The Public Worship of Almighty God
Hile it is impossible to touch upon every point of
PW importance found in the course of Church services,
the more outstanding features of Praise, Prayer, and
Reading of the Word, together with the ordinances of Holy
Communion and Baptism, may be considered as being common to all churches of every denomination.
I. Praise. ‘O come, let us sing unto the Lord’ (Psa. 95: 1) should be the first and finest attitude of praise. If the singing is ‘unto the Lord,’ it must not be a task left for the choir alone in the hymns and chants, but a joy to be shared by the whole congregation. ‘Singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord’ may well spring forth to the lips in public worship, and from time to time the minister may point out the importance of congregational singing, invariably setting an example by joining in heartily himself.
II. Prayer. In liturgical services there is a danger in not ‘fraying’ the prayers. Familiarity inevitably tends to carelessness. “Too often the prayers are said or read only, and are thus mechanical in expression. Rapidity and absence of proper emphasis can spoil the most incomparable of liturgies. So, too, in non-liturgical services, prayer is apt to become stereotyped, lacking in spontaneity and carrying a monotony of expression week after week, so that members of a church can even sometimes anticipate some of the very phrases that the pastor will use.
In the desire to make the petitions intelligible to the congregation, there is danger lest the minister shall, as someone has said, give information to the Almighty. Perhaps the most satisfactory prayers are those of the minister who shows in his praying that he has the habit of prayer in his daily life, that he is conscious of the presence of God and that he knows what communion with God means. His prayer leaves the impression of an approach to God through the Holy Spirit in which the minister is as little conscious of his people’s presence as is compatible with the voicing of their needs as well as supplication for the world at large.
Ill. The Scripture Reading. ‘The importance of this part of the Service cannot be exaggerated, for it is a solemn responsibility to read God’s own Word to the people, and it may easily be made a powerful influence for spiritual blessing. ‘Faith cometh by hearing,’ and if only the Scripture is read as it should be read, there is no reason why the hearing of the Word of God should not produce faith, and thereby bestow blessing.
There are three requisites for good reading, and these concern the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of our nature. The first is Distinctness, the second Intelligence, and the third Impressiveness. All are necessary and not one can be omitted in any truly acceptable reading of the Word. ‘You read as if you had no God in you,’ said a French teacher of elocution to a young preacher, and the laity often have to complain bitterly of the way in which the Scriptures are read. Nothing suggests that they have been studied beforehand, while the inaccurate emphasis, wrong pronunciation, and frequent haste, tend to make God’s Word either inaudible, or even worse. We must take care in our reading to be natural and free from artificialities, and yet reading is an acquired art. ‘All art is nature better understood.’ Not the least element of importance in reading Scripture is the thought that even though people do not understand or appreciate our sermons, they will have had the Word of God, if we have read it as God’s Word should be delivered to the people. Many years ago an undergraduate sauntered into an Oxford Church, of which afterwards he was quite unable to remember the name. At that time he was nearing his final examination and was feeling somewhat depressed. As he entered the Church the second lesson was being read (Ephesians 2:), and the reader made somewhat unusual pauses as he read verse 8 thus: ‘By grace are ye saved through faith and that, not of yourselves it is the gift of God.’ The Divine Word went home to the undergraduate’s heart, and led to his con-Tuer Pusitic WorsHIP ofr ALMIGHTY God 131
version. His name was John Charles Ryle, and in later life he became Bishop of Liverpool.
The following suggestions are offered in the hope that they may be of service towards the better rendering of this supremely important part of our time of public worship.
1. The Scripture chosen should be read thoughtfully beforehand; the New Testament Lessons in the Greek text and with a comparison of the Revised Version. No clergyman ought to assume that the passages are known because they are thought to be familiar.
2. ‘The reading should not be too fast, and pauses should be made for the purpose of breathing. Ordinary punctuation is not as a rule sufficient for public reading; there should be what are called oratorical pauses as well. A very brief pause between the nominative and the verb enables the congregation in large Churches to grasp the subject before the verb is heard; and a slight emphasis on the verbs as the important words is also valuable.
3. All staccato reading should be carefully avoided. ‘The verse division of the A.V. is responsible for some part of this danger.
4. Let every part be enunciated well, remembering the valuable rule for speaking and reading: ‘Use your lips and spare your throat.” The voice should be maintained to the very end of the sentence and not dropped towards the close.
5. Both extremes of monotonous and dramatic reading should be avoided.
6. The five characteristics of good reading are: (a) Accuracy; (4) Distinctness; (c) Intelligence; (2) Sympathy; (e) Reverence.
7. The faults to be avoided are: (@) Indistinctness; (4) Rapidity; (c) Absence of Emphasis; (d) False Emphasis; (e) Absence of care as to pronunciation.
8. All strict pedantry with proper names should be studiously disregarded and English current usage observed as closely as possible.
9. While every Scripture demands careful study from the reader, the following passages seem to call for special care. In Genesis 1: 3, the verb ‘to be’ should not be empha-WSF MinIsTERIAL LIFE AND WorK
sized. ‘And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” To read ‘and there was light’? gives a wrong impression. Similarly with St. John 1: 1-3; if emphasis is placed on the words ‘was’ and ‘with,’ our hearers will fail to appreciate the profound truths taught by the Apostle. The emphatic words are ‘Word,’ ‘God,’ and ‘made.’ No one ever dreams of emphasizing ‘was’ in verse 4, or in verse 6, and it is only custom that leads to a persistence in the error now mentioned. In St. Luke 14: 18-20, the three excuses should be read in such a way as to suggest that they were made quite independently. ‘To emphasize the pronoun in the second and third would give an entirely wrong idea. In contrast to this, St. Luke 16: 5-7 requires stress on the pronouns, because all the debtors were present at the same time and were asked in turn. In St. Luke 15: 32 we must again avoid emphasizing the verb ‘was.’ Attention must be given from time to time in reading the A.V. to the distinction between ‘that’ as a conjunction and ‘that’ when used as a relative pronoun. St. Luke 19: 22 is a case in point. In St. Luke 19: 24, which is the emphatic word; ‘hath,’ or ‘ten’? ‘The Greek will solve the problem for us. In reading Isaiah 9 it seems impossible to render verse 3 according to the A.V.; the negative must surely be omitted. St. Luke 24: 25 is a well-known difficulty, which will cause both error and irreverence if the comma should happen to be made after the word ‘believe.? We must read right on from the comma after ‘fools’ to the end of the verse.
The names of Romans 16 demand careful attention, for they are often very seriously injured in reading. For the most part it will be found that the Greek and the English pronunciations agree. It would sound curious to hear Aris~ tobulus emphasized on the third, instead of the fourth syllable; and in spite of ordinary Shakesperian usage, Andronicus should be emphasized on the third, not the second syllable. Some of the names in the A.V. will be made clearer and more intelligible if the R.V. is compared with it. One of the worst mistakes sometimes made in reading verse 9 in the A.V. is to make Urbane a word of, three syllables.
In Ephesians 4: 9, no emphasis is to be placed on the first
THE Pupiic WorsHip oF ALMIGHTY God 133
syllable of the word ‘ascended,’ because the people are not supposed to know that there is about to be a contrast between ‘ascended’ and ‘descended.’ ‘The emphasis will come on the first syllable of ‘descended,’ though of course in verse 10 the first syllable of both words will be properly emphasized. In Hebrews 4: 3, if the Scripture is read from the A.V., we are perfectly justified in rendering it, “They shall not enter into My rest,’ because the English version is senseless in its literal translation of the Greek form of the Hebrew idiom. So also in Hebrews 4: 8, ‘Joshua’ should be substituted for ‘Jesus.’ The names of the stones in Revelation 21 will also need attention.:
It is recorded of the late Archbishop Temple that when he had the preliminary interview with candidates for Ordination he invariably required them to read aloud to him in his study, and he always chose one passage: 2 Kings 19: 20-34. With characteristic wisdom he thereby tested the man’s powers of reading, and also at the same time his intelligence. ‘There are few passages more difficult and require more care in the due change of voice and emphasis in order to give the prophet’s thought its full expression. I have often heard it read incorrectly. Verses 23 and 24 are the boast of the King of Assyria, and should be read accordingly. “Then should come a pause, and verses 25-28 read in a different tone as expressive of God’s answer to the boastfulness of the King. It is between verses 24 and 25 that the real crux comes, and of course the ‘I’ in verse 25 should have special emphasis. Then verses 29-34 should be read in yet another tone of voice, as addressed by God to His people Israel. When these three differences are clearly made the chapter becomes luminous with suggestion.
These illustrations, which are just a few out of many that could be given, will show the imperative necessity of careful study before reading the Scriptures. “The greatest possible care, feeling, and reverence should be given to our reading. If only we become convinced of the power of God’s Word we shall regard it as a means of grace to give the Divine thought in the clearest and best possible way.
IV. The Communion Service. Familiarity with this beautiful and solemn Service must not blind us to the fact that it calls for constant and thorough attention if it is to be conducted as it ought to be. Inasmuch as everything depends upon the spiritual and intellectual state of the clergyman who leads the Service, no thought or prayer can be too much to give to this work of helping the people to ‘worship God in spirit and in truth.’
V. The Baptismal Service. ‘To receive into the Church of Christ those who come for baptism (whether as infants or as adults), is one of the highest privileges of the Christian minister. People are never told in Scripture to baptise themselves, but to allow themselves to be baptised, and when the minister performs the act of Baptism he does so as God’s representative. Thus Baptism is primarily God’s act towards man, not man’s act towards God. It is therefore essential that the minister should approach this sacred duty fully conscious of the solemnity of the occasion and of his responsibility both to God and to the one who is acknowledging in baptism his relationship to Jesus Christ,