Education for Christian Service (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... TRAINING IN WORSHIP HENRY HALLAM TWEEDY THERE is a widespread impression abroad that worship is on the decline. The spiritual health of the ordinary church service is viewed as weak and anaemic. At times its pulse seems to be so low that the only fitting sacrament is that of extreme unction, and the wail of the mourners, too many of whom are strangers and hirelings, is heard in the land. In the press, religious and secular, the jeremiads of ecclesiastical pessimists appear side by side with the prescriptions of spiritual physicians. Charges of coldness, deadness, formalism, superstition and stupidity are flung at both ministers and congregations, while here and there the enemy lifts his head in triumph, and exults because at last religion--for when worship goes, religion will go also--is about to vanish from the land. Nor is the experience with the ordinary congregation assuring. There are reasons for suspecting that the minister faces more auditors than worshippers. Many of them are being sung to rather than singing, prayed for rather than praying, and pleased or bored by a sermon, not always an aid to worship, which they have no intention of following. Even when they take part in the ritual, it is an open question as to how many actually mean what they say. Day is dying in the west, Heaven is touching earth with rest, has been sung at a morning service with no sense of impropriety. Too many choirs are made up of hired performers who make no pretense of being true ministers in music. They do not use melody as the preacher uses words, to save men. The purpose of their "performance" is to impart pleasure for pay. Even those composed of professing Christians err occasionally. One such body of singers startled a visiting clergyman by...