'I read Prayers': the spirituality of a phrase explored in an 1882 sermon

I read Prayers and preached this morning.

It is a phrase - "I read Prayers" - which appears often in the diary of Parson Woodforde. We might particularly identify the phrase with Georgian piety, but it was an older usage. For example, George Herbert refers to "the Countrey Parson, when he is to read divine services ... having read divine Service twice fully".  It is also underpinned the practice Hooker robustly defended, of non-preaching ministers to "performe the service of publique prayer", against the Puritan rejection of "bare reading" (LEP V.81.5). And all of this, of course, reflects the fact that it is a phrase firmly rooted in the Book of Common Prayer:

At the beginning of Morning Prayer the Minister shall read ... some one or more of these Sentences of the Scriptures that follow ... Then these five Prayers following are to be read here: Except when the Litany is read.

The significance and value of the phrase is indicated by an 1882 ordination sermon by Edward Meyrick Goulburn, 'On reading the prayers and the lessons'. This is suggestive that the phrase continued to be recognised into the late 19th century. (It would be interesting to know when the phrase disappeared from use.) Goulburn opened the sermon with a Hookerian defence of the reading of the prayers as not a lesser ordinance than preaching:

The public functions of the clergy, those which they exercise in the congregation, are twofold. That which has the most obvious and direct bearing upon the interests of the people is the function of preaching, in which they appear as God's ambassadors, charged with a message gathered out of His living oracles, which they are to deliver with all earnestness and fidelity. But there is another side of our ministrations which, because it seems to be so much easier, and to demand so much less forethought and preparation, is sadly apt to be neglected, to the great detriment of our congregations, and to the lowering of the whole tone of our public worship. If it be a high honour and trust to be God's mouth-piece to the people in the sermon, it is scarcely a lower honour, or a less responsible trust, to be their mouth-piece to Him in conducting their devotions, and saying the Church's appointed Prayers.

Emphasising that reading the prayers is to be undertaken "in such a way as to kindle and help the devotions of the people, and thus to edify them", Goulburn then pointed to the need for clergy to grasp the theological coherence of the Prayer Book text:

to one who looks into the Book of Common Prayer, with the desire to acquaint himself with its full significance, how entirely will it approve itself not only as a composition on which a wonderful amount of learning and thought has been expended, but which has been watched over at every stage of its construction by the special Providence of God! But it is vain to expect that you can exhibit the significance of these Services, unless you have yourselves seized it; and to seize it without study is an impossibility.

To illustrate this, he used his own experience as a newly-ordained priest of reading the Absolution:

Shortly after I had been ordained Priest, an elderly friend, who casually heard me give the Absolution on one of the first occasions on which I was qualified to give it, told me it was evident to him, from my manner of reading, that I did not understand it. I was inclined to be piqued by the censure at first, until he showed me that it was perfectly just. "You do not perceive the coherence of the formulary," said he; "you have never laid the parts of it together in your mind. The earlier part contains an announcement of the terms on which God forgives the sinner, which are repentance and faith; 'He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy gospel.' "What follows is a prayer, or an exhortation to prayer, that we, the congregation there present, may come under the terms so announced, which can only be by God's grace forming in us these dispositions of heart; 'Wherefore let us beseech him to grant us true repentance, and his holy Spirit' (i.e., the holy Spirit of faith,) so that, our persons being accepted through Christ, the worship we now offer may be accepted, - 'that those things may please him, which we do at this present' and that 'henceforth we may date our course afresh from this new exercise of repentance and faith — ' the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy; so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy.'" "No man," my friend added, "whose mind is fully possessed with this connexion of thought, can fail to indicate it in his voice by laying a slight emphasis on the 'us;' 'Wherefore let us beseech him to grant us true repentance and his holy Spirit' ... It was a great lesson to me at starting, which I have never forgotten, how very little one may understand of formularies familiar to us as household words, thinking that, because the sound of them is in our ears, the sense is, therefore, necessarily in our minds.

The sermon concluded with a moving charge to those about to receive holy orders to 'read Prayers' faithfully, whatever the context:

Presume not, then, in any part of the ministry you are now about to undertake, to "contemn small things" [quoting Ecclusiasticus 19:1). You are to labour to make everything connected with Divine Worship as solemn, as reverent, as edifying to man, as acceptable to God, as you have it in you to make it. And as a test to your own consciences, whether or not you are doing this with the pure intention of honouring our Divine Master, and discharging in a manner pleasing to Him the great function of conducting Public Worship, let me propose to you in conclusion this question, - whether even at times when your congregation is very small, insignificant alike in numbers and station (say on Wednesdays and Fridays, for example, when there is no sermon, and no singing, and nobody comes to church but two or three old folks from the alms-house), you observe the ritual of your Church with the same punctiliousness, say the Prayers with the same fervour and devotion, and read the Lessons with the same reverence, and the same desire to bring out their meaning for those who do attend, as you would if you were officiating in the dome area of St. Paul's on Sunday evening, when that vast space is crowded with upturned faces ? ... Is not the presence of Him "who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks," covenanted equally to the two or three alms-people in the country church, as to the multitude assembled in the dome-area? "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Let His presence be but the ruling thought in our minds, whenever we presume to administer His ordinances.

The sermon demonstrates the value of the phrase 'read Prayers': how the reading of Morning and Evening Prayer in the congregation is a sanctifying ordinance, to be esteemed; how the phrase calls the minister to a rich indwelling of the text and theological coherence of the Prayer Book; how 'reading Prayers' can affirm the dignity and significance of divine service with a smaller congregation, no less than with a large.

At a time when, in many contemporary Anglican contexts, the re-appearance of non-eucharistic worship is necessary, provoking a degree of liturgical confusion post-Parish Communion, we might suggest that retrieving the spirituality of 'read Prayers' could point to a vision of re-establishing the discipline, rhythms, and practice of Prayer Book Morning and Evening Prayer.