Lectures on the Liturgy

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 39 LECTURE III. THE SENTENCES. Psalm xcv., 6. Oh, come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. Isaiah Lv., 7. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for he will...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 39 LECTURE III. THE SENTENCES. Psalm xcv., 6. Oh, come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. Isaiah Lv., 7. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. When the priest has put on the surplice in the vestry, he enters the reading pew, and, after a few moments spent in private prayer, he stands up and reads one or more of the Sentences, at his discretion, with a clear and audible voice. These sentences are all of a very humiliating character; indeed, the very place occupied by the priest is an instance of the self-abasement of our Church. Before the Reformation, he used to take his station on the most sacred portion of the building, to the east of the screen which separates the chancel. But the framers of our Liturgy felt that the iniquities of the Church had stripped her of her former glories, and they removed the priest from the post of honour to the body of the edifice, where, when the people are gathered, and the congregation sanctified, as the Israelites of old, according to the direction of the Prophet Joel, the minister of the Lord weeps, as it were, between the porch and the altar, saying, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach; and where, in conformity to the same Prophet, he bids the people rend their hearts, and not their garments, and turn unto the Lord their God. When England was divided into parishes, and curates were appointed to watch over the souls of particular flocks, it was intended that pastors should be appointed in sufficient numbers to ascertain the characters of all their sheep; were this still the case, each minister would be enabled to...