01.06. THE MINISTER AS PRIEST

CHAPTER VI THE MINISTER AS PRIEST The duties of religious ministry in Old Testament time were discharged by two classes of ministers, - priests and prophets. The priest conducted public worship, the prophet furnished religious instruction, rarely was the same man both priest and prophet.

It is true that the priest sometimes furnished religious instruction, and the prophets sometimes accompanied their prophesyings with music, which may have been a kind of public worship; but, speaking broadly, the conducting of public worship was carried on by the priests, and religious instruction and inspiration were furnished by the prophets. The object of religious worship is the expression of an existing religious life; the object of religious instruction is the impartation of such life. In our time these two functions are generally united in one service. By the expression of religious life we help to promote it; in promoting religious life we necessarily give expression to it. But they may be, and in point of fact they often are, differentiated.

Sometimes public worship is without any public instruction. In most of the cathedrals of Spain, and in many of those in Italy, there are small facilities for public instruction. There is no pulpit; there are no seats for a congregation; and in point of fact in many of the larger churches in those countries no public instruction is given except during the Lenten season. Thus there is religious worship without any instruction. On the other hand, there may be religious instruction without any worship. There is no indication that there was any public worship connected with the Sermon on the Mount; it is certain that there was no public worship in connection with Paul’s sermon at Athens.

There is held every winter in New York, in Cooper Union, on Sunday evenings, a series of public religious addresses. Jew and Christian, Protestant and Roman Catholic, Churchman and Anarchist, combine to fill Cooper Union Hall fairly full; and under these circumstances those who arrange for these meetings think it not wise to have any religious services. There is no reading of the Scriptures, no prayer, no singing of hymns; there is simply a religious lecture. And the heterogeneous congregation of non-church-goers assembled and the attention they give to the more serious discourses justify the method pursued.

There is no essential reason why any minister might not in his church maintain this distinction, and have sometimes a service without any instruction, and sometimes instruction without any service.

Whether this would be wise or not would depend upon the condition of the homes in the village or town where the church is situated. Ordinarily the instruction and the worship are better commingled; each is better for being connected with the other; the service is more real and rational if connected with instruction; the instruction is more spiritual and vital if connected with some public worship. But there is no essential impropriety in having either without the other.

It is true the best expression of our religious life is in our conduct, in what we do, not in what we say. It is also true that the expression of our religious life which is personal and individual is more important than that which is public and common.

" When thou prayest," says Christ, " enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." [1] But those of us who have a common religious life, - a reverence for God, a hope in God, a responsiveness toward God, a comfort in God, a love for God, will inevitably desire to come together and find some common expression for these common experiences. This is public worship. The most important way in which a boy can express his love for his father is by obedience to his commands. If he does not show it in that way, all the other ways are of little value. The most sacred hour of the week for him is the hour when he sits down alone with his father or his mother, and these two talk together [1] Matthew 6:6. confidentially with no one to hear, and speak almost in whispers, as though they would not even allow their own ears to hear their own words. But still the home would be very imperfect were there not some hours in which the whole family gather together and interchange their thought and their feeling, so that their lives flow in one commingled stream. What these hours of human fellowship in the family are to the home life, the hours of worship are to the church life. They are of vital importance. The minister makes a very great mistake, in my judgment a fatal mistake, if he thinks his chief function is to be a preacher of sermons. Certainly not less important is his function to inspire, direct, and conduct the worship of a worshiping people. To do this he has in all Protestant churches three instrumentalities, - the distinctively devotional meeting, the Lord’s Supper, and the public worship in the regular Sunday service.

I. Every church ought to have some meeting or meetings primarily if not exclusively for the expression of its devotional life. They may be liturgical or non-liturgical or a combination of the liturgical and non-liturgical; they may be intermingled with instruction or exhortation or both, or they may be exclusively devotional; what is essential is that their primary object should be, not a teaching of truth, not an appeal to the emotions or the will, but an expression of the already existing life of penitence and consecration and praise. And if the meeting is devoted to that object, and that object exclusively, it will necessarily be attractive only to those who possess or desire to possess such spiritual life, and to share the expression of it with others. In other words, only those will be attracted to the purely devotional meeting who are both social and spiritual, or perhaps I should say who are socially spiritual. The descendants of the Puritans have made a great mistake in measuring devotional meetings by quantity, not by quality. I confess to that mistake myself. In my earlier ministry I measured the spirituality of my church by the size of the prayermeeting. If I went back into the ministry, I should not apply that measure. I should not try to make the prayer-meeting large, and should not be discouraged because it was small; I should not urge the people to attend it from sense of duty, nor try to draw them to it by purely social attractions. I should wish to get together on certain occasions those members of the church who had a spiritual life to which they wished to give expression in common with other members of the church, and only those. If there were three, I would begin with three; if thirty, I should be glad of the thirty. If twenty more should come in who had no spiritual life, who did not care for the prayer-meeting, and to whom the prayer-meeting meant nothing, I should wish them to stay away. I should not wish a foreign element in a meeting the object of which is not to impart religious life to others but to express religious life by a common devotion. A man may be a very good man, lie may be a profoundly religious man, and not be interested in a purely devotional meeting. His religious life may find its expression in his daily acts and in private devotions. The devotional meeting of the church may be liturgical, and the liturgy may fail to afford the expression which fits his temperament; or it may be non-liturgical, and his critical temper may make it impossible for him to preserve a devotional spirit in spite of the infelicities of expression in the extemporaneous prayers. No man has any right to set up his own method of expression of spiritual life as a standard and then measure all men by that standard. Neither the Roman Catholic nor the Episcopal Church has what is ordinarily designated by the term prayer-meeting. Yet both have developed high types of devotional life. Nor is it true that the prayer-meeting is the thermometer of the Church, if by that phrase is meant that the spiritual life of the Church is to be measured by the size of the prayer-meeting. The true measure of the Church is the efficiency of its active service.

Christ has given to his disciples the true measuring rod: " By their fruits ye shall know them." [1] The difference between the meeting for spiritual expression and the meeting for public instruction is very clearly indicated by certain contrasts in the [1] Matthew 7:20.

New Testament. The Sermon on the Mount was delivered to a great concourse. It is an address for the impartation of religious instruction. The conversation of Christ, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters of John, was an expression of spiritual life to those who were already in sympathy with the Master. All others were excluded: Christ did not begin that conversation with them until the traitor had gone out. Even more striking is the contrast between what we call the Lord’s Prayer and the prayer which Christ offered just before his Passion, as it is reported in the seventeenth chapter of John. The Lord’s Prayer expresses the common wishes of unspiritual humanity, - for daily bread, forgiveness of sin, guidance, deliverance from temptation. But when Christ comes to offer prayer in the innermost circle of his own disciples, he says nothing about daily bread, - he assumes his Father’s care for his own; he says nothing about forgiveness of sins, - he assumes that these men have been forgiven; he does not ask that they shall not be led into temptation. The only petition that is in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and also in the Lord’s prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John, is the prayer for deliverance from evil. " I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the Evil One." And then follows prayer for fellowship with the Father and fellowship with Jesus Christ his Son, which will make them one with God as the Father and the Son are one with each other. One is a prayer of Christ and for those who are already in fellowship with him; the other voices the common aspirations of universal humanity.

Public worship may, and in some sense does, both express and develop the dormant reverence in the community, so that the life of men who never attend worship is modified in its spiritual quality from the mere fact that they dwell in a community where worshipers dwell and public worship is carried on. Thus the atmosphere of a college where a wholly voluntary chapel service is maintained, which is attended by only a minority of the students, is different from one which is without any devotional exercises of any description. It is also true that public worship often enkindles spiritual life in those who chance to attend it, without previously sharing in that life. For both reasons weekly meetings wholly devotional in their character may be advantageously maintained, to which the undevotional may be not only welcomed but invited or even urged. It is also true that weekly meetings may well be held in the church for other than purely devotional purposes. The pastor may maintain a weekly lecture, or a weekly Bible class, or a meeting to arouse missionary enthusiasm, or one for purely social fellowship; or he may combine two or more of these objects in one meeting, and that meeting may be held on the same evening with a purely devotional meeting, either preceding or following it. But he makes a mistake if he allows any meeting to take the place of one purely devotional in its character; or if he attempts by extraneous attractions to draw the unspiritual into the devotional meeting, or by appeals to a sense of duty to coerce them into it. " Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," says Christ. [1] A fourth who has not come in Christ’s name does not add to but detracts from the spiritual value of such a gathering.

II. The Lord’s Supper is a memorial service.

" This do in remembrance of me," 2 is a request rather than a command. Christ wished to be remembered. One thing and only one does he ask us to do for himself; he says, Do not forget me. And that you do not forget me, now and again meet together and take this bread and this wine in memory of me. The one thing that we can do for Christ that is not for the service of some one else is our participation in the Lord’s Supper. But the Lord’s Supper is something more than a memorial. It is an occasion wherein we may especially feel, if we will, the companionship of our Lord. He who believes that the benefit of Christ’s presence is purely through a spiritual inspiration, not through any material or mechanical medium, cannot accept the doctrine of transubstantiation, that is, the doctrine that at the moment of [1] Matthew 16:20. a Luke 22:19. consecration the bread and wine are changed into the " body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord." He who believes that Christ is really present whenever two or three are gathered together in his name, cannot believe that he is any more really present in the Lord’s Supper than in any other truly devotional meeting. But we may well believe that the Lord’s Supper affords an occasion wherein those who participate in it may especially realize, if they will, the companionship of their Lord. For this sacred half hour, not merely our pleasures and cares and customary vocations are removed from our thoughts, but also our daily duties and responsibilities. Our whole attention is concentrated on companionship with our Master and our Friend.

We come to this service in a receptive mood of mind. Our thoughts are directed not to what we should do, or what we should think, or what we are, they are not even directed to what we need; they are directed away from ourselves altogether to Another. The service is one of self-forgetfulness because it is a service of love-remembrance. The meal is itself a symbol of the fellowship which it both expresses and cultivates. We do not know a family until we have taken a meal with them; but when we have sat down to the same table with them, in eating together we come into their family life. The Lord’s Supper we eat with him, and so enter into fellowship with him. This makes it a Lord’s Supper. It is therefore a Eucharist, a thanksgiving. We ought not to meet for the Lord’s Supper with streaming eyes and heavy hearts, but with thankfulness and gladness in him. This should be a feast, not a funeral. And it is a Communion, in which we are brought close to one another because we are brought close to him, and the ecclesiastical and theological and philosophical and temperamental differences for a little time disappear. For the same reason that our devotional meetings should be so arranged that they may be the gathering only of those who are devout of spirit, the Lord’s Supper should be frequently, if not generally, so arranged as to be a private meeting of loyal disciples, as the first Lord’s Supper was. This may be done by an early communion, as in the Episcopal Church, or by a special celebration in the afternoon, which was the custom in the New England churches in my boyhood. If it comes at the close of the morning service, it should be separated from that service, and there should be an opportunity left for those to withdraw who are not intending to partake of the communion, that it may be a real communion of those who are already attached to Christ and desire personal, spiritual, and intimate fellowship with him. It is hardly wise to put our Sermon on the Mount and our fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters of John within the same hour; if we do, we should certainly leave a little interim between them.

III. The third instrumentality for the expression of devotional life in the church is the public worship as a part of the regular Sunday service.

If the Roman Catholics and the Episcopalians have made relatively too much of the service and too little of the sermon, the Puritans and their descendants have made too much of the sermon and too little of the service. In my boyhood days this used to be called " preliminary exercises," and still is sometimes so called, as though it were a kind of grace before meat - short grace, long meat; for we come to the table, not for the grace, but for the food. The evils of this relegation of the worship to a secondary place are many and great. The minister gives it scant attention, devotes the week to his sermon, selects his Scripture reading and his hymns after he comes into the pulpit, and offers prayers which fail to hold the thought of the people because the minister has put no thought upon them beforehand. The choir leader catches the spirit of the minister, and treats the music as a kind of sacred concert - not always very sacred - which precedes the sermon, as the music of the orchestra precedes the play, or as an aesthetic device to get the people to church, as though to get a careless people inside a sacred edifice were the end and aim of a religious service. The people catch the spirit of minister and choir, and think they are in abundant time if they are in their places before the sermon, or take a back seat and slip out as soon as the music which has attracted them is over. And, deeper than all, minister, choir master, and people are trained to think of the worship of Almighty God as a mere incidental frame-work to a literary composition, a portico to the sermon, which is the real temple, with a consequent worship of the preacher in lieu of the worship of God, and the expectation of entertainment from choir and preacher alike, in lieu of serious thought, glad praise, solemn penitence, and renewed consecration. Nor shall we banish this fundamental irreverence from our Puritan churches, until we realize the truth that public worship is at least as important as public instruction, and ought to be as highly esteemed, and deserves and requires as sincere and serious consideration.

Three elements enter into this public worship; the reading of Scripture, the singing of hymns, the prayer. The reading of Scripture may be for devotional purposes or for instructional purposes; that is, it may be to teach the people something, or to express their devotional life. And these two are quite distinct, and must be kept distinct in mind, though the two may be intermingled in actual practice. The advantage of the responsive reading of the Psalms is that no one can think it is for instructional purposes; it carries with it necessarily the idea that it is devotional, not educational. But if the minister would read the Scripture so as to make it an instrument for the expression of devotion, the Scripture must first enter into his own soul. " The words that I speak unto you," says Christ, " they are spirit and they are life." [1] The words of Scripture will not be spirit, and they will not be life to the congregation, unless they have entered into the spirit and life of the reader. He must know not only how to read so that his congregation can hear, but he must know how to read so that his congregation will feel. I am not urging elocutionary reading, still less dramatic reading, least of all, theatric reading; I am urging spiritual reading. The musical service ought to be distinctly an expression of spiritual life. It is not always; we might say, it often is not. We ministers find fault with our choirs, that they are ill-behaved during the sermon; the choirs would often have a right to find fault with the ministers, that they are illbehaved during the singing. We take the time of song to look over our congregation and see who are present; to consider whether the house is too warm or too cold and call the sexton to set it right; to examine our notices and consider how we can most effectively announce some important meeting; or to look over the notes of the sermon and refresh our memories; in brief, to do anything but join in the praise of God. I am not indulging in wholesale denunciations of ministers; I am confessing

[1] John 6:63. faults not uncommon in all non-liturgical pulpits.

I was present once at an ordination in the West where a home missionary, possessed perhaps of more frankness than prudence, after a long sermon and a long charge to the congregation, gave out a hymn in this way: " In order to relieve the tedium of these exercises we will sing the fifty-fifth hymn, - and also to the praise and glory of Almighty God." It was rather too candid and naive a confession of what is really often in the minds of non-liturgical ministers. Frequently the minister selects a hymn without reading it, thinks it too long, and directs the omission of a verse quite regardless of the mutilating effect. Years ago I heard a minister announce a hymn in that way, directing us in singing to omit the second verse; what we sang was this, When thou, my righteous Judge, shalt come To take thy ransomed people home, Shall I among them stand?

O Lord, forbid it by thy grace.

I once attended a meeting of the Young Men’s Christian Association in one of our colleges, where a young man selected for us to sing a baptismal hymn in which we represented ourselves as bringing our children to Christ to dedicate them to him, and I suppose I was the only married man in the room.

Some instruction in hymnology and in sacred music ought to be given and some study of both required in all theological seminaries. It is not necessary that every minister should be a musician, but it is very desirable that he should at least have enough knowledge of music to understand its adaptability to the conditions of the service he is conducting. For an evangelistic service carried on in a hall crowded with tramps and lodging-house men, the Moody and Sankey hymns are admirable. They are adapted to the needs of the kind of people that are there gathered. But when I go to a college Young Men’s Christian Association, and " Safe in the arms of Jesus " or " Hallelujah, ’t is done," is given out to be sung, I know that the cultivated, educated young men of the college are certain to be repelled by any such form of expression of religious life, and I am not surprised that sometimes the men whom the service is intended to attract remain outside until the singing is over. The minister ought to know something about hymns; he ought to know something about music; and he ought to have sympathy with his choir leader. "We shall yet come in the Church of Christ to the conclusion that no man can be allowed to lead the worship of God through the medium of music who is not himself devout. It is as incongruous that an undevout choir-master should lead the worship of God as that an undevout minister should lead it. And yet in many of our city churches the only question asked respecting singer or organist is, Can she sing? Can he play? As a consequence we do not get music that is a vehicle for the carriage of a spiritual life. How can we, when there is no spiritual life in the singer to be conveyed? We get perhaps a good essay at one end of the church, and a musical performance at the other. That is not worship; and it is not religion. " Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." [1] I sometimes think that there is no place where that command is more violated than in some Christian churches. The minister is also to conduct the worship of the congregation by public prayer. In this service he is preeminently their priest. Some of us have been inclined to maintain that there is no Christian priesthood; that the priesthood has forever passed away. Certain of the priestly offices have passed away. The old sacrificial system has gone. There is no more in our temples the lowing of cattle, the bleating of lambs, no more the drawn knife, the rivers of blood, no more sacrificial altars. The priest is no longer an offerer of sacrifice. It is true that the whole Roman Catholic Church, and a few even in the Protestant Church, believe that the sacrifice is a perpetual sacrifice, and must be offered Sabbath after Sabbath. I do not need to discuss the question here. I shall assume that there is no longer need of a sacrifice to be offered, or a priest to offer it. But both the priestly office and the prophetic office remain. What are they? I call a priest one whose function it is to interpret man to [1] Exodus 20:7.

God; I call a prophet one whose function it is to interpret God to man: these two functions constitute the function of the Christian ministry, and they are needed to-day as much as ever they were needed. To interpret man to God - is this needed? Has not the veil of the temple been rent? May not any one enter into the Holy of Holies? Is there needed any mediator between the individual soul and God? Is it not the fundamental doctrine of our religion that every soul can go direct to God, and no man need ask for the intervention of a sacred order?

Yes, this is all true. And yet we men and women do need some one to interpret us to God, because we need some one to interpret us to ourselves. Let me try and make this clear.

What does a painter do? He sees beauty where you and I would fail to see it; then he puts the interpretation of that beauty upon the canvas, and by his painting he not only interprets nature to us, but he interprets us to ourselves. He gives us new eyes; he gives us a new sense, a new perception of beauty. We are educated, because that which was deep down in us is uncovered, revealed, opened out to us, and we see through his eyes, because he with his brush has spoken to us. We are all musicians.

You cannot play a note; you cannot make a chord; you know nothing whatever about the laws of harmony. Nevertheless, you are a musician. If you were not, you would care nothing for the singing of the birds, nothing for the dance music, nothing for the church choral - and we all like one or the other. You are a musician though you cannot compose music. The musician who creates music by his fingers or by his voice, interprets the music to you, and interprets you to yourself, - evokes the music in you, makes you hear who before could not hear, makes you realize what before you could not realize. What we cannot hear the musician hears, though there is no music played, and transcribes on the piano what he has heard with the invisible ear.

You and I lack the invisible ear; but the man who plays on the piano and the woman who sings, create, the one with her voice, the other with the instrument, the hearing ear, and we are interpreted to ourselves, and find that we are musicians though we did not know it. So we are all poets, though most of us have the sense not to try to write rhymes.

There is poetry in all men, and we take our Wordsworth, our Tennyson, our Browning, our Dante, our village poet it may be, and there is something in that poetry which appeals to us, evokes something we were not conscious of. Deep down below our visible self there is a hidden self, and the poet brings that out, and when he speaks, we say, " Yes, I see the beauty which I saw not before." So we men and women, weary and worn or glad and joyous, come to our church on Sunday morning, and we do not know ourselves. This man has sinned, has thrown away his opportunities, has violated the law of love, has been selfish with his employers, been unfaithful in his work, been cross with his wife, been unjust with his children, and he does not know it. He has what he calls " the blues." It is a little, secret, uninterpreted, unintelligible remorse, and he brings it with him to church. By his side there sits a mother. God has reached down out of heaven the arms of his love, and has taken the child from her to himself; she always thought she believed in immortality, and now for a little time she hardly knows whether her babe is living or dead. In the next pew is a young bride, full of all the joy of love, glad, joyous, thankful, and yet she does not know that she is thankful. What this sinner with his heart burdened by unconscious remorse, what this mother shadowed by a half-scepticism, what this bride full of a glad, uninterpreted joyousness desires, is some one in this pulpit to interpret themselves to themselves, and so interpret them to their God. What they want is some man who shall so say, " We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep," [1] that this man half-conscious of his guilt shall say to himself, " That is it; I have so erred; " who shall so say, " I am the resurrection and the life," [2] that this woman who cannot see the truth for her tears shall wipe them away and say, " He is; "shall so say, " We give thanks to thee, thou Giver of every good and perfect gift," that this halfgrateful bride shall say, " My love, he gave it to [1] The Book of Common Prayer.

[2] John 11:25. me.’ ’ The minister ought to be an artist, a musician, a poet, that is, a priest. He ought to know how to interpret the unutterable experiences of men, first to themselves, and then, through that expression and interpretation, to God. This not because God is afar off, that only a few holy men can approach him; but because men, busy with the toil and care of life, have not time to think, or suppose that they have not time, and perhaps have not unaided the ability, to think themselves out, to enter into their own nature, to interpret that which is deepest and best in them. They need an interpreter. The Church ought to be a place where we come to lay all our burdens, whether of sorrow, of sin, of duty, or of joy, at the feet of our Lord. We want some man to lead us to him and speak for us, and so teach us to speak for ourselves.

If the minister is to fulfill this function of priest, if he is to interpret the people to God, first of all he must understand what is in the people. It is said of Christ that he knew what was in men. Every minister ought to know what is in men. We need to know our congregation better than they know themselves. We need to know those hidden experiences which they conceal from one another, and which they conceal from themselves. We must be able to see the soul through the eye, the trembling of the voice, the very silence; we ought to be able to penetrate their mask - not in order curiously to discern the secrets of men, but to help their needs, on the assumption that men do not know their own deepest selves, and require some one to interpret themselves to themselves, and so to interpret them to their God. But it is not enough for the minister to understand these deep experiences; he must learn how to carry them to God. How? By reading devotional literature? By reading prayers? By writing prayers? That has only to do with the mere mechanism, that is the mere supplementary work. No minister ever leads a congregation in public devotion who is not accustomed to go to God in private prayer with that congregation in his heart. When he knows what his people are, when he knows who they are, when he knows what secret life they hide in this masquerade that we call life, when he has been accustomed daily on his knees in his closet to carry their sorrows and burdens to his Father, - then when he comes into the church he will find the way easy, and they will find the way easy.

Sometimes we come to church and our minister addresses to us an eloquent oration which he calls a prayer; sometimes he gives us a lecture on theology which he calls a prayer; sometimes he narrates the gossip of the village, which he calls a prayer; sometimes he gives instructions to the Almighty which he calls a prayer; and when he goes stumbling through a wood that he has never walked in before, the trees not even blazed, nor the underbrush taken away, we refuse to follow him and our thoughts go everywhither. But when he comes on Sunday bearing our burdens on his heart, because he has borne them all the week; when he comes ready to carry them to the Father now, because he has carried them to the Father all the week; when he comes walking on the highway his faith has made plain and simple for him, he has made the pathway for us, and we follow where he leads, though we can scarcely creep.

It does not come within the province of this volume to discuss the relative advantages of liturgical and non-liturgical services. I have never been able to see why the two forms of service should be regarded as mutually exclusive. Why should not the liturgical churches encourage the use of extemporaneous prayers without discontinuing the use of a noble liturgy? Why should not the non-liturgical churches encourage the use of a liturgy without abandoning the advantage afforded by extemporaneous prayers? That there are advantages in both the liturgical and the non-liturgical service appears to the unprejudiced inquirer beyond reasonable question. There are certain spiritual experiences which are constantly repeated and which may therefore well find their expression in forms constantly used. Such are the experiences of repentance and gratitude expressed in the General Confession and General Thanksgiving of the Book of Common Prayer, and the desires in which every congregation may well be expected to unite in every Sunday service for the Nation and the Church. There is a distinct advantage in a common phraseology for the expression of these common experiences. The congregation can audibly unite in them. Even if they do not do so, they are not curious to see what new phraseology the minister will employ to express the life which he expressed in a different form last Sunday. The minister is not brought under pressure to vary the form for the expression of the same life. Awkwardness and infelicities of expression are avoided. Forgetfulness never intervenes to omit from the service those elements of spiritual experience which ought to find utterance on every occasion of public worship. The imagination is appealed to by the fact that on the same day other worshiping assemblies in this and other lands are speaking to the Father of the same experience and in the same words. This unity of expression both emphasizes and promotes that unity of life which is the root out of which alone true church unity can grow. And the fact that the same life has found the same expression through many centuries of Christian experience preserves an historic unity because it affords a living demonstration that the life of God in the soul of man is essentially the same despite all changes of theological and ecclesiastical organization. Finally, a catholic Church (and every Christian Church should seek to be a catholic Church) ought to aim to provide in its service for men of every temperament; and in our Puritan congregations there are apparently an increasing number who share the opinion which Dr. Bainsford has so well expressed in his autobiography, I cannot conceive of any man, whose religious life is earnest, who does not find himself more comforted and uplifted by the use of written prayers, especially when he has a collection of the best prayers of the ages.

Personally I find more rest to the soul and more ease of worship in following along lines which we know perfectly well and which help me to express what I feel. To the educated spiritual consciousness I do not believe there is any special appeal in variety of extemporaneous prayers. If all men prayed always as some men pray sometimes, then we might do away with the Liturgy; but they do not. [1] On the other hand there are great advantages in extemporaneous prayer. There frequently occur in the parish experiences for which no liturgy can possibly afford adequate expression and which in a Church shut up to a liturgy remain unexpressed. This truth is recognized by some of the wisest and most devoted adherents of a liturgical service. Says Cannon Liddon, Although as a general rule it is wise in praying with the sick and poor to use only the Church’s words, there are occasions when extempore prayer becomes a matter of necessity. It is impossible, or almost so, that the research of the parish priest should have been able to anticipate every variety of mental and moral weakness by his selections [1] William S. Rainsford: A Preacher’s Story of His Work, p. 146. from the copious stores of antiquity; and the risk of using general language when there is need of pointed applicability to a- particular case is very great. A soul must be led to God, not under cover of a general formula, but, as she is, in His Presence. [1]

It is not only with the sick and poor that extempore prayer becomes a necessity. The devout minister who is accustomed to study, not merely the social and ethical conditions of his parish, but its spiritual life, and to carry the needs of that life to God in petition, or the amplitude of that life to God in thanksgiving, to whom, in short, intercessory prayer is the continuous experience of his life, will find every week some phases of life in his congregation, not purely individualistic, but typical and measurably common, to which he will wish to give expression in the Sunday service, and for which no research can find expression in " the stores of antiquity." If by the rule of his Church or by his own habit, he is denied the opportunity to give expression in extemporaneous prayer to such experiences, not only is his own life denied its best development, but his congregation also loses that inspiration which freedom and genuineness of expression always affords. In such cases even the liturgy itself is in danger of becoming lifeless. The danger of exclusive use of forms in public devotion is a resultant tendency to formalism. Says Henry Ward Beecher, " The man [1] H. P. Liddon: Clerical Life and Work, p. 36. that merely comes to administer ordinances on Sundays or Saints’ Days, who goes through a regular routine, is nothing but an engineer who runs a machine.’, [1] That he is in danger of becoming such an engineer the history of the Christian Church abundantly demonstrates. The remedy for this peril would be found in the habitual use of extemporaneous and spontaneous prayer to supplement the more obvious and generic expressions of spiritual life furnished by the historical liturgy. And this suggests the second advantage in the use of extemporaneous prayer, an advantage intimated by Dr. Rainsford in one sentence in the paragraph quoted above: "If all men prayed always as some men pray sometimes." The Church ought to furnish opportunity for the some men to pray as they can sometimes. It ought to do more; it ought to develop in its ministry this power of spontaneous prayer. It is impossible to doubt that the Church and the worshiping congregation has suffered a real loss, not only in its expression of life but in life itself, because such men as Dr. Rainsford and Phillips Brooks have been trained not to lead their great congregations through the medium of their own spontaneous expression of their own distinctive yet thoroughly human and catholic spiritual experience. The extemporaneous expression of that experience would itself have inspired a like experience in the hearts of others. If [1] Henry Ward Beecher: Lectures on Preaching, i, 16. all public prayer had been limited to those furnished by the Church, we should have no such book of devotions as" the " Prayers of the Ages; " we should not have the prayer of Paul for his friends and companions given in the third chapter of Ephesians, nor the intercessory prayer of Jesus Christ given in the seventeenth chapter of John, nor, indeed, the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer; for these, like all true liturgies, grew out of original acts of free, spontaneous devotion. What the Church and the ministry loses of deep spiritual experience may be best illustrated by a single quotation expressive of the experience of one minister, whose spiritual power in public prayer was no less than his more widely advertised power in public speech. Says Henry Ward Beecher, 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 anything that is to me so touching as when I stand, in ordinary good health, before my great congregation to pray for them. Hundreds and hundreds of times, as I rose to pray and glanced at the congregation, 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 dangers, so many perils, there were such histories, - not world histories, but eternal world histories, - I had such a sense of compassion for them, 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. Indeed, I sometimes, as I have said, hardly feel as if I had anything to ask; but oh, when I know what is going on in the heart of my people, and I am permitted to stand to lead them, to inspire their thought and feeling, and go into the presence of God, there is no time that Jesus is so crowned with glory as then! There is no time that I ever get so far into heaven. I can see my mother there; I see again my little children; I walk again, arm in arm with those who have been my companions and co-workers. I forget the body, I live in the spirit; and it seems as if God permitted me to lay my hand on the very Tree of Life, and to shake down from it both leaves and fruit for the healing of my people! l That every minister can attain such an experience as that here described is not to be expected; but every minister may have something analogous to it. And to me it is hardly conceivable that the exclusive use of a liturgy should produce such an experience, and as Canon Liddon has said, in the article quoted above, no liturgy can give adequate expression to it.

Whether the minister uses a liturgy or extempore prayer or both, he must be a priest, that is, he must [1] Henry Ward Beecher: Lectures on Preaching, ii, 46, 47. by prayer interpret the experiences of Lis congregation both to themselves and to God. And to do this he must understand the experiences of his congregation by sharing those experiences with them.

Without this participation in their spiritual life he can be no true priest; he is at best only a " praying machine." He may think he uses extempore prayers and yet repeat well-worn phrases Sunday after Sunday, using devotional forms which have all the disadvantages and none of the advantages of an historic liturgy. He may every Sunday violate the injunction of Jesus Christ, " Use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do." [1] In that case his careless prayers will be a weariness to his congregation and an offense to God. Or he may study through the week the spiritual life of his community, he may habitually carry those experiences to God in intercessory prayer for his people, his experience throughout the week may repeat that of the Apostle Paul, " Without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers; " [2] in which case his public prayers will be true prayers, not ill-disguised addresses to his congregation; and the congregation will forget to be critical of the form of petitions when those petitions reveal to themselves the unknown deeps of their own nature. No less he may be a mechanical administrator of a liturgy, - [1] Matthew 6:7.

[2] Romans 1:9; comp. Ephesians 1:16; 1 Thessalonians 1:2; 2 Timothy 1:3; Philemon 1:4.

" nothing but an engineer who runs a machine; "he may read prayers emptied of all devotion, - prayers, not prayer, hurrying through them as though the sooner ended the better the service. Or he may pour into that confession of sin, that prayer of thanksgiving, that longing for national welfare and for the unity of the Church, a heart surcharged with all the spiritual desires of the ages. And as he prays, he may realize that a congregation greater than any man can number are joining with him in these expressions of penitence and gratitude and spiritual desire, and that he is walking with them on a great highway well trodden by the feet of the centuries. The minister, whether offering extemporaneous prayer or using a familiar liturgy, has no higher function than this: to interpret our souls to ourselves and so express to God, for us and with us, our unexpressed spiritual experiences. Jacob, afraid of his brother’s just wrath, fled away from the scene of his sin, and laid himself down to sleep with his head pillowed on the stones, careless of his cheated father, his wronged brother, his lonely mother, his offended God; and as he slept he dreamed; and in his dreams " behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it." And when he waked, of his pillowstones he made an altar, saying, " Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." [1] Out of our [1] Genesis 27:10-22. petty lives, our short-lived triumphs, our discouraging defeats, our embittered enmities, and our disappointing friendships, out of our sins and our sorrows, forgetful of ourselves and of our God, and in spiritual unconsciousness of what we have done, and who we are and what our needs, we come to the House of God; and we want our minister to put that ladder of prayer before us that we may see it and may see the God-inspired prayers ascending and the God-given answers descending; and when at last the strains of the organ die away and we go back to our busy lives, the words upon our lips shall be, not, " What an eloquent preacher we heard to-day! " but, " God is in this world, and though I knew it not I know it now, for God’s voice, speaking in the heart of the great congregation and in my own heart, has been interpreted to me by his priest."