On the Old Road Volume Ii Part 43

--HOR., _Carm._, iv. 14.]

EPILOGUE.

BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, _June 1880._

249. MY DEAR MALLESON,--I have glanced at the proofs you send; and _can_ do no more than glance, even if it seemed to me desirable that I should do more,--which, after said glance, it does in no wise. Let me remind you of what it is absolutely necessary that the readers of the book should clearly understand--that I wrote these Letters at your request, to be read and discussed at the meeting of a private society of clergymen. I declined then to be present at the discussion, and I decline still. You afterwards asked leave to print the Letters, to which I replied that they were yours, for whatever use you saw good to make of them: afterwards your plans expanded, while my own notion remained precisely what it had been--that the discussion should have been private, and kept within the limits of the society, and that its conclusions, if any, should have been announced in a few pages of clear print, for the parishioners' exclusive reading.

I am, of course, flattered by the wider course you have obtained for the Letters, but am not in the slightest degree interested by the debate upon them, nor by any religious debates whatever, undertaken without serious conviction that there is a jot wrong in matters as they are, or serious resolution to make them a t.i.ttle better. Which, so far as I can read the minds of your correspondents, appears to me the substantial state of them.[169]

250. One thing I cannot pa.s.s without protest--the quant.i.ty of talk about the writer of the Letters. What I am, or am not, is of no moment whatever to the matters in hand. I observe with comfort, or at least with complacency, that on the strength of a couple of hours' talk, at a time when I was thinking chiefly of the weatherings of slate you were good enough to show me above Goat's Water, you would have ventured to baptize me in the little lake--as not a goat, but a sheep. The best I can be sure of, myself, is that I am no wolf, and have never aspired to the dignity even of a Dog of the Lord.

You told me, if I remember rightly, that one of the members of the original meeting denounced me as an arch-heretic[170]--meaning, doubtless, an arch-pagan; for a heretic, or sect-maker, is of all terms of reproach the last that can be used of me. And I think he should have been answered that it was precisely as an arch-pagan that I ventured to request a more intelligible and more unanimous account of the Christian Gospel from its preachers.

251. If anything in the Letters offended those of you who hold me a brother, surely it had been best to tell me between ourselves, or to tell it to the Church, or to let me be Anathema Maranatha in peace,--in any case, I must at present so abide, correcting only the mistakes about myself which have led to graver ones about the things I wanted to speak of.[171]

The most singular one, perhaps, in all the Letters is that of Mr.

Wanstall's, that I do not attach enough weight to antiquity. I have only come upon the sentence to-day (29th May), but my reply to it is partly written already, with reference to the wishes of some other of your correspondents to know more of my reasons for finding fault with the English Liturgy.

252. If people are taught to use the Liturgy rightly and reverently, it will bring them all good; and for some thirty years of my life I used to read it always through to my servant and myself, if we had no Protestant church to go to, in Alpine or Italian villages. One can always tacitly pray of it what one wants, and let the rest pa.s.s. But, as I have grown older, and watched the decline in the Christian faith of all nations, I have got more and more suspicious of the effect of this particular form of words on the truthfulness of the English mind (now fast becoming a salt which has lost his savor, and is fit only to be trodden underfoot of men). And during the last ten years, in which my position at Oxford has compelled me to examine what authority there was for the code of prayer, of which the University is now so ashamed that it no more dares compel its youths so much as to hear, much less to utter it, I got necessarily into the habit of always looking to the original forms of the prayers of the fully developed Christian Church. Nor did I think it a mere chance which placed in my own possession a ma.n.u.script of the perfect Church service of the thirteenth century, written by the monks of the Sainte Chapelle for St. Louis; together with one of the same date, written in England, probably for the Diocese of Lincoln; adding some of the Collects, in which it corresponds with St. Louis's, and the Latin hymns so much beloved by Dante, with the appointed music for them.

253. And my wonder has been greater every hour, since I examined closely the text of these and other early books, that in any state of declining, or captive, energy, the Church of England should have contented itself with a service which cast out, from beginning to end, all these intensely spiritual and pa.s.sionate utterances of chanted prayer (the whole body, that is to say, of the authentic _Christian_ Psalms), and in adopting what it timidly preserved of the Collects, mangled or blunted them down to the exact degree which would make them either unintelligible or inoffensive--so vague that everybody might use them, or so pointless that n.o.body could be offended by them. For a special instance: The prayer for "our bishops and curates, and all congregations committed to their charge," is, in the Lincoln Service-book, "for our bishop, and all congregations committed to _his_ charge." The change from singular to plural seems a slight one. But it suffices to take the eyes of the people off their own bishop into infinite s.p.a.ce; to change a prayer which was intended to be uttered in personal anxiety and affection, into one for the general good of the Church, of which n.o.body could judge, and for which n.o.body would particularly care; and, finally, to change a prayer to which the answer, if given, would be visible, into one of which n.o.body could tell whether it were answered or not.

254. In the Collects, the change, though verbally slight, is thus tremendous in issue. But in the Litany--word and thought go all wild together. The first prayer of the Litany in the Lincoln Service-book is for the Pope and all ranks beneath him, implying a very noteworthy piece of theology--that the Pope might err in religious matters, and that the prayer of the humblest servant of G.o.d would be useful to him:--"Ut Dompnum Apostolic.u.m, et omnes gradus ecclesie in sancta religione conservare digneris." Meaning that whatever errors particular persons might, and must, fall into, they prayed G.o.d to keep the Pope right, and the collective testimony and conduct of the ranks below him. Then follows the prayer for their own bishop and _his_ flock--then for the king and the princes (chief lords), that they (not all nations) might be kept in concord--and then for _our_ bishops and abbots,--the Church of England proper; every one of these pet.i.tions being direct, limited, and personally heartfelt;--and then this lovely one for themselves:--

"Ut obsequium servitutis nostre rationabile facias."--"That Thou wouldst make the obedience of our service reasonable" ("which is your reasonable service").

This glorious prayer is, I believe, accurately an "early English" one.

It is not in the St. Louis Litany, nor in a later elaborate French fourteenth century one; but I find it softened in an Italian MS. of the fifteenth century into "ut nosmet ipsos in tuo sancto servitio confortare et conservare digneris,"--"that Thou wouldst deign to keep and comfort us ourselves in Thy sacred service" (the comfort, observe, being here asked for whether reasonable or not!); and in the best and fullest French service-book I have, printed at Rouen in 1520, it becomes, "ut congregationes omnium sanctorum in tuo sancto servitio conservare digneris;" while victory as well as concord is asked for the king and the princes,--thus leading the way to that for our own Queen's victory over all her enemies, a prayer which might now be advisedly altered into one that she--and in her, the monarchy of England--might find more fidelity in their friends.

255. I give one more example of the corruption of our Prayer-Book, with reference to the objections taken by some of your correspondents to the distinction implied in my Letters between the Persons of the Father and the Christ.

The "Memoria de Sancta Trinitate," in the St. Louis service-book, runs thus:--

"Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui dedisti famulis tuis in confessione vere fidei eterne Trinitatis gloriam agnoscere, et in potentia majestatis adorare unitatem, quesumus ut ejus fidei firmitate ab omnibus semper muniemur adversis. Qui vivis et regnas Deus, per omnia secula seculorum. Amen."

"Almighty and everlasting G.o.d, who has given to Thy servants, in confession of true faith to recognize the glory of the Eternal Trinity, and in the power of Majesty to pray to the Unity; we ask that by the firmness of that faith we may be always defended from all adverse things, who livest and reignest G.o.d through all ages. Amen."

256. Turning to our Collect, we find we have first slipped in the word "us" before "Thy servants," and by that little insertion have slipped in the squire and his jockey, and the public-house landlord--and anyone else who may chance to have been coaxed, swept, or threatened into Church on Trinity Sunday, and required the entire company of them to profess themselves servants of G.o.d, and believers in the mystery of the Trinity. And we think we have done G.o.d a service!

"Grace." Not a word about grace in the original. You don't believe by having grace, but by having wit.

"To acknowledge." "Agnosco" is to recognize, not to acknowledge. To _see_ that there are three lights in a chandelier is a great deal more than to acknowledge that they are there.

"To worship." "Adorare" is to pray to, not to worship. You may worship a mere magistrate; but you _pray_ to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The last sentence in the English is too horribly mutilated to be dealt with in any patience. The meaning of the great old collect is that by the shield of that faith we may quench all the fiery darts of the devil.

The English prayer means, if it means anything, "Please keep us in our faith without our taking any trouble; and, besides, please don't let us lose our money, nor catch cold."

"Who livest and reignest." Right; but how many of any extant or instant congregations understand what the two words mean? That G.o.d is a living G.o.d, not a dead Law; and that He is a reigning G.o.d, putting wrong things to rights, and that, sooner or later, with a strong hand and a rod of iron; and not at all with a soft sponge and warm water, washing everybody as clean as a baby every Sunday morning, whatever dirty work they may have been about all the week.

257. On which latter supposition your modern Liturgy, in so far as it has supplemented instead of corrected the old one, has entirely modeled itself,--producing in its first address to the congregation before the Almighty precisely the faultfulest and foolishest piece of English language that I know in the whole compa.s.s of English or American literature. In the seventeen lines of it (as printed in my old-fashioned, large-print Prayer-Book), there are seven times over two words for one idea.

1. Acknowledge and confess.

2. Sins and wickedness.

3. Dissemble nor cloke.

4. Goodness and mercy.

5. a.s.semble and meet.

6. Requisite and necessary.

7. Pray and beseech.

There is, indeed, a shade of difference in some of these ideas for a good scholar, none for a general congregation;[172] and what difference they can guess at merely muddles their heads: to acknowledge sin is indeed different from confessing it, but it cannot be done at a minute's notice; and goodness is a different thing from mercy, but it is by no means G.o.d's infinite goodness that forgives our badness, but that judges it.

258. "The faultfulest," I said, "and the foolishest." After using fourteen words where seven would have done, what is it that the whole speech gets said with its much speaking? This Morning Service of all England begins with the a.s.sertion that the Scripture moveth us in sundry places to confess our sins before G.o.d. _Does_ it so? Have your congregations ever been referred to those sundry places? Or do they take the a.s.sertion on trust, or remain under the impression that, unless with the advantage of their own candor, G.o.d must remain ill-informed on the subject of their sins?

"That we should not dissemble nor cloke them." _Can_ we then? Are these grown-up congregations of the enlightened English Church in the nineteenth century still so young in their nurseries that the "Thou, G.o.d, seest me" is still not believed by them if they get under the bed?

259. Let us look up the sundry moving pa.s.sages referred to.

(I suppose myself a simple lamb of the flock, and only able to use my English Bible.)

I find in my concordance (confess and confession together) forty-two occurrences of the word. Sixteen of these, including John's confession that he was not the Christ, and the confession of the faithful fathers that they were pilgrims on the earth, do indeed move us strongly to confess Christ before men. Have you ever taught your congregations what that confession means? They are ready enough to confess Him in church, that is to say, in their own private synagogue. Will they in Parliament? Will they in a ballroom? Will they in a shop? Sixteen of the texts are to enforce their doing _that_.

The most important one (1 Tim. vi. 13) refers to Christ's own good confession, which I suppose was not of His sins, but of His obedience.

How many of your congregations can make any such kind of confession, or wish to make it?

The eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth (1 Kings viii. 33, 2 Chron.

vi. 26, Heb. xiii. 15) speak of confessing thankfully that G.o.d is G.o.d (and not a putrid plasma nor a theory of development), and the twenty-first (Job xl. 14) speaks of G.o.d's own confession, that no doubt we are the people, and that wisdom shall die with us, and on what conditions He will make it.

260. There remains twenty-one texts which do speak of the confession of our sins--very moving ones indeed--and Heaven grant that some day the British public may be moved by them.

(1.) The first is Lev. v. 5, "He shall confess that he hath sinned _in that thing_." And if you can get any soul of your congregation to say he has sinned in _any_thing, he may do it in two words for one if he likes, and it will yet be good liturgy.

(2.) The second is indeed general--Lev. xvi. 21: the command that the whole nation should afflict its soul on the great day of atonement once a year. The Church of England, I believe, enjoins no such unpleasant ceremony. Her festivals are pa.s.sed by her people often indeed in the extinction of their souls, but by no means in their intentional affliction.

(3, 4, 5.) The third, fourth, and fifth (Lev. xxvi. 40, Numb. v. 7, Nehem. i. 6) refer all to national humiliation for definite idolatry, accompanied with an entire abandonment of that idolatry, and of idolatrous persons. How soon _that_ form of confession is likely to find a place in the English congregations the defenses of their main idol, mammon, in the vilest and cruelest shape of it--usury--with which this book has been defiled, show very sufficiently.

261. (6.) The sixth is Psalm x.x.xii. 5--virtually the whole of that psalm, which does, indeed, entirely refer to the greater confession, once for all opening the heart to G.o.d, which can be by no means done fifty-two times a year, and which, once done, puts men into a state in which they will never again say there is no health in them; nor that their hearts are desperately wicked; but will obey forever the instantly following order, "Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and shout for joy, all ye that are true of heart."

(7.) The seventh (Acts xxiv. 14) is the one confession in which I can myself share:--"After the way which they call heresy, so worship I the Lord G.o.d of my fathers."