The frontispiece depicts the east end of the interior of St Leonard’s Church, Dunfermline, (architect: Dr Macgregor Chalmers). The note refers to mural painting, carved woodwork, silver- copper- and iron-work, enamels, and embroidery, and to the large part played in the execution of these works by members of the congregation, including the minister, Dr William McMillan.
In his Presidential Address to the Society (May 1932) Dr Millar Patrick, with the professed aim of achieving an equal emphasis on Word and Sacrament, seeks (questionably?) to lay blame for the imbalance on certain aspects of the character of John Knox, as well as on other factors in Scottish history which led to an “excessive intellectualising of Scottish religion”. That, it is argued, led to an undervaluing of imagination and symbolism and a turning “back to the legalism of Judaism”. By way of redress he makes suggestions as to the prominent setting and suitable adornment of the Table (and to the establishing of an [advisory] Assembly Committee).
Dr William McMillan gives the text of a fragment of the Communion Service used by John Knox (from a 16th century manuscript to be found in Dr Williams’ Library). After a general biographical and historical introduction there are sections headed “Form of Worship”, “Praise”, “Communion”, “Communion Elements”, “History of the Communion Order”, “The Zurich Order”, “Reconstruction of Knox’s Order” and then the text of “The Order” itself with “A Prayer for the Congregation”. There are numerous extended footnotes.
Noting that “private prayer can dispense with the arts, public prayer cannot”, Dr A L Drummond calls for a creative attitude to architecture and the arts in the building of churches. Tracing developments from Colonial times in the USA, and in post-Reformation Germany, he notes that while in the former there were, under the influence of Dr Ralph Adams Cram, many excellent medieval-inspired buildings of the 20th century “there is but little radical modernism”, in Germany there had emerged a tradition-denying Functionalism that reduces architecture to machinery. He concludes that “not engineering but biology should be the root idea of religious architecture” and suggests that change should be governed by a law of growth not by architectural revivalism.
Dr William Cowan, having traced the roots of responsive elements in worship to Temple and Synagogue in Judaism, through early and later Christian usage, makes a plea for a stronger recovery in Scottish Presbyterian usage. He cites examples from Waldensian usage, from Dr Rudolph Otto, and from children’s materials provided by the Church in Scotland.
Manual of Church Praise, According to the Use of the Church of Scotland
Church of Scotland Committee on Publications, reviewed by David S Merrow
The Book of Common Order of the United Church of Canada
The United Church Publishing House, Toronto, reviewed by William Maxwell
Liturgy and Worship, ed. Dr W K Lowther Clark, London, SPCK
Ecclesia Anglicana, by G F Pollard, London
The Book of Common Worship (Revised) approved by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America; Philadelphia
The Protestant Dictionary, new edition; London: The Harrison Trust
The Books of the Latin Liturgy, by Abbot Cabrol, OSB; London: Sands & Co.
The Oxford Movement in Scotland, by W Perry; Cambridge University Press
Worship in Other Lands, by H P Thomson; London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
Private Prayers for a Week, Compiled by William Bright; London: SPCK
Le Culte: Étude d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses, by Professor Robert Will, University of Strasbourg: Paris. Felix Alcan.
St Leonard’s Church, Dunfermline (East End) - Frontispiece