same yesterday, to-day, and for ever as when He came to visit this earth
in great humility. That the Lord is King, though the earth be moved. He
sitteth upon His throne, be the nations never so unquiet. We are here to
declare to ourselves and all men, and the whole universe, that we at
least believe that the heavens and earth are full of His glory. We are
here to declare that, whether or not the kings of the earth are wise
enough, or the judges of it learned enough, to acknowledge Christ for
their king, we at least will worship the Son lest He be angry, and so we
perish from the right way; for if His wrath be kindled, yea but a little,
then blessed are they, and they only, who put their trust in Him. We are
here to join our songs with angels round the throne, and with those pure
and mighty beings who, in some central sanctuary of the universe, cry for
ever, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power:
for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were
created."

We do so in ancient words, ancient music, ancient ceremonies, for a token
that Christ's rule and glory is an ancient rule and an eternal glory;
that it is no new discovery of our own, and depends not on our own
passing notions and feelings about it, but is like Christ, the same now
as in the days of our forefathers, the same as it was fifteen hundred
years ago, the same as it has been since the day that He stooped to be
born of the Virgin Mary, the same that it will be till He shall come in
His glory to judge the quick and the dead. Therefore we delight in the
ancient ceremonial, as like as we can make it, to that of the earlier and
purer ages of the Church, when Christianity was still, as it were, fresh
from the hand of its Creator, ere yet it had been debased and defiled by
the idolatrous innovations of the Church of Rome. For so we confess
ourselves bound by links of gratitude to the Apostles, and the successors
of the Apostles, and to all which has been best, purest, and truest in