LOS COMITÉS DE BIOÉTICA
LOS COMITÉS DE BIOÉTICA: ESPACIOS DE DIFUSIÓN
Vol•I, p •82• '
aims of the ^innovators**. ^People54, says Boyd, ^endured the ways of the Kirk because they never
knew anything better*** Be conceived it as his duty to. point out a better way ** flthe older and better way
1 in which we are trying to walk*1*
Boyd was from the first a prominent member of both the Church Service Society and the Scottish
Church Society, and was one of the committee appointed by the former Society to prepare the sixth edition of
luolxo lotion* Xn 1867 he -was appointed convener of
the committee of the General Assembly which produced
The .Scottish Ilymna 1 * It was largely through his
influence that the enlarged edition of the Scottish Hymnal was arranged to meet the various outstanding days of the Christian Year by the insertion of hymns suitable for Advent, Christmas, Good Friday* Faster,
P Whitsunday and Ascension Bay* '*
Most of the innovations Boyd and the early
pioneers of Church reform desired are described in a paragraph in the first of his nSt, Andrews1* volumes, where he ‘writes of the services he was accustomed to
conduct in St. Mary*s Church, St*Andrews* This 1* A.K.H.Boydi Bt* Andrews .and Blsewhere* p*?8.
155*
description is of great value as an indication of the type of service laid down in Euclxologlpn* to which Boyd adhered. ”Our second church, St, Mary’s, was re*»opened for worship on Sunday, October 9th. It had been a dismally ugly and shabby place, but it was made remar,kably pretty and church-like# Sir George Bold, the new President of the Scottish Boyal Academy , said a word about It which is pleasantly remembex*ed. Step by step the worship has been improved, till novz it is precisely that of the latest edition of Biic ho lotion.
She pxmyers are reads the Amens are responded^ axid the Xiord’-s Prayer and the Greed joined in* The 'pulpit is used, only for the sermon., The Psalms fox* the day are chanted, the Se Deum and Benedict us are sung in the morning, and the Magnificat and Uuno Dimittis in the
evening.. She congregation stand up in assent to the
Ascription which closes the sermon. She lessons are read fanm a lectern* She Communion Sable is as
beautifully vested as any you will xzeadily see south of the Weed. Add to these externals, that X know no
church in the land where the congrogatioxx is more devout, nor where the worship is more uplifting. I cannot say
1 what a help and comfort St. Mary’s has been to me”.
1 ♦ A. K ♦ H • Boyd> Twenty.Kive .Years of,, Bt.., Andrews.,
a service in a Scottish parish church would be considered extremely "advanced**»
The defect of Boyd1 s Ohurehmanship was hi©
slavish imitation of Anglicanism, and his tendency to measure Scottish Church life and ways by Anglican
standards. Repeatedly in his pages we come upon
laudatory references to Anglican modes of worship, and it is noticeable that Boyd speaks oftoner of his friends in Anglican orders than of hie Scottish associates - more of Thor old of Winchester ox' Dean Stanley than of Tulloch or Story, hie closest friends in the Church of
Scotland, surplice to
ficant that
He states that he prefers th© English
the Scottish preaching gown. It is sign!- one of hi© sons was ordained into the Church of England, that hi© daughter was confirmed and married in an Anglican church by Bishop Thor old § and that at a private e<n?emony at his wife* s funeral the English burial service xvas read and Holy Communion dispensed by his son in the English rite. Moreover, he repeatedly maintained that were the Scottish Church disestablished (then an imminent possibility), he would seek a sphere for him-
belong to the Church of England and that right 1
heartily*1»
Boyd was in temperament and outlook, an Anglican in Fresbyterlan order a*
157 •
Geacae WaafainKton ^P£Qtt,„<1829~-lJQ9.>,
"As a litupgist of the Chuxrah, Da?. Sprott held a
foremost and indeed an unequalled posit;ion * He spent
his early manhood in a generation when even the elements
of liturgical knowledge were unknown, and when the • services of the Church were too frequently conducted
in a way that showed small appreciation of seemliness and order0
She sa words fxvom an
death indicate his place
obituary notice at Bprottfs
in the Church life of his day,
{go him, more than to any other man, the revival of
Church principles is due* His knowledge of the history of the Beforxaation period in Scotland, combined with his liturgical scholarship, made him a doughty champion of the validity of Presbyterian orders and apostolic
succession in the Scottish Church♦ In a famous English
ecclesiastical trial, that of the Bishop of Lincoln in
1* A*S#H«Boyds op*eit*, p»362»
X8S9> SproWs wx»itings were freely quoted as 1
authoratitive on ouch subjects*
Be was the son of a pioxieer, and himself a pioneer in a widely different sphere• Bis fathex*,
the Rot* John Sprott, was descended from Galloway stock,
and after education at
Bova Beotia where, for
Glasgow University, emigrated to
the remainder of his life, he
ministered amongst the early settlers*
George W* Sprott was born in leva Scotia in 1829,
the eldest of five children to his fat her Lb third wife*
After schooldays in the colony he matriculated, like hie
father, at Glasgow University , and became prominent in
student activities* Be received, the degree of Bachelor of Arts in- 1849» during the happy years X spent at that college I had many fellow-students who afterwards
2 reached distinction in their various paths of life11. Among the names he mentions it is interesting to note those of John Maclend, A-» K* IL Boyd, Thomas Irishman
and J, Cameron Lees, all of whom were closely associated with him in his work as Ohurehman, historian and
liturgist.
1, The Scotsman, October 28th, 1909* Xf,or a general
"' account'.of this* trial see lord lOltoas Inward, King
and Our Times. p*91 ff. - -
2* GwVLSnrott$ The Uoctrlne of Schism in the Church of • Scotland, p*62, • >
After completing his theological. course* Sprott sought ordination from the Presbytery of Dunoon and returned to Hova Scotia in 1832 as assistant to the minister of St* Andrews Church* Halifax (1S33-5)* But a short time later found him back in Scotland as
assistant minister at Greenock and Dumfries before he left foj? Ceylon in 1857 to'ibeeome chaplain to the
Scottish congregation at Kandy* »«v
His seven years of overseas service (1857-64)
px’Oved a formative period in Sprott1 s life* He found himself amongst a non-Christian native population* and
with, characteristic assiduity* began to study the
complicated philosophy of Buddhism* The presence of
the Dutch Eeforiaed Church on the island ‘prompted him to a closer study of the Churches of the Reformation* and
resulted in a pamphlet on the history and work of the
Dutch Church in Ceylon*
While abroad Spx»ott began to watch with keen inter-
Ju
eet the beginnings of reform in Presbyterian worship " ■<
initiated by Dr* Robert Bee* and thoroughly supported this attempt at improvement. nAs soon as 1 went
abroad*** he 'writes, nX realised the very defective state Of the Church in regard to worship* X began to do what
work ever since
He felt it necessary$ However, to issue a warning,
for- he felt that the innovators were, in some oases, adopting a wrong course by overmuch imitation of the
rites and ceremonies of the Church of England. - "A
man should know what he ia about before he interferes with what has been consecrated by time and ancestral
associations# Wen Archbishop baud committed mistakes through ignoranee of ecclesiastical antiquity $ following a corrupt medievalism when he imagined he was restoring early Catholic usages § and a number of our Scottish innovators are in danger of makings on a smaller scale,, the same mistake* The Church of England looms so
large from its being so near, and ‘pai’tioularly, alas! since we have no longer* a great united Rational Church of our own, that Scotsmen ax*e in danger of referring too much to it and too little to the primitive Church, and to the almost perfect restoration of early Christianity by our own and kindred reformers in the- sixteenth century When we at first become sensible of defects in our own
services, we are very apt to think the Church of England a model to imitate § but a further acquaintance with
Oteistian antiquity and with our own historical tradition
lAX •
has led me, at leasts to we should look to as our
of which our own forma a
This was a constant
think fax* otherwise# What model is the Befoxmxed Church
i
pa.rb’% *"*
theme with Dr# Hprott, for he felt that the Scottish Church must retain its own
distinctive ‘Deformed heritage, end that a mere imitation
of Episcopal usages would he disastrous# ’’The past history of our country, the memories of our youth, the tombs of our fathers, cry out against it# There is a
1 Scottish prejudice in our veins* in favour of what was vindicated by our ancestors at bo great a price".**
It was a pamphlet Witten by• SproM; while ais Kandy,
entitled the Church
,of: Booti&nd' (published JDdinbur&h, 1865) , containing'a plea for a return of greater seemlinoss and order in the services of the Ohm?ch which, as will be seen in a. later chapter, led to the formation of the Church Service
Society? .Although separated by many thousands of miles from the little group in Glasgow which formed the
Society, George Washington Bprott was its true progenitor .In 1866 Bprott was presented to the rural parish of Gar loch in Aberdeenshire, and in that cuiet sphere found time and opportunity for those liturgical and ecclesias**
X» G*l»Sproft s The . Worship^,. Bites..and Ceremonies ...of the Churcn of Septi aM7 unTlTS»
tieal studies which had become Ms abiding interest. As one of the editors of Bt^hologloft be was able to put bio scholarship at the disposal of the Church Service Society* &&& was responsible for much of the material in that hook* notably the Holy Communion Service, which was entirely his own compilation^
"ultimately based1** he declares* °npon the Eastern Liturgies? like the American (German) Reformed and the Catholic Apostolic services* from which it is largely borrowed* It embodies some of the richest materials
3 • of Christian devotion0 * ’
The year 1868 saw the publication of his first
volume, a critical edition of The.. g,oolc..
of.; Cowion. Order»
commonly.Jcnpwn, as do,hn..::Knpxl.gi...Litnrgy4 and in 1871appeared his fieaj&ieh,
In 1875 he found himself elected Moderator of tli© Bynod of Aberdeen,, and preached at the opening service a not;able sermon on A J...eagetjtj^.1.,. to the.
tp„ .cn?dain, This sermon elicited a request from
Professor William Milligan and others who heard it that
it should be published $ in the hope that it might be
"productive of much good°« A second, edition was
1 G*W Sprotbg The Worship, and Off ice a of the Ohureh
Scotland, p OX X, 3X*dW u t.%,4, «