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THE

GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE.

MARCH, 1868.

ON A BECOMING POSTURE IN PUBLIC WORSHIP.*

BY T. W. MATHEWS.

EVERY one who thinks on the subject at all will probably allow that there must be such a thing as is indicated in the title of this essay-that some postures are decidedly unbecoming, and that of all permissable attitudes some are more proper than others. As long as we inhabit material bodies some posture is unavoidable, at all times and in every place; some posture, therefore, we must assume when we assemble for the professed worship of our Maker. The question before us is-What is the posture that best befits this solemn, sublime, and heavenly engagement?

My remarks will be chiefly directed to the posture we ought to be in during prayer. For our customs during the other parts of public worship the reading of the sacred Scriptures, the hearing of sermons, and the service of song-are, as far as I know, proper enough. But on the point of prayer I think there is, in most congregations, room for blame, and need of improvement.

No one will, I trust, suspect that this external matter is about to be represented as of essential importance, or as comparable with the spirit of worship. If we are not worshipping God in the Spirit and in the truth, all external forms, however decent and reverential in themselves, are destitute of value. Indeed, I know nothing to be more jealously guarded against, as a fatal instrument of self-deception, than a sedulous cultivation of the outward rites and ceremonials of religion.

It is wonderful, it is humbling, it is alarming, to contemplate the Ritualism prevailing in this country in the present day. To think that Christians (so called) should attach any importance to a rule, which says. that when certain words are uttered, one man should stand and the rest should kneel, and when other words are used, all should stand; that when the words of the apostles are read you should sit, but must be on your feet to hear the words of the evangelists; that during the chief

*This Essay is printed by request of the Conference at which it was read. We gladly insert it, and ask that it may be perused and pondered by all into whose hands it may come. Those who give it this attention will, we are persuaded, support the vote of the Lincolnshire Conference, in heartily thanking its amiable and venerable writer.-EDITOR.

VOL. LXX.-NEW SERIES, No. 15.

*

portion of the meeting you may turn in any convenient direction, but at the recital of the creed you must mind and turn to the east; and on "Trinity Sunday must omit the words, Holy Father." Can the heavenly religion of Jesus Christ have developed itself into such sillinesses as these?

What can be the use of all this ceremony, this change of attitude and orientalisation? of this abundance of actions, of dresses, and of utensils, neither called for by human convenience, nor instituted by command of God? Are they designed to relieve the fatigue produced by long continuance in one posture? Is there any supposed merit in these visible compliments? Can intelligent beings really fancy that in any sense we are the better for observing these things, or the worse for omitting them? Are they done just that we may be seen of men, and that others may perchance think what very devout people we are, and how well we know how to do the proper thing at the proper moment? Or have these actions all been instituted by the mere wantonness of power, usurped by presumptuous priests and self-willed rulers? Sidney Smith called this attention to posture imposture. I repeat it, it is humbling and alarming, that in this nineteenth century people calling themselves Christians can be found in England thus playing at religion as children play with toys; and that others should go in crowds to look at their childish sport, their pretty dresses, and their ecclesiastical gymnastics. Ah! there is a deep, deep evil out of which all these performances issue.

But while we censure others, let us modestly and seriously inquire

whether we are not ourselves obnoxious to blame. After all, reli

* Wheatley, p. 149. Bohn's Edition. 1853.

gion, pure, spiritual, heavenly religion, must have a Form. God Himself had to be manifest in the flesh, and take on Him the form of a servant. "He that made that which is within made that also which is without" the earthly, material body, as well as the intelligent, ethereal spirit. And are we not sensible that the suitable expression of our inward sentiments, whether by words or by gestures, tends both to sustain those sentiments in ourselves, and render them influential on others? Must we not allow that there is often observable in Nonconformist places of worship a want of reverence in our manners and appearance, which, not without reason, is an offence to those who are accustomed to more dignity and decorum, and which really impairs our own impression of the solemnity of Christian worship? People sometimes enter the place of assembly with an inconsiderate noisiness which is distracting to the worshippers, and even with a jauntiness quite incompatible with the gravity of the occasion. Not unfrequently during the reading of the oracles of God, the singing of His praise (possibly, also, even during the act of invocation), there is a careless staring about, and an interchanging of the language of the eye, demonstrating that the heart is not seeking Him who has promised to be with those who meet together in His name

Yes we must have forms. Words are forms, actions are forms, postures are forms. Sincere words are the just utterances of the thoughts of the mind. Words, however excellent, which do not fairly express the then present state of the heart, are hypocrisy. The Lord's Prayer (in my judgment the simplest yet the sublimest, most comprehensive, most wonderful form of prayer ever composed) becomes, in the lips of an unintelligent, careless person, the

language of hypocrisy.* If this be so, what a great mass of hypocrisy, then, must be every week accumulated in the religious assemblies of England!

Forms, as before said, both express and sustain the sentiments they embody, and they serve to reproduce them in others. If, then, we are reasonably solicitous that our words should be true interpreters of our heart-worship, we should be correspondingly careful that our postures should be so too. These are as expressive, as edifying, and as reproductive as those. They are, or at least they ought to be. And as when we speak in prayer or praise we should have regard not only to our own edification but to that of others also, so should we also consider the edification of others in our very postures. Both are really implicated, though not to an equal extent, in the impressiveness and benefit of public worship.

A painful posture should be avoided. Religion is not a penance, but a joy. A painful attitude would in a little time call off to itself the attention which ought to be fixed on the divine object of our worship.

A lazy posture on the other hand is equally to be shunned. Religion is rest, but it is not slothfulness. If, indeed, any one is sick, his best posture for prayer is lying in bed; but that is for private or domestic, not for public, worship. If a person is so frail that he cannot stand or kneel, then let him accommodate his feeble frame as best he may to the service of the sanctuary-let him lean, let him recline. These are, however, exceptional cases. But for healthy persons, such as the vast majority of attendants on public

Is it not a curious fact, and one worthy of consideration by those who are sticklers for words, that hardly ever in my life have I heard, in the Established Church or out of it, the Lord's Prayer repeated in the words of our Lord?

worship always are

for healthy

persons to put themselves into positions suitable for the infirm is laziness; unbecoming, unedifying to themselves, and injurious to those who may happen to observe them.

In my opinion this censure attaches to those who sit during prayer. Far be it from me to say that this attitude is not compatible with sincere and even earnest worship; but it is not natural for either humility, or reverence, or penitence, or fervency, or grief, or desire, or transport, thus to exhibit itself. I know that it is once said of David that he "went in and sat before the Lord," and spake to God (2 Sam. vii. 18); but that was private not public worship individual, not social. William Penn thought that silently sitting was the best posture for private meditation. For this purpose let every one try, ascertain, and practise for himself the attitude he finds most beneficial.

But for united worship this posture is unsuitable-it tends to dullness; and certainly no stranger looking on a company of sitters would be likely, from sympathy with them, to be impressed with the solemnity of worship, with the awful majesty of the Being they are addressing, or even with the earnestness or the joyfulness of those who profess to be this holding "communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." And if our united worship does not mean this, what does it mean?

Of all attitudes for prayer kneeling seems the most appropriate. Even to a fellow creature, in times of great agitation, when some eminent favour is to be solicited, especially when pardon is to be asked, men will offer

their entreaties on their knees. Subjects, and even courtiers, do so to their sovereigns, and especially children to their parents. All of us probably kneel habitually in our

closets. So we do at the bedside of the sick and dying; and even in our occasional and social meetings with our Christian friends. We do the like oftentimes at our prayer meetings, and probably always at our family worship.

Jesus "kneeled down and prayed" (Luke xxii. 41).

Paul kneeled down and prayed Iwith the elders of the church at Ephesus (Acts xx. 36); and with the disciples at Tyre "he kneeled down on the shore and prayed" (Acts xxi. 5). Indeed it was his expression for usual habitual prayer;

"For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph. iii. 14).

So Peter knelt in prayer. ix. 40).

(Acts

So did Stephen, even when being stoned to death. (Acts vii. 60). Daniel also, as is recorded with

frequency.

And Ezra.
And David.

pos

And Solomon. The beautiful ture in which that then wise and pious monarch offered up his prayer in the great congregation at the dedication of the temple, is circumstantially described (2 Chron. vi. 13). "For Solomon had made a brazen scaffold, of five cubits long, and five cubits broad, and three cubits high, and had set it in the midst of the court and upon it he stood, and kneeled down upon his knees before all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven."

In many passages of Scripture, remote from each other, the blessed God, declaring His great design in the formation, sustentation, and government of the human family, expresses His holy resolution, that, as He liveth, every knee shall bow to Him. (Isaiah xlv. 23; Romans xiv. 11; Phil. ii. 10).

On this divine prediction, and on

every principle of adoration, reverence, gratitude, penitence, and hope, the universal exhortation of Psalm xcv. 6 is founded-" O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker."

Some blame, therefore, is attributable to us, I think, even with respect to the structure of our meeting-houses. No provision is usually made for this natural, reasonable, expressive, and scripturally sanctioned posture in prayer. Among us people hardly ever kneel in public worship, for, indeed, without great effort they cannot.

The modern Jews, I believe, in their synagogues usually keep their hats on. Christian men universally take them off. Why? Certainly because the apostle Paul has plainly enjoined this practice (1 Cor. xi.. 4-16.) Now if we follow the apostolic injunction in one point, why not in another? With decision and clearness Paul says (1 Tim. ii. 8), "I will therefore that men pray ever where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting." Notwithstanding this distinct direction as to the attitude Christians should observe in prayer, I apprehend that few among us even so much as think of the words, or do what they prescribe. Nay, so entirely dead among us is this decent, lovely, and edifying custom, that I can hardly cherish the hope that all who are even hereby reminded of it will dare to be so singular as to conform themselves to it.

I am far from approving of the careless, listless, unmeaning, irreverent posture of our dissenting congregations in general. Look at

them. The minister says, "Let us pray;" but the people sit just as they were; except, perhaps, that many of them put their hands down before them, or fold their arms and lay them on the book-board, or let them repose on the coping of the

pew before them, and then recline their heavy head on the cushion of their arms, just as if praying meant sleeping. Or perhaps they just sit up as they did before, and gaze at the minister; while he, most likely with his eyes shut, is speaking, in their name professedly, to the heartsearching God. Many of the hearers are probably in the meantime staring about, as if the worship were no concern of theirs, or at the best just thinking what an eloquent prayer it is! Let us put an end to this irreverence, brethren. Let us learn, let us resolve, to "lift up our hands with our hearts to God in the heaven."

In the congregation to which I have the happiness of statedly ministering, a custom prevails, which

I found existing when I first entered on my office, which I presume we inherit from our venerated forefathers, and which I think is next best to kneeling, viz., that when prayer is about to begin, the people rise and stand with their back to the minister; I trust, also, that, like himself, they close their eyes, in order that they may more effectually impress on their minds the solemn consciousness of the presence of the Infinite Being they are invoking, and may shield themselves from all such wandering thoughts as might enter by the eye-those miserable inward distractions which we have all great reason both to fear and to deplore, to bewail for the past, and to deprecate for time to come.

MEMOIR OF MR. J. BAILEY, WOODHOUSE EAVES, LEICESTERSHIRE.

66

"He was a good man."-Acts xi. 24.

"One that feared God and eschewed evil.-Job. i. 1.

Ir the righteous shall be "in everlasting remembrance," and "the memory of the just is blessed," it seems but meet and right that some record should be preserved of one who, for more than half a century, so faithfully served his generation." If, however, we were to follow the desires and inclinations of him who rests from his labours, not a single line would ever be written. lt is only in deference to the repeated requests of his numerous friends that we have consented to prepare this sketch of his life.

The late Joshua Bailey was born in Manchester on July 10th, 1790. His early days were spent in Loughborough; and amongst the companions of his childhood were the Îate Dr. Yates, the eminent linguist, of Calcutta, and the Rev. J. Wallis, tutor of the College at Leicester.

Owing to losses, and other adverse circumstances, his parents were unable to give him any education, so that in every sense he was a selfmade man. Before even he was eight years old he was no stranger to daily toil, but when ever he referred to the struggles of his early life, it was never in a complaining spirit; for he was ever ready to acknowledge the good hand of God in the trials of his early as well as his later life.

We much regret that we cannot give a definite account of his conversion, as we have been unable to find any memorandum of this important change. He received, we believe, his first religious impressions from a brother, but his mother, who was a woman of piety and intelligence, exercised considerable influence over him. We have heard

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