_Dear pages of ancestral prayer, Illumined all with Scripture gold, In you we seem the faith to share Of saints and seers of old.
Whene'er in worship's blissful hour The Pastor lends your heart a voice, Let his own spirit feel your power, And answer, and rejoice._
In the present chapter I deal a little with the spirit and work of the Clergyman in his ministration of the ordered Services of the Church, reserving the work of the Pulpit for later treatment.
Let me begin by a brief reminder of the greatness of the spiritual treasure which we possess in the Book by which we minister. How shall I speak of it as I would? "The Prayer Book isn't inspired, I know," said an old coast-guardsman some years ago to a friend of mine, "but, sure and certain, _'tis as bad as inspired_!" "I find the Liturgy," said another veteran, Charles Simeon, "as superior to all modern compositions as the work of a philosopher on any deep subject is to that of a schoolboy who understands scarcely anything about it." "All that the Church of England needs to make her the glory of all Churches," said Simeon's friend, the late Rev. William Marsh, "is the spirit of her own services."
I am not so blind as to maintain that our Book is ideally perfect, and that its every sentence is infallible. It is not quite literally "as bad as inspired." After using it in ministration for nearly five-and-twenty years I own to the wish that here and there the wording, or the arrangement, or the rubrical direction, had been otherwise in some detail, perhaps in some important detail. I do certainly wish very earnestly indeed that the Revisers of 1661-2 had expressed themselves more happily in that Rubric about "Ornaments" which within recent years has proved--little as they expected it, or intended it, to do so--such a fertile field of discord. But for all this, my five-and-twenty years' ministerial use of the Prayer Book has only deepened my sense of its inestimable general value and greatness.
If a temperate and equitable revision were possible at the present time I should welcome the prospect on most accounts. But it seems to me plain that it is _not_ at present possible. And meanwhile I thank God from my inmost heart for the actual Prayer Book as a whole.
Let me point out a very few of the claims of the Book on our love and gratitude; and now specially in view of what we may sometimes hear said about it by Christians not of our own Church.
i. Observe its profound and searching _spirituality_. It is quite true that in a certain sense the Book takes all who use it for granted; it assumes them to be worshippers in spirit and in truth; it does not pray for them, or lead them in public worship to pray for themselves, as for those who do not know and love God, who have not come to Christ. But then what form of public, common prayer can well do this? And meantime the Book does, especially in the service of the Communion, and particularly in that too often omitted part of it, the "longer Exhortation," beginning _Dearly beloved in the Lord_, throw the worshipper back upon himself for self-examination. This is just the method of St Paul in his addresses to the Christian community. He writes to all as "saints," "faithful," "elect," "sanctified." What does he mean? Does he mean that those glorious terms are satisfied by the fact that all have been baptized, or even that all are communicants at the sacred Table? Not at all. He takes all for granted as being what they profess to be, when he greets the community. [Rom. viii. 9; 1 Cor. xvi. 22; 2 Cor. xiii. 5; Gal. v. 6.] But he says also, "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His"; "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema"; "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you--except ye be [Greek: adokimoi], counterfeits?" "In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love." Such sentences throw a flood of holy and searching light on the sense in which St Paul "took them all for granted." And the Prayer Book is in true harmony with both parts of the Apostle's method.