Sunday morning church is a this-world
function with a pietized gossip and a decorous sort of sociable with
an intellectual fillip thrown in. Thus we try to make our services
attractive to the secular instincts, the non-religious things, in
man's nature. We try to get him into the church by saying, "You will
find here what you find elsewhere." It's rather illogical. The church
stands for something different. We say, "You will like to come and be
one of us because we are not different." The answer is, "I can get the
things of this world better in the world, where they belong, than with
you." Thus we have naturalized our very offices of devotion! Hence
the attempts to revive worship are incongruous and inconsistent. Hence
they have that sentimental and accidental character which is the
sign of the amateur. They do not bring us very near to the heavenly
country. It might be well to remember that the servant of Jahweh doth
not cry nor lift up his voice nor cause it to be heard in the streets.
Now, there are many reasons for this anomalous situation. One of them
is our inheritance of a deep-rooted Puritan distrust of a liturgical
service. That distrust is today a fetish and therefore much more
potent that it was when it was a reason. Puritanism was born in the
Reformation; it came out from the Roman church, where worship was
regarded as an end in itself.
Pages:
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231