THE TREND OF MODERN WORSHIP.
By M. C. W.
In a racy though pungent article in the (Baptist) Examiner of January 31, entitled, “Dilettanteism in Worship,” Professor J. B. Thomas, D. D., sets forth the departures and tendencies of the Protestant churches toward ritualism and Rome, as contrasted with the simplicity of the past. “Streams of tendency,” he says, seems to threaten an aesthetic flood of no mean proportion. Churches once noted for the serene simplicity of their faith and worship are now aping Rome in style of architecture, “memorial windows,” “collects,” “responsive readings,” “first lesson,” “second lesson,” “Lord’s prayer” in concert, etc., etc., closing with the “gloria.” He says of such a spectacle in the Methodist Episcopal Church:— “Yet in the midst of this elaborate ceremonial, wrought out under the glory of stained glass and the enchantments of delicious music, one resting on luxurious cushions and feasting on the elegancies of ‘Queen Anne architecture’ could hardly help being beset by the recollection that this is the church which in its early days was most intolerant of the subtle arts that tend to foster the ‘lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.’ With what blunt yet friendly fidelity it sought to smite all pretentiousness out of its votaries, as witness these homely counsels to the local preacher, which were given place in one of its early directories: ‘Do not affect the gentleman. You have no more to do with this character than with that of a dancing master. A preacher of the gospel is the servant of all. Be ashamed of nothing but sin; not of cleaning your own shoes or your neighbor’s.’” An “altar service” is spoken of in a Baptist church; “black-winged robes” in Baptist pulpits; “processional” hymns, and operatic music “interpreted” by “artists;” and many similar things introduced at Christmas and Easter. He continues:— “But what the fashionable quartette are to sing nobody knows, and what they have sung nobody knows any better when they are done, except it may be, as indolent congressmen are said to know the bill they have voted upon ‘by its title.’ The most familiar verse subjected to the tortures of the artistic inquisition becomes unrecognizable. Bereft of consonantal head, hands, and feet, broken on the rack, disemboweled, and its entrails strung out into trills and diminuendoes, it is shattered at last by a vocal explosion out of which fragmentary echoes only fall like the spray of spangles from a bursting rocket.” It seems almost a pity that John Wesley envied the devil his ‘good music,’ if it was to be secured only by getting the devil to conduct it after his own method. Here again it seems hazardous to ‘weed the garden of the Lord with Satan’s borrowed dibble.’ He who mistakes the ‘holiness of beauty’ for the ‘beauty of holiness,’ and transfers his worship from the one shrine to the other, may find himself a devil worshiper at last. The Greeks worshiped beauty in sensuous ecstasy; Paul exhorts Christians to ‘sing’ as well as ‘pray’ with the ‘spirit and the understanding.’” In speaking of the old-time preachers, too dull for this artistic day, he well says, “If they lacked sentiment, they did not lack sense.” The “straight line of rectitude” was more to them than the curved “line of beauty.” But the tendency of the age, like that of Rome, is to comfort the individual with the “apples of color, song, and incense.” He pointedly asks, “What signifies Easter apart from Good Friday and Lent?” And truly, with Dowling we may say, that if we receive one thing on the authority of tradition we are bound to receive all. The tendency of all this is Romeward:— “Unhappy will be the day when the minister ceases to command attention through the intelligent interpretation of the word, and must depend for success upon the histrionic grace with which he rolls his languid eyes (and reverberating r’s) toward heaven. No rush in the mire is more certain to launch into rankness of growth and to hold to tenderness of stalk than ritualistic enthusiasm. The sanest men have been lured into the Roman church by it, if Ruskin may be trusted, ‘like larks into a trap by broken glass.’” The only way to reach hearts is through the Spirit and power of God; and no forms of worship, no elaborate or ornate ritual, will ever take its place, or accomplish its results. Ritualism will impress the superstitions; but this union of the sacred and sensuous is liable to result, as says Mr. T.:— “The alien Cutheans in Samaria once concluded that their other infirmities might be healed if only they could perfect the ‘element of worship.’ That they might proceed secundum artem, they sagaciously sent for one of the ancient ‘priests’ to ‘teach them the manner of the god of the land.’ Having been thus made adepts in religious etiquette, they ‘feared the Lord and served their graven images, both their children and their children’s children; as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.’”