There is nothing
inevitable about their order; they have no intelligible,
self-verifying procedure. Anthems are inserted here and there without
any sense of the progression or of the psychology of worship. Glorias
are sung sometimes with the congregation standing up and sometimes
while they are sitting down. There is no lectionary to determine a
comprehensive and orderly reading of Scripture, not much sequence of
thought or progress of devotion either in the read or the extempore
prayers. There is no uniformity of posture. There are two historic
attitudes of reverence when men are addressing the Almighty. They are
the standing upon one's feet or the falling upon one's knees. For
the most part we neither stand nor kneel; we usually loll. Some of us
compromise by bending forward to the limiting of our breath and the
discomfort of our digestion. It is too little inducive to physical
ease or perhaps too derogatory to our dignity to kneel before the Lord
our Maker. All this seems too much like the efforts of those who have
forgotten what worship really is and are trying to find for it some
comfortable or attractive substitute.
Second: we show our inexperience by betraying the confusion
of aesthetic and ethical values as we strive for variety and
entertainment in church services; we build them around wonder and
admiration, not around reverence and awe.
Pages:
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228