FORMS IN RELIGION.

WHAT is the origin of "Forms in Religion?" It lies very far back in time, and deep in our human

nature.

We have, in this state of existence, knowledge of two orders of things-matter and spirit. It is, doubtless, not normal or healthy in us to find things material, such as are proved by sense, to be seemingly nearer or more palpable to us than those spiritual. Were we as spiritual as we ought to be, it would not be so. But still, always, here, we have a corporeal nature; and all things that we do have a bodily relation, an embodiment,-a form, or enaction. Religion itself, then, as a human endowment or possession, must take shape or form. So long as religious forms are merely the embodiment of religious life, so far they must be natural and normal. How far they have always been and are so, let us consider.

Several purposes or objects of religious forms are discernible :

1. To give expression to religious emotion. 2. To maintain commemorative associations. 3. To arouse and sustain reverential feeling. 4. To convey spiritual meaning in types and symbols. 5. To make confession of faith or profession of religious allegiance or membership.

As to the first of these; all emotion, religious or otherwise, demands expression-is impulsive-needs action. A natural language exists for all feeling. Uplifted eyes and hands, the bent knee or prostrate form, speak of strong emotion, of adoration or humiliation, as spontaneously and intelligibly as the

smile, tear, and groan tell of other feelings. This makes, of course, nothing good of their forced counterfeit; nor must it ever be forgotten or overlooked, that emotion is far from the whole-is but an incidental part-of religion: and still less is such emotion as needs vent in immediate expression a primal part of it. With these qualifications, it may be said that some such expression is genial to our human nature. From the songs and dances before the Lord of King David, and the hymn sung by the disciples with Christ, of which Mark tells, in the past, to that alleluia foretold in the Revelations, "as the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of many waters and great thunderings," it has ever been and ever will be natural for the mouth and the eye to utter what the heart is filled with. And more than that, there is no other music that human voice or hand has ever made on earth, so rich to the ear, from its tenderest to its grandest tones, as that of worship, be it the lonely and lowly hymn of the servant at her work, or the Te Deum of the Cathedral. Nor is there any beauty of the human face so lovely to the eye even of earthly art or judgment as when, like Stephen's, it shines as the face of an angel, looking straightway up into heaven, or as in the almost inspired pencilling of Raphael, it reflects the thoughts of the most blessed among women-the mother of heavenly joys and sorrows.

2. From the earliest times, commemorative association has been attached religiously to material forms or observances. So Noah built an altar upon his leaving the ark. Jacob made a pillar of the stone which was his pillow at Bethel, and poured oil upon it; and again raised an altar at El-elohe-Israel, after his reconciliation with Esau. The Passover festival was held in memory of the deliverance of the Israelites in Egypt, as well as typically of a future greater

deliverance. The Sabbath was in part commemorative; "because God rested on the seventh day."

3. To develop adoration and awe by a sense of the majesty of God's power, was an object under the old dispensation; of some of whose ministrations Moses said, "I exceedingly fear and quake." Mystery is itself awful. Priests of all religions have appealed to this. It is far from being lost sight of now-in the pompous processions and ceremonials of Rome, imitated with a servile weakness elsewhere, even in a branch of a church once English, and in a city which is called American (New York).

Let us not forget that here, too, human nature is abused merely by perversion. When holy places were believed in, under the cloud which rested over Christian Europe so long, before the Reformation, it was a noble thought to make those places divineseeming in grandeur and solemnity. The Gothic has been called the Christian type of architecture. The meeting boughs of forest avenues suggested its pointed arches; and there is, in that continued and united ascent of opposites, a sublimity of form which none who have beheld it can fail to feel; greater, with its "long-drawn aisles" and "dim religious light," than even that of the "spire, star-high, and pointing still to something higher."

4. Spiritual meaning has often been, in religious rites or forms, prophetically conveyed. All sacrifices have borne such meaning, in part at least. The thought of sacrifice was brought by man from the cradle of the race, as a portion of the primeval revelation. Of its different bearings, of expiation, selfdedication, and thanksgiving or communion (shown in the sin offering, burnt-offering, and meat or thankoffering), the first would not have occurred to man without a divine prompting. It was from the beginning taught as a type of the propitiatory sacrifice of the Cross.

5. As a rite of religious profession or admission into church membership, baptism may suffice for an example, although many other forms are well known. Not dwelling on this at present, let us look back again for a moment at the great changes of religious forms which are most familiar.

The patriarchal adoration was as simple as possible; Jacob "worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff." The head of the family was the priest. The earliest of special priests was Melchisedek, King of Salem; and no ritual is described for him, but the bringing forth of bread and wine, with a blessing. With progressive boldness of mind and hardness of heart, there came among men a craving for ceremonial observances-strengthened in Egypt during the captivity by familiarity with the imposing rites of that nation's priesthood. There is little room to doubt, from the similarity in many things between the two ceremonial systems, that, while the idea and object of the two were quite radically different, concession to the inclinations of the Israelites may have been made, in many of the details of the Levitical law, in likeness to the Egyptian ritual. In the wilderness, the ark and the tabernacle, and at Jerusalem the temple, elevated ritualism to its highest earthly magnificence.

That was the dispensation of material, outward glory. We cannot say why it was so,-why was so long delayed the revelation of the Spirit,-why even the immortality of the soul, taught by Egyptian priests, and dreamed of by Greek poets and sages, was but dimly foreshadowed in any words of Scripture prophecy. But it was so-man was allowed to enlarge to the most his powers; in Greek art and philosophy and Roman empire all that humanity could do and become, was permitted, and its vanity proven, before the glory of the Truth was made

known to all. We may compare that long waiting, perhaps, with the millions of years the earth is shown by geologists to have awaited its full preparation to become the residence of man. The years of eternity are many; and God has no need to hasten.

But before the full coming of the Spiritual dispensation was the intermediate announcement of John, who concentrated all the elaborate ceremonial of the old law into one rite,-baptism with water. That single form took the place of all that had been before; and it was typical and prophetic of what was to come after, the baptism of the Spirit.

What an immense change, from the Law (now fulfilled) with its multitudinous forms, to the Gospel of Him who said, "The time cometh and now is, when neither in this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, shall men worship the Father."

Was this because all that had been, was without meaning or dignity? No. It was not that visible, material glory was nothing, but that spiritual fulness was infinitely more. Nor was it because the objects or purposes of religious expression, in form or action, had no longer an existence. Not at all. This is a vital point in our thought. Those needs are rooted in our humanity. The expression and cherishing of devotional emotions and commemorative associations, and the declaring of allegiance and membership in the Church-these are not done away with, nor ever will be. It was only the mode of their being met that was changed in the Christian dispensation. But this change was, still, all-important, however imperfectly it has been understood.

After and instead of the Law, which was highly ceremonial as well as moral, came the spiritual Gospel, whose founder established or ordained for permanency no rite or ceremony whatever. In His perfect obedience to and fulfilment of the whole Law,