ARTICLE VI.-THE PROPRIETIES OF THE PULPIT.

THERE are those who would settle all questions of taste or decorum on which they are either in a minority or indifferent, by the ancient maxim, "De gustibus," &c., meaning thus to deny all jurisdiction and leave a decision impossible. The maxim justly imports that, as in respect to physical appetite, so in art, literature, and social life, there are questions which must be left to individual partialities. Men cannot be expected to agree, and therefore ought not to dispute about them. But the ancient critic did not hold that there is no standard of good taste, or that there can be no approximation to harmony among cultivated minds, and therefore every one ought to abide by his own practice according to his preference, or in the absence of any preference. By common acknowledgment, there is such a thing as we call good taste, decorum, or, especially in respect to graver or more sacred occasions, propriety. It has its foundation in the nature of things and the natural susceptibilities of the human mind as cultivated and matured. It has its own canons of criticism. Questions of this sort may be reasonably discussed, and with the advantage of time and experience, differing minds may arrive at common perceptions and conclusions on these subjects as generally as on graver matters of truth or obligation. The concurrent, lasting judgment of educated persons conversant with the subject in view, must form a legitimate tribunal. There is no more warrant for saying there is no such thing as propriety, because all are not agreed upon it, than for saying the same of truth. The pretense is no better than a flimsy refuge for conceit, vanity, and presumption. That there is a propriety to be ascertained and regarded in the most important work we can have to do, even in the public worship of God, is acknowledged in the apostle's precept: "Let all things be done decently and in order."* There is a decency, an order,

* 1 Cor. xiv., 40.

in the services of a Christian assembly, which the writer there has in view; a character that is suitable and becoming; the worshipers must judge, and nay learn, what it is; and no individual is authorized to violate or overlook it in carrying out his separate partiality.

The proprieties of the church, then, are those considerations that serve to determine what is proper, what is decent, or becoming, in the services of the church. As the persons concerned are the minister and the people, the subject may relate especially to the pulpit or to the pews. Confining ourselves now to one only, we inquire as to the proprieties of the pulpit. And, not to cover too much ground, we here refer only to the conduct of the devotional services of a Christian assembly.

In the greater part of Christendom, public prayer is in prescribed forms. Even there the effect of the service depends much on the spirit and the manner in which it is performed. But wherever, as in most Protestant congregations, the officiating minister is required to compose the prayers as well as the sermon, his office becomes more difficult and responsible than is commonly imagined. To introduce the right thoughts in the right language, with due regard to all the circumstances of the occasion, requires qualifications not to be presumed in the majority of men,-sensibility and sympathy, imagination, and memory, and judgment, with good general powers, in unusual measure and combination. High excellence here demands rarer resources than in preaching. The wonder is not that the service is so often unsatisfactory, but that it is no worse, especially since candidates for the ministry seldom appreciate its importance, or approach it with the requisite preparation.

One principal consideration determining the nature of public worship, and therefore its proprieties, is this, that it is addressed directly to God. He is its object, and as such is immediately contemplated in the act. It is not so with all duties or good works, some of them necessarily occupying the mind to the present exclusion of thoughts of divine things. It is not so even with preaching, which therefore has other laws. To say that all actions ought to be a kind of worship, is only a rhetorical figure for setting forth the tribute He receives from obedience.

This fact, of the direct contemplation of God in proper worship, of course enjoins the obligations of sincerity, purity, lowliness, and reverence, but these are not now in view so much as the claims of a true propriety. In a service addressed to God, as all may see, there is no place for the same colloquial freedom which is allowed in conference with men. The temper, the thought, the language, the voice, must be affected by this difference. There cannot be the same familiarity at the throne of grace as in conversation. There can be no defense for the minister who, according to a child's natural, just criticism, "prayed as if God were his cousin," or another who conducted family worship in such a manner that a boy asked, "Does God like such praying?"

Hence, too, prettinesses of expression, polite phrases, and flourishes of rhetoric, are out of place in prayers and hymns. As opposed to these things, simplicity is indispensable. The imagination, however naturally fervid, must be chastened as far as the presence of God is felt. The petitioner must not declaim.

In the same view, we object to what is called "preaching prayer," which aims directly and consciously at effect upon the human hearers. The only effect that ought to be sought directly, is upon the divine hearer. It is true that this service has a most salutary influence upon the assembly, yet such an influence itself requires that it he not directly aimed at, but left to flow from a proper appeal to God. For the same reason the singing that is obviously designed, like an artistic performance, to please the assembly, belongs to a musical con. cert rather than to the worship of God. In fine, the end pro. posed, both in prayers and hymns, is the expression of devout affection; and impression is not a legitimate object except as it may be reached secondarily and incidentally, which, indeed, is the most effectual way of reaching it.

A second consideration is the fact that the minister is the organ of the worshiping congregation. He is a priest in this sense that he represents them before the divine throne. He conducts their worship. Hence, he says, "Let us pray ;" and since such a relation must always be taken for granted, this simple form is better, because more simple, than "Let us

unite in prayer." So far, indeed, as the people may act for themselves, there is no reason why they should be only represented, and therefore congregational singing, as far as it can be had, answers more nearly than any other to the idea of public worship. There is the same argument for certain brief forms of prayer, such as the Lord's prayer, which may be conveniently uttered both by the minister and the people. It is as unreasonable to exclude all prescribed forms among the people, as to exclude all extemporaneous utterance on the part of the minister. The service, whether of the one sort or the other, is properly what it is called in the title of the Episcopal prayerbook, "Common Prayer," being common in the sense of the phrase, "the common salvation," since it purports to be the offering of the congregation, and not of the minister alone. For this reason, if we were treating now of the proprieties of the pews, we should insist on the people bearing some part in all the offices of worship, not only actively in praise, but at least in some posture of consent in prayer.

Since the minister stands in this relation, it becomes him, moreover, to conduct the service as though it were his prerogative, and were expected of him in his place. Hence we cannot like to hear him say, "The choir will please to sing," or "omit if you please," or "shall we sing?" or the like parlorphraseology, instead of, simply, as his office authorizes, “Let us sing." Might he not as properly say, "Shall we pray?" or, "If you please, let us pray?" If we mistake not, there is in such usages an indication of what is still more plainly shown in other ways, the notion that singing is not as strictly as praying an act of worship.

But still more we insist, that as the organ of the church the minister must truly represent their condition, capacities, wants, and feelings. His confessions, petitions, and thanksgivings, must be such as they could utter with one voice, or as he can have their sympathy in uttering. Now it is generally acknowledged that his use of an unknown tongue, speaking for himself, but to them unintelligibly, would violate this rule. Yet he violates it no less if for any reason he is beyond or above the range of their sympathy in thought, or feeling, or language. It is for him to lead them; and, if possible, so to

lead as to allure and advance them; but he must so lead that they can follow him, which certainly they cannot do up and down every by way of fancy, or among the pyrotechnics of eccentric feeling, or in the rarified air of mysticism. A prayer may be strictly too poetical, in the better sense of the word and still more unbecoming is rhapsody or sentimentalism. It has its admirers, yet they utterly mistake this canon of all criticism, that the worship which pu ports to come from the people must represent the people.

The same rule may be violated by a certain refined, elevated spirituality. High experiences, like subtle speculations, may belong to the minister's own exercises, but cannot become him as the organ of the church. His interior history, his individual type of piety, may have an interest as his own, but what have we to do with these when he and they-and they through him-are looking to God? His idiosyncasy thus obtruded is an impertinence. Some would have the min ster sunk in the man rather we would sink the man in the minister,-not in an official personage, yet in the living minister, whenever he represents the church, as when he says, "Let us pray." In this connection occurs a caution against the excessive quaintness or originality-it will be called the one or the other as it is disliked or relished-whether in thought or language, which continually startles the worshipers. Two devout and cultivated persons were conversing on this general subject, the one a Baptist, the other an Episcopalian, and while the first complained that where prescribed forms were used he always knew what was coming next, the other complained that without them he never knew what was coming next. Either of the two contrary extremes thus described in the condition of the worshipers may impair the effect. Extempore prayer, which we have now in view, may the less expose them to inattention through familiarity, yet, on the other hand, it may be of such a sort as to surprise, or even bewilder or perplex them, so far as not the less to defeat its proper end, and this the more by reason of its ill-directed intellectual activity. Whatever other merits it may have, it must fail as public prayer if it cannot represent and lead their