LITURGICAL PRAYER.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 26, Issue 11, 1 November 1936, Page 7

LITURGICAL PRAYER.

Bishop Knox, m a letter to the Record, has been advocating a more frequent use of the Litany; he is supported by Mr Albert Mitchell, who writes as one of "those who still retain a liturgical sense," but are, he fears, "looked upon as back numbers." We heartily concur with this appeal for Prayer Book standards of public prayer; it is becoming obvious that the ordered worship of the Church is suffering from the cult of the easy, the popular, and the emotional. Less and less demands are made upon the mind of the worshipper, and too much reliance is placed upon the attempt to stimulate vague feelings of emotion ("Bring me my bow of burning gold; bring me my arrows of desire"); m nine churches out of ten an attentuated Evensong is drenched with hymns, and the liturgical traditions of the Church are weakened by aiming at an ideal more appropriated popular devotions. The Litany is unpopular, partly because of bad methods of. its use, but also because, people are no longer taught to make any serious effort to use their minds m church. The Litany requires a good deal of concentrated attenion. Nevertheless, those who follow it carefully can hardly fail to be edified, strengthened, and braced m their whole attitude towards God. Its final object, like that of all great liturgical prayers, is an act of. worship made to God's glory; its emotional appeal is none the less profound because it is severely restrained, and it is built upon the great dogmatic truths of the Catholic Faith. In it we approach One God m Trinity, and the Trinity m Unity; but it is remarkable as a great prayer directed, for the larger part of its extent, to Jesus Christ m His adorable, Incarnate

"Godhead. Thus thousands who would find it" impossible to follow an abstract theological argument come naturally "to think rightly of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ" by the mere fact that they learn to pray: "By Thine Agony and bloody sweat; by Thy Cross and Passion; by Thy precious Death and Burial; by Thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension, Good Lord deliver us." — (From the Church Times.)