up the Hebrew parallelism and disregarding 
 the antiphonal structure. Such method not only- 
 takes away in large measure the significance of 
 such reading, but makes the passage too long for 
 the best devotional expression of a congregation. 
 It will lack unity and fulness of tone. It is to 
 be remembered that the responsive reading 
 is for worship and not instruction. The Psalms 
 were chanted in the early church. They are 
 now chanted in the English and Scotch churches, 
 and if they could be properly chanted in our 
 own churches, it would be a decided gain in the 
 dignity and elevation of spirit in worship. They 
 are addressed to God, the expressions of the 
 grateful, adoring, penitent heart. The nature 
 of responsive reading should determine its use. 
 
 The minister should especially keep himself 
 out of sight. He should avoid any undue in- 
 dividual emphasis or inflection. Without 
 monotony or intoning, there should be a certain 
 evenness and certainty of movement. Of course 
 there should be intelligent expression, but the 
 
112 Public Worship 
 
 range of inflection will be smaller than in per- 
 sonal interpretation, and all will be done for the 
 total effect of the worship. The minister should 
 try to call out the united response of the people. 
 By securing leaders in different parts of the 
 congregation, it is possible to secure a united 
 and worshipful response. The first words are 
 to be struck clear and firm and a steady and 
 strong movement kept throughout. With 
 proper care the people, young and old, will love 
 this part of the service. It will greatly tend 
 to unite them in their thought and feeling, and 
 increase the spirit of worship. 
 
 The Minister's Use of Scriptures. — The 
 minister may have a twofold purpose in his use 
 of Scripture: to call to worship and to give 
 instruction. 
 
 In the call to worship, brief verses may be 
 read or recited, at the opening of the service, at 
 the prayer of confession, and at the offering. 
 
 In the use of Scripture for instruction, the 
 passages may be selected without reference to 
 the particular sermon, to present the chief facts 
 of Gospel revelation in successive steps through 
 the year. This may be called the historical 
 method, the way God has pleased to make 
 Himself known to the world. The volume. 
 
The Use of Scripture in Worship 113 
 
 "Aids to Common Worship," is arranged on 
 this plan, to give each Lord's Day short passages 
 from the old Covenant, the Gospels and the 
 Apostolic Word. 
 
 The orderly reading of the Scriptures in the 
 worship of the Church began very early. About 
 400 A. D. writers began to mention fixed lections 
 from Holy Scripture. The English Prayer-book 
 is a good example of such selections. "The 
 general principle of the selections seems to be 
 this: In the earlier, and as we may call it the 
 doctrinal, half of the Christian year, from Advent 
 to Trinity, the appointed Gospels set before 
 us declarations or illustrations of the great facts 
 of our creed commemorated at the different 
 seasons, and the Epistle is adapted to the Gospel 
 or to the season. In the second or practical 
 half of the year (the Sundays after Trinity) the 
 Epistles take the lead with teaching concerning 
 the Christian life, which the Gospels for the most 
 part serve to illustrate.'* 
 
 If we recognize the independent spiritual value 
 of the Scriptures, there is strong reason for their 
 systematic use in worship. The reading should 
 aim at some completeness of teaching "that 
 the people may become better acquainted with 
 the whole body of Scriptures.'* 
 
 This may seem to interfere with unity of wor- 
 
114 Public Worship 
 
 ship, but desire for unity should never prevent 
 the effort to meet the completest need of the 
 people in worship. Such systematic reading 
 will be larger than the taste of the preacher, 
 will not have the weakness of random choice 
 or of a few favourite and familiar passages, and 
 will meet the need created by the lessened use 
 of the Bible in the family and in private reading. 
 
 The use of the Scriptures in worship in their 
 historic order of revelation, or in their progressive 
 teaching of Christian experience, demands more 
 than the knowledge and taste of the individual; 
 it must be the work of large cooperation by a 
 selected group of men or churches. Until the 
 sentiment of the Church demands such co- 
 operation, the present method in non-liturgical 
 churches will continue, of selecting the Scripture 
 lessons for the use of the sermon, to meet the 
 special need of the hour. 
 
 If such be the method, the use of the Bible 
 will depend upon the variety and balance of the 
 preacher's teaching. If he be a man of the 
 Word and have the educative purpose in preach- 
 ing, the most helpful portions of the Bible will 
 be read. 
 
 It is well to make the selection from both the 
 Old and New Testaments, when such selections 
 can increase the impression of truth. They should 
 
The Use of Scripture in Worship 115 
 
 have a unity, a single underlying thought. Not 
 a verse should be read after the connected thought 
 has been expressed. There is no virtue in 
 reading so many verses of Scripture. 
 
 "Arrange the order of service so as to have 
 suflficient reading of Scripture. The books as 
 literature of religion are worth reading, as the 
 Word of God should have supreme place. When 
 the systematic reading of the Bible in the family 
 and the school has declined it is our duty to make 
 the people familiar with the essential parts of 
 its revelation. If any part of the service should 
 be shortened, it should not be the use of the 
 Scriptures." (Pattison, "Worship," p. 131.) 
 
 There is no need to read the chapter from 
 which the text is taken, unless it is needed in 
 some exposition of the sermon or is a part with 
 which the people are not familiar. It is better 
 to select two independent passages, one from the 
 Old Testament and one from the New, illustrat- 
 ing the subject of the sermon, but not containing 
 the text. 
 
 The selection of the Scripture lesson should 
 be thoughtfully made, something more than 
 connection with the text. The selections should 
 be recorded, so that by review of the use of 
 Scripture, the preacher can see to it that he 
 goes beyond a few favourite passages, that he 
 
116 Public Worship 
 
 has searched to bring forth things new and old. 
 There should be unity in teaching. This is 
 sometimes secured by a variety of selections. It 
 should not always be of the same length. 
 Certain parts should not be joined with others. 
 The parable of the Prodigal Son should be 
 read alone. 
 
 The study of the Scripture lesson is a part of 
 the preparation for worship. Every lesson 
 should be selected and studied for its own sake, 
 studied for vocal expression, and frequently 
 a record made of such studies. Reading aloud 
 has relation to spiritual thought and feeling. 
 
 "Vocal expression demands that thought and 
 feeling should be living and present. Emotion 
 cannot be kept for years. There must be a 
 recontemplation of each idea, a recreation of 
 every scene, a reapplication of knowledge. 
 Only intense study and meditation a short time 
 before reading can give a passage adequate 
 expression. Thought may be prepared and 
 presented after long years more adequately than 
 imagination and emotion. Feeling must always 
 be a present, living realization, or it is not feeling 
 at all. But even thought will lose all fresh and 
 imaginative responsiveness, and will be cold 
 and dead, without being once more thought 
 out and its grounds carefully examined. 
 
The Use of Scripture in Worship 117 
 
 "Last of all there must be a spiritual realization 
 of the message, an application of it to the reader's 
 own experience. Nothing can compensate for lack 
 of this. Without this part of the preparation of 
 the lesson, there will be a certain aloofness in the 
 reading, a certain separation of the thought and 
 feeling from the reader's own soul." (Curry, 
 "Literary and Vocal Interpretation of the 
 Bible," p. 295.) 
 
 The public reading of the Scripture must be 
 in part personal, for we can only express impres- 
 sions made upon our own souls. But there are 
 certain tests of true expression that we should 
 apply to our reading. Is it truthful? Is it 
 simple? that is — is there a true self-forgetfulness 
 in the reverence for truth? Does it preserve 
 the unity of the thought, each movement of the 
 voice related to the life of the whole? We 
 should always try to accentuate the fundamental 
 thought. There should be animation, but regu- 
 lated and directed, in keeping with a certain 
 reserve, no striving to make a point. Repose is 
 characteristic of all true art. 
 
 But the chief thing to remember in reading 
 the Scriptures is that we are interpreters, trying 
 to give the thought of another. It is not our 
 own word, but thought coming to our own soul 
 as well as to others. We try to express the truth 
 
118 Public Worship 
 
 and at the same time its impression on our souls. 
 Let the truth make its own impression, picture, 
 story, lesson, with simple realism, with as little 
 of self in it as possible. The reading should 
 never be dogmatic and pedantic. 
 
 "Every time a man reads the Scripture, he 
 will cause chords to vibrate, not merely between 
 his heart and the hearts of his fellow men, but 
 between other souls and the infinite ov er-SQuL_ 
 He knows, if he has any true conception of what 
 he is doing, that he is treading upon holy ground, 
 and takes off the shoes of his own personal whims, 
 of all artificial theatric personations, to speak 
 with the utmost simplicity, knowing that the 
 words will awaken, not only memory of a mother*s 
 or of a father's voice, which may long have been 
 silent, but echoes of the soul's own life. Each 
 soul has an open door into the Infinite, and 
 through this door of consciousness only the 
 Infinite and Eternal enter. Any reverent 
 reader of the Scriptures knows that his little 
 knock at the door of the senses is but to call 
 the attention of the soul to the knock of an inner 
 infinite visitor. He feels that God is nearer 
 every soul than he himself can ever be." 
 (Curry, p. 14.) 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 THE WORSHIP OF SACRED SONG 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 The Universal Use in the Church. 
 Sacred Poetry. 
 
 The poets of the Church called to their ministry. 
 
 Teachers of praise, aspiration and faith. 
 
 The relation of hymns to the life of the Church. 
 
 The Office of Music in Worship. 
 
 The influence of music upon character. 
 Its special social value. 
 
 The union of poetry and worship; its high devo- 
 tional value. 
 
 The Twofold Function of Church Music. 
 Expression and impression. 
 
 The General Principles of Church Music. 
 
 The choice of hymns. Relation between the 
 music and the hymn. Music should be congre- 
 gational and largely expressive. 
 
 The place of the choir. 
 
 Growth in the music of worship. 
 
 Practical Difficulties in the Worship of Song. 
 The wrong conception of church music. 
 Lack of musical training among the people. 
 The claim of choirs. 
 
 How Shall the Difficulties Be Met. 
 
 The minister the leader of the entire service. 
 
 The importance of sacred song taught by example 
 
 and word. 
 Right relations with the choir. 
 Proper musical training for the choir and people. 
 
vni 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF SACRED SONG 
 
 Sacred song is the union of two of the noblest arts, 
 music, and poetry, in the worship of God. It has 
 ever been thought that poetry had something of 
 divineness; and the ancient myth that music was 
 the gift of the Gods to establish communication be- 
 tween earth and heaven has an element of truth. 
 
 No Christian communion, save the Quakers, 
 has failed to use sacred song, and even the 
 Quakers are now beginning its use. The worship 
 of God with music may almost be called a prime 
 notion of the soul, so ancient and universal it 
 is. "There never was any land so barbarous, 
 or any people so polite, but have always ap- 
 proached their gods with the solemnity of music 
 and expressed their devotions with a song." (Dr. 
 Hickman, Ps. C: 1, 1695.) The majestic music of 
 the Jewish temple, the joyful songs of the early 
 Church have been continued in chant and hymn, 
 in choral and symphony, commanding the gifts of 
 the highest genius in the service of worship. 
 121 
 
122 Public Worship 
 
 No worship is felt to be complete without 
 music. But there is the widest difference in our 
 churches, ranging all the way from reverent 
 and skilled expression, to the music that has 
 little worth and is secular in flavour and style. 
 
 Because of the general acknowledgment of 
 the importance of sacred music and the lack of 
 a definite standard of taste and a clear impression 
 of the place of music in worship, it is well for the 
 minister to give earnest thought to the practical 
 questions of church music. It will help us to con- 
 sider separately for a moment the two elements 
 united in worship, sacred poetry and sacred music. 
 
 Sacred Poetry. — No words can properly ex- 
 press the debt of Christian faith to sacred poetry. 
 We may take as our own the words of Wordsworth: 
 
 "Blessings be with them — and eternal praise. 
 Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares — 
 The poets who on earth have made us heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays — " 
 
 The poets of the Church have been as truly ^ 
 set apart by God for a holy ministry as the 
 heralds of faith. The spirit that Milton invoked, 
 
 "That dost prefer 
 Before all temples the upright heart and pure," 
 
 has touched and illumined the minds of Christian 
 singers. In their moments of intense feeling. 
 
The Worship of Sacred Song 123 
 
 the moments of poetic illumination, they see 
 truth more clearly than the common mind, 
 they perceive the vital relation of man to God, 
 the gifts of God and the reasons for praise. 
 They have often been led through strange and 
 checkered careers, that they might have some- 
 thing of the universal in their experience and 
 touch the heart of humanity. They strip truth 
 of its semblance; they uncover the human heart; 
 they give definite form to the shadowy visions 
 of the soul; they voice what we feel in our best 
 moments, and so lead to holy aspiration and 
 voice heavenly desire. 
 
 The sacred poets have been men of faith. 
 They have been the seers of the Church. They 
 have seen the silver lining of the cloud; they have 
 seen the hosts of the sky marshalled for the 
 defence of God's children; they have sung of 
 the triumphs of God's truth. "The Lord is my 
 strength and my song and is become my sal- 
 vation" was sung at the beginning of the wilder- 
 ness journey. The hymns of the Church have 
 been full of faith in the triumph of Christ. There- 
 fore we see the vital relation of sacred poetry 
 to worship. 
 
 It touches the heart and inspires to praise; 
 it lifts us on the wings of aspiration; it strength- 
 ens our faith. Praise, desire, faith — these 
 
124 Public Worship 
 
 all the gifts of song — are likewise the vital 
 elements of genuine worship. 
 
 "Our hymns spring out of religious experience 
 at its best, and they tend to lift experience to 
 its highest levels. The very cream of truth and 
 of soul life is gathered into them. They contain 
 the refined riches, the precious essences, the cut 
 and polished jewels of Christianity in all ages. 
 They are truly prophetic, the records of the 
 insight and intuition and rapture of the seer 
 and the saint." (Dr. Waldo Pratt. *' Musical Min- 
 istries," p. 50.) 
 
 The development of English hymnology came 
 from the spiritual growth of the Church. The 
 dogmatic certainty and the personal devotion 
 of Puritanism is voiced in the hymns of Isaac 
 Watts. The love of Christ and the larger hope 
 for men that marked the evangelical revival is 
 felt in the verse of Charles Wesley. Cowper and 
 Newton were the poets of the evangelical move- 
 ment when it has passed into definite party and 
 creed. Newman and Faber express the unrest 
 of human opinions and the craving for the peace 
 of authority that comes through venerable 
 tradition and the long line of historic faith. The 
 Anglo-Catholic movement in its access of loy- 
 alty to the Church and its increased reverence 
 and dignity of worship is seen in the hymns of 
 
The Worship of Sacred Song 125 
 
 How and Trench and Thring. Bishop Heber 
 and Andrew Bonar sound the compassion and 
 devotion of the Missionary Spirit. And Mr. 
 Bliss and Mr. Sankey and Mrs. Crosby have 
 put into song the popular revival spirit of our 
 day. The hymn is both product and force of 
 the religious life of the people. 
 
 The Office of Music. In the Sanctuary is 
 no less important than that of the hymn. The-^ 
 best music is an "inwardly enlarging, elevating, 
 and refining force." It depends not solely upon 
 the senses, but is expressive of serious and high 
 thought. It may even be more subtle and power- 
 ful than poetry in touching the feelings; it goes 
 deeper and reaches feelings that are verily too 
 deep for words. It seems to lay hold upon the 
 very life of the spirit and so has to do with the 
 spiritual condition of worship. 
 
 As in its most thoughtful form, it makes its 
 appeal to the feelings, music is the truest ex- 
 pression of the emotions, not only passing moods 
 of feeling, but the underlying disposition. In 
 its best state, it is a breathing forth of the heart. 
 
 And music is not only the voice of the single 
 soul, but it possesses a high social quality. It 
 unites men in feeling. ven those who might 
 not agree as to the sentiments of the hymn, 
 
126 Public Worship 
 
 feel a kinship and join heartily in the 
 music. 
 
 It is striking that in hymnology and sacred 
 music, the unity of the Church is prophesied 
 and foreshadowed. We sing the hymns of the 
 Catholic Newman and Faber with as much 
 delight as those of the Puritan Watts. An 
 English Unitarian has written of the glory of 
 the cross, 
 
 "In the Cross of Christ I glory," 
 
 and his American brother has interpreted most 
 deeply its love: 
 
 "0 Love Divine that stooped to share 
 Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear." 
 
 Then music, as the form of beauty, in a certain 
 sense detaches the mind from the world. So 
 for the moment it helps to emancipate the 
 mind from its prejudices, to annul the force of 
 habit, to calm the agitation of passion and 
 charge the spirit with noble sentiments. It is 
 here that the teaching force of music is felt. 
 
 When we join the inspiring lyric with inspiring 
 music, we have devotional expression of the 
 highest form and value. 
 
 "In all great religious movements the people 
 have been inspired with a passion for singing. 
 They have sung their creed; it seems the freest 
 
The Worship of Sacred Song 127 
 
 and most natural way of declaring their trium- 
 phant beUef in great Christian truths, forgotten 
 or denied in previous times of spiritual depression 
 and now restored to their rightful place in the 
 thought and life of the Church. Song has 
 expressed and intensified to enthusiasm their 
 new faith, their new joy, their new determination 
 to do the will of God. Song has consoled their 
 sorrows, and sustained their courage in the 
 presence of danger. When a great assembly, 
 in a church or on a hillside, has united in a mourn- 
 ful confession of sin, or a pathetic appeal to the 
 Divine Mercy, or in exulting thanksgiving for 
 salvation, there has been created in a thousand 
 hearts that vivid consciousness of sharing a 
 common spiritual life which gives new energy 
 to religious faith and new depth to religious 
 emotion. When we find each other, we are in 
 the right way to find God. Sometimes, no 
 doubt, when listening to a solitary singer, as 
 when listening to a solitary speaker, a whole 
 congregation may become conscious of sharing 
 a common fear, a common sorrow, a common 
 hope, a common trust, a common joy; but this 
 consciousness of a universal sympathy is far 
 more certainly and far more strongly developed 
 when the common emotion gives pathos and 
 tenderness, vehemence and energy, to the great 
 
128 Public Worship 
 
 wave of song which every voice, the rudest as 
 well as the most cultivated, assists to swell. 
 This I believe explains in part the power which 
 psalmody exerts over the religious life; and I 
 think that the explanation is confirmed by the 
 fact that it is the songs which people have sung 
 with others which they delight to sing alone. 
 While they sing, they recover in some measure 
 the consciousness of fellowship with other Chris- 
 tian souls." (R. W. Dale. " Lectures,'* p. 274.) 
 
 We infer from the discussion that vocal musici^ 
 in public worship has a twofold function: that of 
 expression and that of impression. Expression 
 is the first and foremost, the expression of relig- 
 ious feeling, adoration, penitence, thanksgiving, 
 longing, the voice of the people to God, the 
 expression of Christian faith and hope, the voice 
 of a glad and triumphant faith. 
 
 The function of impression that church music 
 is to perform is a true but minor one, that of 
 attraction, making sensitive and reaching the 
 will and conscience through the emotions. 
 "Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty" is a 
 hymn of expression, the natural and fitting voice 
 of the congregation. While 
 
 " Come, ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish," 
 
 is a hymn of impression, sung to men, to awaken 
 their need and sense of God. 
 
The Worship of Sacred Song 129 
 
 The music of expression often makes the 
 deepest impression on the hearers. The feehngs 
 are moved indirectly, by new views of truth and 
 by the example of praise. And this impressive 
 influence of sacred music is no violation of the 
 principle that the chief office of music is ex- 
 pressive. In fact its influence is in proportion as 
 the latter purpose is realized. 
 
 The General Principles of Church Music. 
 — What shall be the choice of hymns? It is an 
 axiom to say that the hymn should be genuine 
 poetry, more than the metrical version of de- 
 votional thought. Yet the strict application 
 of this simple and fundamental rule would 
 exclude more than half of the hymns in the 
 usual collections. 
 
 "O God! our help in ages past" has few equals 
 for simple grandeur, but a true poetic taste 
 forbids the use of the majority of Watts's hymns. 
 The ministry must cultivate a true poetic taste 
 as the help to the devotional spirit. And we are 
 vigorously to choose those hymns that are the 
 true poetic expression of religious sentiment. 
 A few of the modern revival hymns make quick 
 appeal to the popular heart, are easily sung, 
 and may be the teachers of religious life. The 
 majority of them are shallow in thought and 
 
130 Public Worship 
 
 without musical worth. But in all matters of 
 education we must help men as we find them, 
 and patiently lift them to better things. 
 
 We should select hymns of the best and 
 simplest lyric forms. The peculiar metrical form 
 of some hymns, true poetry, should properly 
 exclude them from Church use. Such a beauti- 
 ful hymn as that of Jones Very: 
 
 "Wilt thou not visit me? 
 
 The plant beside me feels thy gentle dew ; 
 Each blade of grass I see. 
 From thy deep earth its quickening moisture drew, " 
 
 is not to be chosen for congregational use because 
 its metre is too peculiar for united expression, 
 and it voices the desire of the single soul more 
 than of the many. 
 
 Many hymns have outlived their usefulness. 
 They were local and personal in colouring, 
 expression of states that seem exaggerated or 
 false to the Christian consciousness of the present. 
 The hymn should be the living voice, not the 
 echo of the past. And I think that we should 
 use a greater number of adoring, grateful, 
 triumphant hymns. We sing too many in the 
 minor key. We need to be lifted out of weariness 
 and depression and borne upward in our praise. 
 
 "The complaint I make is that the hymns 
 which have been written for the last quarter 
 
The Worship of Sacred Song 131 
 
 of a century have no faith or hope or joy in them; 
 they are all tears and sighs; they might have 
 been written by people who never heard of the 
 liberty with which Christ has made his people 
 free. Moreover they are singularly restricted 
 in their subjects. They are mostly about 
 heaven or about the human side of our Lord's 
 character and life, and in both cases are miser-*'^ 
 ably sentimental. They are women's hymns 
 rather than men's; and they are the hymns of 
 very weak, hysterical women too. Those about 
 our Lord are written in the style in which 
 Romanists write about their saints; there is 
 hardly ever any vision of the glory and majesty 
 which shine through all His sufferings and shame. 
 They excite pity rather than reverence. No 
 man could do a better service for the Church 
 just now than by writing a score of hymns 
 inspired with the spirit of the *Te Deu7n\'^ 
 (Doctor Dale to Th. H. Gill.) 
 
 The minister should study hymnology, as he 
 does Scripture and prayers, that he may feed 
 his own soul and serve his people the best. He 
 should know the hymn-book of his own church, 
 that he may make a wiie choice of hymns for 
 every service, and cultivate the taste of his 
 people for the best hymns. There is danger- 
 that he follow his personal taste and conjfine 
 
132 Public Worship 
 
 his choice to a few favourite hymns, and 
 ignore the need of the people and the riches of 
 hymnology. 
 
 The Relation Between the Music and the 
 Hymn. — This may be rather the matter for the 
 musicians of the Church and for the book- 
 makers. But the demand of the Church will 
 partly govern the supply, and it is best for us 
 to have definite ideals. It seems a reasonable, 
 principle that only sacred music should be used 
 in worship, and that there should be exact 
 correspondence between music and hymn. 
 And yet secular melodies are often wedded to 
 sacred words, and men think that in some way 
 the sacred place and the sacred words will 
 sanctify the music. "Don't let the devil have 
 all the best tunes" is the common argument. 
 The suflficient answer is — if they are his tunes, 
 he should have them. This joining of sacred 
 words and secular music is certainly a super- 
 ficial view of music. Every piece of music 
 worth the name has a motif, an essential spirit, 
 exactly fitted to the ministry it was intended 
 to perform. If it is filled with a sensuous, 
 pleasure-loving spirit, it will minister to nothing 
 else in its final effect, no matter whether it be 
 set to "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," or "Nearer 
 
The Worship of Sacred Song 133 
 
 My God, to Thee." As Doctor Blodgett, an 
 authority in church music, has so strongly said: 
 "The fact is that all music, worthy to be called 
 by the name, is the expression of some special 
 and intense spiritual state, the whole quality 
 and force of which are breathed into the com- 
 position, and communicated in strictest integ- 
 rity to every hearer, in varying intensity and 
 definiteness, according to his sensitiveness and 
 culture, but affecting every one after the same 
 fashion and swaying his thought and feeling into 
 essential accord with it, whether he will or no." 
 ("The Place of Music in Public Worship," 
 
 p. 11.) 
 
 Music, as far as it is congregational, should 
 be largely expressive. As it makes its appeal to 
 the feelings, and is the language of emotion, 
 this would rule out that large class of hymns 
 and music that is didactic. All hymns that 
 teach doctrine solely and directly, those that are 
 calls to the impenitent or any special class, 
 cannot in the best sense be the voice of the con- 
 gregation in worship, and so have little place 
 in such singing. The chief use of such hymns 
 is that of being sung for and to the congregation 
 and not by them. The principle should be 
 applied wisely. The strict application would 
 sometimes weaken the power of congregational 
 
184 Public Worship 
 
 singing. The use by the people of impressive 
 hymns, voices of penitence and faith, the calls 
 to the impenitent, may be nobly pathetic and 
 moving. 
 
 The music should be congregational. The 
 people should rise as a significant and helpful 
 position toward united action. The hymns 
 and the music should be chosen in reference to 
 the people, their need and ability, and the people 
 should sing. No other music is so worshipful. 
 The people have no right to delegate this duty 
 and privilege to the choir. The choir is to lead 
 the congregational music and sing such other 
 pieces as shall promote the spirit of worship 
 or impress the special truth of the hour. A 
 quartet may not be the invention of the Evil 
 One, as Mr. Moody once impulsively said, but 
 it is not the best leader of the worship of praise. 
 The volume of sound is not sufiicient for inspir- 
 ing leadership, and the taste of the individual 
 singers is too apt to triumph over the need of 
 the people. The people do not easily follow the 
 lead of a quartet. It will be hard to find a quartet 
 in a single great English or Scotch church, so 
 completely has the revival of music brought in 
 chorus and congregational singing. A chorus, 
 with independent voices for special work, is the 
 most helpful choir. 
 
The Worship of Sacred Song 135 
 
 "The anthem is one of the most helpful parts 
 of the service. I don't think that any sermon 
 on the words, *The Lord is mindful of His Own,' 
 could do so much for me as the anthem when it 
 is well sung." ("Dale, Life of," p. 533.) . 
 
 There should be growth in the music of wor- 
 ship. At the beginning it should be adjusted 
 to the spiritual condition of the average wor- 
 shipper who really desires to meet God. The 
 first hymn should be general in character, with 
 music that is inspiring, something that the 
 people will love to sing. Then the service 
 should move steadily on in a given direction of 
 thought and feeling, each hymn and selection 
 by the choir, being helpful in itself, and also 
 an appreciable advance in the line of worship 
 and influence. 
 
 There Are Practical Difficulties in the 
 Worship of Song. — The first difficulty is the 
 wrong conception of church music. It is con- 
 sidered by some in the spirit of the concert 
 hall. They ignore or forget the breadth of the 
 invitation and command to the praises of the 
 Church. They listen to the choir as to a per- 
 formance, and judge it by its artistic value. Or 
 if they take part in congregational singing, their 
 delight is only "a sensuous one in pretty and 
 
136 Public Worship 
 
 sweet tunes, and in the transient enthusiasm 
 awakened by a full body of sound." 
 
 A second practical difficulty is the lack of 
 musical training among the people. It is true 
 in city congregations, and in some country 
 churches it is a serious hindrance to worthy 
 congregational worship. It is difficult to find 
 trained voices for the choir, and still more to 
 find the taste and training among the people 
 necessary for intelligent and worshipful singing. 
 And a third serious difficulty is with the choir 
 itself. Its assumption on the one hand of 
 musical superiority, ruling the entire musical 
 service, regardless of pastor and people; and on 
 the other hand, attempting ambitious perform- 
 ances, forgetting the power of simple music. 
 
 How Shall These DifBculties Be Met? — 
 The minister is to meet them, for he has no right 
 to resign his leadership of the entire service of 
 worship. The advice sometimes given to young 
 ministers — to have nothing to do with the 
 choir — is the worst possible advice. There 
 never can be the development of proper music 
 in the church without the intelligent, wise, sym- 
 pathetic leadership of the pastor. And here is 
 the reason for the proper training of the minister 
 in sacred music. The pulpit must teach the 
 
The Worship of Sacred Song 137 
 
 importance of the worship of song. The action of 
 the minister in the pulpit is significant and greatly 
 influential. He should be as attentive and 
 reverent during the music as the prayer. The 
 music is often the sincerest prayer. Freedom from 
 conversation, from the reading of notices, and 
 from attention to the details of service is neces- 
 sary for a worshipful example to his people. 
 Rising with the congregation and singing the 
 hymn when his strength will permit will express 
 his part with the people in worship. An occasional 
 service of song, with talks upon hymn writers 
 and the history and use of notable hymns, will 
 help to teach the people the importance of the 
 service. 
 
 The character of organist, chorister, and 
 singers will have relation to the spirit of worship. 
 They should be in sympathy with the church, 
 reverent and earnest in temper, making their 
 work a service of religion. The minister is to 
 establish and maintain the most cordial rela- 
 tion with them. Without dictation, he is to 
 make them feel that their work and his is in 
 harmony and plan together the worship of 
 each day. The minister is to appreciate the 
 work of his choir and be generous in the expres- 
 sion of it. 
 
 "No argument is needed to show how important 
 
138 Public Worship 
 
 is a true fraternal sympathy between the pastor 
 and the organist or choir-master and the singers 
 of the choir. Whether a state of sympathy 
 exists is usually determined by the pastor's 
 own action, except in cases where there is some 
 manifest folly in the plan of organization adopted 
 by the Church itself independently of the pastor. 
 Musical people are like others in being sus- 
 ceptible to kindliness and respectful consideration 
 to manly and noble intentions, to an intelligent 
 and judicious policy, to genuine spiritual warmth. 
 Indeed their very artistic training makes them 
 susceptible to these things in a peculiar degree. 
 Instead, therefore, of treating them with timidity 
 or suspicion or disdain, the pastor should assume 
 that he may count on them as hearty sympa- 
 thizers in achieving whatever things are true, 
 honourable, lovely, and gracious." (Pratt, 
 "Musical Ministers," p. 148.) 
 
 There are enough fair voices in nearly every 
 congregation to furnish a helpful choir; and it 
 is the pastor's business to see that they are per- 
 suaded to enter upon this service of God and 
 properly trained for it. And by personal in- 
 fluence, the pastor can make the people feel 
 the dignity and worth of the worship of praise. 
 
 A recent musical journal has these fitting 
 words: 
 
The Worship of Sacred Song 139 
 
 The minister and the musician are of the same lin- 
 eage; their work is one. The latter is, indeed, in a sense 
 subordinate to the former, but only as a younger 
 brother is inferior to the first-born. If, therefore, the 
 one should be holy, so should the other. There are 
 young men and women of musical ability in mul- 
 titudes, who dream of doing good in a grand way; 
 here is a field worthy of them. Let them cultivate 
 their powers as highly as may be; and then present 
 themselves to the Church as candidates for Levitical 
 orders. Let them take possession of the choir and the 
 organ, and sanctify them to holy uses; then pride will 
 give place to devotion, jealousy will vanish before 
 pious zeal, and music will find its true place in Chris- 
 tian worship. 
 
 It is absolutely essential to proper congre- 
 gational singing that the people receive some 
 systematic training in sacred music. The teach- 
 ing of music in our public schools should tell 
 upon our devotional singing, but this is not 
 enough. Only a small part of our congregations 
 will have such opportunities for vocal training. 
 The matter should receive care from the pastor 
 and oflScers of the church. 
 
 In many churches, the chorister can be secured 
 to train the congregation. A few minutes before 
 or after the mid-week meeting can be used for 
 this purpose. A choral society can be formed 
 
140 Public Worship 
 
 to meet through the winter months, or a regular 
 class taught once a week. In smaller places, 
 the several congregations should unite in securing 
 a good singing-master for a part of the year. It 
 is not a visionary plan. And we shall complain 
 of the spiritless singing, of "hosannas lan- 
 guishing on the lips," until some vigorous and 
 continuous effort is made to teach the people, 
 "young men and maidens, old men and children," 
 to praise the Lord. 
 
 It is desirable that the singing of the family 
 circle, the Bible school, and the devotional meet- 
 ings should be a preparation for the public wor- 
 ship of the church. And to this end, the hymns 
 of the church should in large part be used, that 
 all become familiar with and learn to love the 
 language and the music of such worship. And 
 the church officers should have hymn books with 
 tunes placed in the pews. 
 
 Sacred song should not be left to the taste 
 and impulse of the individual. The church 
 should labour as a society to make its praise 
 worthy of its faith. 
 
LECTURE IX 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREE 
 WORSHIP 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 The Development Means Evolution, not Revolution. 
 Worship Should Express a Comprehensive Christianity. 
 The Principles of Development. 
 
 Unity. — The message and unity. The relation 
 
 of variety to unity. 
 Harmony. — The relation of the hymns and prayers 
 
 to harmony. 
 IntelHgibility. — Should the hymns be read? The 
 part of choir and congregation. 
 Suggested Orders of Service. 
 
 What Can be Done to Increase the Life and Fervour of 
 
 Worship. 
 
 The minister's part. Study. Cultivation of lit- 
 urgical sense. The reverential spirit among the 
 people. The social spirit in worship. 
 
 142 
 
IX 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREE 
 WORSHIP 
 
 Our influence on the worship of any congre- 
 gation should be evolution and not revolution. 
 We should attempt no sudden changes, nothing 
 that would possibly weaken the conviction or 
 devotional habit of the people. We must have' 
 the devotion and patience to enrich the spiritual 
 life and cultivate the spirit of reverence, and the 
 taste for nobler form, before insisting that such 
 forms shall alone be used. We must have the 
 wisdom to build on existing forms as far as pos- 
 sible; to take the present ability and liking and 
 gradually help it to better things. 
 
 One may go to a church where the Gospel 
 Songs, the more easy and jingling tunes, are 
 customary music. It would certainly be foolish 
 to tell them how vulgar and unworthy the taste, 
 and to insist at once upon the nobler music of 
 the Church. Little by little, without comparison 
 or censure, by personal practice, one can turn 
 
 143 
 
144 Public Worship 
 
 their thought to finer poetry and truer music, 
 elevating the popular taste. And ever the 
 whole life of the Church must grow, deepen 
 and enrich, if the nobler forms are to be the 
 fitting expression of the soul. 
 
 There has been an easy teaching of truth and 
 simple pathos and quick appeal to the social 
 element in such music that has made it an in- 
 strument in reaching the multitudes. If it has 
 sometimes been shallow and sensational, so has 
 their faith and life. Not only must we strive 
 after a nobler worship, the forms we use being 
 teachers, promoters of reverence and aspiration, 
 but the life itself must grow or the worship is 
 but a hollow form. 
 
 Our worship should express a comprehensive '/ 
 Christianity, as broad and vital as the Gospel 
 itself. In the hymns we sing and the prayers 
 we offer, and the forms of church life that become 
 the tests of discipleship and the expressions of 
 service, we must always lay hold of the essential 
 things of religion and minister to the variety of ^ 
 natures in the household of faith. We must, 
 not develop a narrow or eccentric piety. We 
 must not shut out or fail to feed the natures of 
 all who truly desire to serve God. / 
 
 "There are a great many men, — merchants, v ' 
 bankers, lawyers, manufacturers, mechanics — 
 
The Development of Free Worship 145 
 
 who will join heartily in dignified public worship, 
 and will give time, money, and strength, to what- 
 ever works of righteousness and charity the 
 Church may reasonably lay upon them, who 
 simply cannot and will not, wear their hearts 
 upon their sleeves, or give expression to their 
 inmost personal experience in a social meeting. 
 By making such social expression of personal 
 religious experience practically synonymous 
 with the religious life, you are excluding this 
 type of men from the fellowship of the spiritual 
 life as effectively as if you stationed a regiment 
 of soldiers with fixed bayonets around the church 
 edifice." (President Hyde, Outlook, Dec. 8, 
 1900.) 
 
 We are to strive with patient persistence at 
 intelligible, spiritual progress. Whatever we 
 do should have intellectual and spiritual signif- 
 icance. President Charles Cuthbert Hall's 
 principles of unity and intelligibility are self- 
 evident. Harmony might well be added as a 
 third. 
 
 There should be a study in each service to*>^' 
 produce unity. This unity, as in the sermon, ^ 
 will come from singleness of theme and single- 
 ness of purpose. If we do not have some 
 definite truth to be expressed by each service, 
 and some definite end to be gained, we can have 
 
146 Public Worship 
 
 no unity. If we give thought to each service, 
 we shall certainly have in mind something that 
 we wish to secure. And this certain thing in our 
 own mind will certainly secure order in the parts 
 of worship and definite impression upon the 
 minds of the people. It is a serious criticism 
 upon us as leaders of the Church, if men say that 
 they can perceive no system in our work from 
 Sunday to Sunday, either in our teaching or in 
 our worship. It is truly a serious burden put 
 upon us as leaders of free worship, but there is 
 no way of escape save into a liturgical church 
 where everything is fixed for us. In free worship, 
 intelligent thought must plan and direct as 
 fully as in the sermon. 
 
 There are certain permanent elements in the: 
 service, as confession of faith, ascription of 
 praise, confession of sin, dedication of life, seek- 
 ing for help. But the new elements of each 
 service consist of the present life of the people, 
 the need and desire of the day, and the truth 
 then to be taught. The hymns, the Scripture 
 lessons, the prayers, the sermon, may all have 
 a certain truth in mind and move on with grow- 
 ing volume toward a certain end. 
 
 The message of the hour will most naturally 
 furnish the unity of the service. As in Catholic 
 and Oriental churches, the sacrament of the 
 
The Development of Free Worship 147 
 
 Lord's Table has been the centre and norm of 
 development, in Protestant churches the altar 
 is the pulpit and the directing force is the teach- 
 ing of the Word of God. If anything like a 
 church year is followed, or if a large prevision 
 is had, and a plan of pulpit instruction formed 
 looking through several weeks or months, the 
 truths would naturally direct the choice of 
 Scripture lessons, and more or less shape the form 
 of the prayers and the selection of the hymns. 
 If there is some truth that so seizes the preacher 
 that he must speak it, if there is some need of 
 men that so presses upon his mind and heart 
 that he must attempt the answer in his sermon, 
 then that truth or need will dominate his life 
 for the time, and he will find authority for it in 
 God's Word, and he will set the people singing 
 it; and what he so earnestly desires and feels 
 that the people must have, he will ask for in his 
 prayers and help the people to ask for them- 
 selves. The Scripture will suggest or illustrate 
 the truth, the hymns will prepare the heart for 
 the truth, or be the expression if it, or the appeal 
 for it; and the prayers, while never forgetting 
 the spirit and purpose of a people's worship, 
 never didactic or anticipating and repeating the 
 exact truth of the sermon, will be shaped by that 
 truth, will have its form and colouring. It is 
 
148 Public Worship 
 
 a practical and useful principle then to let the 
 truth for the hour guide the worship of the hour. 
 
 The principle of unity may be overworked. 
 The general interests of worship, the varied and 
 comprehensive expression of the people, may 
 be overlooked in the desire to gain singleness of 
 impression. We must remember that this 
 matter of unity does not mean sameness. It is 
 not necessary to have everything on the same 
 key, everything teaching the same truth, to 
 have unity of impression. 
 
 Sometimes alternation and variety relieve 
 the mind, bring in other motives, that the theme 
 may be returned to with added force. A hymn 
 of the very opposite nature from the sermon 
 may throw the light of contrast upon the truth. 
 It would not be well for the service to move 
 on in a straight line. We need not lose single- 
 ness of purpose in granting the natural demand 
 of the mind for variety. 
 
 W^e shall seek a true harmony in the service \/\/J 
 between the objective and the subjective, between 
 the didactic and the devotional. The sermon 
 and the worship will have a true balance. No 
 one part will seem exalted at the expense of 
 another. 
 
 Notice how the hymns may help the harmony 
 of service. The first hymn general, lifting up 
 
The Development of Free Worship 149 
 
 of the heart to God, something to break the spell 
 of worldliness and create the sense of God. 
 True worship demands that the people should 
 find voice at the beginning, that reverence and 
 fellowship may be cultivated and that the ser- 
 vice be felt at once as the people's. Then the 
 second hymn, one that may be more impressive 
 in its character, touching the spiritual sensi- 
 bilities and preparing the heart for the truth; 
 and the final hymn one that may voice the great 
 lesson of the Word. 
 
 In the new ''Directory for Public Worship," 
 prepared by the United Free Church of Scotland, 
 a prayer for illumination precedes the sermon. 
 
 "The preaching of the Word is so important, 
 and the responsibilties both of preacher and 
 hearers are so great, that it is fitting and desir- 
 able that the sermon or lecture should have a 
 brief prayer specially assigned to itself. This 
 is commonly known as the Prayer for Illumina- 
 tion, or for the special presence and power of 
 the Holy Spirit with the Word. A hymn con- 
 taining petitions and aspirations for the Spirit 
 may sometimes take the place of this prayer." 
 
 In our churches, it seems far better to have 
 the hymn the immediate preparation for the 
 sermon. We have many hymns that are true 
 petitions. Croly's "Spirit of God, descend 
 
150 Public Worship 
 
 upon my heart," or Rawson's "Come to our 
 poor nature's night," or Johnson's "Father, in 
 Thy mysterious presence kneehng," will make the 
 heart tender and sensitive, fill it with holy desire, 
 and so be a true preparation for the hearing of 
 the Word. 
 
 Notice how the prayers may increase the 
 harmony of worship. 
 
 They should not repeat each other; each should 
 be in its place, of peculiar thought and spirit; 
 and each an appreciable advance in the idea of 
 the hour. 
 
 Invocation or Lord's Prayer. — The invo- 
 cation will be most helpful if clothed largely 
 in Scripture language, such simple and famil- 
 iar forms that the people will easily and heartily 
 join in it. An example from "The New Di- 
 rectory of Public Worship'* gives a simple, 
 direct, and Scriptural invocation: 
 
 Almighty and everlasting God, teach us to worship 
 thee Who art a Spirit, in spirit and in truth. Take 
 away all blindness of heart, all coldness and backward- 
 ness of spirit. Open thou our lips, and our mouths 
 shall show forth thy praise. Open our hearts to re- 
 ceive thy truth in the love of it. May Christ be glo- 
 rified in the preaching of His Gospel, and in all the 
 services of His house this day for His name's sake. 
 Amen. 
 
The Development of Free Worship 151 
 Here is one wholly in the words of a Psalm. (84.) 
 
 O Lord God of Hosts, hear our prayer; give ear, 
 O God of Jacob. A day in thy courts is better than 
 a thousand. We had rather stand at the threshold 
 of thy house than dwell in the tents of wickedness. 
 O Lord, be our sun and shield; give us grace and 
 glory. Withhold no good thing from us. O Lord of 
 Hosts, bless us who trust in thee. 
 
 Confession. — If such a short prayer could 
 follow the Psalter, it would put us in har- 
 mony with the Reformed churches of the 
 Continent and the Church of England, that 
 adopted this special order from the Continent; 
 and also emphasize the fact of human need, too 
 often ignored in the thought of to-day. It 
 would be a true preparation for worship and 
 teaching. And furthermore it would keep the 
 general prayer from undue length and to its 
 strict character of thanksgiving and personal 
 and general petition. 
 
 The Confession of Sin, adopted by the Pro- 
 testant church of Zurich, 1525, has for almost 
 four centuries been on the lips and in the heart 
 of the Reformed church all over the world. 
 
 The General or Pastoral Prayer. — ^Thanks- 
 giving, petition, and intercession. In these 
 
152 Public Worship 
 
 matters we must not be content with only 
 general expressions, but at times mention such 
 particulars as shall touch and arouse the minds of 
 the congregation. Take the matter of Thanks- 
 giving as example: 
 
 A prayer of general thanksgiving, however fine 
 and impressive it may be to a spiritual mind, often 
 seems to minds not spiritual only exaggerated and 
 unreal. Its power is due to its touching chords that 
 are sensitive and quick to respond, to its awakening 
 memories that have been often renewed and are never 
 far to seek. 
 
 In order to do a like service to the less devout, we 
 must mention and dwell upon the special mercies of 
 God, we must touch those points of their life where 
 they cannot but acknowledge the hand of a loving 
 Father. As we all learn to know the sinfulness of our 
 own hearts only through individual acts of sin, so we 
 learn to be thankful through perceiving the specific 
 acts of God's goodness in our daily lives. By specify- 
 ing them in prayer, we awaken memories in hearts 
 dull and slow, and by means of that lift them to 
 gratitude and the ascription of all praise to the giver 
 of all good. (See particulars in "The New Di- 
 rectory for Public Worship. ") 
 
 The Closing Prayer seeks a blessing upon 
 the Word, holding to the single thought of the 
 hour. 
 
The Development of Free Worship 153 
 
 Intelligibility. — The entire service of 
 worship should be intelligible; the people 
 should understand it and feel its motives that 
 they may have an intelligent and hearty part in 
 it. This means that the minister should plan 
 for the service and have it so clearly marked out 
 that the people may catch its meaning. It 
 means that he interpret with his voice all his 
 parts in the service, the Scripture, the hymns 
 (when read), the prayers. We must read and 
 pray with the Spirit and the understanding so 
 that even he that filleth the place of the un- 
 learned shall say Amen. 
 
 Does intelligibility require the reading of the 
 hymns by the minister .f* The custom of reading 
 the hymns began when there were no or few 
 hymn-books in the pews. That need has passed, 
 and yet many ministers thoughtlessly read all 
 the hymns. They do so simply because it has 
 been the custom. They are sticklers for what 
 has been. The hymn-book in the hands of the 
 people and the need of economy of time for the 
 fuller service to-day should cause the discon- 
 tinuance of the habit of reading the hymns. 
 The reading of the hymn without special and new 
 interpretation is a source of darkness and not of 
 light. A single stanza may be read (especially 
 at the opening of the service), to fix the attention, 
 
154 Public Worship 
 
 to unify the thought and feeling, and so pro- 
 mote the spirit of worship. And whenever in 
 the service that needs to be secured and can be 
 by the reading of the hymn, one should not 
 hesitate to read it. Sometimes the people 
 sing an old hymn in a perfunctory manner. It 
 is so familiar that they sing mechanically. 
 Then the truth is to be given a new significance. 
 A new hymn needs often to be interpreted by 
 the voice. 
 
 The choir must be taught to obey the law 
 of intelligibility. They must not sing in an 
 unknown tongue. Distinctness is as primal in 
 singing as in speaking. It will be a help if all 
 the pieces by the choir, sentences, chants, 
 anthems, be printed in full on the order of 
 service, or distinct references made to the books 
 of praise so that the people may follow the 
 words. 
 
 And the congregation must be taught to take 
 their part in worship, thoughtfully and heartily, 
 never in a perfunctory and careless way; not 
 mere listeners but worshippers in heart and voice. 
 This result is not an easy and quick attainment, 
 but will certainly follow a wise and persistent 
 leadership. The best books of worship gen- 
 erously provided for all and some system of 
 training will be a condition of such attainment. 
 
The Development of Free Worship 155 
 
 SUGGESTED ORDERS OF SERVICE 
 I 
 
 THE UNITED FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 1 . Sentences of Scripture. 
 
 2. Invocation. 
 
 3 . Praise — Psalm or hymn, 
 
 4 . Scripture — Old Testament. 
 
 5. Prayer of adoratioo, thanksgiving, confession 
 
 and petition. 
 
 6. Praise — Psalm sung or chanted, hymn or 
 
 anthem. 
 
 7 . Scripture — New Testament. 
 
 8 . Praise — Hymn. 
 
 9. Prayer of Intercession, with Lord's Prayer. 
 
 10 . Praise — Hymn. 
 
 11. Prayer for Illutaination. 
 
 12. Sermon. 
 
 13. Praise — Hymn. 
 
 14 . Prayer for bjessing on the Word. 
 
 15 . Praise — Doxojogy. 
 
 16. Benedictioj^. 
 
 II 
 
 THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OP BUFFALO, N. Y. 
 
 1 . Organ and Anthem. 
 
 2. Sentences of Scripture. 
 
 3. Doxology. 
 
 4 . Invocation, Creed and Lord's Prayer. 
 
 5 . Chant — Choir and congregation. 
 
156 Public Worship 
 
 6 . Commandments, responses and summary. 
 
 7 . Sentences and Prayer of Confession. 
 
 8 . Hymn. 
 
 9 . Psalter* — Gloria Patri. 
 
 10 . Scripture Lesson — Te Deum. 
 
 11. General Prayer. 
 
 12. Sentences — Offering and prayer. 
 
 13. Hymn. 
 
 14 . Sermon. 
 
 15. Hymn. 
 
 16 . Prayer and Benediction. 
 
 m 
 
 BEIEFER ORDER 
 
 1. Organ (Anthem). 
 
 2 . Call to Worship. Scripture sentences. 
 
 3 . Doxology or hymn . 
 
 4 . Invocation and Lord's Prayer. 
 
 5 . Psalter — Gloria Patri. 
 
 6 . Prayer of Confession. 
 
 7. Hymn. 
 
 8. Scripture Lessons; Old and New Testaments. 
 
 (Creed). 
 
 9 . General Prayer. Thanksgiving and petition. 
 
 10 . Offering — Choir — Prayer. 
 
 11. Hymn. 
 
 12. Sermon. 
 
 13. Hymn. 
 
 14 . Prayer and benediction. 
 
The Development of Free Worship 157 
 
 The last named order does not differ mater- 
 ially from that in "Common Worship," but is 
 somewhat shorter and can be made still simpler 
 without marring its meaning. 
 
 The preface, whether Scripture Call, Invoca- 
 tion, Hymn, or all together, should give the 
 keynote to the worship. The people should 
 jQrst listen to the Word of God, so the Scripture 
 should come early in the service. The Psalter 
 is an act of praise and should be followed by 
 brief praise, or the Gloria, The Creed after 
 the Scripture lesson is the proper response to 
 the Word of God. 
 
 Worship now moves forward into more intimate 
 converse with God. The intellectual side has 
 been expressed in the Scripture lessons; now the 
 heart speaks in the pastoral prayer. The last 
 prayer with the benediction, while the people 
 are seated, secures that quiet and reverent clos- 
 ing of the service that will deepen the impression 
 of truth. 
 
 A second service designed to win those not 
 regular worshippers may well be simpler and freer 
 in form. Here the desire to gain men may well 
 govern all forms. Father Dolling of Poplar, 
 East London, the greatest missioner among the 
 poor of our generation, insisted on his right to 
 adapt the liturgy of the Established Church to 
 
158 Public Worship 
 
 the needs of the people, and more than once lost 
 his charge in defence of his liberty. 
 
 Three things may be done to increase the 
 life and fervour of worship: 
 
 The first of all is for the minister to devote' 
 himself to a more careful and spiritual prepara- 
 tion. He is the leader and the responsibility 
 rests chiefly upon him. 
 
 Study is the path of true preparation. The 
 minister is to study the prayers and hymns of 
 the ages, become acquainted with the forms 
 used in other churches, and make himself fa- 
 miliar with the spirit and sentiment of his own 
 church. Our ministers are freemen and not 
 bound by any rules save those of firmness and 
 Christian love. We can enrich our thought and 
 forms of worship from whatever source we 
 please. We may go to Catholic writers as well 
 as Protestant. Can we not unite as brethren 
 to make our ministry of worship as perfect and 
 helpful as possible .^^ Preparation demands that 
 we give to the Scripture and hymns and prayers 
 some of the earnest thought that we put upon 
 our sermons. To select the hymns after we 
 have reached the church and to shape the prayers 
 while the hymns are being sung is an unworthy 
 view of our service. 
 
 And if we are to be the leaders of worship, 
 
The Development of Free Worship 159 
 
 we must go into the pulpit with spiritual prep- 
 aration. There should be the quiet hour of 
 deep meditation and spiritual seeking, the con- 
 scious dependence upon the Holy Spirit. And 
 with such girding and guiding we shall be able 
 to lift the people into the apprehension of 
 spiritual worship. 
 
 There is something more needed than sincere 
 piety and earnest preparation on the part of the 
 minister. It might be called the liturgical feel- 
 ing, the sense of fitness. 
 
 Are there any liturgical laws to govern the 
 minister? In a free worship, definite laws can- 
 not be laid down, but certain principles may be 
 suggested, as already stated in this chapter. 
 The principles may take this summary: Is a 
 certain act or part of worship in the right place .^ 
 Will it be the proper expression of the religious 
 life and will it tend to the growth of such life? 
 It is the sense of fitness. It is the feeling of 
 reverence, the singleness of mind in any particular 
 act of worship, the taste that will exclude the 
 trivial and the incongruous and choose the best. 
 
 A sense of fitness could not announce a rum- 
 mage sale between the parts of a communion 
 service, or let the people listen to a sacred con- 
 cert before finding their voices in worship. 
 
 How can the liturgical sense be trained? 
 
160 Public Worship 
 
 By whatever cultivates a sense of reverence and 
 harmony; by the study of liturgies and noble 
 prayers and hymns; by familiarity with the devo- 
 tional parts of Scripture. And above all, by 
 single-mindedness in worship, suffering nothing 
 that shall divert the mind from the aim of the 
 hour or that shall not contribute to spiritual 
 expression and growth. 
 
 Another help to truer worship is the cul- 
 tivation of the reverential spirit among the people. 
 All flippant manner and speech in the church are 
 to be avoided. A worshipful attitude is to be 
 encouraged in prayer and singing. The church 
 building is to be guarded against uses whose 
 associations will weaken the spirit of reverence. 
 The children and youth are to be taught that 
 worship is a joyful yet solemn act. By our 
 attention and seriousness and preparation, men 
 are to feel that worship is an act of intellect 
 as well as sentiment, demanding the concen- 
 tration of the highest powers of manhood. 
 
 The social spirit in worship needs to be cul-' 
 tivated. There is too much individualism in 
 our congregations. Men go to church for hear- 
 ing and not for participation, for mental interest, 
 and not for spiritual fellowship. 
 
 How shall the social element in worship be 
 promoted, the community of spirit and act be 
 
The Development of Free Worship IGl 
 
 encouraged? While aiming at constant growth, 
 there should be a stable element in worship. 
 "Some permanent basis in every form of wor- 
 ship; something of the old, of the familiar, of 
 the invariable; some worn pathway for the feet 
 of worshippers to tread in." And this will touch 
 the tender sentiments of men and unite their 
 hearts in sympathy; for there is a power in old 
 associations, old songs, and old scenes. The 
 singing of the Doxology, the repetition of the 
 Lord's Prayer and of the Apostles' Creed, and 
 the use of a proper proportion of old and new 
 hymns will aid the fellowship of believers. And 
 their hearty use of the forms of devotion will 
 make the worship of God a joyful service and 
 attractive to a larger number of worshippers. 
 
 Whatever be the difficulties to the worthy 
 expression of free worship — and they will seem 
 greater with years of service — we need not 
 despair. 
 
 We can do more for the spiritual life of the 
 Church and for the worship of God in the Spirit 
 by freedom in worship than by any fixed liturgy. 
 "We too have received the Holy Ghost. He 
 did not forsake the Church when the great saints 
 of former ages passed away; and if we rely on His 
 inspirations, and devote to the substance, the 
 spirit, and the form of worship the thought and 
 
162 Public Worship 
 
 care which they ought to receive," worship shall 
 be the fitting expression of the religious life of 
 the Church, and channels whereby the grace of 
 God shall come more richly into the hearts of 
 men. 
 
 "Public worship ought to be comforting, 
 joyful, enthusiastic, beautiful, the flower of all 
 the week, but its chief note should be reverence 
 and godly fear. Praise and prayer, the reading 
 of Holy Scripture, and the preaching of the 
 Evangel should conspire to lift the congregation 
 above the present world and the sensible atmos- 
 phere in which they have been living, and bring 
 them face to face with the eternal. It was this 
 tender and gracious fear which made the glory 
 of Puritan faith and gave visible force to Puritan 
 character. 
 
 Nothing is more urgently needed in this day, 
 which knows how to doubt and jest, but is for- 
 getting how to revere and adore, when the great 
 function of worship has become pleasing and 
 amusing, a performance and a comedy. What 
 we may well pray for is a baptism into our fathers* 
 penitent, austere, enduring Christian faith, who 
 summoned themselves hourly to the judgment 
 seat of Christ, and therefore considered it a 
 small thing to be judged by man's judgment; 
 who never met in the Great Name, whether in 
 
The Developement of Free Worship US 
 
 stately cathedral or bare hill side, but they came 
 to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to 
 Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, and 
 to God, the Judge of all." (John Watson, **Cure 
 of Souls," p. 271.) 
 
BOOKS ON WORSHIP 
 
 GENERAL 
 
 "Christian Worship. " Richard and Painter. 
 " Worship. " Published by the Century Co. 
 "PubHc Worship. " Pattison. 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 "The Prayers of the Bible." McFadyen. 
 " Extempore Prayer. " Tailing. 
 "Anthology of Prayers for Public Worship." 
 United Free Church, Scotland. 
 
 SCRIPTURE 
 
 "Literary and Vocal Interpretation of the Bible.'* 
 
 Curry. 
 "Use of the Bible in Worship." Hall. 
 "Aids to Common Worship." Published by the 
 
 Century Co. 
 "Responsive Readings." Henry van Dyke. 
 
 HYMNS 
 
 "History and Use of Hymns and Hymn Tunes.*' 
 
 Breed. 
 "Musical Ministries. " Waldo Pratt. 
 "Music in the Western Church." Dickinson. 
 
 MANUALS 
 
 "Book of Common Order." Church of Scotland. 
 " New Directory for Public Worship.'* United Free 
 
 Church, Scotland. 
 "Common Worship." Presbyterian Church, U. S. 
 "The Common Order of Morning Worship." 
 
 Hungerford. 
 
 
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