FORMS OF WORSHIP.
Byron’s lines—Carnegie’s description—Parsee nature-worship—English
Sunday—The sermon—Appeals to reason misplaced—Music better
than words—The Mass—Zoroastrianism brings religion into daily
life—Sanitation—Zoroastrian prayer—Religion of the future—Sermons
in stones and good in everything.
Not vainly did the early Persian make
His altar the high places and the peak
Of earth-o’ergazing mountains, and thus take
A fit and unwall’d temple, where to seek
The spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,
Uprear’d of human hands. Come, and compare
Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,
With nature’s realms of worship, earth and air,
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer!
_Childe Harold_, iii. 91.
A shrewd Scotch-American ironmaster—Andrew Carnegie—in an interesting
and instructive record of experiences during a voyage round the world,
gives the following description of the worship of the modern Parsees, as
actually witnessed by him at Bombay:—
‘This evening we were surprised to see, as we strolled along the beach,
more Parsees than ever before, and more Parsee ladies richly dressed, all
wending their way towards the sea. It was the first of the new moon, a
period sacred to these worshippers of the elements; and here on the shore
of the ocean, as the sun was sinking in the sea, and the slender silver
thread of the crescent moon was faintly shining on the horizon, they
congregated to perform their religious rites.
‘Fire was there in its grandest form, the setting sun, and water in the
vast expanse of the Indian Ocean outstretched before them. The earth was
under their feet, and wafted across the sea the air came laden with the
perfumes of “Araby the blest.” Surely no time or place could be more
fitly chosen than this for lifting up the soul to the realms beyond
sense. I could not but participate with these worshippers in what was so
grandly beautiful. There was no music save the solemn moan of the waves
as they broke into foam on the beach. But where shall we find so mighty
an organ, or so grand an anthem?
‘How inexpressibly sublime the scene appeared to me, and how
insignificant and unworthy of the unknown seemed even our cathedrals
“made with human hands,” when compared with this looking up through
nature unto nature’s God! I stood and drank in the serene happiness which
seemed to fill the air. I have seen many modes and forms of worship—some
disgusting, others saddening, a few elevating when the organ pealed forth
its tones, but all poor in comparison with this. Nor do I ever expect
in all my life to witness a religious ceremony which will so powerfully
affect me as that of the Parsees on the beach at Bombay.’
I say Amen with all my heart to Mr. Carnegie. Here is an ideal religious
ceremony combining all that is most true, most touching, and most
sublime, in the attitude of man towards the Great Unknown. Compare it
with the routine of an ordinary English Sunday, and how poor and prosaic
does the latter appear! There is nothing which seems to me to have fallen
more completely out of harmony with its existing environment than our
traditional form of church service. The sermon has been killed by the
press and has become an anachronism. There was a time when sermons like
those of Latimer and John Knox were living realities; they dealt with all
the burning political and personal questions of the day, and to a great
extent did the work now done by platform speeches and leading articles.
If there are national dangers to be denounced, national shortcomings to
be pointed out, iniquity in high places to be rebuked, we look to our
daily newspaper, and not to our weekly sermon. The sermon has in a great
majority of cases become a sort of schoolboy theme, in which traditional
assumptions and conventional phrases are ground out, with as little soul
or idea behind them as in the Thibetan praying-mill. In the course of a
long life I have gained innumerable ideas and experienced innumerable
influences, from contact with the world, with fellow-men, and with books;
but although I have heard a good many sermons, I cannot honestly say that
I ever got an idea or an influence from one of them which made me wiser
or better, or different in any respect from what I should have been if I
had slept through them. And this from no fault of the preachers. I have
heard many who gave me the impression that they were good men, and a
few who impressed me as being able and liberal-minded men—nor do I know
that, under the conditions in which they are placed, I could have done
any better myself. But they were dancing in fetters, and so tied down by
conventionalities that it was simply impossible for them to depart from
the paths of a decorous routine.
The fact is that the whole point of view of our religious services,
especially in Protestant countries, has become a mistaken one. It is
far too much an appeal to the intellect and to abstract dogmas, and too
little, one to the realities of actual life and to the vague emotions and
aspirations which constitute the proper field of religion. In the great
reaction of the Reformation it was perhaps inevitable that an appeal
should be made to reason against the abuses of an infallible Church; and
as long as the literal inspiration of the Bible and other theological
premises were held to be undoubted axioms by the whole Christian world,
there might be a certain interest in hearing them repeated over and over
again in becoming language, and in listening to sermons which explained
shortly conclusions which might be drawn from these admitted axioms. But
this is no longer the case. It is impossible to touch the merest fringe
of the questions now raised by the intellectual side of religion in
discourses of half an hour’s length; even if the preacher were perfectly
free, and not hampered by the fear of scandalising simple, pious souls
by plain language. Spoken words have to a great extent ceased to be
the appropriate vehicle for appealing either to religious reason or
to religious emotion—books for the former, music for the latter, are
infinitely more effective. Music especially seems made to be the language
of religion. Not only its beauty and harmony, but its vagueness, and its
power of exciting the imagination and stirring the feelings, without
anything definite which has to be proved and can be contradicted, fit
it to be the interpreter of those emotions and aspirations which fill
the human soul in presence of the universe and of the Great Unknown.
Demonstrate, with St. Thomas Aquinas or Duns Scotus, how many angels can
stand on the point of a needle, and I remain unaffected; but let me hear
Rossini’s ‘Cujus Animam,’ or Mozart’s ‘Agnus Dei,’ and I say, ‘Thus the
angels sing.’
In this respect the Roman Catholic Church has retained a great advantage
over reformed churches. Whatever we may think of its tenets and
principles, its forms of worship are more impressive and more attractive.
The Mass, apart from all dogma and miracle, is a mysterious and beautiful
religious drama, in which appropriate symbolism, vocal and instrumental
music, all the highest efforts of human art, are united to produce
feelings of joy and of devoutness. The vestment of the priest, his
gestures and genuflexions, the Latin words chanted in stately recitative,
the flame of the candles pointing heavenwards, the burning incense
slowly soaring upwards, the music of great masters, not like our dreary
and monotonous psalmody, but in fullest harmony and richest melody—all
combine to attune the mind to that state of feeling which is the soul of
religion.
In this respect, however, what I have called the Zoroastrian theory
of religion affords great advantages. It connects religion directly
with all that is good and beautiful, not only in the higher realms of
speculation and of emotion, but in the ordinary affairs of daily life.
To feel the truth of what is true, the beauty of what is beautiful, is
of itself a silent prayer or act of worship to the Spirit of Light; to
make an honest, earnest, effort to attain this feeling, is an offering
or act of homage. Cleanliness of mind and body, order and propriety in
conduct, civility in intercourse, and all the homely virtues of everyday
life, thus acquire a higher significance, and any wilful and persistent
disregard of them becomes an act of mutiny against the Power whom we have
elected to serve. Such moral perversion becomes impossible as that which
in the Middle Ages associated filth with holiness, and adduced as a title
to canonisation that the saint had worn the same woollen shirt until it
fell to pieces under the attacks of vermin. We laugh at this in more
enlightened days, but we often imitate it by setting up false religious
standards, and thinking we can make men better by penning them up on
Sundays in the foul air and corrupting influences of densely peopled
cities.
The identification of moral and physical evil, which is one of the most
essential and peculiar tenets of the Zoroastrian creed, is fast becoming
a leading idea in modern civilisation. Our most earnest philanthropists
and zealous workers in the fields of sin and misery in crowded cities are
coming, more and more every day, to the conviction that an improvement
in the physical conditions of life is the first indispensable condition
of moral and religious progress. More air, more light, better lodging,
better food, more innocent and healthy recreation, are what are wanted
to make any real impression on the masses who have either been born and
bred in an evil environment, or have fallen out of the ranks and are
the waifs and stragglers left behind in the rapid progress and intense
competition of modern society. Hence we see that the devoted individuals
and charitable institutions who take the lead in works of practical
benevolence direct their attention more and more to the rescue of
children from bad surroundings; to sending them to new and happier homes
in the colonies, to country retreats for the sickly, and excursions for
the healthy; and to providing clubs and reading-rooms as substitutes for
the gin-palace and public-house. The latest development of this idea,
that of the ‘People’s Palace’ in the East End of London, is a noble
offering to the ‘Spirit of Light,’ by whatever name we choose to call
him, in opposition to the ‘Spirit of Darkness.’
To the Zoroastrian, prayer assumes the form of a recognition of all that
is pure, sublime, and beautiful in the surrounding universe. He can never
want opportunities of paying homage to the Good Spirit and of looking
into the abysses of the unknown with reverence and wonder. The light of
setting suns, the dome of loving blue, the clouds in the might of the
tempest or resting still as brooding doves, the mountains, the
Waste
And solitary places where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see,
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be;
the ocean lashed by storm, or where it
All down the sand
Lies breathing in its sleep,
Heard by the land—
these are a Zoroastrian’s prayers.
And even if, ‘in populous cities pent,’ he is cut off from close
communion with nature, opportunities are not wanting to him of letting
his soul soar aloft with purifying aspirations. A glimpse of the starry
sky, even if seen from a London street, may bear in on him the awful yet
lovely mystery of the Infinite. Good books, good music, true works of
art, may all strengthen his love of the good and beautiful. A dense fog,
or drizzling rain may obscure the outward view, but with the inner eye
he may stand listening to the lark or under the vernal sky, and while his
Heart looks down and up,
Serene, secure;
Warm as the crocus-cup,
As snowdrops pure,
thank the Good Spirit that it has been given to man to write, and to
him to read, verses of such exquisite perfection as Shelley’s ‘Ode to a
Skylark’ and Tennyson’s ‘Early Spring.’ Above all, where men congregate
in masses, in the great centres of politics, of commerce, of literature,
science, and art, he can hear best
The still sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, but of ample power
To chasten and subdue,
and associate himself with movements in which his little individual
effort is exerted towards making the world a little better rather than a
little worse than he found it.
This, rather than wrangling with his fellow-mortals about creeds and
attempts to name the unnameable, believe the unbelievable, and define the
undefineable, seems to me to be the religion of the future. Call it by
what name you like, I quarrel with no one as long as he can find
Sermons in stones and good in everything.