The Ritual Reason Why

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1868. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... Note A. (Referred to at p. 135.) 600. The following valuable remarks on attention to minute details in ritual are from a paper read at York during the Congress by the Rev. E. A. Hillyard, Rector of St. Laurence's, Norwich :-- "Another objection occurs to the minds of many, who are themselves favourers of Ritualism up to a certain point. Those, I mean, who are wont to admire the comeliness and decency of the general features of a ceremonial service, but express themselves offended at the apparent attention to minute detail. Granted, say they, that our services are too cold and repellant, and that you have made them hearty and attractive, but why this continual bowing and scraping, these genuflexions and crossings, this constant attention to such very small acts? These surely are trivialities, puerilities, of themselves unedifying, beneath the dignity of a priest, his place, and the object of our worship. In short, let us, they say, have choral services, but no tomfoolery. Taking away the terms containing more of abuse than argument, the objection is intelligible, but it may be said that analogy (which has been allowed in the hands of Christian apologists to play a large part in the defence of truth) does not lead us to this same contempt of minutiae which our opponents exhibit. Things, to us small and apparently trivial, have their places in Creation--an office however obscure to us, which they fulfil--a meaning and an importance in their minute lives, though scarcely if at all subservient to man, his uses, and his wants. Nay, further, their very uselessness to us tells of Another Whose praise or wisdom they display; that whereas we refer all things to ourselves as centre, and condemn or approve according as we are pleased or displeased, like the fly on ...

Charles Walker is Associate Professor of History, University of California Davis.