THE ART OF PUBLIC WORSHIP
By DR. PERCY DEARMER
THE most neglected of the arts ! Yet the most universal and the most ancient : modern also, and, I think, immortal ; for, though dogmatic belief should continue to ebb and religion become vaguer and more protean, the sense of worship will not decrease, and when .public worship is as noble as the need of it, the common assembly for one intense and consecrated hour in the week may become universal again. It surely will, if men are wise.
The art of public worship is the most comprehensive and most difficult of all the arts. It is based upon philo- sophy as well as theology, it embraces ethics and depends for its proper exercise upon an understanding of psycho. logy—which we understand as yet so little. It cannot, I think, be generally successful unless it is continuous with tradition ; and this involves for Englishmen both law and liturgies—the last a tiresome branch of history, which is narrowing in its effects upon the student, but fortunately has been so thoroughly worked that we can take its results on trust. Yet on the other hand public worship can discover—and has discovered—quite new lines of activity. " Free services " abound in the Church of England as well as in the Free Churches ; and a revo- lutionary discovery was made when the Society of Friends initiated the practice for ordinary people of corporate silence. Would that greatest of all accomplishments, the emancipation of the slaves, the centenary of which we have observed this summer, have ever come to pass if the Quakers had not won enlightenment by quiet waiting upon the Spirit of God ?
Yet it is certain that the nation as a whole (and the world as a whole) needs in general a more vocal worship, and that most people in this country prefer the traditional methods of the Church of England. They may well do so ; for the Prayer Book is the only " ritual " (to use the word in its proper sense) which is written in the noblest form of a great language. Clothed in exquisite and magnificent prose, glowing with poetry, rich, restrained, concise and finely shaped, the only danger with our ritual is that we may let it become static by shrinking from revision. That ritual includes the English Bible ; it also includes a hymnody which in the more recent books is real poetry, and holds in fee the great melodies of all the nations. Musical inventions also that are peculiarly our own, such as the Anglican chant, and the Anthem in which great compositions from many sources are used as a short spiritual exercise. And carols ! —the wide scope of which all through the year is only beginning to be recognized.
And now it has become clear that this art of public worship, besides requiring a sound philosophy, a practi- cable psychology, and the rest, includes all the other arts. Dancing ?—the reader may. object. Well, in the Psalter dancing is included, and when we remember that the dance is not primarily twirling or jumping, but is the art of expressive and often solemn movement, like the ceremony which is witnessed by crowds every day in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace—a true dance symbolizing the Guard of the British Empire—it will be seen that the solemn functions which occur for instance every year at Westminster Abbey—the Royal Maundy, for instance, and the dedications and centena- ries do really belong to this ancient and universal. form of art. There arc, we know, some clergymen who by a fussy and posturing excess of ceremonial give their services some semblance to an inferior form of ballet ; but this is because they have not learnt the first principle of every art—reserve.
Excesses, foolish and lamentable as they are, have been prominent during the decades immediately behind us. They cannot be defended liturgically, aesthetically, or ethically—ethically they are indefensible because every parson has promised to obey the directions of the Prayer Book, and because such things estrange from worship those very people—the ordinary parishioners— whose care the parson has solemnly undertaken. The English, though they enjoy processions and similar functions on occasion, like their normal worship to be simple, and are for the most part alienated from religion when it is not. But in large towns there are enough people who are helped by a larger (though not less loyal) measure of ceremonial ; and it is right that they should be wisely provided for, within the wholesome and beautiful standard which the Prayer Book provides in the Ornaments Rubric and other ceremonial directions.
Yes, it is difficult to think of an art which is not involved in that of public worship. Poetry, prose, "shape," music we have mentioned ; but these involve elocution, drama, singing and the orchestra. And printing and bookbinding also (how bad they have been !). Even the Quaker cannot dispense with architecture ; and the Friends used to be the only church whose members wore their distinctive vestments (sober as these were) in everyday life. Yes, costume ! Where would the Salva- tion Army be without its uniform, known all over the world ? Arts, then, and the minor crafts—sculpture and painting, textiles, metal work, and, work in wood and glass. How bad they were in the nineteenth century—so bad that we sometimes crave for the gracious simplicity of a whitened barn, and that we hope for an iconoclastic movement to remove the awful stained glass and the miserable " ornaments " with which our grandfathers spoilt our priceless heritage of church architecture.
They did not know ! Philosophy, psychology, ethics, and all the forms of art were involved ; and they did not know it. " Ritual," which was their misnomer for this deep and difficult art, became a matter of perverted and embittered church-parties and of costly litigation. They almost destroyed our churches by what they called restoration, they made sham Gothic the outward expression of the Christian religion ; they invented a church music which roused the contempt of all other civilized nations ; they flooded the country with hymn- books which hid the glorious ritual of the Prayer Book under a weak and saccharine sentimentality. And all with the best intentions; for they were right in thinking that fundamental improvements were needed. Well, sound learning is now taking the place of party spirit ; there is an official " Committee for the Care of Churches " ; and we are recovering. For at least we know enough to recognize humbly now that public worship is a complex and difficult • art for which we need the best help that wise and creative men can provide,
Previous page
