Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

Quoth the Knight with calm disdain,
"Wine is poison to the brain,

Water's God's providing."

Then the chief-" He spurns our wine, boys,
Let him taste the sparkling Rhine, boys,
Since he chooses water.

He will need not cup or can,
Let him drink to Charlemagne,
Give Sir Knight no quarter."

Then they soused him in the Rhine,
And they made him pay a fine,

Which, of course, was handed over to the poor;

But I'm very pleased to say

That this custom's passed away,

So you need not miss the Rheinfels on your tour.

FLY LEAVES FROM MY DIARY.-No. 4.

LEO.

How NOT TO Do IT-IN Two METHODS.

I.

AM, when at home, as little inclined to wander in search of fresh stimulants to devotion as a man well can be. Not only do the sensational services of revivalists, evangelists, and what-not, grate upon my nerves to an extent which assures me that, whatever they may do for others, to me they would only do harm--but even among the long established and orthodox churches of my neighbourhood, I am not prone to rambling. The clever author of "Wanderings among the Aisles" need never set his heart upon me for a companion in a second tour of exploration, for I should be out of health and temper both, before I had shared a fourth of his labours. We are the creatures of circumstances to an extent which, perhaps, we are too proud always to admit; but I see no shame in confessing that I could no more preserve my devotional feelings unimpaired, were I to alternate rapidly between the Rev. Mr. Bull of St. Boanerges and little Mr. Smiler of St. Simplicia-than I could preserve the charming caligraphy with which I occasionally gladden our editor's eyes under fiequent changes from a "J" to a Crow Quill. When I am from home I must perforce move my ecclesiastical quarters; and then probably I notice the changed

circumstances under which I find myself, more than a confirmed rambler would do. Notwithstanding my sedate and settled habits, like every man of middle age, I have seen some variety of forms of worship, and have often been struck by the strange diversity of roads by which different men profess to approach a common object. I have attended divine service in a music hall, in a carpenter's shop, in the upper floor of a palace, in a workhouse, in a hotel drawing-room, and in ever so many barns. I have heard a man preserve perfect humility in presence of six thousand fellow creatures, every one of whom had been directly or indirectly drawn to him by the fame of his eloquence. I have heard a man rant himself hoarse with commonplaces on a sea-beach, with his back to a piled up wilderness of cloud-rack, across which the lightning flamed incessantly, while endless peals of thunder rolled away, one after another, into sullen silence along its unearthly valleys. And I have heard a considerable number of ministers of various denominations, whose discourses left upon me no manner of impression of any kind-good, bad, or indifferent. These are common experiences enough, and the last is I am afraid the commonest experience of all. Spending my summer holiday this year, far away from home, and in a district which, while remaining pure country, has from various reasons an unusually educated and intelligent population—I have been much struck by what seemed to me two typical instances of common enough errors in the conduct of public worship. I relate them, not because I profess any special power of judgment in such matters, but because I think any candid expression of opinion must be worth having upon a subject which seems sometimes lapsing into downright (however decorous) indifference. The more ordinary my capacity for forming an opinion upon this particular point, the better shall I represent the great mass of hearers, whose needs have herein no sort of connection with their intelligence; and who must assuredly be fed, however vitiated their taste may seem to be. It is a serious thing for even one intending worshipper to be repelled rather than attracted; and since what repelled one would probably repel many, I take it that even the wisest in the pulpit will not refuse to bend down and listen to the humblest voice from the pews-so it be honest.

My first example comes from the side of dissent. The denomination is no matter, and the locality of the Chapel I shall not indicate, although the preacher I heard-being a temporary supply-had no connection with the district. The building, the congregation, and the set portions of the service, call for no especial comment. They were each in their way distinctly above the average, but presenting no very salient features of any kind. To one accustomed to a more imposing ritual, the whole would doubtless have appeared somewhat cold, but he would not have been able to deny that, of its kind, it was beyond reproach. The minister began to pray. Then whatever charm there had been, was at once rudely broken; and I began to feel that whatever I might be doing as I sat there-I certainly was not worshipping. An American reporter once, with a beautiful inadvertency of candour, described the supplications of a popular minister as "among the most

sublime efforts ever addressed to an intelligent audience." This is indeed a habit into which it must be the easiest thing in the world to fall; but, whether for good or evil, I am inclined to think that an audience never listens less to prayer than when it is misdirected toward itself. There seems to me, however, one thing worse than praying and forgetting whom we should address; and that is, praying and forgetting whom we are addressing. The prayer in question was interlarded with invocations of the divine name to an extent enough, of itself, to grate very harshly upon the taste; but as to the spirit of the prayer the suppliant would certainly have appeared to any unprejudiced hearer to have been addressing a being of exalted rank and of high character, but not otherwise differing greatly from himself. I have heard, who has not?-addresses to the Deity of a very extraordinary nature, from uneducated men, and however difficult I may have found it to repress a smile, I have never for a moment supposed that that would be charged to the speaker as irreverence, which even my imperfect judgment could see to be nothing more, and nothing worse, than pure ignorance. But familiarity in approach to the divine being, upon the part of an educated man perfectly acquainted with the powers of language and the meaning of words-is quite another matter; and the effect, to my mind, was simply shocking. I have been a Dissenter all my life, and must frankly confess that I have found its system of extempore prayer a difficulty prone to end in total failure. What can our petitions be, after all, but repetitions? Even in our private prayers, I cannot help thinking that, faith being general and submission general, we err if we begin to specify details as though we were drawing up a legal document to which an omission might prove fatal. But even the more important personal matters, as to which any Christian would be sure to ask for guidance, are-with few exceptions-prohibited to the pulpit, which, absolutely unable to enter into individual cases, has to confine itself for the most part to the purest generalisations. So far, liturgical and non-liturgical services are almost upon a par; and I think a dissenter must be very simple minded, or very prejudiced, if he supposes that by getting rid of a liturgy he has escaped the danger of formalism, and the necessity of repetition. Common sense seems to me to point in the opposite direction; and to lead us to expect that the benefits which are supposed to accrue from the system of extemporaneous prayer, will be dependent, not only upon powers which are exceptional, but upon a frame of mind which everyone knows cannot be commanded, and which it is therefore idle to count upon at set intervals. But supposing informal prayer to possess every advantage which its friends could claim for it, it is impossible that it should escape liability to dangers arising from personal unfitness or error. I feel no doubt whatever that the prayer which so shocked me was offered up in all sincerity and good intent. I am at least equally certain that to address the Almighty with irreverent familiarity in public can do nothing but harm, no matter how well-meaning the motive may have been. Eloquence of diction is far worse than useless, in prayer. Minuteness of detail is needless, even

where it is possible. What is left to us, but the spirit of supreme reverence; alike needful whether we pray, or trust, or submit; not to be expressed-much less superseded-by any fashion of speech whatsoever, but perfectly capable of expressing itself without any. This given, the spirit, at any rate, of prayer, cannot be absent. This away, forms or the absence of forms are equally valueless, and we had better be silent. Neither in the still solemnity of a Friends' meeting, or in the sonorous monotony of the Catholic mass, should I find intelligible utterance of my feelings; but give me either of these, a thousand times over, rather than that I should be compelled to listen to a man who almost presumes to give advice to his Maker.

Had I been writing for effect, it would have been most inartistic upon my part to have left the sermon to the last, because there is really nothing to say about it. Not that it was by any means destitute of ability, but the reverse. The preacher almost ostentatiously showed that he had burdened himself with no notes; but he need not have troubled himself-his sermon would have proved that. Its general tendency, if strings of clever commonplaces have tendencies, was to the effect that all was sure to be right, that we had no occasion to trouble ourselves about Time or Eternity; that, in fact, God would see to everything. Here was a rendering of the truth that God is Love, free enough in all conscience, and so far heavenly as to appear much better suited to heaven than earth. If all our remorses and tribulations and longings and terrors are to be summed up into so concise a compass, the riddle of the world is soon read; and with reverence be it said, was hardly worth the propounding. But hungry souls who may have gone to that house of prayer famishing for comfort and for nourishment, must, I expect, have gone away as empty as they came. To those who need bread it can but be a matter of secondary importance whether they are put off with a stone or with a dish of sugared froth. The latter may be the pleasantest, but one or the other equally means starvation.

II.

After my unfortunate experience at chapel, I not unnaturally directed my steps next Sunday to church. The town of Slowborough, to which I wended my way, lies high and dry among great sweeps of down-like common and vast corn-fields; and is principally remarkable for having been a great deal more important in the past than ever it is likely to be in the future. It possesses a dozen shops, in which the archæology of commerce may be advantageously studied, as I can testify who have seen the same goods in the same windows for some years past—a dozen public-houses, decorous resorts to which those who have nothing to do repair to do it-four streets, down which you might fire a gun at any time without much fear of doing mischief-an old-fashioned pillared market house which forms a delightful resort for the young in wet

weather-a workhouse, and a church. Forty coaches are said to have passed through it daily in the old coaching days. They are represented by an omnibus uncertain in its time and limited in its accommodation. A great ecclesiastical establishment spread its influence from it all over the surrounding country. It is reduced to a heap of antique stones in a garden. Strange old-world carvings are built into the walls of its houses with an effect more saddening than ornamental. Stately stone mansions here and there invite people of large families and limited incomes temptingly, but are mostly "to let." Smaller tenements occasionally fall down for lack of repair, and no man rebuilds them. Slowborough is now, as nearly as possible, four and ahalf miles from anywhere, and appears to be dropping, calmly and complacently, clean out of human ken. Still it has its Church, sole relic of all its vanished greatness; spacious, wealthy, and restored. Into a comfortable seat in this edifice I was courteously ushered, and found enough to occupy me, before the service began, in wondering what the restoring architect's object could have been in placing an elaborate sham window-frame in front of an old stained-glass window, in such fashion that the latter was never wholly concealed, nor more than half revealed, place yourself as you would. Of the Church prayers I need say nothing. They were not very well read, and the musical portion presented considerable ground for improvement; but this part of the service was performed decorously-if somewhat coldly-and the beautiful liturgy of the Church of England is always the same. The clergyman took as his text a passage from the account of the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon, which struck me as being singularly insusceptible of practical treatment; just one of those historical points in fact upon which it is so easy to talk so much, and say so little. All fears, however, arising from the nature of the text, were speedily dispelled by the discovery of the fact that the sermon had no earthly connection therewith. The departed potentates were evidently intended merely as pegs, upon which, when once screwed-up, we hang whatsoever we think fit and trouble ourselves no more about them. What the preacher did think fit to attach to them was something very strange indeed; for his sermon was simply an angry, and sometimes even violent diatribe against the Liberation Society. I have not the slightest sympathy with the Liberation Society, and happen to be of the firm belief that its objects, however theoretically right, could not be carried out in the present day without the most deplorable results. that the pulpit is neither the place for the attack or for the defence of any such matters, and when I heard the members of the body in question held up to wholesale scorn as "men whose only desire it was to rob the Church," I could not repress a feeling of indignation. Surely sufficient harm has been done in political life by the reckless assumption that all who are with us are right, and all who differ from us are knaves or fools, without importing such a method of judgment into the very service of God. I know men who have given time, money, health, and comfort to the furtherance of this movement, which they believe to be just and

But I also believe

« ZurückWeiter »