By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale.
(Continued from page 99.)
IN view of what has been shown already, as to the practice of the Church of Scotland in its best days, one has a right to ask what is the authority for the universal custom of ministers of the Church of Scotland in our day, and most of those of other churches, except our own, for praying at the grave at funerals. The Bible, being an unchangeable Book, cannot furnish that authority any more than it did to our forefathers, and if their practice was based on the Bible, the practice of the present age must be a departure from it. That they have departed from it and from the Directory for Public Worship is, not only evident, but proved by the following statement from one of their own authorities on church law and procedure: “With regard to worship, the standard of the Church is nominally the Directory of Public Worship, produced at the Westminster Assembly of Divines and approved by the General Assembly of 1645. This is included among the leading documents mentioned in the Basis of Union, but, as no such Directory can be expected to retain exclusive obligations on the Church after the age for which it was composed has passed, a note is added that it is to be ‘regarded as generally regulative and of validity as . . . interpreted or modified by Acts of the General Assembly or by consuetude’ ” (Practice and Procedure in the Church of Scotland, 3rd Ed., p. 11), by Rev. J. T. Cox, D.D. It is evident from this that, though the Directory is in the Basis of Union, members and office-bearers are to understand it in whatever manner it suits themselves. This is to be expected of men who have swallowed the Declaratory Act of 1892, a document which for its vagueness and ambiguity is notorious among Church documents. In other words the Church of Scotland has modified its relationship to the Directory so far, that, at least in the case of the burial of the dead, it has opened the door wide enough for the superstitions which our forefathers, with might and main, sought to expel. Alas! that some who profess greater orthodoxy than many Church of Scotland ministers should be equally guilty.
This practice of praying at the grave has become so important in the estimation of some that they do their utmost to impose it on others who give it no countenance. They represent a funeral without a prayer at the grave as heathenish though they themselves can get neither precept nor example in Scripture for their own practice. The excuse is often made that, when people are standing round an open grave, after lowering the body of a fellow-mortal into it, they are more susceptible to serious impressions and, under such circumstances a prayer might be beneficial. Such as hold this view ought to study the Lord’s mind in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and especially that part of it where the rich man expresses the view that if one went from the dead to his father’s house to warn them, that they would repent. The reply he got was, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” When at a funeral, we do not now wait to hear a prayer at the grave, but such of them as we have heard, we found nothing in them calculated to awaken serious impressions, but much to harden the heart and confirm sinners in their impenitency. In such services one may hear confirmed drunkards, liars, thieves and immoral persons, who gave every evidence that they had died as they had lived, referred to as being in Heaven with Christ. This betrays, not only a lack of faithfulness to the living, but a hardened unconcern about uttering falsehood before the Lord.
It is almost unbelievable the extent to which some go in order to impose this practice on others, so that even the feelings of the bereaved are not spared. We remember, over twenty years ago, being at the funeral of a very dear friend, a member of our Church, and one who adhered wholeheartedly to its position. After we lowered the body into the grave, one of these modern apostles of Christian burials, whom I candidly acknowledge was not of any branch of the Presbyterian Church, intruded himself into the company and asked the bereaved father if he wanted a prayer at the grave. Through anguish of heart, no reply was given, and fearing that silence would be taken for consent, we answered on behalf of the father that, as a Church, we were not countenancing such a practice. Unsolicited, he began to defend his position by saying that Christ prayed at the grave of Lazarus, and that that ought to be enough of an example for us. The fact that the Saviour was not at the funeral of Lazarus and that any prayer which may be referred to in connection with the raising of Lazarus out of the grave cannot be put in the same category as a burial service, manifests the ignorance behind this defence, as will be apparent to anyone who will read the inspired narrative on this point.
Sometimes we find men and women who all their days, by their profession, testified against this practice, and on the day of their funeral, relatives, who in no way sympathised with their views, insisting on getting a minister to pray at their grave. Such a prayer will, in no way, harm the deceased, but it is not much comfort to those who are responsible for such conduct to know that in the last act of kindness they performed to the departed they vitiated it by insulting their memory. It were better, under such circumstances, to set aside one’s own views, especially when these views could not be supported by the Word of God, than to do anything so heartless.
Where there is a true regard to the Word of God and to the practice of the Church in its best days together with an intimate knowledge of the contentions of its confessors and martyrs, no place will be given to the heathenish innovations of men, which they bring in under the name of religion. This was the case in modern times with such a noted man as Dr. David Hay Fleming, of St. Andrews, who left strict instructions that there were to be no prayers at his grave. He was one who had an accurate, profound, and sympathetic knowledge of the contentions of the Church of Scotland, and his conduct, in this instance, speaks to his countrymen as a clear commentary on the language of Scripture, “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
In closing this article, we cannot do better than quote a statement of the celebrated Thomas McCrie, D.D., the historian of John Knox, on the introduction of religious services at funerals and the privilege conferred upon us by our forefathers in forbidding them in the Church of Scotland: “One superstitious rite paves the way for another, and one superstitious opinion generates seven worse and more monstrous than itself. The primitive Christians, from regard for those who suffered death for the Gospel, began to perform their funeral obsequies with great solemnity. They visited their tombs—they held their assemblies for worship at them—they celebrated the anniversary of their martyrdom. The prayers and commemorations at the funeral of martyrs (which came to be extended to all who died in the faith) were at first confined to thanksgiving for their deliverance and glorification, with supplications that those who survived might be enabled to follow their example. But prayers over the dead were soon succeeded by prayers for them; and produced in due time the doctrines of purgatory, penances, pardons, the merit of masses, obits and dirges, canonisation, saints’ days, prayers to the dead, the collecting and worshipping of relics, pretended miracles, and a thousand absurdities of the same pernicious description.
“Our ancestors, at the Reformation, wisely resolved to strike at the root of this system of corruption and imposture, as the only effectual way of getting rid of the evils which it had entailed on them, and of guarding against their return. Upon this principle they completely abolished, not only the funeral service, which they justly regarded as having been a powerful instrument in the hands of superstition and priestcraft, but also holidays, the hierarchy, the use as well as the names of the five popish sacraments, with a multitude of other ceremonies, which, though introduced with the view, or under the pretext of decorating and recommending divine worship, tend, in fact, to tarnish its beauty, and to reduce and exhaust its spirit. This thorough reform constitutes the high distinction of Scotland among the Protestant Churches. Its beneficial influence has extended to all departments of society—it has improved our temporal as well as our spiritual welfare—it has freed us from many galling impositions, which diminish the comforts, and fret the spirits of other nations. It may be seen in the superior information of our people, in their freedom from childish fears and vulgar prejudices, in the purity of their morals, and in that practical regard, which, unconstrained by forms, and unattracted by show, they voluntarily pay to the ordinances of religion. One of the worst symptoms of our state, and which may justly occasion foreboding apprehensions, is, that we are not duly sensible of our privileges, nor aware of the cause to which, under Providence, we are principally to ascribe them; and that there are many among us, whose conduct gives too much ground to suspect, that they would be ready to part, at a very cheap rate, with those privileges which their fathers so dearly won” (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 573, 574).