CHURCH RITUAL.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19357, 9 July 1928, Page 8

CHURCH RITUAL.

NONCONFORMIST VIEW. SERMON BY REV. D. G. MILLER. "I have 110 quarrel with a Church which seeks to outline its doctrine, but while the Church of England is the National Church of our land we demand the'right, as citizens, to say that we shall not tolerate anything which smacks of priesthood in a •country which is essentially Protestant." These remarks were made by the Rev. D. Gardner Miller regarding the recent tendencies in the Church of England during an address to the Loyal Orange Institution of Canterbury yesterday. Mr Miller took as his text: '"Guard the Deposit committed to thy charge." This meant: "Guard the simple religion of God." He took his listeners back > to the religion of the first- century A.D. At this date priests or the altar or sacrifice did not enter into religion. They came later, for better or worse. There was nothing in the. angelic record which called for these things. "The great need to-day is to impress the world that nothing must come between the Church and the humblest man or woman," continued Mr Miller. "I refer to the struggle which is going on in England about Prayer Book. Bread and wine are bread and wine and all the prayers in the world cannot change them into anything else. There is only one thing the Church of England can do—that is to disestablish herself. She will not be the first church to go into the wilderness for her conscience sake and she would become a bigger force than ever she has been in the days of her establishment. We must reassert the principles of the Reformation: (1) There must be no mediator between God and man; every man himself is a priest. (2) There must be justification by faith, and faith alone."