extemporary way is the most rational, they were certainly right; for no good reasons can be given for praising God by forms, that will not be equally good for praying to him in the same way; and no objection can be offered against the last, that will not be as strong against the first; for instance, if we say that praying to God by forms deadens the devotion of the people, so will praising him by forms too. If forms of prayer restrain the influences of the Holy Spirit, so must forms of praise. If forms of prayer cannot express all the wants of a Christian congregation, neither will forms of praise comprehend all the causes for which a Christian congregation may have reason to praise God, especially, as the forms we use were composed several thousand years ago, and calculated chiefly for the Jewish religion and worship. If forms of prayer be unlawful in themselves, so must our forms of praise; because, as I observed before, they are often real prayers. "Supposing that extemporary worship was more acceptable to God, and useful to ourselves, no man in a congregation can reap the benefit of it but the parson. Our laity are most grossly mistaken, if they imagine that they pray extempore by our present method; for if they pray in the words of the minister, (and in his words they must pray, if they join at all in publick worship,) they are as much confined to a form as any other people. For example, if the minister says, Most gracious God, forgive us our sins; preserve us from danger, and provide for our necessities; if the people repeat these words, either in their minds, or with their mouths, or both, it is evident that they pray as much by form, as if the prayer had been composed a thousand years ago. In fact, it is impossible for a congregation to join in wor ship otherwise than by a form; and all the difference is, that we worship by a form with which we are entirely unacquainted; a form that we have never seen nor examined before; a form that is trusted to the discretion and ability of the parson for the time, and which the minister himself has never once read over nor examined, even in the slightest manner. It is hard to determine whether his presumption in putting a form of prayer into our mouths, that he has never examined, or our complaisance in using a form that neither we, nor our minister have ever once read over, is most unaccountable. But that either he, or we, should imagine, that to worship God in this manner is most rational for us, or most acceptable to him, is such an instance of the strength of prejudice, and the effects of education, as no man could have thought possible, had it not been proved by experience: for in fact, it is to imagine that our worship is the more rational, the more we are strangers to the words and matter of our prayers, and the less access we have had to satisfy ourselves of the propriety of our petitions, and the more confidence we repose in another man; that our worship will be the more acceptable to the Deity, the less care and pains are taken about the words or matter of it, by the parson or the people; and that our prayers will be so much the sooner heard, the less chance they have to be expressed in proper words, or to consist of pious and reasonable petitions. We may sometimes have a better, or worse form, according to the judgment and capacity of the minister; but we must always have a very defective one; and our very best form must be as far inferiour to a rational, well-composed liturgy, as the learning, judgment, and memory of one man, are to the abilities and calm reflection of a number of the most learned and judicious men of the age. I must confess that I have often beheld, with indignation, the parson pulling out his papers for the sermon, when he trusted the prayer to his invention and memory; not that I have any prejudice against reading of sermons, or am not convinced that it is the best method, unless the minister be a man of extraordinary parts, of extensive learning, and blessed with a very good memory; but that I look upon it as an affront offered to God and the congregation, and very absurd in this instance; as it shows that the minister is less concerned about the propriety and decency of his address to God, than to his people; and that he is more afraid of a blunder in his sermon, than in his worship; or at least, that he thinks, either that a mistake in the last is of less consequence than in the first, or that it is an easier matter to pray than to preach well. "I have often heard the members of our church, when the difficulties and dangers of our present way of worship have been fairly laid before them, satisfy themselves by saying, that most of our ministers had a form which they used, and with which, by length of time, their people became very well acquainted. I believe it may be true, that most of them materially fall into a form; but if we will believe themselves, (and they certainly know best,) it is rather by chance than by design, and of consequence more by good luck, than good management, or much care, if the form they fall into be a good one. However, it is here granted, that the worshipping of God by a form is not only lawful and reasonable, but also necessary; and, if this be the case, why should not our worship be rendered uniform, by an established general form of prayer? Why should it not be brought as near perfection as possible, by the judgment, piety, and learning of our ablest ministers, and other members of our church, conferring together upon the subject? Why should not this form of prayer be communi. cated to the laity, that we may examine and approve of it? Is a parson's form such a secret, that we may not see and examine it for ourselves? Is it any advantage to our worship, that he may alter, curtail, or enlarge it, as his passions or prejudices chance to direct; and warp into his form any whimsical opinion, that he chances to embrace? We must, notwithstanding his form, go to the church with a trembling heart; as we know not but some minister may officiate, whose form of prayer we never have heard; our own minister may have changed his, or some unlucky and indecent petition may be thrown in as he has it in his power to do as he pleases." Lest I should make the extract too long for your columns, I shall conclude with the hope, that your readers may procure this little work, and read what the Blacksmith has to say on the subject of a publick hiturgy. CRANMER. [THE following sermon, preached before the London Society for promoting Chistianity amongst the Jews, on Thursday, April 18, 1822, at the Parish Church of St. Paul, Convent Garden, by the Rev. George Stanley Faber, B. D. Rector of Long Newton, is earnestly recommended to the notice of our readers.] SERMON.-No. XXI. THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS TO THE FAITH OF CHRIST, THE TRUE MEDIUM OF THE CONVERSION OF THE GENTILE WORLD. ISAIAH IX. 1-5. Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see; all they gather themselves together, they come to thee thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then thou shalt see, and flow together; and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. THERE is a very peculiar circumstance, respecting the propagation of Christianity, which can scarcely fail, I think, of arresting the attention even of the most cursory student of history, though it may well excite both wonder and curiosity. The circumstance to which I allude, is this: the amazingly wide and rapid diffusion of the gospel during the earlier centuries after our Lord's ascension to heaven, and its comparatively slow and trifling progress during the middle and later centuries. In the course of a very few years, the religion of Christ had more or less pervaded the whole Roman empire, and had made successful inroads into the contiguous nations, both barbarous and civilized: in the course of little more than three centuries it became the established theological system of the greatest and the most polished monarchy then subsisting. Succeeding events seemed to threaten, if not its absolute extinction, yet at least its contraction within its original narrow limits. But the result was the very opposite of what, by political sagacity, might reasonably have been anticipated. The religion of the conquering Goths was, in every instance, nationally abandoned: the religion of the conquered Romans was, in every instance, nationally adopted. Some of the northern warriours might be earlier, and some might be later, proselytes: but the ultimate universal concomitant of Gothick national invasion was Gothick national conversion. When this great moral revolution was effected, the victories of the cross seemed, as it were, to be suddenly arrested in their mid career. Much about the time that our Saxon ancestors were exchanging the fe rocious idolatry of their fathers for the milder religion of Christ, the Saracens attacked the whole southern line of the Roman empire: and, after the interval of a few centuries, they were followed by the Scythic Turcomans. Each division of these irresistible conquerors obtained permament settlements upon the Roman platform: the Saracens, in Syria, and Africa, and Spain; the Turks, in the entire territory of the eastern empire. Yet mark the wide difference of the result. All those earlier invaders, who seized upon the fragments of Roman dominion from the north, embraced the religion of the vanquished; though in direct opposition to a well-known maxim of Paganism, that the success of their votaries was the surest test of the power of the gods all those later invaders, who planted themselves upon the Roman territory from the south-east and the east, not only rejected the religion of the vanquished, but continued to be pertinaciously animated by a most violent spirit of hostility against it. The difference between the two cases is sufficiently striking: but the matter does not rest here. It is not, that other remote nations were rapidly accepting the gospel, while the Saracens and the Turks, with an unhappy singularity, were rejecting it so far from such being the fact, it would be difficult, I believe, to produce any prominent instance of a national conversion to Christianity, subsequent to the period during which the ancestors of the present Europeans received it as their publick rule of faith. The Mexicans and the Peruvians, indeed, may have been half exterminated, and half forced into a semblance of our religion; and in our own days, on better principles and to a purer mode of faith, the petty islands which are washed by the great Pacifick ocean, may have been nationally converted: but what are these, when contrasted with the vast field for missionary exertion, which stretches far into comparatively civilized Asia! Individually, some conquests may have been made by the pious and laborious men, who have undertaken the mighty task. But what has been done nationally? What has been done upon a grand scale? What has been effected, which bears any resemblance or proportion to the earlier triumphs of the cross? Both Romanist, and Protestant, and Greek, are alike compelled to give the same desponding answer: JUST NOTHING. Look at Persia; look at Arabia; look at Boutan and Thibet; look at Tartary; look at Hindostan; look at China.; in one word, cast your eye over the whole of southern Asia with its dependant islands; and what do you behold? No where, is the cross nationally triumphant: every where, an incalculable majority of the people either bows to the idols of Paganism, or is besotted through the delusion of Mohammedism. What I have stated, though it may well serve to produce abundant speculation, is itself a mere naked matter of fact. However we may account for it, and however we may regret it; still nothing can be more clear, than that the progress of the gospel has now for many ages been almost completely arrested. Nor must we attribute this notorious circumstance altogether to want of exertion. The depressed oriental church may indeed have been long in a state of constrained torpidity; but neither the Romanist nor the Protestant has discon3 GOSPEL ADVOCATE, VOL. III. tinued the holy warfare and yet we all too well know, what very trifling effects have been produced either by the one or by the other. I say not this as undervaluing even the most trifling effects; for, in one point of view, they are infinitely important, and as such amply repay every exertion: but still, when we look back to the earlier centuries, what are a few thousands of scattered individuals, if compared to the unreclaimed millions which throng the vast continents of Asia and Africa ? I. Extraordinary as the fact before us may appear, it is both recognized and (unless I greatly mistake) explained also in holy scripture. 1. Its anticipatory recognition is more or less involved in almost all the prophecies which respect the last ages. (1) Let us first hear the voice of symbolical prophecy, as it speaks through its inspired organs, Daniel and John. The figurative stone, cut out of the mountain without hands, does not itself become a great mountain so as to fill the whole earth; until that concluding period, when the entire compound imperial image shall be broken and dissipated to the winds of heaven. * The predicted universal dominion of the Son of man, so that all peoples and nations and languages should serve him, is not established; until after the day, when the fourth great empire, in its last form of sovereignty, shall be utterly destroyed.† The crowned bowman on the white horse, who in the first ages of Christianity goes forth conquering and to conquer, disappears during the whole intermediate prophecy of the Apocalypse: nor do we again encounter him, until the same fated period, when the last imperial form of the last apostate kingdom is destined to fall before him, and to make room by its subversion for his unlimited reign upon earth.‡ (2) Such are the intimations conveyed to us in the language of figured prophecy; intimations abundantly plain and intelligible, even if nothing more had been said on the subject; but, with the language of figured prophecy, the language of literal prophecy exactly corresponds. "In the last days," we are assured, "the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow unto it."§ "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.' ."|| "The Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one."T (3) Now it is perfectly clear, that the accomplishment of these, and many other parallel prophecies, would have been frustrated, if the conversion of the Gentiles had gone on equably and rapidly in proportion to its original progress: for, had the whole Gentile world been converted in the course of the first nine or ten centuries; there would * Dan. ii. 34, 35, 44, 45. + Dan. vi. 2. xix. 11--16, 17--21. Rev. vii. 7--14, 19--27. Isaiah ii. 2. Ibid. xi. 9. |