PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF THE BURIAL SERVICE.
Of the ritual of the Grave I hardly need to speak. I know only too well that there are funerals and funerals. There are occasions of unrelieved sadness. There are occasions when the Minister's heart is chilled by a manifest and utter indifference. But the saddest, dreariest of burials is an opportunity for the Lord. Whether or no you see your way to give an address, let it be seen that you are dealing with God in the prayers, and read the Lessons "as one that pleadeth with men."
A brief word in passing on the problem raised by some of the phrases of our Burial Service. Let me call attention to the studied generality of the words, _In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life_. Before 1662 this ran "in sure ... hope _of resurrection_, etc.," which, as you will observe, expressly applied the "hope" to _that_ case of burial; the change was evidently made on purpose to relieve conscience in the matter. Then remember that the whole service is constructed, like all our services, for the member of the Christian community taken on his profession; and that assumption, unless flagrant facts withstand it, is to be made, in public ordinance, as much at the grave as elsewhere. And do not forget that _hope_, be it ever so "trembling," is _never_ forbidden at a grave-side. I am no advocate of what is called "the larger hope"; I dare not be. But I am deeply convinced that mercies of the Lord, in cases quite beyond our possible knowledge, are experienced in the very act of departure.
"Betwixt the stirrup and the ground Mercy I sought, mercy I found."
That instance has many parallels; and God only knows their limits. Never should we say, whatever we may awfully fear, that such and such a soul is _to our knowledge_ lost.
As regards the practical management of extreme cases, the young Clergyman will of course act altogether under his Incumbent. And the young Incumbent will remember that he can have recourse to his Bishop for counsel.
iv. Let me say one special word on our administration of the precious ritual of the Table of the Lord. I am not attempting here any discussion of its doctrinal aspects in detail. For myself, as I have said elsewhere, I make no secret of long-settled "Evangelical" convictions. I regard the Holy Eucharist as above all things else the Lord's way of sealing to His true Israel the unutterable benefits of the New and Everlasting Covenant, rather than an occasion on which He infuses into them His glorified Manhood. His sacred Body and Blood are, for me, the Body and the Blood _as they were_, once for all, at Calvary, and as they are not therefore literally now; and my participation in them is accordingly my participation in the virtues of the Atoning Sacrifice, there once and for ever wrought and offered. But this is by the way. I speak now of our spirit and manner in the administration, in respect of some principles which are little if at all affected, it seems to me, by even grave differences of doctrinal theory. Alas, at the present day it is too often the case that the communicant is fairly bewildered by the varieties of Communion ritual, or by the complications of it. Ought this to be so, on _any_ theory of the Eucharist? Did I for one believe our adorable and beloved LORD to be locally present (I use the words not technically but practically) on the Holy Table as nowhere else here on earth, I think that all my instinct would go towards a reverence whose depth was manifested not by an elaborate ceremonial but by the most solemn possible simplicity of act. A ritual whose details must be matter of careful practice, and which suggests almost the need of a Spanish master-of-the-ceremonies--ought _that_ to be the natural effect of an, as it were, invisible Presence?