|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 61
A third reason for the lack of corporate or public offices of devotion
in our services lies in the intellectual character of the Protestant
centuries. We have seen how they have been centuries of individualism.
Character has been conceived of as largely a personal affair expressed
in personal relationships. The believer was like Christian in Bunyan's
_Pilgrim's Progress_. He started for the Heavenly Country because
he was determined to save his own soul. When he realized that he was
living in the City of Destruction it did not occur to him that, as
a good man, he must identify his fate with it. On the contrary, he
deserted wife and children with all possible expedition and got him
out and went along through the Slough of Despond, up to the narrow
gate, to start on the way of life. It was a chief glory of mediaeval
society that it was based upon corporate relationships. Its cathedrals
were possible because they were the common house of God for every
element of the community. Family and class and state were dominant
factors then. But we have seen how, in the Renaissance and the
Romantic Movement, individualism supplanted these values. Now,
Protestantism was contemporary with that new movement, indeed, a part
of it. Its growing egotism and the colossal egotism of the modern
world form a prime cause for the impoverishment of worship in
Protestant churches.
And so this brings us, then, to the real reason for our devotional
impotence, the one to which we referred in the opening sentences of
the chapter. It is essentially due to the character of the regulative
ideas of our age. It lies in that world view whose expressions in
literature, philosophy and social organizations we have been
reviewing in these pages. The partial notion of God which our age has
unconsciously made the substitute for a comprehensive understanding of
Him is essentially to blame. For since the contemporary doctrine is
of His immanence, it therefore follows that it is chiefly through
observation of the natural world and by interpretation of contemporary
events that men will approach Him if they come to Him at all.
Moreover, our humanism, in emphasizing the individual and exalting his
self-sufficiency, has so far made the mood of worship alien and the
need of it superfluous. The overemphasis upon preaching, the general
passion of this generation for talk and then more talk, and then
endless talk, is perfectly intelligible in view of the regulative
ideas of this generation. It seeks its understanding of the world
chiefly in terms of natural and tangible phenomena and chiefly by
means either of critical observation or of analytic reasoning. Hence
preaching, especially that sort which looks for the divine principle
in contemporary events, has been to the fore. But worship, which finds
the divine principle in something more and other than contemporary
events--which indeed does not look outward to "events" at all--has
been thrown into the background.
It seems to me clear, then, that if we are to emphasize the
transcendent elements in religion; if they represent, as we have been
contending, the central elements of the religious experience, its
creative factors, then the revival of worship will be a prime step
in creating a more truly spiritual society. I am convinced that a
homilizing church belongs to a secularizing age. One cannot forget
that the ultimate, I do not say the only, reason for the founding
of the non-liturgical churches was the rise of humanism. One
cannot fail to see the connection between humanistic doctrine and
moralistic preaching, or between the naturalism of the moment and
the mechanicalizing of the church. "The Christian congregation,"
said Luther, child of the humanistic movement, "should never assemble
except the word of God be preached." "In other countries," says old
Isaac Taylor, "the bell calls people to worship; in Scotland it
calls them to a preachment." And one remembers the justice of Charles
Kingsley's fling at the Dissenters that they were "creatures who
went to church to hear sermons!" It would seem evident, then, that a
renewal of worship would be the logical accompaniment of a return to
distinctly religious values in society and church.
What can we do, then, better for an age of paganism than to cultivate
this transcendent consciousness? Direct men away from God the
universal and impersonal to God the particular and intimate. Nothing
is more needed for our age than to insist upon the truth that there
are both common and uncommon, both secular and sacred worlds; that
these are not contradictory; that they are complementary; that they
are not identical. It is the church's business to insist that men
must live in the world of the sacred, the uncommon, the particular,
in order to be able to surmount and endure the secular, the common and
the universal. It is her business to insist that through worship
all this can be accomplished. But can worship be taught? Is not the
devotee, like the poet or the lover or any other genius, born and
not made? Well, whether it can be taught or not, it at least can be
cultivated and developed, and there are three very practical ways in
which this cultivation can be brought about.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|