Lex Orandi Or Prayer and Creed Author:George Tyrrell General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1907 Original Publisher: Longmans, Green Subjects: Religion / General Religion / Christianity / Catholic Religion / Christian Life / Prayer Religion / Christian Theology / General Religion / Christian Theology / Apologetics Religion / Faith Religion / Prayer No... more »tes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: LEX ORANDI. THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. Every rite and sacrament of the Church has its outward and its inward side ; its value in the world of sense and its value in the world of spirit. Of the latter our Saviour says: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing," and those unacquainted with the idiom of His language, have often supposed that in rebuking one exaggeration He here countenances another; that in insisting on the supreme importance of the spirit, He denies all importance to the flesh. And yet the very metaphor employed -- spirit and flesh ; soul and body -- suggests the true sense of His utterance : namely, that the relation of inward and outward in religion is akin to that of soul and body. Without the spirit, the flesh profiteth nothing; yes, but without the flesh the spirit is inoperative, silent, incommunicable. If God is to enter into practical relations with man, He must in some way become man ; He must present Himself to us humanwise; the Idea must become imaginable ; the Truth, incorporate; the Word must be made flesh and dwell in our midst. As sacramental in principle, the religion of the Incarnation is consonant with the unchanging exigencies of human nature ; it is the ideal religion of humanity. Ritual, like gesture or intonation, is after all only an extension or supplement of verbal language. Words a...« less