List | next: The imitation of Christ
The ritual reason why
by Charles Walker (of Brighton.)
- Login or register to forward title to your Kindle or delivery email
- download the converted book to your desktop.
- Enter rr2.mobi/bxK in your Kindle browser to download
- Click on cover to see Google Books preview
Excerpt:
6. Do we find this system continued by the Apostles?
—We do. The disciples continued to attend the Temple services, and were constant in "the breaking of the Bread and in the prayers."' So
1 Acts ii. 42: T?) K\aati Toc &prov ical To is vpoacvxais, i. e. the eucharistic breaking of bread, and the accompanying prayers. Such set forms or liturgies were of earliest date; so much so that St. Paul quotes from one; 1 Cor. ii. 9. Compare Liturgy of St. James.
too the Apostles baptized those that were converted; and laid their hands on those that were to receive the Holy Ghost, or to be set apart for the ministry. And we find St. Paul giving directions for the proper administration of the Lord's Supper, and promising to set the rest in order when he came. The same Apostle, to whom was committed the care of all the Churches, was most careful that "all things should be done decently and in order."'
7. Can you give me any further instances? —There is the case of the woman that anointed the feet of our Lord with precious ointment, when Judas took exception to the costly character of this act of service. I may add also that it is the generally received opinion that the "cloak" which St. Paul left at Troas, was the Eucharistic vestment, the "parchments" he speaks of being the Liturgy:a and that the Apostle John is believed to have borrowed his imagery of the heavenly worship
1 1 Cor. xiv. 40: nark ri^iv, according to (accustomed) form.
a 2 Tim. iv. 13: (pe\ivriv, which is still the word employed in the Eastern liturgies to denote the Chasuble.
from that which was then customary in the Church.1
8. Does ecclesiastical history support this view?
—Yes: the fact that the Eastern and Western Churches, differing so widely as they do in language, in the customs of their people, and in many minor points of ceremonial, should yet employ a system of symbolism in worship, essentially the same in all its broad principles, is in itself a proof. Nor is other wanting. Lights and incense are mentioned in the earliest liturgies. Even in the times of persecution, when Christians had to worship in dens and caves of the earth, the worship of God was conducted with splendour and costliness. Thus the historian Eusebius tells us that the magnificence of the sacred vessels inflamed the cupidity of the persecutors, as was the case with St. Lawrence, who suffered martyrdom A.d. 258, because he would not give up the treasures of the Church. St. Optatus testifies that in the Diocletian persecution the Churches had very
1 Bevelation, passim.
many ornaments of gold and silver. Prudentius thus speaks of the ornaments of the Church in Rome when St. Lawrence was martyred. The Priests offer in gold; the sacred Blood is received in silver chalices; in the nightly sacrifices the wax tapers are fixed in golden candlesticks." It is certain that as soon as the conversion of Constantine gave peace to the Church, Divine Worship was at once celebrated with great pomp and magnificence; and it is noticeable that Eusebius in speaking of the restoration of the Churches, and the dedication of new ones which then ensued, has handed down a sermon of his own, in which he speaks of St. Paulinus, bishop of Tyre, who had engaged himself in this work as "a new Bezaleel," of whom we read (Exod. xxxv. 31), that God filled him with wisdom of heart to work all manner of works of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue and in purple, and in scarlet, and in fine linen. In a word it is not too much to say that till the sixteenth century no Christian Church was deficient in the three leading characteristics of ritual — vestments, lights and incense.
