We are
here to join our songs with angels round the throne, and with those pure
and mighty beings who, in some central sanctuary of the universe, cry for
ever, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power:
for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were
created."
We do so in ancient words, ancient music, ancient ceremonies, for a token
that Christ's rule and glory is an ancient rule and an eternal glory;
that it is no new discovery of our own, and depends not on our own
passing notions and feelings about it, but is like Christ, the same now
as in the days of our forefathers, the same as it was fifteen hundred
years ago, the same as it has been since the day that He stooped to be
born of the Virgin Mary, the same that it will be till He shall come in
His glory to judge the quick and the dead. Therefore we delight in the
ancient ceremonial, as like as we can make it, to that of the earlier and
purer ages of the Church, when Christianity was still, as it were, fresh
from the hand of its Creator, ere yet it had been debased and defiled by
the idolatrous innovations of the Church of Rome.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80