IN CHURCH -THE IMPORTANCE OF A UNIFORM LIT URGY AS A CHIEF MEANS OF THE TEACHING OF THE the preceding Lecture we have shown the legal obligations which bind the clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, and, so far as they are concerned, its laity also, to conform with strict and conscientious obedience to its Constitution and Prayer Book, that these, and these only, are our law of ritual and doctrine. We have also shown that every minister in "this Church" has voluntarily assumed these obligations by a "solemn engagement" before his ordination, and has renewed them as an essential part of his ordination vow; that he has received no authority from any source to minister the offices established in the Prayer Book, in any other way or manner than they are appointed by the words and Rubrics of "the Liturgy," which "this Church requires to be received by all its members,” and that such obedience of the clergy to the law of ritual of their own branch of the Church has always been a fundamental principle of the Church Catholic; hence, that the assumption by any priest of the power to do otherwise is unwarranted by all the history of the past, and by the sacred promises with which he has bound himself in that portion of the Church which he now serves. But the Prayer Book, while it thus contains and is the law of worship of the American Church, is much more than this; and the obligations and responsibilities connected with the use of its offices and ordinances involve issues that underlie and give additional weight and importance to the law. The Church is a Divine organism, has a Divine commission, works with Divinely ordered agencies, and toward ends which are marked out for her by her Divine Head. Any attempt to consider the nature and position of the Church without giving full weight to these considerations must ever fail to grasp her real place and operation in the world, or her essential difference from the multitude of other institutions or associations for doing good which now exist, or ever have existed, among men. It is quite possible to exaggerate this side of the nature of the Church, or to extend it to conditions where it does not apply. Vast harm has been done by this one-sided presentation and unwarranted application of the Divine, or, if you will, supernatural element of the Church and its ministry. Church history shows us that essentially the same error has been at times displayed in certain mistaken opinions concerning the person of our blessed Lord. He was regarded by these errorists as wholly Divine; that which seemed human was only so in outward qualities, in form and appearance, there was no real humanity there; the only real being His person possessed was the Divine. So, too, the principle of this heresy has been extended in certain systems of theology to the Holy Eucharist, and those who hold this view maintain that there is no natural substance of the bread or wine remaining after their consecration, but that their sensible properties are merely an external veil of appearance under which the sole reality is the substance and the person of the living Christ. But notwithstanding the perversions to which this great truth is thus liable, the Church must be regarded, in any right view of her character, as a Divine and spiritual organism, while at the same time it must always be remembered that her agents are men, her instrumentalities all human, the elements on which she works human conscience, human reason, human will, and the results she aims at to have men lovingly receive her truths and willingly work with her, accordingly, that in every function and office, while her spirit and power are from God, her means all act through man. In the practical application of these two phases of her nature to her organization and her work, the Church has, by the terms of the commission from Christ, under which she acts, two corresponding lines of operation. These are in one aspect clearly separate, in another, never to be disunited. Each can act within its sphere and produce a certain good, but neither can attain its full results without the co-operation of the other. For the Church is by the Divine ordainment at the same time and equally 1. The conveyer of God's spiritual gifts through Christ to the world and men, 2. And the teacher of God's truth as it is in Christ, in all that is needful for man's spiritual life in time and eternity. Both these offices are clearly expressed in Christ's commission to His disciples, as well as by other passages of Holy Scripture, and have been exercised by the Church in all ages from the very beginning. The first is embodied in the commands of our Lord, "Go ye, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them," etc., and "Do this in remembrance of Me." The second is given in the equally authoritative words, "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you." Accordingly, as the giver, the dispenser, the medium of the Divine blessings prepared for man through Christ, she has the great sacraments of Baptism, by by which men are new-born into the kingdom of God, made members of the body of Christ, and the Holy Communion, which, to those who receive it rightly and with faith, is the nourishing of their souls with the spiritual realities of Christ's body broken for them, and His precious blood poured out for their life. Besides these, she is the witness and keeper of Holy Scripture. She sanctifies with her benediction the marriage bond and makes it an ordinance of God, and not a mere civil contract to be severed by man's will or law. She stands by the grave and keeps alive through all ages the sublime fact of man's resurrection. And with her innumerable ministrations of love and mercy, and comfort and guidance, and the influence that goes out unceasingly from these she is always dispensing to the world, even when it most contemns and jeers at her Divineness, the life and the help and the spirit of her Head and Master. But how does she exercise the second of her Divine missions? How, as a Church, in her organic, authoritative capacity as "the pillar and ground of the truth" does she teach men the "things which Christ commanded her" to maintain and declare to all nations? How was this done in the beginning? By what means and agencies were the essentials of the faith preserved and handed down in the earlier centuries, before there were, as yet, written, universal creeds to which all could refer, or the great councils had spoken the belief of the Church in words which the Christian world of all time was to receive as its symbol of the faith? How-coming down to later ages-how was the substance of Gospel truth mainly preserved in the long dark centuries, when, generation after generation, the Northern barbarians swept down over Europe in desolating waves of brutality, ignorance and heathenism? And amid the corruptions and perversions which the Church herself had contracted in this long struggle, how were the essential verities of the faith held fast and made known (as they were) whatever marring they may have received through superstition and ignorance, or however gross may have been the errors which so often encrusted and disguised the truth? The one great means by which, from the beginning and through all the after centuries with their ever changing conditions, this has been done, is the ministra |