The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-06-27 00:00:00

LONDON & NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD,

SIR,—My attention has been called to a paragraph in
the Liverpool Mercury of Tuesday last, copied from the
Dublin Freeman's Journal, and headed " Irish harvesters
and the Railway," wherein is introduced a notice purport-
ing to have been issued by this Company, and signed " T."
Ormandy.
I beg to state that there is no such person in this ser-
vice—that the notice was not issued with the sanction or
knowledge of any officer of the Company, and that it is
altogether unauthorised.
As the re-production of the article in the Liverpool
papers has given prominence to the remarks somewhat
freely indulged by the editor of the Freeman, I solicit the
favour of your giving publicity to this denial of the notice
having emanated from the London and North-western
Company.—l am, your obedient servant,
FISHER OR3IA.NDY.
Euston Station, London, 24th June, 1854.

ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH.

TO THE EDITOR OP TILE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

Sin,—" One of the Churchwardens" of St. Martin's is
a somewhat imaginative, and a very zealous Churchwar-
den. Your faithful servant,
Wst. Pouocs.

27, Bedford-street North, June 20, 1854

MATRIMONY A SACRAMENT.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

Sin,—ln the first part of the Sermon of Swearing are
these words,—" By the like holy promise the sacrament
of Matrimony knitteth man aiid wife in perpetual love."
I shall leave Mr. Pollock to fix the degree of authority
which the Homilies possess. Surely the clergyman who
has raised Mr. P.'s ire had some right to assert that
Matrimony is a sacrament, and I can readily conceive that
the lady with whom he conversed, unintentionally con-
founded the Homilies and the Prayer-book.
Again, in the homily of " Common Prayer and Sacra-
ments" are these words,—" Therefore neither it (i.e.,
Ordering of Ministers) nor any other sacrament else (as
Matrimony) be such sacraments as Baptism and the Com-
munion are. But in a general acception the name of a
sacrament may be attributed to anything whereby an
holy thing is signified."
This is a fair statement of the case as set forth in the
Book of Homilies. _

One word about the picture of the crucifixion. Is it
true that a certain cleric complained to one of the rectors
that pictures of the crucifixion had been given away in a
district in Liverpool, and that when that rector called at
the complainer's house on the matter, the first thing that
met his eye was the very same subject occupying a promi-
nent place in the best room ? Yours,

A FORMER CURATE IN LIVERPOOL.

DAILY PUBLIC PRAYER, AND WEEKLY

COMMUNION.

TO TUE EDITOR OP TILE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

ventured to assert a short time ago, through
your paper, that " the Lord's Day cannot be duly honoured
without the offering of that sacred memorial which He
ordained as the peculiar service of His religion ; and that
a monthly celebration of the Lord's Supper is a disgrace-
ful abridgment of the Church's office three Sundays out
of four, without warrant from Scripture, or antiquity."
Of course, I should not have hazarded such an assertion
as this, had I not been prepared to j ustify it, and glad of
an opportunity of reiterating a statement which unhappily
so well deserves the serious consideration of the people of
Liverpool.
Your anonymous correspondent, " A Churchman of
Liverpool," challenges me to produce my "authority" for
a weekly Communion from the Bible and Prayer-Book ;
and has been already sufficiently answered by your corre-
spondents of last week, who ask him to produce chapter and
verse for monthly Communion ; for his observance of
Christmas-Day, or Good Friday, or even for the Lord's
Day, and also for neglecting to keep holy the Sabbath, or
seventh day. It might also be demanded of " A Church-
man of Liverpool" to produce his authority from the
Prayer-Book for the assembling of Christians for worship
on one day only in seven, seeing that the Prayer-Book is
entitled The order of morning and evening prayer daily
throughout the year," and does not contain a single prayer
peculiar to Sundays only.
" A Churchman of Liverpool" cannot produce his Scrip-
tural authority for any of these Christian observances, still
less for his weekly prayer and monthly communion; and
his inability to do this ought to make him question the
soundness of the principle which would appeal on all
occasions to the Bible, and the Bible only, as the religion of
Protestants. The fact is, that the Bible is not ordinarily
the source of truth, though it is the witness and confir-
mation of all truth. The Christian Church, for which the
New Testament was written, existed long before that
volume was compiled. The primitive Christians received
their first faith and discipline from the apostles them-
selves; and, consequently, it is the height of presumption
for us of the present day to ignore their faith and practice,
and to pretend to understand the Scriptures better than
they. The Church of England certainly adopts a very
different course, as both the preface to the Prayer-Book
and the Book of Homilies testify, our services being com-
piled from those in use, so as to be " agreeable to the mind
and purpose of the old Fathers," and more than twelve of
these Fathers being quoted on a point of doctrine in a
single homily.
What, then, is our authority for weekly Communion?
Simply the universal practice of Christians from the
very first. The Holy Communion is emphatically THE
CEREMONY or CHRISTIANITY—the one act of worship
ordained by it—the peculiar Gospel mode of drawing near
to God. St. Luke, in the earliest history of the Church,
informs us that the disciples " came together to break
bread," and that they " broke bread from house to house,"
and " continued in breaking of bread." And all subse-
quent history witnesses to the same fact. Christians
always assembled for this purpose; this was their mode of
worship. What are the forms of primitive worship which
have come down to us ? The order of administering the
Holy Eucharist, and little else. Formerly the word
"Liturgy" was applied exclusively to the administration
of this sacrament. This was the staple worship of the
primitive Church, daily celebrated by the clergy, and
received weekly at least by the people ; so that congrega-
tions which met from week to week without this act, and
churches in which it was solemnized once a month, were
wholly unknown.
" A Churchman of Liverpool" will please to remember
that I am not hazarding a private opinion, but stating a
notorious fact—a fact which proves the worship of Church-
men of Liverpool to be essentially different from the worship
of the " Holy Church throughout all the world" in the
first and purest ages, and different, too, from the worship
prescribed by the Church of England, the rule of the
Prayer-Book being that the Holy Communion should be
administered on all Sundays and other holydays—that all
priests and deacons should receive it " every Sunday at
the least"—and the only contemplated exception to its
being celebrated in all churches on every Sunday being the
paucity of communicants, as in parishes containing only
twenty people of discretion, and there not being on all
Sundays, four, or at least three, " to communicate with the
priest.'
As the Church of England intended to forbid the prac-
tice of private masses, it was necessary to make provision
for such exceptional cases as the above. But there is no
ground for supposing that the clergy have a discretionary
power to curtail the office in large congregations, where
there must always be three or four persons ready to com-
municate. It were a slander upon our Church, highly
mischievous in our controversy with Rome, to maintain or
allow for a moment that, in adopting, or rather continuing,
the ancient " Liturgy," she intended to forsake the ancient
rule of frequent Communion. In every church, therefore,
in Liverpool, there ought to' be weekly Communion at the
least. Prayer and a sermon, without the Lord's Supper,
is not the Gospel mode of hallowing the Lord's-day.
"The foolishness of preaching" is useful in its way, espe-
cially to the unlearned and unconverted; but it must not
be allowed to thrust out that holy sacrament and mystery
of God, which is no vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue
figure of a thing absent, but is the food of immortality—
in which the faithful see, hear, and know the mercies of
God sealed, the satisfaction by Christ towards us con-
firmed, and the remission of sin established.—l am, Sir,
yours, faithfully, CaclL WRAY.
Feast of the Nativity of John Baptist, 1854.

WEEKLY COMMUNION.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

Sin,—lf your correspondent of the 13th, "A Churchman
of Liverpool," was sincere in the profession of his anxiety
to ascertain the mind of the Church of England with
regard to the celebration of Holy Communion, he will feel
obliged to your correspondent of last Tuesday, Mr. Pughe,
for so concisely and aptly instructing him in the better
interpretation of her rubrics, and correcting the dangerous
misapprehension into which he had fallen.
Assuming him, therefore, to be a clergyman, as I should
from the pronoun he uses, though the assumption is very
difficult, from the unfortunate ignorance which the whole
letter displays, I expect he is already preparing his
people for the adoption of Weekly Communion. Though
I must confess that this extraordinary solicitude makes
me very much doubt the sincerity of his intentions, for
supposing him to be one of those who are identified with
current laxity, I cannot conceal my abhorrence of the
hypocrisylwhich can go on, year after year, setting at
nought the plainest commands of the Church, and yet
venture to make a profession of the principle of obedience
when it appeared to be safe, and to put an opponent at a
disadvantage.
The " Churchman" will now perceive that he was
making the Church's provision for an exceptional case,
which the spirit of her whole offices condemns, and which
is imposed upon her, by the laxity of her people, to be the
rule of service which she herself propounds. As she has
made the celebration of Communion dependant upon the
people, of course she cannot help assuming a possibility
that sometimes there will be "no communion," simply
because there may not be "three to communicate ;" and
Mr. Wray's remark that a monthly celebration "is a
disgraceful abridgment of the Church's office," is a re-
proach not on the Church, but on the people, and on the
priest who fails to teach the people the necessity of a more
frequent celebration. The Church provides her dressed
altar, her communion service with its Epistle and Gospel,
and orders the priest to return from the pulpit to the holy
table ; and when she directs that such and such prayers
only shall be said " if there be no communion," the words
might be altered, "if there be not three to communicate
with the priest." But when the priest, three Sundays
out of four, assumes that worship is over at the end of the
Nicene Creed, changes his garment, and forgetting that
the sermon is a mere interjection in the communion ser-
vice, at its conclusion dismisses the people with the bless-
ing, are we to be told that lee is not contravening the
intention of the Church, and disgracefully abridging her
office ? Most assuredly not. And I beg to repeat to the
" Churchman," with a personal application to himself, if he
be a clergyman, Mr. Wray's
:emphatic and most true
denunciation. I protest that his practice is a disgraceful
abridgment of the Church's office, and a reproach to his