_The Church in Prayer_
Thus far little has been said of the more corporate aspect of the
spiritual life--of army movements, so to speak. Our minds have been
chiefly on the duties of men in their individual capacity. Not that any
one can ever behave so that he alone is affected by his output of
energy. Whether consciously or unconsciously every human being that
breathes, according as he moves his will upwards or downwards, elevates
or hinders his fellows. The most secret passages of life should be
traversed with reference to others, in order that we may be ruled by
that beautiful consistency which will enable us to act formally in
public without readjusting our whole inner temper. There will be no
wrench, no unnatural straining to become what we cannot be at a moment's
notice, but on the contrary merely an exhibition under altered
conditions of the spirit which has all along actuated us. For instance,
one who has not learned to pray hard for others and to ponder over
their welfare, cannot hope to speak to men with any force on spiritual
topics. He has not cultivated the frame of mind that will give him power
to do it. If he tries, his words will most likely be irreverent cant or
an empty echo. It is only out of the fulness of the heart that the mouth
can speak effective words.
In no department of life is this more true than in corporate worship.
The power of public worship is dependent upon and the outcome of healthy
and faithful private worship, to say nothing of the rest of the personal
life. Those who have true personal religion will feel their life of
devotion incomplete without common prayer; a growing desire for public
worship is an index of a man's deepening spirituality. On the other
hand, when we hear men saying that they do not care for church services,
that they can pray just as well at home, and so on, it is safe to
conclude that whatever fine-spun theories they may hold, as a matter of
fact they are suffering from spiritual atrophy, praying neither at home
nor anywhere else. Private devotion whets the appetite for public
worship. And those who are in intention true to fundamental Christian
principles will not mistake the end of the Church's corporate worship.
The assembling of the congregation is something far larger than the
creation of a public occasion for saying private prayers. There are
numbers of persons who go through the whole service without a thought
for any one but themselves, sucking the liturgy dry of whatever touches
their own immediate concerns, but oblivious to those who kneel around;
and perhaps private manuals supply the place of the Prayer Book. Such
persons squeeze into their own cup all the inspiration that a harmonious
concourse of men carries with it, and make no return. Like the
horse-leach's daughters their cry is, "Give, give." Could anything be
more selfish or more anomalous? There is no effort of imagination, no
kindling of sympathy, no struggle to enter under the shadow of the
prayer of the congregation, so that they are as completely alone as
though they were in a desert place.
Nor is public worship a device for rousing in people a devotional frame
of mind, which will enable them to pray better by themselves. Doubtless
one indirect effect of the great dignity and beauty of liturgical
worship, is to stimulate those who participate in it to a deeper
devotion at home. But public worship is a climax, not a mere means to an
end; it is the culmination of private devotion, not its starting point.
Without hidden spiritual effort, it is a phantom of the real thing; with
it, it is the matchless consummation of adoration, prayer and sympathy.
Under the least satisfactory conditions the congregation gathered in
God's house has marvellous dignity; the unity of movement, the rich
variety and the rhythm of liturgical expression characterize it as the
most august of human assemblies.
But the possibilities of the Church in prayer rise to their supremest
height, when the congregation is rich with the fruits of personal
religion. So closely woven are the public and the private phases of
devotion that they are of a piece. The power of the former is due to the
hours of secret prayer, the struggles with self, the nerving of the
will--in short, all that hidden discipline and training that lie behind
the veil of private life. Out of this, corporate worship emerges as
effect rises out of cause. However great, then, the private life of
devotion is in which men pray to God in the guarded secrecy of their
homes, it is only preparatory, leading up to the service of the
sanctuary.[19] Private prayer is the lesser, public the greater; the
former is the exercise of the individual members with special regard to
their own development, the latter is the stately movement of the whole
body in beautiful unison. Each member contributes to the whole what has
been gained in private efforts; each comes to give rather than to
receive, or, if it may be so put, to receive through giving; and of
course a man can give only what he has gathered.
The glimpses we have of heavenly worship[20] reveal nothing but common
worship. We see no individuals standing apart from the throng, absorbed
in their own little expression of praise. The ranks are unbroken, and
one united and uniting impulse thrills the whole. The visions recorded
by S. John are visions not merely of ideal worship in its restricted
sense of spoken prayer and praise, but of the ideal life. The
fundamental idea of common worship consists in dependence upon God and
fellowship with man, and when all life is filled to the full with this
twofold spirit, all life will be worship, and let it be said here with
firm emphasis, that if we do not lift up our life to the level of our
prayers, eventually our prayers will be dragged down to the level of our
life. Life in heaven is something more than one long Sunday service; it
is the use of all powers and faculties in the spirit of worship, worship
representing the highest and finest temper of mind of which we have
experience. So when we read the figurative language of S. John, we must
remember that he is declaring under the symbolism of worship what the
features of heavenly life are--the conscious service of God in a
harmonious human society.
Similarly here on earth common worship is a symbol of true life as well
as a means of sustaining it. The attention of the congregation gathered
before the altar is fixed upon God, and no stronger indication of the
reality of brotherhood could be conceived than the visible assembly
occupied in a common exercise. When all our activities become saturated
with the consciousness of God in His perfection, and with the fact of
the oneness of Christ's mystical Body, formal worship will be no more a
necessity. But that will be when heaven is reached, for which day there
must be some little waiting yet. In the meantime it is vital that
worship, as we know it, should not be an excrescence on life but a real
part of it, part of it as truly as the deep, silent tide flowing between
narrow banks is part of the same river which above and below is worried
by rocks or widened into a lake. Public worship should represent perhaps
the most concentrated part of life, but nothing unnatural, nothing out
of gear with work-a-day moments. Work should flow into worship as easily
as the stream into the ocean. There should be, in all the business of
life, the steady application of God's laws, and that underlying
consciousness of His Person and Presence which, so far from detracting
from the efficiency of our work or preventing full devotion to it, will
intensify every energy. The melody of the song is emphasized and
supported by the accompaniment, not lost in its multitude of sounds.
Given this attitude of mind, and what a simple, natural thing praise
with the lips becomes! And how sublime the uprushing flood of hymnody
from an assembly of men of like mind!
Again, public worship ought to be the highest and not the only
expression of parochial family life. The assembled congregation is the
symbol of an enduring Christian brotherhood, where mutual consideration,
love and service form the unalterable watchwords. To-day this thought is
much obscured by the parochial family having so little reality outside
the church walls. This is especially applicable to city churches, where
congregations gather from the remotest localities. The parish seems to
be fast dying out and the congregation is taking its place. The people
who worship in the same building neither know one another nor, in many
instances, desire to. This is simply fatal to ideal public worship, one
purpose of which at any rate is to quicken and seal the sympathy that
already exists as the result of intercourse in the outside world. It is
a grave responsibility for any one, for the sake of what he may deem to
be larger spiritual privileges, to leave the church of the locality in
which he lives and where his natural duties and friendships lie, to go
to some distant place of worship where fellowship is impossible. Ideally
the worshippers belonging to the parochial family are all known to one
another and in frequent personal contact; they do not look to their
clergy alone for spiritual help, but also to their fellow laymen. All
too often the clergy are supposed to have the sole responsibility of
spiritually aiding the members of a parish, whereas, the laity, whether
they recognize it or not, have almost an equal responsibility. The
clergyman does spiritual work, not because he is a clergyman, but
because he is a Christian; though his special vocation determines the
exact form his work should take. If there were more intelligent sympathy
among the members of the congregation one with another, what strength
would come to the penitent struggling to his feet, what added power to
the faithful! Many fail, not because the clergy have been negligent, but
because those who are termed the brethren have never extended a helping
hand to support, to comfort, to cheer. If a congregation were alive to
these responsibilities outside of the church, what a glorious time would
be the gathering within its walls--inspiring, thrilling! Indeed, any one
who tries to be unselfish and to act in the common concerns of life with
reference to his neighbour's interests, any one who has elsewhere
learned ever so little about intercession, cannot be unmindful when he
comes to church of those who worship by his side, strangers though they
be. By the exercise of sympathy, sympathy which he has learned to kindle
with less at hand to quicken it to life than that given by the living,
breathing forms near by, he can bring close to him his
fellow-worshippers, moving into the shadow of their intercessions as
well as calling them in to share his own. It will be noticed that the
usual order has been reversed in the foregoing. Usually men are urged to
worship well that they may live well;[21] the proposition that has been
made here is that men must live well if they would worship well. It
makes little difference which way the thought is expressed, the mode of
expression depending on the part of the circle at which we begin our
course. Life runs up into worship and worship runs out into life. Each
leads into the other.
The use of a liturgy is an added power to public worship. It is only by
liturgical aids that public worship can become common worship. A liturgy
delivers a congregation from the spiritual idiosyncrasies of a minister
as well as disciplining those of the worshippers themselves. The
comprehensiveness and symmetry, the saneness and dignity of the Book of
Common Prayer are educative forces of enormous value. Left to themselves
men lose the true perspective of things; they dwell too much on matters
of secondary importance, and become insular in their outlook. A liturgy
comes in as a corrective of these constitutional failings; it confronts
us with all that is vast in the realm of truth; it calls us away from
the consideration of those things over which we have pondered until
morbidness has seized upon us; it ministers that grateful rest which
comes from the mind being freed from the contemplation of one set of
interests, by being caught away by and absorbed in new and wider
interests; it rounds out the devotional life; it invites us to lean upon
the prayers of others as we desire them to lean on ours.
All who aspire to worship well in the congregation must note that the
liturgy sets the tone for all devotions. Those who in private affect
spiritual exercises foreign to the character of the Prayer Book of the
Church, may get a certain emotional satisfaction for the moment, but
they purchase the luxury at the cost of weakening their power for common
worship. Their private prayers form no preparation for their public
prayers. The clergy have it as a grave responsibility to see that the
books of private devotion which they put into the hands of their people
are such as fit into the Church's system.
Demeanour in the congregation is a small thing to think of after the
great central theme that has been holding our attention. But nothing is
unworthy of consideration which bears on the perfecting of common
worship; and with two simple observations on demeanour this chapter
will be closed. First, regarding the self-consciousness that both
distresses the soul and weakens its devotional power. The sense, while
in the act of prayer, of being observed by others, is distracting. But
is it not a piece of conceit to imagine that we are being observed,
widely at any rate, as well as something akin to an insult to those
about us? Are we not implicitly charging them with neglect of duty and
with irreverence? After all they are probably occupied with their
devotions as we ourselves should be. The simplest way of conquering the
distraction when it arises is to take the person or persons concerned
into our prayers by a conscious act. Then in the second place, as to our
own behaviour, it is only common charity to avoid singularity of
conduct. Most of the ordinary acts of reverence which the individual may
practise, can be so unobtrusively performed as not to attract notice.
But when there is a danger of causing distraction to others, as in a
strange parish for instance, it is more conducive to real reverence to
omit than to observe them. Sometimes the best way to be loyal to a
principle is deliberately to break a rule, and if this suggestion be
reasonable then why should not a person, unaccustomed to ornate ritual,
fall in with any legitimate customs observed, if he finds himself at
any time in a church where such customs obtain?
FOOTNOTES:
[19] _The writer does not hesitate to advise persons who are temporarily
residing, as is often the case during the summer, where there is no
Episcopal Church, to attend public worship, once a Sunday at least, at
the representative Evangelical place of worship of the community.
Reading the Church service at home by one's self is no substitute for
public worship._
[20] _As_ e. g. _in Rev. v: 11-14_.
[21] _See p. 7._