Ceremonialism

“ If noble, how he may stamp his feeling and his ideas on the action of the age, and long after death will reappear—a glorious resurrection this—in the intelligence, the literature, the philanthropy; in the temperance, and purity, and piety of the place! How many towns in America thus keep the soul of some good minister, some farmer or mechanic, lawyer or doctor—oftenest of all, of some good religious woman, long after her tomb has become undistinguishable in the common soil of graves? ”

“ And so when an Emperor is married, or the funeral rites of a Sovereign Prince celebrated, or a new saint canonized, or perchance some proud cardinal or noble to be glorified, whatever Art can accomplish by symbol and song is devoted to the emblem-book pageantry,—and the graving tool and the printing press accomplish as enduring and wide-spread a splendour as even Titian’s Triumphs of Faith and Fame. ”

“ A whole Nation gathered, in the name of the Highest, under the eye of the Highest; imagination herself flagging under the reality; and all noblest Ceremony as yet not grown ceremonial, but solemn, significant to the outmost fringe! ”

“ Why, you foolish youngster, ceremony is everything in life. To understand Precedence aright is to know the secrets of nature. The order of Precedence is the order of Creation. It is, in fact, a very cosmogony. Oh, a noble science! a noble science!
1st Court. Right, good Megacles, to magnify your office. Bravery is nothing; goodness is nothing; beauty is a foolish dream. Give us Ceremony, Ceremony, more Ceremony; it is the salt of life.
Meg. A very intelligent youth. But here comes the King.
22
Enter the King, Asander, and Lysimachus. ”

“ As we scatter the chaplets and garlands, fragrant with the sweetness of spring, on the spot of green which covers the mounds of our nation's benefactors, may we open our hearts to the teachings of the hour and the sacredness of the ceremony, light anew the fires of patriotism, and renew our pledges of life and sacred honor to transmit unsullied to our children this noble heritage of ours! And, while we meet around these altars of our love, may we give a thought of affection to those far-off graves marked with that one word, 'Unknown'! ”

“ Golden harps and crowns, and hidden manna and white robes and thrones, and all the other representations, are but symbols of the blessedness of union with Him, or consequences of it. Immortal life and growth in perfection, both of mind and heart, and the cessation of all that disturbs, and our investiture with glory and honour, flung around our poor natures like a royal robe over a naked body, are all but the many-sided brightnesses that pour out from Him, and bathe in their rainbowed light those who are with Him. ”

“ The like idea seems to obtain, moreover, in the decorations of the hall, in which History is artfully blended with Religion and Chivalry; implying, if my republican comprehension can rightly interpret this writing on the wall, that to be a true patrician, one must have historical antecedents, and should represent some great fact in the annals of one’s country; and that such antecedents, to be made honourable to an individual, must be sustained by personal worth, and by that refined and sublimated virtue which is called honour. ”

“ Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it, crowd after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' heads all the night long; your soul shall stay enough within it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull;—no more. ”

“ And now at last we have reached those charges connected with that "most noble creature, man," who, as we are told, "is borne in heraldic achievements both limbwise and entire. And as a man should be represented in his greatest dignity, a king should be depicted on his throne, a bishop in his robes, a soldier in military habit, and so on." ”

“ But royal robes I shall have on,
More glorious than the glist'ring sun;
My crown not diamonds, pearls, and gold,
But such as angels' heads enfold.
The city where I hope to dwell,
There's none on earth can parallel. ”

“ What marvel if such empty understandings should be busied with ribbons, and stars, and crosses; if this noble should yearn after the Garter, and that noble pine for the Golden Fleece; if one man should long to carry a wand in the precincts of the court, and another man to fill an office in the royal household; while the ambition of a third is to make his daughter a maid-of-honour, or to raise his wife to be mistress of the robes? ”

“ As for nobility in particular persons; it is a reverend thing, to see an ancient castle or building, not in decay; or to see a fair timber tree, sound and perfect. How much more, to behold an ancient noble family, which has stood against the waves and weathers of time! ”

“ In the allusions to the officers of a lodge, and the degrees of Masonry as explanatory of the organization of our own society, we clothe in our symbolic language the history of the organization of society. ”

“ And if further we demand, how such ceremonies as are instituted and used to stir up men, in respect of their signification, unto the devout remembrance of their duties to God, are in such an institution and use, matters of mere order? ”

“ Those of your Grace, for instance, left no distressing examples of virtue, even to their legitimate posterity, and you may look back with pleasure to an illustrious pedigree, in which heraldry has not left a single good quality upon record to insult or upbraid you. You have better proofs of your descent, my Lord, than the register of a marriage, or any troublesome inheritance of reputation. There are some hereditary strokes of character, by which a family may be as clearly distinguished as by the blackest features of the human face. ”

“ They finish society, manners, language. Form and ceremony are their realm. They embellish trifles. All these ceremonies that hedge our life around are not to be despised, and when we have become habituated to them, cannot be dispensed with. ”

“ That the ceremonies are a great hinderance to edification, appeareth, First, In that they obscure the substance of religion, and weaken the life of godliness by outward glory and splendour, which draws away the minds of people so far after it, that they forget the substance of the service which they are about. ”

“ Some ceremonies may be for the conservation of order and civility, or to prevent confusion and unseemliness; others are the natural or conventional language of our feelings, as bending the knees, or bowing the head ”

“ All ceremonies are tainted even from the first by things less worthy than their first intention, and you, my dear sons and daughters, who have gathered to-day in this worn and ancient building, beneath these monuments to ancient vanities and these symbols of forgotten or abandoned theories about the mystery of God, will do well to distinguish in your minds between what is essential and what is superfluous and confusing in this dedication you make of yourselves to God our Master and King. For that is the real thing you seek to do today, to give yourselves to God. ”

“ The makers of religions have established their ceremonies, their form of art, upon fear of death, on the hope of the father in his child, upon the love of man and woman. They have even gathered into their ceremonies the ceremonies of more ancient faiths, for fear a grain of the dust turned into crystal in some past fire, a passion that had mingled with the religious idea, might perish if the ancient ceremony perished. ”

“ We can picture the humble servant of God, clad in a coarse robe of a single color, deep in his chosen labor of recording the life and teachings of his Master, and striving to endow this record with the glory of the seven colors which were rightly due to a King alone. ”

“ Once upon a time the people really believed in the ceremony, and what it was supposed to tell them. Even now many thousands of them have great faith in the acts that have been performed; but as education spreads, the belief in these quaint and picturesque ceremonies will die out. ”

“ They find their nobility in their baptism, their glory in the sign of the cross and their Catholic profession, their treasure in the blessed sacrament, their palace with its picture gallery and service of gold and silver in the church, their royal audiences at the ever open court of the King and Queen of heaven, their gala-days and spectacles in the festivals and processions and ceremonies of the ecclesiastical year, their ideal vision of coming happiness in heaven. ”

“ Why, if the nobility is based on renown, the renown is another's! For, truly, nobility seems to be a sort of reputation coming from the merits of ancestors. But if it is the praise which brings renown, of necessity it is they who are praised that are famous. Wherefore, the fame of another clothes thee not with splendour if thou hast none of thine own. So, if there is any excellence in nobility of birth, methinks it is this alone—that it would seem to impose upon the nobly born the obligation not to degenerate from the virtue of their ancestors.'
Song VI.
True Nobility. ”

“ The higher noblesse, making up in their own society, by the acquisitions of descent and leisure, a delightful sphere of all that was most fascinating in art, music, dress, and blazonry, as well as power and fame, moved as very gods, flattered with the tenet that other classes were an inferior species actually made out of a different clay. Genealogy and heraldry formed a great part of education. The members of the privileged families all wore territorial titles as their badge. The most beggarly individual who wore the sword claimed precedence of the most substantial citizen. ”

“ And when those animals give glory and honour and thanks to him that sitteth upon the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty Elders go into the Temple, and there fall down before him that sitteth on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 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. ”

“ On the sides are dark and damp recesses, where women assist at the celebration of worship, which is always carried on, according to ancient custom, with much wailing and strange gestures of the body. The book of the law which is in use is no less venerable than the edifice in which it is contained. ”

“ Numerous relations are extant, in print and in MS., of the great autos publicos generales, giving in more or less detail the elaborate ceremonial which developed itself, in the effort to render impressive these crowning manifestations of the piety that regarded, as the highest service to God, the extermination of those who persisted in worshipping him according to their own consciences. ”

“ In comparing the impressive simplicity of this consummation of the wishes of a mighty people, with the tricked-out ceremonial, and hollow show, which embarrass a corresponding event in other lands, it was impossible not to feel that the moral sublime was here—that a transaction so important, and of such extended and weighty import, could borrow nothing from drapery or decoration, and that the simple presence of the sacred volume, consecrating the act, spoke more thrillingly to the heart than the trumpets of a thousand heralds. ”

“ Would a loving daughter, in mere desire for gaudy dress, ask a jeweler for a bright fac-simile of the worn cross which her mother bequeathed to her on her deathbed?—would a thoughtful nation, in mere fondness for splendor of streets, ask its architects to provide for it fac-similes of the temples which for centuries had given joy to its saints, comfort to its mourners, and strength to its chivalry? ”

“ On you, and such as you, depends the fate of the most precious heritage ever won by the valor, preserved by the prudence, or consecrated by the virtue of an illustrious ancestry—illustrious, not because of factitious titles, but nature's nobles, wise, good, generous, and brave! ”

“ No parchments, however venerable with the mold of ages, no human institutions, can bound the immortal wants of the royal sons and daughters of the great I Am—rightful heirs of the joys of time and joint heirs of the glories of eternity. ”

“ It is the same with Mediæval Heraldry and Gothic Art. We may apply to our own times, our own uses, our own delight, what the old Heralds and the Gothic Artists have taught us, without even dreaming of wearing armour or re-establishing the feudal system. ”

“ When the sacrifice to ancestors was finished, the king feasted his uncles and younger brothers or cousins, that is, all the princes and nobles of the same surname with himself, in another apartment. The musicians who had discoursed with instrument and voice during the worship and entertainment of the ancestors, followed the convivial party 'to give their soothing aid at the second blessing.' The viands that had been provided, we have seen, in great abundance, were brought in from the temple, and set forth anew. ”

“ The ceremonial observed in each case is widely different in its aspect to one who sees in it merely a cumbrous way of transacting a matter of convenience, and to another who perceives in it the initiation of a new member into the family of mankind, and a looking forward to,—an attempt to make provision for, the future destiny of an unconscious and helpless being. ”

“ Dr Burges would comprehend the significancy of sacred ecclesiastical ceremonies, for stirring men up to the remembrance of some mystery of piety or duty to God, under that edification which is required in things that concern order and decency by all divines. ”