Worship: Its Priority, Principles, and Practice (continued)
I proceed, in the last place, to show some tests which our public worship should be tried.
This is a point of vast importance, and one which every professing Christian should look fairly in the face. Too many are apt to cut the know of all difficulties about the subject before us, by referring to their own feelings. They will tell us that they are not theologians, that they do not pretend to understand the difference between one school of divinity and another. But they do know that the worship in which they take part makes them feel so much better, that they cannot doubt it is all right. I am not disposed to let such people turn away from the subject of this paper quite so easily. I cannot forget that religious feelings are very deceitful things. There is a sort of gentle animal excitement produced in some minds by hearing religious music and seeing religious spectacles, which is not true devotion at all. While it lasts, such excitement is very strong and very contagious; but it soon comes and soon goes, and leaves no permanent impression behind it. It is a mere sensuous animal influence, which even a Romanist may feel at seasons, and yet remain a Romanist both in doctrine and practice.
1. True spiritual worship will affect a man's heart and conscience. It will make him feel more keenly the sinfulness of sin, and his own particular personal corruption. It will deepen his humility. It will render him more jealously careful over his inward life. False public worship, like liquor-drinking and opium-eating, will every year produce weaker impressions. True spiritual worship, like wholesome food, will strengthen him who uses it, and make him grow inwardly every year.
2. True spiritual worship will draw a man into close communion with Jesus Christ Himself. It will lift him far above churches, and ordinances, and ministers. It will make him hunger and thirst after a sight of the King. The more he hears, and reads, and prays, and praises, the more he will feel that nothing but Christ himself will feed the life of his soul, and that heart communion with him is "meat indeed and drink indeed." The false worshiper in the time of need will turn to external helps, to ministers, ordinances, and sacraments. The true worshiper will turn instinctively to Christ by simple faith, just as the compass needle turns to the pole.
3. True spiritual worship will continually extend a man's spiritual knowledge. It will annually give bone, and sinew, and muscle, and firmness to his religion. A true worshiper will every year know more of self, and God, and heaven, and duty, and doctrine, and practice, and experience. His religion is a living thing and will grow. A false worshiper will never get beyond the old carnal principles and elements of his theology. He will annually go round and round like a horse in a mill, and though laboring much will never get forward. His religion is a dead thing, and cannot increase and multiply.
~J. C. Ryle~
(continued with # 15)
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Come Forth As Gold
Followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises (Heb. 6:12).
They (heroes of faith) are calling to us from the heights that they have won, and telling us that what man once did man can do again. Not only do they remind us of the necessity of faith, but also of that patience by which faith has its perfect work. Let us fear to take ourselves out of the hands of our heavenly Guide or to miss a single lesson of His loving discipline by discouragement or doubt.
"There is only one thing," said a village blacksmith, "that I fear, and that is to be thrown on the scrap heap. "When I am tempering a piece of steel, I first beat it, hammer it, and then suddenly plunge it into this bucket of cold water. I very soon find whether it will take temper or go to pieces in the process. When I discover after one or two tests that it is not going to allow itself to be tempered, I throw it on the scrap heap and sell it for a cent a pound when the junk man comes around.
"So I find the Lord tests me, too, by fire and water and heavy blows of His heavy hammer, and if I am not willing to stand the test, or am not going to prove a fit subject for His tempering process, I am afraid He may throw me on the scrap heap."
When the fire is hottest, hold still, for there will be a blessed "afterward"; and with Job we may be able to say, "When he hath tried me I shall come forth as gold."
--Selected
--Selected
Sainthood springs out of suffering. It takes eleven tons of pressure on a piano to tune it. God will tune you to harmonize with Heaven's key-note if you can stand the strain.
Things that hurt and things that mar
Shape the man for perfect praise;
Shock and strain and ruin are
Friendlier than the smiling days.
Shape the man for perfect praise;
Shock and strain and ruin are
Friendlier than the smiling days.
~L. B. Cowman~
Friday, April 18, 2014
Worship # 13
Worship: Its Priority, Principles, and Practice (continued)
Against the three evils of which I have just been speaking, I desire to life up a warning voice. Such worship is not acceptable in God's sight. It may be pressed upon us most plausibly by clever men. It may be very attractive to the eye, and ear, and the sensual part of our nature. But it has one fatal defect about it: it cannot be defended and maintained by plain texts of Scripture. Sacramentalism, Ceremonialism, Sacrificialism, will never be found in Bibles fairly read and honestly interpreted.
We should search the pages of English history, if nothing else will open our eyes, and see what those pages tell us. Of worship in which Sacraments, Ceremonies, Sacerdotalism, and the Mass made the principle part - of such worship England has surely had enough. Such worship was tried by the Church of Rome in the days of our forefathers, for centuries before the Protestant Reformation, and utterly failed. It filled the land with superstition, ignorance, formalism, and immorality. It comforted no one, sanctified no one, elevated no one, helped no one toward heaven. It made the priests overbearing tyrants, and the people cringing slaves. And shall we go back to it? God forbid! Shall we once more be content with services in which baptism, the Lord's Supper, the power of the priesthood, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the necessity of symbolical decorations, the value of processions, banners, pictures, altar lights, are incessantly pressed on our minds? Once more I say, God forbid! Let Let every one that loves his soul come out from such worship and be separate. Let him avoid it and turn away from it, as he would from poison.
~J. C. Ryle~
(continued with # 14)
Against the three evils of which I have just been speaking, I desire to life up a warning voice. Such worship is not acceptable in God's sight. It may be pressed upon us most plausibly by clever men. It may be very attractive to the eye, and ear, and the sensual part of our nature. But it has one fatal defect about it: it cannot be defended and maintained by plain texts of Scripture. Sacramentalism, Ceremonialism, Sacrificialism, will never be found in Bibles fairly read and honestly interpreted.
We should search the pages of English history, if nothing else will open our eyes, and see what those pages tell us. Of worship in which Sacraments, Ceremonies, Sacerdotalism, and the Mass made the principle part - of such worship England has surely had enough. Such worship was tried by the Church of Rome in the days of our forefathers, for centuries before the Protestant Reformation, and utterly failed. It filled the land with superstition, ignorance, formalism, and immorality. It comforted no one, sanctified no one, elevated no one, helped no one toward heaven. It made the priests overbearing tyrants, and the people cringing slaves. And shall we go back to it? God forbid! Shall we once more be content with services in which baptism, the Lord's Supper, the power of the priesthood, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the necessity of symbolical decorations, the value of processions, banners, pictures, altar lights, are incessantly pressed on our minds? Once more I say, God forbid! Let Let every one that loves his soul come out from such worship and be separate. Let him avoid it and turn away from it, as he would from poison.
~J. C. Ryle~
(continued with # 14)
Evil Never Surrenders Without a Fight
And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him (Mark 9:26).
Evil never surrenders its hold without a sore fight. We never pass into any spiritual inheritance through the delightful exercises of a picnic, but always through the grim contentions of the battle field. It is so in the secret realm of the soul. Every faculty which wins its spiritual freedom does so at the price of blood. Apollyon is not put to flight by a courteous request; he straddles across the full breadth of the way, and our progress has to be registered in blood and tears. This we must remember or we shall add to all the other burdens of life the gall of misinterpretation. We are not "born again" into soft and protected nurseries, but in the open country where we suck strength from the very terror of the tempest. "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."
--Dr. J. H. Jowett
--Dr. J. H. Jowett
Faith of our Fathers! living still,
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword:
O how our hearts beat high with joy
Whene'er we hear that glorious word.
Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!
We will be true to Thee till death!
Our fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Were still in heart and conscience free;
How sweet would be their children's fate,
If they, like them, could die for Thee!
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword:
O how our hearts beat high with joy
Whene'er we hear that glorious word.
Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!
We will be true to Thee till death!
Our fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Were still in heart and conscience free;
How sweet would be their children's fate,
If they, like them, could die for Thee!
~L. B. Cowman~
Thursday, April 17, 2014
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)
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)
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Worship # 11
Worship: Its Priority, Principles, and Practice (continued)
12. In complete public worship there should be united public praise. That this was the custom among the first Christians, is evident from Paul's words to the Ephesians and Colossians, in which he commanded the use of "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). That was the custom so widely prevalent as to be a mark of the earliest Christians is simply matter of history. Pliny records that when they met they "used to sing a hymn to Christ as God". No one indeed can read the Old Testament and not discover the extremely prominent place which praise occupied in the temple service. What man in his senses can doubt that the "service of song" was meant to be highly esteemed under the New Testament? Praise has been truly called the flower of all devotion. It is the only part of our worship which will never die. Preaching and praying and reading shall one day be no longer needed. But praise shall go on for ever. A congregation which takes no part in praise, or leaves it all to be done by deputy through a choir, can be hardly thought in a satisfactory state.
13. Finally, in complete public worship there should be the regular use of the two sacraments which Christ appointed in his church. By baptism new members should be continually added to the congregation, and publicly enrolled in the list of professing Christians. By the Lord's Supper believers should be continually offered an opportunity of confessing their Master, and continually strengthened and refreshed, and put in remembrance of his sacrifice on the Cross. I believe, with every feeling of respect for Quakers and Plymouth Brethren, that no one who neglected these two sacraments would have been regarded as a Christian by Paul and Peter, James and John. No doubt, like every other good thing, they may be painfully misused and profaned by some, and superstitiously idolized by others. But after all there is no getting over the fact that baptism and the Lord's Supper were ordained by Christ himself as means of grace, and we cannot doubt he meant them to be reverently and duly used. A man who preferred to worship God for many years without ever receiving the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is a man, I am firmly persuaded, that would not have been thought in a right state in the days of the apostles.
I commend these 13 points to the serious attention of my readers, and invite them to consider them well. I can easily believe that I may have said things about them with which some Christians may not agree. I am not their judge. To their own Master they must stand or fall. I can only tell my readers, as an honest man, what appears to me the teaching of Holy Scripture. I do not for a moment say that no man will be saved who does not see public worship precisely with my eyes. I say nothing of the kind. But I do say that any regular system of public worship which does not give a place to the Sabbath, the ministry, preaching, prayers, Scripture-reading, praise, and the two sacraments, appears to me deficient and incomplete. If we attend a place of worship where any of these points is neglected, I think we suffer loss and damage. We may be doing well; but I think we might be doing better. To my mind these points of public worship appear to stand out plainly on the face of the New Testament; and I plainly say so.
~J. C. Ryle~
(continued with # 12 - "Things to be Avoided in Public Worship)
12. In complete public worship there should be united public praise. That this was the custom among the first Christians, is evident from Paul's words to the Ephesians and Colossians, in which he commanded the use of "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). That was the custom so widely prevalent as to be a mark of the earliest Christians is simply matter of history. Pliny records that when they met they "used to sing a hymn to Christ as God". No one indeed can read the Old Testament and not discover the extremely prominent place which praise occupied in the temple service. What man in his senses can doubt that the "service of song" was meant to be highly esteemed under the New Testament? Praise has been truly called the flower of all devotion. It is the only part of our worship which will never die. Preaching and praying and reading shall one day be no longer needed. But praise shall go on for ever. A congregation which takes no part in praise, or leaves it all to be done by deputy through a choir, can be hardly thought in a satisfactory state.
13. Finally, in complete public worship there should be the regular use of the two sacraments which Christ appointed in his church. By baptism new members should be continually added to the congregation, and publicly enrolled in the list of professing Christians. By the Lord's Supper believers should be continually offered an opportunity of confessing their Master, and continually strengthened and refreshed, and put in remembrance of his sacrifice on the Cross. I believe, with every feeling of respect for Quakers and Plymouth Brethren, that no one who neglected these two sacraments would have been regarded as a Christian by Paul and Peter, James and John. No doubt, like every other good thing, they may be painfully misused and profaned by some, and superstitiously idolized by others. But after all there is no getting over the fact that baptism and the Lord's Supper were ordained by Christ himself as means of grace, and we cannot doubt he meant them to be reverently and duly used. A man who preferred to worship God for many years without ever receiving the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is a man, I am firmly persuaded, that would not have been thought in a right state in the days of the apostles.
I commend these 13 points to the serious attention of my readers, and invite them to consider them well. I can easily believe that I may have said things about them with which some Christians may not agree. I am not their judge. To their own Master they must stand or fall. I can only tell my readers, as an honest man, what appears to me the teaching of Holy Scripture. I do not for a moment say that no man will be saved who does not see public worship precisely with my eyes. I say nothing of the kind. But I do say that any regular system of public worship which does not give a place to the Sabbath, the ministry, preaching, prayers, Scripture-reading, praise, and the two sacraments, appears to me deficient and incomplete. If we attend a place of worship where any of these points is neglected, I think we suffer loss and damage. We may be doing well; but I think we might be doing better. To my mind these points of public worship appear to stand out plainly on the face of the New Testament; and I plainly say so.
~J. C. Ryle~
(continued with # 12 - "Things to be Avoided in Public Worship)
Meet Him Alone Early In the Morning
Be ready in the morning, and come... present thyself there to me in the top of the mount. And no man shall come up with thee (Exod. 34:2-3).
The morning watch is essential. You must not face the day until you have faced God, nor look into the face of others until you have looked into His. You cannot expect to be victorious, if the day begins only in your own strength.
Face the work of every day with the influence of a few thoughtful, quiet moments with your heart and God. Do not meet other people, even those of your own home, until you have first met the great Guest and honored Companion of your life--Jesus Christ.
Meet Him alone. Meet Him regularly. Meet Him with His open Book of counsel before you; and face the regular and the irregular duties of each day with the influence of His personality definitely controlling your every act.
Begin the day with God!
He is thy Sun and Day!
His is the radiance of thy dawn;
To Him address thy lay.
Sing a new song at morn!
Join the glad woods and hills;
Join the fresh winds and seas and plains,
Join the bright flowers and rills.
Sing thy first song to God!
Not to thy fellow men;
Not to the creatures of His hand,
But to the glorious One.
Take thy first walk with God!
Let Him go forth with thee;
By stream, or sea, or mountain path,
Seek still His company.
Thy first transaction be
With God Himself above;
So shall thy business prosper well,
And all the day be love.
--Horatius Bonar
He is thy Sun and Day!
His is the radiance of thy dawn;
To Him address thy lay.
Sing a new song at morn!
Join the glad woods and hills;
Join the fresh winds and seas and plains,
Join the bright flowers and rills.
Sing thy first song to God!
Not to thy fellow men;
Not to the creatures of His hand,
But to the glorious One.
Take thy first walk with God!
Let Him go forth with thee;
By stream, or sea, or mountain path,
Seek still His company.
Thy first transaction be
With God Himself above;
So shall thy business prosper well,
And all the day be love.
--Horatius Bonar
The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early upon their knees. Matthew Henry used to be in his study at four, and remain there till eight; then, after breakfast and family prayer, he used to be there again till noon; after dinner, he resumed his book or pen till four, and spent the rest of the day in visiting his friends.
Doddridge himself alludes to his "Family Expositor" as an example of the difference of rising between five and seven, which, in forty years, is nearly equivalent to ten years more of life.
Dr. Adam Clark's "Commentary" was chiefly prepared very early in the morning. Barnes' popular and useful "Commentary" has been also the fruit of "early morning hours."
Simeon's "Sketches" were chiefly worked out between four and eight.
~L. B. Cowman~
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