The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1881-04-13
Our Contributors.
Will-Worship.
BY REV. R. L. DABNEY, D. D.

swer to the advocate Of floral decorations,
that am not wise enough to foresee what
harm they may do, in the end and he
IS not uise enough to foresee the harm, they
may not do. And this, doubtless, is one
reason God has forbidden will-worship.
But so much of harm, even can dis
Germ: that the floral decorations foster
discomfort (by indulging it) with the
simplicity Of the worship instituted by
God; and thus they open the way for
other things that are worse. They famil-
iarize the conscience with the transgres-
sion of Gods command not to add any
thing to his institutions, by breaking
over in little pretty way so that, after
time, people will be ready to break
cover in a larger and uglier way.
But if we would listen to sound COM
mon sense, we should attach great weight
to another view. All these modern in
noyations on American, evangelical Pro
testantism are parts of system, and
marks of current of influences. They
may not be essential parts; but they are
known and accepted parts While this
is true, it is no sufficient excuse to say
ooh, there is no harm in theml" What
more harmless than white ribbon? Where
is the moral turpitude in combining red,
white, and blue in one rosette? None in
the world But in 179O-'95, everybody
in Paris knew that white cockade was
the badge of the Royalist, Bourbon-party
and the tricolor" the badge of the Re-
publicans. If man, then and there,
did not wish to be elassed as a royalist,
it was simple madness for him to display
white cockade; if he would not be
counted with the republicans, he had no
business to sport the "red-white- and
blue" To plead that neither color of
itself meant anything, neither had any
political sin in it, would have been, in
the man who did not mean to be counted
almost idiotic. What would we have
thought of the man who insisted on as
sorting his right to wear the accepted
badge and not be counted when he knew
he was under no obligation or necessity
to wear any ribbon at all and that if he
did, he would inevitably be counted by
all Paris?
Now all the world knows that these
fashions of will-worship are badges of a
religious tendency. No man has right
to display them, while he does not con-
scientiously approve that tendency. To
do this is gratuitously and causelessly to
give weight and influence to error. And
that tendency is Ritualism. The goal to
which all Ritualism looks is Popery. The
popish priest, as he goes along, notes the
contrast between the Presbyterian, the
Methodist, the Immersionist Church of
fifty years ago, and of to-day. Is any
body so soft as not to know that when he
sees the change from the plain house and
the plain worship of the past and the
luxurious architecture of medieval char
acter, the stained glass, the organ and
operate music, the floral decorations, etc.,
etc.; and as he sees the altar cloths and
NdhulOo auu VI uNAhA0o OOH11hS Ue'Oh lHCO
the Episcopal churches, he chuckles in
himself? Of course be does. AS a shrewd
man, he knows that all this is preparing
the way for him. He knows that all this
is titillating tastes, which Professionalism
cannot crafty to the full, without COM
hitting treason to its principles,) and
which popery can. He knows perfectly
well that it is all helping to sow the seed
of crop which is to come to his mill.
Do not the current facts sustain his hopes?
All the innovators do not become papists?
No. But their faces are all turned more
or less that way; and the foremost ones
uniformly go Ron1e-aOard.
The best that can be said, then, of all
these harmless inventions is what the
apostle said Of some things in his day ::
Cali things are lawful; but all things
are not expedient." "All things are
lawful, but all things edify not" And
the conscientious conclusion to which he
came about them was: that he would
forego the personal qualification of these
things forever. rather than. bv even q