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that which even pious Christians in these days have permitted themselves to adopt; much which she has recommended or enjoined would now be looked upon as formalism, or outward service: in our just fear of a lifeless formalism, we have forgotten that every Christian feeling must have its appropriate vehicle of expression; that the most exalted acts of Christian devotion, that our closest union with our Saviour, is dependant upon certain forms; that the existence of forms does not constitute formalism; that where the Spirit of Christ is, there the existence of forms serves only to give regularity to the expression, to chasten what there might yet remain of too individual feeling, to consolidate the yet divided members "in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."
Yet, as in every case in which the current of prevailing opinions, either in faith or practice, has for some time set in one direction, there have not been wanting indications, that Christians have felt their system incomplete; that there was something in the tranquil piety of former days, which they would gladly incorporate into the zealous excitement of the present; that although religion is in one sense strictly individual, yet in the means by which it is kept alive, it is essentially expansive and social; that the only error here to be avoided, is a reliance upon forms; that the forms themselves, as soon as they are employed to realize things eternal, and to cherish their communion with their Saviour, become again spiritual and edifying.
It is accordingly remarkable in the present day to observe, in how many cases individuals have been led back by their own Christian experience to observances, in some respect similar to those which the Church had before suggested and provided for them. In the more advanced period of their Christian course, or amid the respite from the unceasing circle of active duty, which God has granted them through an interval of sickness, they have seen the value of those rites, the scrupulous adherence to which they once regarded as signs of lifelessness. In either case they would willingly own, that the union provided by the Church is not only more ordered, and less liable to exception, than one which individuals could frame; but also, that, as being more comprehensive, it would more effectively realize their objects.
