A PROTESTANT MINISTER ON CATHOLIC WORSHIP.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 315, 2 May 1879, Page 11

A PROTESTANT MINISTER ON CATHOLIC WORSHIP.

I "♦ Tkk lecture at the hall of the Boston Young Men's Christian Union, On Sunday the lfith February, by Ilev. Julius H. Ward, a minister of the Episcopal Church, was on '• One of the Lost Arts." Mr. Ward s>ai<l : •' In the fresh tide of life that has touched this generation, religious inquiry has become the supreme fact among men and woTftcn who think and read. One of the wisest literary men of our time said to me the other day : ' This Protestant life don't satisfy inc.' Again and again intelligent mun and women say : ' Don't ask mo. to attend meetings or hear sermons. That thing was overdone years ago.' In these daj's of reconstruction, when people are religious outside of churches, when people of brains arc outside the fold, what is the matter? May not an art have been lost in our Protestant rcligiou which is the art of aits for the developement of our religious life ? Is there a purely Protestant service in Kos-ton rich enough in itsalf to exist without being touched up by preaching ? The Sunday sjimon competes with Sunday reading of the best sort, andcompitea in vain. Here is the modern dilemma. Modern Sunday son ices are chiefly devoted to intellectual disquisitions or sentimental twaddle, and neither feed the soul nor warm the heart. The d'fficulty goes yet | deeper. The Protestant service was originated to bj the extreme of I Catholic worship. I use the word not more in its Roman than in its j Anglican meaning. The general confession of intelligent people is that I thoic mustbaareturn to Catholic worship if Christian congregations are to continue to exist in the Protestant world. There is a great change passing over the community in this respect, and the return to Catholic usage is only a question of time. The seirch to-day is for the lost art of religious d#votion. The point to be developed to-day ia to show what religious worship is. It is both human and divine. God basin us the interest of a father in hU children, and oar necessities orj such that we cannot live without God. All religious worship springs out of this relation between God and man. God has something to giro ; man has something to ask for ; man's duty and privilege is to be grateful to God. Here are the germs and the grounds of worship, whether by confession of sin, declaration of belief, or gratitude of heart as a centre. It is God in Jesus Christ that we worship. There is more than this. Worship to the public mut>t be symbolic. It must appeal to the soul and heart through the senses. Nay, even this is not all. The worship, even as symbols, is empty unless there is reality in it. I find the reality in the fact that Christ v truly present by spiritual union with up, when we are V.ought into close human relations with Him under the veil of bread anl wine, when they become the symbolic representatives of divi ie life in the Lord's Supper. Here you touch reality. The worship of Chiist in tho Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is the worship of God under tho symbols which Christ said shonld be the channels of spiritual power. This gives the Lord's Supper the central position it has always had in the Christian Church. It is the central act of worship. No congregation of Christians can fallow the traditions of the Church back to the very beginning which does not at least weekly have this celebration. No religions worship can be complete until the Lord's supper is elevated to the supreme position which Catholic usage has assigned to it. " You may call it idolatry, or anything you please, but the one thing which the Christian religion is valuable for is to keep Christ the Son of the Father in close, personal, actual contact with our daily life, and Christ appointed this Sacrament of renewing spiritual growth for this very cud. There can be no worship worthy of the name which does not let down the lufinite God into practical contact with the human eoul. It is ia thus making Christ the central object of worship that we arc lifted above ourselves." Mr. Ward showed at some length that this principle of worship bad always existed in the idea of sacrifice, gratitude and communion, and that they culminated in worship, which was neither idolatry nor mere inwardness of thought, but thu use of boJy, rain I and soul to create life anew. Then the relation of this principle ta the practical details of worship was briefly considered, the lectuw closing with a statement of what Christian worship of the truly Catholic sort does for our daily life, what joy, and refreshment, an 1 uplifting it contain?. — — — — — i— —