Many good people are pained by the Commination Service which we have just heard read.  They dislike to listen to it.  They cannot say ‘Amen’ to its awful words.  It seems to them to curse men; and their conscience forbids them to join in curses.  To imprecate evil on any living being seems to them unchristian, barbarous, a relic of dark ages and dark superstitions.

But does the Commination Service curse men?  Are these good people (who are certainly right in their horror of cursing) right in the accusations which they bring against it?  Or have they fallen into a mistake as to the meaning of the service, owing, it may be supposed, to that carelessness about the exact use of words, that want of accurate and critical habits of mind, which is but too common among religious people at the present day?

I cannot but think that they mistake, when they say that the Commination Service curses men.  For to curse a man, is to pray and wish that God may become angry with him, and may vent his anger on the man by punishing him.  But I find no such prayer and wish in any word of the Commination Service.  Its form is not, ’Cursed be he that doeth such and such things,’ but ’Cursed is he that doeth them.’

Does this seem to you a small difference?  A fine-drawn question of words?  Is it, then, a small difference whether I say to my fellow-man, I hope and pray that you may be stricken with disease, or whether I say, You are stricken with disease, whether you know it or not.  I warn you of it, and I warn you to go to the physician?  For so great, and no less, is the difference.

And if any one shall say, that it is very probable that the authors of the Liturgy were not conscious of this distinction; but that they meant by cursing what priests in most ages have meant by it; I must answer, that it is dealing them most hard and unfair measure, to take for granted that they were as careless about words as we are; that they were (like some of us) so ignorant of grammar as not to know the difference between the indicative and the imperative mood; and to assume this, in order to make them say exactly what they do not say, and to impute to them a ferocity of which no hint is given in their Commination Service.

But some will say, Granted that the authors of the Commination Service did not wish evil to sinners—­granted that they did not long to pray, with bell, book, and candle, that they might be tormented for ever in Gehenna—­granted that they did not desire to burn their bodies on earth; those words are still dark and unchristian.  They could only be written by men who believed that God hates sinners, that his will is to destroy them on earth, and torture them for ever after death.

We may impute, alas! what motives and thoughts we choose, in the face of our Lord’s own words, Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.  But we shall not be fair and honest in imputing, unless we first settle what these men meant, in the words which they have actually written.  What did they mean by ‘cursed’ is the question.  And that we can only answer by the context of the Commination Service.  And that again we can only answer by seeing what it means in the Bible, which the Reformers profess to follow in all their writings.