an assemblage of several actions, forms, and circumstances, serving to render a thing magnificent and solemn. Applied to religious services, it signifies the external rites and manner in which the ministers of religion perform their sacred functions, and direct or lead the worship of the people. In 1646, M. Ponce published a history of ancient ceremonies, showing the rise, growth, and introduction of each rite into the church, and its gradual advancement to superstition. Many of them were borrowed from Judaism, but more from Paganism. In all religions adapted to the nature of man there must be some positive institutions for fixing the mind upon spiritual objects, and counteracting that influence of material things upon habits and pursuits which is, and must be, constantly exerted. Without such institutions, religion might be preserved, indeed, by a few of superior understanding and of strong powers of reflection; but among mankind in general all trace of it would soon be lost. When the end for which they are appointed is kept in view, and the simple examples of the New Testament are observed, they are of vast importance to the production both of pious feelings and of virtuous conduct; but there has constantly been a propensity in the human race to mistake the means for the end, and to consider themselves as moral and religious, when they scrupulously observe what was intended to produce morality and religion. The reason is obvious: ceremonial observances can be performed without any great sacrifice of propensities and vices; they are palpable; when they are observed by men who, in the tenor of public life, do not act immorally, they are regarded by others as indicating high attainments in virtue; and through that self-deceit which so wonderfully misleads the reason, and inclines it to minister to the passions which it should restrain, men have themselves become persuaded that their acknowledgment of divine authority, implied in their respect to the ritual which that authority is conceived to have sanctioned, may be taken as a proof that they have nothing to apprehend from the violation of the law under which they are placed. But, whatever be the causes of this, the fact itself is established by the most extensive and the most incontrovertible evidence. We find it, indeed, wherever mankind have had notions of superior power, and of their obligation to yield obedience to the will of the supreme Being.

Under the system of polytheism which prevailed in the most enlightened nations previous to the publication of Christianity, this was carried so far, that the connection between religion and morality was in a great degree dissolved, rites and ceremonies, sacrifices and oblations, were all that it was thought requisite to observe; when these were carefully performed, there was no hesitation in ascribing piety to the persons who did perform them, however deficient they might be in virtuous and pious dispositions. Even under the Mosaical dispensation, proceeding as it did, immediately from heaven, and adapted, as in infinite wisdom it was, to the situation of those to whom it was given, the same evil early began to be experienced; and although it was lamented and exposed by the prophets, and the most enlightened men among the Jews, it was so far from being eradicated, that it continued to acquire strength, till it was exhibited in all its magnitude in the character prevalent among the Pharisees at the period of Christ's manifestation. With this highly popular and revered class of men, religion was either merely a matter of ceremony, or was employed, for base and interested purposes, to cast a veil of sanctity over their actions. They said long prayers, but it was for a show; they gave alms, but it was after they had sounded a trumpet, that the eye of man might be fixed upon their beneficence; and, as to the point now under review, they were most strikingly described by our Saviour, when he said of them, "They pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, but they neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and truth." The Christian religion not only expressly guards against an evil which had become so prevalent, but its whole spirit is at variance with it, its own ceremonial observances being few, and obviously emblematical of whatever is excellent and holy. But still the Gospel finds human nature as other religions found it; and ecclesiastical history, even from the earliest periods, shows with what astonishing perverseness, and with what wonderful ingenuity, men departed from the simplicity of Christianity, and substituted in its room the most childish, and often the most pernicious, practices and observances. The power of godliness was lost in forms; and the innovations of a profane will-worship became almost innumerable. The effect was, that men regarded God as less concerned with the moral conduct of his creatures, than with the quantum of service they performed in his temples; and religion and morals were so disjoined, that one became the substitute for the other, to the universal corruption of the Christian world.

Bibliography Information
Watson, Richard. Entry for 'Ceremony'. Richard Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/wtd/c/ceremony.html. 1831-2.

Bible Dictionaries Ceremony

Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary

Bible Dictionaries
Ceremony