CHAPTER II

PURITAN OBJECTIONS

"If these beautiful arts-architecture, painting, music, and the like detain men on their own account, to wonder at their own intrinsic charms, down among the things of sense, if we are thinking more of music than of Him whose glory it heralds, more of the beauty of form and color than of Him whose temple it adorns, then, be sure, we are robbing God of His glory; we are turning His temple into a den of thieves. No error is without its element of truth, and jealousy on this point was the strength of Puritanism, which made it a power notwithstanding its violence,— notwithstanding its falsehood.”—H. P. Liddon, Sermon on Intruders in the Temple.

In spite of the natural fitness of the Christian Year to men's spiritual needs, as we have remarked in the preceding chapter, the Church of England met with great and bitter opposition in regard to its observance from the Puritans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hooker, in his splendid defence of the Church against these narrow views, speaks of "the difference in days" as being "natural and necessary." "Even nature," " he says, "hath taught the heathens, and God the Jews, and Christ us, that festival solemnities are a part of the public exercise of religion." He quotes S. Augustine as saying, "By festival solemnities and set days we dedicate and sanctify to God the memory of His benefits, lest unthankful forgetfulness thereof should creep upon us in course of time." 2 And Hooker further adds: "The very law of nature itself, which all 1 Ecc. Pol., V. lxx., pp. 490–494. 2 Pp. 495, 6.

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men confess to be God's law, requireth in government no less the sanctification of times, than of places, persons, and things, unto God's honor." 1 It was God who said to Moses at the Bush, "The place whereon thou standest is holy ground," and it was God also who said, "Ye shall keep My Sabbaths, and reverence My Sanctuary." 2

To all this reasoning the Puritans objected strenuously, though with great inconsistency, as being themselves sticklers for their own self-appointed fast-days, and their own severe and unscriptural view of the Sabbath. In 1644 the Puritan Parliament passed an ordinance strictly forbidding the observance of all holy days, and appointed a solemn fast to be held on Chrismas Day, alleging that that festival was originally of heathen origin. The law required every one to go to work, and that every keeper of a closed shop should be brought before the judge and punished. This condition of things lasted for sixteen years.

Referring to one of the petty objections of the Puritan party to the proper day for the observance of Easter, Dr. Samuel Seabury in his valuable treatise on "The Church Calendar" says, "On such occasions, and even in anticipation of them, the Puritans, whom God seems to have created to try the patience of the saints, were seized with inward spasms." They were a class of men," he adds, "who stood more in need, as Dr. South somewhere says, of Luke the Physician than of Luke the Evangelist."3 The Late Bishop Huntington of Central New York, himself of devout Puritan ancestry, expressed a similar opinion when he described Puritanism in this aspect of its character as "a disturbed biliary duct."

If Puritan objections had been confined to the abuse 1 p. 497. 2 Ex. iii, 5; Lev. xix. 20. 3 Pp. 114, 116.

of the Christian Year, to the multiplication of saints' days and other festivals, and to many superstitious practices that had grown up about their observance, they would have been listened to respectfully. We know that the very best of customs are liable to abuse, and have been abused. In fact these very Puritans turned the Lord's Day into a very different kind of day from God's appointment of it; burdensome, hard, and unlovely, very unlike that "delight" which Isaiah says it was meant to be.1 That, however, is a poor reason for their descendants in this generation making it a day of revelry such as many Church people also, alas, both in England and elsewhere had done, and are doing today. So too of Christmas and other holy days. All had been abused, just as similar days among the Jews had been. Isaiah had told the people in the Name of God: "The new moons and sabbaths I cannot away with. It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting."2 The same was true of their sacrifices and their incense, all of them nevertheless of divine obligation. But perversion and abuse are grounds for destruction only to fanatics, and not to true reformers. All good things have been abused, the Bible, the Prayer Book, the ministry, the sacraments, the altar, the pulpit, the church. The Sabbath was woefully perverted in our Lord's day, but that only gave Him reason for restoring it to its rightful place, not for repealing the law that ordained it.3

Even in Apostolic days Jews who had become Christians had to be warned against the perversion of such good customs as they had inherited from their forefathers. "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years," writes S. Paul to the Jewish Christians of Galatia. I am afraid of you," he adds, "lest I have 1 Isaiah lviii. 13. 2 Isaiah, i. 13. S. Matt. xii. 8.

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bestowed upon you labor in vain."1 Their old purely Jewish customs were no longer necessary for Christians. They were only "shadows" and "beggarly rudiments," he says.2 They could indeed lawfully use them, as he himself did, but not impose them as of necessity. All Christian Jews kept Saturday, their old day for keeping the Sabbath, as well as Sunday. We find the Apostle himself on one occasion offering the ancient Jewish sacrifices in the Temple, 3 and this was twentyfive years after his conversion. But all these things had ceased to be of obligation to Jewish Christians, and were purely voluntary. "The body is of Christ." 5 Here is the reality, in feast, and ministry, and sacrament, for which all these "shadows" had prepared the way.

1 Gal. iv. 10, II.

4 See Col. ii. 16; Rom. xiv. 4, 5, 6. Col. ii. 17.

'Heb. x. 1; Gal. iv. 9, Rev. Ver. Acts xxi. 20-27.

CHAPTER III

THE CHURCH YEAR A GROWTH

"There shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of His roots shall bear fruit."-Isaiah ii. 1., Rev. Ver.

As we proceed to examine the system of the Church's Year we shall see that it is not a completely developed plan from the beginning, but a growth or evolution from a single root, to which many nations and many generations have contributed their special gifts, just as the soil does to the vine. It had its "root" in the ritual year of the Church of Israel. It had its "Branch" in the Incarnate Life of our Lord out of "the root of Jesse.' He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the Ending, the First and the Last, the Light and the Life, of all her worship and her work.

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When we trace it historically we find that, just as surely as our modern fruit trees and vines, peach, apple, plum, grape, have been developed from early wild species with less succulent and palatable fruit, so the Christian Year has its origin in the ritual year of the Patriarchs and of Israel. That was the "root ""

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as well as the shadow." The Branch" and the

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"Body" are of Christ." It is this " mystery of the

Holy Incarnation" which the Church by h. Christian Year, with marvellous practical wisdom, has planned century after century to illustrate in dramatic form, by season and day, by lesson and prayer, by hymn and

1 Is. xi. 10.