Worship # 12

Worship: Its Priority, Principles, and Practice (continued)

I proceed, in the fourth place, to show some things which ought to be avoided in public worship.

I am well aware that there is no perfection in this world. There is no visible church, I am sure, in whose public  worship it would not be easy to show faults, defects, and shortcomings. The best service in the best visible church on earth will always be infinitely below the standard of the glorified church in heaven. I admit with sorrow and humiliation, that the faith, and hope, and life, and worship of God's people are all alike full of imperfections. To be continually separating and seceding from churches, because we detect blemishes in their administration, is not the act of a wise man. It is to forget the parable of the wheat and tares.

But I cannot forget, for all this, that we have fallen on dangerous times in the matter of worship. There are things going on in many churches, and chapels in the present day so highly objectionable, that I feel it a plain duty to offer some cautions about them. Plain speaking about them is imperatively demanded at a minister's hands. If the watchmen hold their peace, how shall the city take alarm? "If the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare himself for battle?" (1 Cor. 14:8).

There are three great and growing evils in public worship, which require special watching in the present day. I feel it a positive duty to direct attention to them. We have need to stand on our guard about these evils, and to take heed that they do not infect and damage our souls.

1. Let us beware, for one thing, of any worship in which a disproportionate honor is given to any one ordinance of Christ, to the neglect of another. There are churches at this moment, in which baptism and the Lord's Supper, like Aaron's rod, swallow up everything else in religion. Nothing beside receives much attention. The honor done to the font and the Lord's Table meet you at every turn. All else, in comparison, is jostled out of its place, over-shadowed, dwarfed, and driven into a corner. Worship of this sort, I hesitate not to say, is useless to man's soul. Once alter the proportions of a doctor's prescription, and you may turn his medicine into a poison. Once bury the whole of Christianity under baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the real idea of Christian worship is completely destroyed.

2. Let us beware, for another, of any worship in which an excessive quantity of decoration and ornament is used. There are many churches at this moment, in which divine service is carried on with such an amount of gaudy dressing, candle-lighting, and theatrical ceremonial, that it defeats the very purpose of worship. Simplicity should be the grand characteristic of New Testament worship. Ornament at any time should be employed with a very sparing hand. Neither in the Gospels nor in the Epistles shall we find the slightest warrant for a gorgeous and decorated ceremonial, or for any symbols except water, bread, and wine. Above all, the inherent wickedness of human nature is such that our minds are only too ready to turn away from spiritual things to visible things. Whether men like it or not, what the heart of man needs teaching, is the uselessness of outward ornaments without inward grace.

3. Let us beware, above all things, of any worship in which ministers wear the dress, or act in the manner of sacrificing priests. There are hundreds of English churches at this moment in which the Lord's Supper is administered as a sacrifice and not as a sacrament, and the clergy are practically acting as mediators between God and man. The real presence of our Lord's body and blood under the form of bread and wine is openly taught. The Lord's Table is called an altar. The consecrated elements are treated with an idolatrous reverence, as if God himself was in them, under the form of bread and wine. The habit of private confession to clergymen is encouraged and urged on the people. I find it impossible to believe that such worship as this can be anything but offensive to God. He is a jealous God, and will not give his honor to another. The sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross once offered, can in no sense or way ever be repeated. His mediatorial and priestly office he has never deputed to any man, or any order of men. There is not a word in the Acts or Epistles to show that the apostles ever pretended to be sacrificing priests, or to make any oblation in the Lord's Supper, or to hear private confessions, and confer judicial absolutions. Surely that simple fact ought to make men think. Let us beware of Sacrificialism, the Mass, and the Confessional!

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 13)