William James Miller

“ Faith.—"Divine, or as it is called, Catholic Faith is a gift of God and a light of the soul; illuminated by which, a man assents fully and unreservedly to all which Almighty God has revealed and which He proposes to us by His Church to be believed, whether written or unwritten. It is also a belief in the whole Gospel, as distinguished from a reception of some portion of it only; and it is a faith so full of the love of God as that it leads us to act differently from what we {107} should if we did not believe and marks us out as a peculiar people among men."—From Manual of Instruction. ”

“ It is thus we have brought home to us, as in no other way, the meaning and reality of "The Communion of Saints." Amid the solemnities of worship "and memorial we thus learn that the living and the dead are bound together by ties that are eternal, ties that no change of time can break, because before God they are one in the Mystical Body of Christ. ”

“ The gesture of kneeling is not only a mark of personal humility and reverence, but also one of those acts required of every one as an individual component part of the body which forms the congregation. To neglect it, is to neglect a duty which is owing to God and man in this respect as well as the other. We have no right to conspicuous private gestures in a public devotional assembly; nor are the gestures which we use (in conformity to the rules of the Church) to be necessarily interpreted as hypocritical because our personal habits or feelings may not be entirely consistent with them. ”

“ By Regeneration, therefore, is meant that gracious act of God whereby for Christ's sake. He brings us into a new relationship with Himself, adopts us as His own children, translates us into the kingdom of His Son, incorporates us into His Church, and so brings us under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is the name originated for Baptism by our Lord Himself in His discourse with Nicodemus, as recorded in the third chapter of St. John's Gospel, and it is for this reason that this passage is appointed to be read in the service for the Baptism of Adults. ”

“ The Church is the House of God, not man's house; a place wherein to meet with Him with the closest approach which can be made in this life. Hence, if Jacob consecrated with the ceremony of unction the place where God made His covenant with him, and said of it, 'This is none other but the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven'; so should our churches be set apart and consecrated with sacred ceremonies making them holy to the Lord. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the Church is a Divine Institution, founded on Christ and His Apostles, and is declared in Holy Scripture to be the Mystical Body of Christ, in which we are united to Him, admitted into covenant with God and so brought into a new relationship with God, then Infant Baptism is not only one of the most reasonable, but one of the most urgent doctrines of the Christian Religion, because it is in Holy Baptism that all these blessings are vouchsafed to us. ”

“ Growth of the Church.—The course of the Episcopal Church in the United States has been characterized by a very remarkable growth—a growth that has attracted the attention of the Public Press, both religious and secular. Thus the Roman Catholic News said recently, "The gains of the Episcopalians in this country, steady, onward, undeniable, and that at the expense of the denominations called evangelical, is one of the remarkable characteristics of our times." ”

“ The Church has always kept it as such. From day to day, amid the solemnities of worship, we follow our Lord in His Passion, live it over again, as in Psalm and Hymn, in Proper Lessons, in Epistles and Gospels and pleading, prayers the whole record of the Royal Reception, the final Teachings, Betrayal, the cruel mockery, the desertion, and the awful Agony on the Cross, the Death and the Burial of the Lord of Life is solemnly recited as a memorial before God. ”

“ The use of the "Amen" in Public Worship emphasizes the Priesthood of the Laity, as for example, in the consecration of the elements in the Holy Communion, while the celebrating Priest stands before God offering to Him this holy Oblation, he does it in company with all the faithful, and to signify their cooperation with him in this great act they say "Amen," adopting his words and acts as their own. In the early Church the "Amen" was said with such heartiness, an ancient writer describes it as sounding "like a clap of thunder." ”

“ Hence the Prayer Book prescribes a Collect, Epistle and Gospel for every Sunday in the year, and its rubrics plainly teach us that according to the mind of the Church the principal service of every Lord's Day should be the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Our Lord has also taught us by His example as well as by precept, that works of mercy, both spiritual and corporal, are lawful to be done on this day, and are peculiarly appropriate to it. ”

“ Again, in the New Testament the Church is called the Body of Christ, the kingdom of heaven, the Bride, and its people are declared to be branches of the one Vine Jesus Christ Himself. "The great thought running through all the New Testament descriptions of the Church is that of the Church's unity in itself through its union with Christ the Head." There is not the slightest warrant in the Bible for the present state of our divided Christianity, which is simply the result of sin and man's waywardness. ”

“ The Altar is entirely stripped of its hangings and ornaments, except the cross, and is sometimes covered with black hangings. The observance of Good Friday is inwoven into the very texture of the Christian Religion, having been kept from the very first age of Christianity with strictest fasting and humiliation. The mind of the Church seems always to have been, "this day is not one of man's institution, but was consecrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when He made it the day of His most Holy Passion." ”

“ The Church Mission House is a perfect beehive of Church work. Here all the leading interests of the Church are centred. In its spacious, well-lighted rooms are the offices of the Missionary Society. Here, too, are the headquarters of the Woman's Auxiliary, the American Building Fund Commission, the officers of the General Convention, of the General Clergy Relief Fund, the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, the Girls' Friendly Society and other Church agencies. Here, too, in its beautiful Chapel the noontide prayers are daily offered for the spread of the Gospel of Christ throughout the world. ”

“ Recognizing the fact that music always characterized the worship of God's Church both under the Old Dispensation and under the New, the essential thing is the character of the music in our churches to-day and the mode of rendering it. ”

“ Not even the glorified Saints who have attained to the purity and bliss of Heaven are raised to higher blessedness and purity than that saintly maiden was whom Elizabeth was inspired to call 'the Mother of my Lord.' This sanctity of the Blessed Virgin through her association with her Divine Son has always been kept vividly in view by the Church. ”

“ From ancient sources we learn that it was the universal custom of the Church to wear distinctive vestments at the celebration of the Holy Communion to mark it as the only service ordained by Christ Himself, and also as the highest act of Christian Worship. This is evidenced by the fact that the seven historical churches which have possessed a continuous life since the Nicene era, viz.: the Latin, Greek, Syrian, Coptic, Armenian, Nestorian and the Georgian—all use the Eucharistic Vestments. ”

“ The Diocese embraces all the people within its limits and for them all it has a message and a blessing. For the deliverance of this message and the bestowal of this blessing all, both Clergy and Laity, have responsibilities and therefore the Church turns to them for the means whereby this work can be carried on. The support of Diocesan Missions is as obligatory on all members of the Church as the support of the Bishop or their own Parish, and to this all will contribute annually if they love the Lord Jesus in sincerity and truth. ”

“ Divine Service.—In the old rubrical usage of the {85} Church, "Divine Service" always meant the Holy Communion, which was also called the Divine Liturgy. The central point of all Divine Worship, towards which all other services gravitate, and around which they revolve, like planets around the sun, is the great sacrificial act of the Church, the offering of the Blessed Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood. ”

“ This truth is embodied for us in the Creed, in the words, "Jesus Christ, His Only Son our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary." This great outward fact is the foundation of all that follows: upon it Christianity depends and all Christian Doctrine has reference to it. By reason of the Incarnation the Church as a living Body becomes Christ's Body on earth, and in the Church and by means of it man is brought into union with Him who is the beginning of a new race, the Head of a new and spiritual creation. ”

“ Because, in whatever religious teaching they receive, their Baptism is never referred to, and they are never reminded that they are now God's children by adoption and grace because baptized, it comes to pass that, when these same children are asked to be confirmed, they think and act as if they were invited to "join the Church." And as they are more influenced by the speech and methods of the various religious bodies which prevail in their community than they are by the Church's teaching, they imagine that something extraordinary is required ”

“ If we take the whole Christian world of to-day, we find that the number of Christians is in round numbers five hundred millions. Of this number only one hundred million are non-Episcopal, so that we may conclude from the universal acceptance of Episcopacy before the Reformation and from the large preponderance of adherents to this form of Church government at this present time,—from these facts we may safely conclude that Episcopacy is in accordance with the mind of the Master. ”

“ Hence she values her Book of Common Prayer which is the outgrowth of the devotions of the ages and she cherishes the usages and traditions that have grown up around it. The Episcopal Church does not insist on forms merely for the sake of forms, but she values them for their helpfulness, for what they convey to the soul faithfully using them, and also, because they enable us to worship God as did His faithful people in all the ages past. ”

“ Adult Baptism.—The rule of the Church is Infant Baptism. She brings children even in their tenderest years within her Fold and there trains them up "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." But when in England the Puritans and Anabaptists arose and prevailed, then there grew up a generation that reached maturity without having been baptized, and then it was that there arose the necessity for "The Ministration of Baptism to such as are of Riper Years and able to answer for themselves." ”

“ The Creed begins with the words "I believe," because each and every statement in it contains a truth superior to reason, revealed by Almighty God and proposed {72} to our faith faculty. In the American Church two forms of the Creed are used, namely the APOSTLES' and the NICENE, to each of which the reader is referred. (See also ORTHODOX.) Two customs in saying the Creed have come down to us from the most ancient times, (1) that of turning to the East or towards the Altar in saying it, and (2) that of bowing the head at the holy Name of Jesus. ”

“ The Parish partakes of the character of the people who compose it; if they are earnest and devoted, loyal and true to the Church's appointments, the Parish is sure to be prosperous. In other words, the Church lives as they who are of it live. It is vital with their vitality. It is a live body as they are live Christians. Thus the success of a Parish is not wholly dependent on the Rector, but on the people as well. ”

“ This is the meaning of Infant Baptism; and the Church has always regarded such Baptism as a reasonable and benevolent work, as is exemplified by her universal practice from the beginning. The "Mercy to Babes" in the Old Dispensation has not been lost out of the New, the Dispensation of the Spirit of love, which brings to all, even to the infant, as well as to its parents, God's mercy which "He promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed forever." ”