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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

PRINCETON, N. J

BX 5937 .P67 W3 1892 Potter, Henry Codman, 18J4-

1908. Waymarks, 1870-1891

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WAYM ARKS

1870-1891

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BEING

JBiscourjses, toitl} Some ^Iccount of tl}eir (Occasions

/ BY

HENRY C. POTTER, D.D., LL.D.

NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY

31 West Twentv-Third Street 1892

Copyright, 1891, By E. p. Dutton and Company.

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

TO THE

Clergg anU people of tt)c Hioccsc of Keb) Hork,

AMONG WHOM, AS PRESBYTER AND BISHOP, HE HAS GONE

IN AND OUT FOR TWENTY-THREE YEARS ONLY TO FIND

THEIR SERVICE MORE AND MORE A PRIVILEGE,

These Discourses, rvhich m-e a part of the Story of that Service,

ARE DEDICATED

By their attached friend and servant,

HENRY CODMAN POTTER.

Diocesan House, New York:

St. Andrew^ s Day, November 30, 1891.

CONTENTS.

Page

PREFATORY 1

I. The Priesthood of Science 11

II. The Young Seer 27

III. A Nation's Prayers 44

IV. A Nation's Sorrow 66

V. Sermon Commemorative of John David Wolfe 71

YI. Sermon Commemorative of Adam Xoriue . . 86

VII. A Plea for the American Sunday .... 100

VIII. The Reconstructive Power of Christianity 119

IX. The Church's Needs 135

X. Sermon preached at the Consecration of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, Garden

City, L I., June 2, 1885 158

Xr. Sermon Preached at the Benediction of All Saints Cathedral, Albany, N. Y.

Nov. 20, 1888 176

XII. Woman's Place and Work in the Church . 212

XIII. Chlrch Schools in America 226

XIV. The Witness of Saint Paul in Rome ... 243

viii Contents.

Page

XV. The American Church in Paris 256

XVL The Powers and the Power of the Episcopate 274

XVII. The Calling of the Episcopate 293

XVIII. A Consecration Sermon 312

XIX. The Free Church a Witness to the Brother- hood OF Humanity 327

XX. Agencies of Revival 345

XXI. Mission and Commission : A Sermon preached at the Consecration of the Rev. Phillips

Brooks, D. D 361

WAYMARKS.

1870-1891.

PREFATORY.

The materials of which history is made are often de- rived from sources apparently the most remote and un- promising. Indeed, it may be said to be a chief charm in histories that have qualities of enduring interest, that their authors have not disdained such sources, however insignificant or obscure.

It is in some such considerations that this volume must find its excuse. During the time of our Civil War I remember noting upon a friend's book-shelves a volume with the title " Sermons of the Revolution." I never opened it, and I am unable, at this distance, farther to identify it. But I recollect very well the train upon which, not unnaturally, it started my imagi- nation. For if the preaching of the Revolutionary period was at all colored by its incidents, there can be little doubt that it was stirring and interesting.

In other words, the preaching of any particular decade or two must inevitably reflect, in some sense, the history of the time. The pulpit is, indeed, called upon by the very nature of its office and its commission to be above

1

2 Way marks.

the hour and not below it, to lead and not to follow public opinion ; and it undoubtedly goes far to explain its loss of power, whenever and wherever it has lost power, that it has forgotten its office as an enduring and, in one sense at any rate, an unchanging witness, in convulsive and often unseemly efforts to pitch its utter- ances in the key of some passing excitement. It may easily vulgarize itself in doing this, and it often has ; but the fact still remains that, without either vulgarity or unfaithfulness, it may in many ways wisely empha- size, illustrate, or forecast the more serious and eventful activities of a generation.

And certainly — to pursue no farther a question which might easily open the door to a very large controversy — this much is true of discourses which are occasional in their nature, and which have been called out by the very noteworthy progress of the life of the Church dur- ing the last quarter of a century, and no less by those significant movements, not always strictly ecclesiastical in their character, to which, nevertheless, the quickened life of the Church has contributed so much.

The discourses which follow are chiefly of this nature. They mark a considerable variety of incidents, each of which may be said in some sense to be representative, and if they do no more, they throw some little light upon the story of twenty years which, in the life of the Church even more than in the larger life of the nation, have been eventful years.

Only a little while before they began our great Civil War had but just ended; and between 1865 and 1870

Prefatory. 3

the re-united Church and the re-united Nation were taking account of themselves, and, in the case of the former especially, coming to recognize the larger oppor- tunities which confronted it. Of some of these, of the way in which the Church has sought to improve them, of the men whom she has called to seize them, of the institutions she has created or revived, the better to utilize them, the pages that follow will speak. The topics included among them are —

The Priesthood of Science,

Missions,

The Organized Work of Women,

Free Churches,

Cathedrals,

Citizenship and the Citizen,

The Episcopate,

Higher Christian Education,

The American Sunday,

New York Merchants,

National Bereavements,

and others which furnish occasion to take note of the forces which have contributed both to the life of the nation and the progress of the Church, and those con- ceptions of their obligations on which, as experience has shown, that progress will largely depend. That those conceptions, so far, especially, as the Church is con- cerned, widely differ, is a fact which to the student of ecclesiastical history is patent at every turn. Roughly stated, that difference may be said to be incarnated in the attitude of the individualists and the institutionalists.

4 Way marks.

To the first of these the religion of the New Testament is a purely personal message. The men to whom first it came, it has been trimiiphantly urged, were incapable of receiving any other ; and the enormous power with which they acted upon their time resided principally in their absolute emancipation from every shred of institutional despotism. That, later, that despotism, expelled at first, found its way back into the Church and climbed to the high places of its power, — all this, we are told, is only another way of saying that primitive Christianity lost its simplicity in proportion as it gained worldly prosperity, and gained organic compactness and com- pleteness as it lost its earlier spirituality.

" On the contrary," declare the Institutionalists, " the seeds of every organic detail of the Church of the fifth or the fifteenth century existed in the simpler organiza- tion of the first. So far from their being a product of the splendid and ceremonious imperialism of the age and the empire of Constantino, they were the consum- mate flower of those germs which Christ planted in the heart of His Church when he said, " This do," " Go teach," or spoke the few other simple commands of which the New Testament has preserved the record. The principle of authority was there, — the authority of the Church to decree rites and ceremonies, if neces- sary to create institutions, to command obedience, in one word to repeat in the sixteenth, the nineteenth, or any other century, the Roman imperialism of the first.

Yes, the principle of authority was there ; but it will be well to remember how it was there. As a remedy

Prefatory. 6

for the lawlessness, the unbelief, the indifference (largely exaggerated, however) to constitutional rule, whether in the Church or in the State, which are now said to exist among us, it is proposed in some zealous and well-mean- ing quarters to revive the era of authority, to dismiss that fundamental condition of Anglo-Saxon moral and intellectual character and conduct which w^as born out of darkness when the Barons at Runnymede wrung Magna Charta from the reluctant hands of King John, which, whether in the life of the Church or the State has been the seed-principle of hope and progress ever since, and to erect upon the ruins of the noblest civiliza- tion and the loftiest type of Christian discipleship which the world has seen a blind idolatry to the principle of authority. But what do those who so desire mean when they speak of authority ? Most surely, they are right who insist that Christianity is an Institutional as well as an individual religion. Nothing can be plainer than that Christ laid the foundation, defined the conditions, appointed the signs or notes, designated and commis- sioned tlie officers of a Divine Society, who were to exercise authority, and in whom the administration of discipline and the responsibility both for the due teach- ing and due definition of the Faith, were permanently vested. But under what conditions ? One listens to some modern preacher thundering his anathemas from some pulpit safely removed from the challenge or the disapproval of his constituency, against all who disown or interrogate the voice of authority, and then contrasts such utterances with those of Apostolic men and Apos-

6 Waymarks.

tolic days : " I speak as unto wise men, judge ye ; " " Know ye not, of your own selves ; " " Let each man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Plainly enough, the Church of New Testament days was far enough removed from that self-sufficient individualism that owns no voice of authority but its own will, and dismisses the idea of a divinely constituted government in the Church as equally hostile to liberty and to right. But, on the other hand, it was no less removed from that arrogant ecclesiasti- cism which allows no challenge of its authority nor any criticism of its methods. Both the one and the other it sought to commend to the world not so much by its claims as by its deeds. In the spirit of Saint James it taught its disciples not so much to boast of its pedigree as to vindicate the dignity of its lineage by the splendor of its service. '' Show me thy faith without thy works," it said to men whose chief pride was a pride in their or- thodoxy, '' and I will show thee my faith by my works."

And what it said then it has pre-eminent need to say, and to say in the language of a lowly and unselfish ser- vice to-day. It is certainly worth remembering concern- ing the Founder of Christianity, that though He would have been justified on grounds which can never be those of His disciples in making much of His authority and its source, He never, except when provoked to do so 1)y explicit challenge, does either. He is content to let His life and work, and the substance and quality of His teaching speak for Him.

And His Church may well be content to do the same. Even if the everlasting assertion of her claims and the

Prefatory. 7

boastful exhibition of her pedigree were not equally un- interesting and unintelligible to the great majority of those to whom she comes, there is an essential vulgarity in such an exhibition which marks at once the novice and the parvenu. Those who are assured of their position are not always clamoring that other people shall recog- nize it. They are content that the claims of honorable lineage and noble blood shall reveal themselves in nobil- ity of speech and conduct.

And this is substantially the calling of the Church to- da3\ Confronted with the problems of to-day, she is not a creature of to-day. Whensoever any shall ask of her a reason of the faith that is in her, she may not forget that glorious past nor that Apostolic ancestry from which she received it. The Church of Christ is not a gelatinous body, formless, flabby, invertebrate. Her organic life is at once continuous and cumulative in the force of its impact upon the sins and wrongs of the world, just because it is organic ; and it is at her peril that she disesteems or undervalues it.

But, all the same, the fact still remains that she must demonstrate its reality and its power rather by what she is than by what she says. As she shows to men at once her flexibility and her constancy, — her power of adjust- ing herself to particular emergencies, and her tenacity in maintaining her supernatural faith and order, — she will best prove her Scriptural and Catholic doctrine and demonstrate her possession of an immortal heritage. In a generation eager to believe that anything new is as good or better than anything old, she must make it plain

8 Wayynarks.

that " the old is better," the old faith, the old order, the old discipline, by showing that these can adjust them- selves to every new emergency and prove not unequal to the gravest of them.

It is out of this strong persuasion that the discourses which follow have come. Diverse as are the occasions which inspired them, and the subjects with which they deal, they will be found, it is believed, to have an essen- tial unity in an underlying aim to vindicate the message of the Church as a living message, and the truths which are her inheritance as capable almost indefinitely of re- statement and re-adaptation, but unchanging in their substance, and eternal in their appropriateness alike to the needs of the personal soul and to the manifold wants of human society.

H. C. P. St. James Day,

July 25, 1891.

THE PRIESTHOOD OF SCIENCE.

Early in this century a lad entered the Lehigh Valley who was destined to leave upon its future an enduring mark. He brought nothing with him save a resolute purpose and the promise of a vigorous mind, but with these two weapons he carved his way, by steadily advancing steps, to fortune and honor. Whatever others may have done for the region in which he spent his life and energies, the part which Asa Packer bore in the development of its physical resources and in the building of its great water and rail ways must always occupy a commanding place. Beginning with the humblest tasks, he speedily made himself ht for others that were higher; and as he rose step b}^ step in wealth and influence he more and more clearly discerned and vigorously seized the opportunities which opened before him. Without earl}^ ad- vantages himself, he did not disparage their worth to others, and so there was formed and grew in his mind the idea of a University which, under distinctly Christian sanctions and in cordial recognition of the place and office of the Church in education, should especially provide that training in the physical sciences which, while not disdaining other culture, might best equip young men for the tasks and problems which the founder of Lehigh University had found at every turn confronting him.

It is not an uncommon characteristic of successful men who have won success without the aid of collegiate training to disparage and disesteem it. That wealth and place and power have been won without it is proof enough to them

10 Waymarks.

that they and others do not need it. But, as in religion, as the late Lord Beaconsfield with characteristic felicity desig- nated them, there are "maimed rites," so in human achieve- ment there are one-sided and deformed results. There is Avealth without modesty, and power without discrimination, and success as bald and barren of any humane grace or charm as a steam-pump. And operating in its sphere precisely in the same way as does a steam-pump, successful manhood may churn out of the bowels of the earth or the depths of some undetected chance its colossal fortune, and be at the end of its career as empty of beauty or appreciation for excellence, or the love of wisdom, or learning, or goodness, as at the beginning. It is not only the charm but the glory of cul- ture that it helps to make one more largely discerning and more truly symmetrical ; and it no more disproves the value of learning that successful men are often indifferent to this, than it disproves the value of light that a blind man cannot see it.

It was the happy distinction of Asa Packer that he could recognize the value of gifts and privileges which he himself had not enjoyed; and there is something very inspiring in the career of one who ennobled great wealth by so wise and noble a use of it. Judge Packer's gifts and bequests to the University amounted to over three millions of dollars, and he provided that its instruction should be forever free.

The two sermons that follow were both preached before the faculty and students of Lehigh University, — the first on June 18, 1871, and the second on the occasion of the conse- cration of the beautiful Memorial Chapel for the University erected by the daughter of the founder, Mrs. Mary Packer Cummings, on Founder's Day, October 13, 1887. The preacher gladly records his indebtedness in connection with the former to the late principal Shairp's admirable volume "Religion and Culture."

I.

THE PRIESTHOOD OF SCIENCE.

Thepriesfs lips should keep knowledge. — Malachi ii. 7.

Keep it, that is to say, not in the sense of secreting, but of acquiring. The Hebrew word ^*'?^'. — translated '' keep " — has an expressiveness which our English version fails to give. The idea which lingers in its root is that of open-eyed and expectant alertness, and the meaning here is that the priest is to be not merely a mausoleum of buried information, but an open-mouthed acquirer of still fuller knowledge. Some men's wisdom is betrayed supremely by their reticence. They are chiefly remarkable for what they do not say. They wear a sage look, but their lips are stiffly com pressed, as if they feared lest their knowledge should somehow leak out unawares. The text gives no counte- nance to such. It bids the priest's lips keep knowledge by cherishing that interrogating, inquisitive, receptive temper which daily seeks to increase it. The priest is not so much to hoard what he has as to aim to greaten past acquirements by the gain of new and larger truths. He is to utter words of wisdom, but he is first to see to it that he had some words of wisdom to utter.

12 Way marks.

In other words, the meaning of the language is that the priest should be a student, — leading and teaching others, because he is being daily led and taught himself. And so 1 accept it as not inaptly describing a future mission of those to whom, especially, I speak to-day. Yours, gentlemen of the Lehigh University, is a priest- hood which, though it be less technically religious, is as veritable as any other. " Homo Minister et Interpres Naturae," is the legend which I read upon the fore-front of your Institution ; and what could more aptly or more suggestively intimate the mission which you are here training yourselves to fulfil ? Is it not to be your high function to leave the herd behind, and pass onward into most intimate communion with science and with Nature ? Is it not your rare privilege to lay your listening ears closest to the lips of the silent oracle, and catch so a murmur of truths which less tutored learners may not hope to hear ? Is it not reserved for some of you, as you shall go on turning over the strata of the earth's surface, as one would turn over the pages of a book, to read off from them the vindication of that law which hath its seat in the bosom of God ? And if so, are you not called, like Moses, to bear these tables of stone on which God has written His eternal mind, back again to the great congregation of humanity, and unfolding there their meaning, so to be the true and veritable priests of science ? Accept then the priesthood to which you are called, and reverence it as sucli ! In grouping the call- ings which you are to follow under so sacred a name, I would fain have you think very highly of those callings.

The Priesthood of Science. 13

A man who thinks meanly of his own vocation, what- ever it may be, provided it be an honest one, is very apt sooner or later to have a tolerably valid reason for thinking meanly of himself. Least of all, surely, ought this to be their error who are to analyze the elements or disinter the buried treasures, or construct the ever- lengthening highways, of this wonderful world of ours. He who deals with Nature, whether in levelling her mountains and filling up her valleys, or in applying the solvent of his patient scrutiny to her manifold secret resources, has a calling at once most dignified and most responsible. The ancients were wont to put their roads under the patronage of their deities, and verily we moderns must needs look with something of their ear- lier wonder and awe upon triumphs of civil engineering in those old days which seem well-nigh superhuman. Nay, more, a man who bears so important a part as does he who constructs some great highway, in binding continents together and widening the empire of Chris- tian civilization, must verily, I think, sometimes recog- nize how sacred and conspicuous a part he is bearing in hastening the Millennial glories !

And if he is, the question is surely not an indifferent one, how may he best discharge his high responsibilities, and most worthily bear his part in the carving and archi- tecture of a better future ? It is that question, as I conceive, which is so aptly and comprehensively an- swered in the text.

The true minister of any science must, in the first place, be —

14 Waymarks,

1. A student. It is too commonly concluded that life may generally be divided into two periods, the period of preparation, and the period of performance. And so when many a man leaves college walls he bids farewell to books and to study, forever. Has he not to work for his living, he tells you ; and how can he hope to be doing more than his daily task ? Ah, how many such there are in the busy world about us, who have been swallowed up by the mere drudgery of their vocation ! They had glorious visions of great achieve- ments once ; they had meant to leave something be- hind them, when they went out of the world, whereby the race should have cause to remember them. But the dry routine or the coarse ambitions of life have been too much for them. They follow what they call professions, not trades, but they have turned their pro- fession into a trade, and are simply manufacturing their knowledge into a marketable commodity. " Of our day it may truly be said," to borrow the language of an English scholar,^ " that high living and plain think- ing are the all in all." In other words, " in an age of great material prosperity like the present, when the comforts and conveniences of physical life have vastly increased and science is every day increasing them," these comforts are apt to seem, in themselves, a satisfy- ing portion, and the thing to be chiefly sought after. Suppose that one of you here this morning were offered the alternative of joining an exploring expedition to South America for the purpose of making an examina- 1 J. C. Shairp, Religion and Culture, p. 50.

The Priesthood of Science. 15

tion of its mineral resources in the interests of science and the world's increased knowledge, the compensation being a bare maintenance, or a position as mining engi- neer in connection with a Nevada mining company, your salary being five thousand dollars and your expenses, can you doubt that the spirit of the day would bid you accept the latter ? Yet the one offers you an unexplored continent with who knows what glorious secrets slum- bering in its bosom, while from the other you can only hope, it may be, for a narrow range of familiar and traditional processes. To yield to such temptations is the danger, as in these days of well-nigh every other profession, so of those professions which are to be yours.

And so I ask you, standing here upon their threshold, to remember that knowledge is forever sacreder and more precious than the merely material and market- able results of knowledge. Yours may be circumstances which shall shut you up to a very narrow round, and demand of vou verv fatis;uino; toils. Yet I verilv be- lieve that you can find no happier recreation than in carrying the studies which you have begun here into other and more active spheres. You will not account me disrespectful to the thorough and admirable curric- ulum of your University if I remind you that when you have traversed it, you have as students just begun the work of life, — just learned to use the faculties with which a gracious Providence has endowed you. Use them, I beseech you, upon new and ever-aspiring tasks ! Have an ideal in the profession which you have chosen,

16 Waymarks.

up toward which you are daily reaching. It may be an impossible ideal. The old alchemists never discovered the philosopher's stone, though they burned the mid- night oil for a lifetime, and melted whole fortunes in their ever-bubbling crucibles. But what helpful truths came out of those smoky laboratories, and above all, w^hat sublime examples of patient and untiring, ever- interrogating industry were lived in them, to be the inspiration of every student of physical science or art ever since ! " I had to be my own mason, my own plasterer, my own water-carrier," said Bernard Palissy, telling what toils it cost him to discover for pottery a w^hite enamel ; " I had even to transport bricks on my own back, — I had to watch my furnace and keep its heat aglow for six consecutive days and nights. But meantime, and though disheartened by my oft-repeated failures, I found moments in which to study chemistry, and so, the road by which to conquer every difficulty." If such a man had been vanquished by his difficulties, as many a faithful student of art or science has been since then, he would still have served the race best of all by his heroic devotion to a seemingly unattain- able ideal. " What have we," cry the mercenary mate- rialists of our day, in the words of a recent writer,^ " to do with ideals ? Let us leave them to the rapt poet, to the recluse thinker, or to the dreaming visionary. It is the actual, the hard facts of life that we have to deal with ; to push our way in the world, and, hemmed in by, and often well-nigh crushed beneath, imperious

1 Shairp, Religion and Culture, pp. 25, 26.

The Priesthood of Science. IT

circumstances, to maintain the struggle for existence. Enough for us if we can battle through them without being overpowered. Ideals ! let us leave them to those who have wealth and leisure : they are among the luxuries, not the necessaries of life. For us, we have enough to do to make something of the real."

" To make something of the real. Yes, that is it, precisely. But how," it has well been asked,^ "are we to make anything of the real, actual, unless we have some aim to direct our efforts, some clue to guide us through its labyrinths ? " And this aim, this clue, is just what is meant by the Ideal. You may dislike the word, and reject it, but the thing, if you would live any life above that of mere brutes, you cannot get rid of. An aim, an ideal of some sort, if you have reason, and " look before and after," you must have. True, no man's life can be wholly occupied with the ideal, not even the poet's or the philosopher's. Each man must acquaint himself with numberless details and must manipulate them, — must learn the stuff that the world is made of, and how to deal with it. But though most of us are immersed in business, or battling all life through with tough conditions, yet, if we are not to sink into mere selfish animality we must needs have some master-aim to guide us, — " something that may dwell upon the heart though it be not " always or often " named upon the tongue." For, if there be sometimes a danger lest the young enthusiast, through too great devotion to an abstract ideal, should essay the impossible, and bruise

1 Religion and Culture. 2

l8 Waymarks.

or crush himself against the walls of destiny, far more common is it for men, in our day, to be so crushed under manhood's burdens that they abandon all the higher aims of their youth, and submit to be driven like gin-horses —

" round the daily scene Of sad subjection and of sick routine."

Bear with me, my brothers, if I urge you to see to it that you are betrayed into no such dreary blunder. While cherishing and utilizing the practical side of whatever studies you have chosen here, or calling here- after, remember that it has upper walks, with loftier secrets than any you have penetrated yet. Be a better worker, because you are the better student. Challenge the difficulties in those studies to whose application to common life you have devoted yourselves. Believe me, though you may not always solve the problem for whose key you may be searching, you will win some- thing better than any single secret, — not merely more supple faculties, and readier mental aptitudes, but a heartier love of any and every truth for its own sake, and a more willing and docile readiness to follow loyally wheresoever that truth may lead you.

2. And this leads me to remind you that, as" mem- bers of the noble priesthood of science and of learning, it behooves you to be not merely students, but catho- lic students. Your own studies here will, I doubt not, have been and will be my best allies in enforcing this necessity. For surely a student of any particular de partment of learning cannot advance in it a great way

The Priesthood of Science, 19

Avitliout finding that there are other departments of learning, which he must take as torches in either hand, if he would find his way much farther amid its practi- cal difficulties. What, for instance, could a civil en- gineer do without some knowledge both of geology and of chemistry ? He must know the fibre of the hills through which he is hewing his way, and the dura- bility of the materials with which he is piling up his slender and yet much-enduring trestle-work. And such a case is a type of innumerable others. We draw a line around certain domains of knowledge, and call this one or that one by the name of a particular sci- ence. But, in fact, each science invades and overlaps the other. The surgeon must be something of a cutter, and the chemist something of a botanist. No man can shut himself away from any one of the wide fellow- ships of human knowledge, and say, " I have no need of thee!"

Says Emerson : " I knew a draughtsman, employed in a public survey, who found that he could not sketch the rocks until their geological structure was first explained to him." When he knew that, then his geology helped his art, and he did his work at once deftly and truly. Even so of departments of knowl- edge that seem the farthest apart from each other. " What connection is there," we should be tempted to ask, " between the study of anatomy and bridge-build- ing?" But " Duhamel built a bridge by letting in a piece of stronger timber for the middle of the under surface, getting his hint to do so from the structure

20 Waymarks.

of the shin-bone." ^ Smeaton wanders through the forest, and there communmg with rural nature, after a fashion which the modern materialist would perhaps consider very unprofitable, he finds the clue to the con- struction of the Eddystone lighthouse in the outlines of an oak-tree. Indeed, as Watt was a geometrician, and Michael Angelo a sculptor as well as a painter, so there are very few of any of the great names in sci- ence or art who have not shown the immense advan- tage to any particular calling of widening one's view and aim beyond its particular limits. And this, too, with reference not merely to what may be called practical or material advantage, but with reference, su- premely, to the highest and truest advantage. ''A man is more than his trade." The spirit that is in each man craves other nourishment than the bread he wins. In saying this I do not forget that we have each one of us our special work to do, and that it often tasks all our strength, whether in the study, the class-room, office, or the mine, or the laboratory, to do it.

But while fully acknowledging that, in order to suc- ceed in any particular calling, we must not only be dis- tinctively harnessed to it, but must also bring to it the finest edge of faculty and a steadfast devotion of all that we have learned by accurate and exclusive techni- cal training, I must still believe, in the language of a wise teacher of our own time, that '' there is something more than this and greater ; which, if we desire to be-

1 Emerson, Essay on Art, p. 38.

The Priesthood of Science. 21

come not merely useful instruments, but men, must never be lost sight of. The professional or scientific inquirer who, over and above his daily duties and busi- ness relations, has learned to feel that he has other relations, wider and more permanent, with his fellow- beings in all ages, that he is a debtor for all that he has and is to a wider circle of things than that with which he outwardly comes in contact, that he is an heir of all the great and good who have lived before him, — is not on that account a worse workman, and is certainly a higher and better man." Unless he is willing to give himself up to narrow prejudices and distorted theories, the student of our day, whether of science or of literature, must often consent to turn aside from the paths of his own specific department, and learn something of the great moral, social, and po- litical movements of the world about him. He has other duties than those of his own specific calling, and he may not safely neglect them, nor the study that fits him to discharge them. There are other inspira- tions, if he will but seek them, than any that await him in successful achievements in his own particular vocation.

I am not blind to the danger — never surely greater than in our day — of spreading our efforts over too large a space, and so making all our acquirements thin and meagre and superficial ; but over against that danger there stands another, equally perilous to many scientific and professional men, of so exclusively con- centrating their interests upon a narrow space and sub-

22 Waymarks.

ject that they cease ultimately to be either good citizens or humane men. The state, society, the untaught mul- titudes about us, have each a claim upon our interest, our energy, and our regard. We may not neglect those claims without equal injury to those who represent them and to ourselves. More than ever, in these days, does each man among us, no matter what the partic- ular range of his aims and inquiries, need to be also, a student of history, of political economy, and of moral science. When he has become so life will mean more to him than it has ever done before, and he himself will sooner or later rise to be the power that he ought to be in his generation, and the blessing that he may be to his kind. Out of a more catholic habit of in- quiry will come a more catholic breadth of sympa- thy, and so the wide-minded, large-hearted student will learn the meaning of a greater toleration, a greater helpfulness, and a greater love !

3. And this leads me to say, finally, that it behooves you, my brothers, to be not only students, and catholic students, but also reverent students. Those of you whose future will be concerned principally with the phy- sical sciences, are commonly supposed to be in great and imminent danger of unbelief. For one, I venture to account such a supposition as often ill-founded, and oftener still unjust. An English bishop having spoken of Mr. Darwin's speculations as a " denial of the crea- tion," and as " bad and devilish imaginations," he was straightway and worthily rebuked by more than one Christian student of science, who showed conclusively

The Priesthood of Science. 23

that Darwinism neither denied the Divine creation, nor asserted man to be self-originated. Indeed, a late writer in an English periodical maintains that Darwin- ism strengthens the case for Christianity against un- belief ; and whether we may choose to regard him as having proved or failed to prove his position, one must needs hail with thankfulness the dawning of a day when the champions of the religion of Jesus Christ are no longer swift to dub every new explorer in science with the sweeping stigma of " infidel."

But while this is true, we may not disguise from our- selves that there is always danger lest the man of science, in dealing with the material facts of Nature, and tracing second causes, should forget that there is a great first Cause, and that all the phenomena of physical life rightly studied, only argue an infinite and spirit- ual life, which forever presides in and over them. As you go forth, with such skill as you have acquired here, to challenge the mysteries of Nature, or to pursue your studies in whatsoever direction, lay aside the tools and implements of your various callings not infrequently, I beseech you, and hearken for the whispers of a voice within you, which witnesses to the existence and sover- eignty of a Being who is the Author of Nature, to whom this wondrous and complex universe of ours is " but a drop of a bucket, and who taketh up the isles as a very little thing." No telescope has ever seen Him, and yet He waits to be our supreme and unerring teacher. In bidding you to hearken for this voice sometimes, I do not bid you be a whit the less earnest and entliusiastic

24 Waymarks,

and inquisitive in whatsoever line of inquiry you have ah'eady resolved to pursue. But remember, there is something else within you than the busy, inquisitive, thinking brains. Remember that there beats beneath whatever cunning plaitings of custom may seek to hide it, a great, eager, unsatisfied, hungry heart. If in your studies you are willing to starve that, if you never seek for an object that shall teach the dormant love-power in you rightly and worthily to love, then, believe me, you are dooming the neediest side of your nature at once to ignorance and starvation. And therefore I entreat you supremely to lay the foundations of all your future stud- ies in a reverent hearkening to that Being who is at once the Creator of the Universe and your Creator, and in a personal discipleship to that incarnate Christ through whom supremely He has revealed Himself. Let every other study be your schoolmaster to bring you to His feet who can alone solve for you the sternest problems or illumine your deepest ignorance. Knowing Him the world will get a new aspect, and all your studies, in whatsoever domain, a higher and sacreder meaning. When the facts of Nature perplex you, when the seem- ing tangle of history dismays or disheartens you, when shadowy possibilities of the future threaten to over- whelm you, you will know that His hand who is behind the darkness holds the unerring clue, and that out of all the seeming mysteries of the present, that Sovereign Hand shall sooner or later bring forth divinest order and beauty and sunshine !

Nay, more. Coming as reverent and believing stu-

The Priesthood of Science. 25

dents to this the greatest of all teachers, Himself at once unerring wisdom and infinite compassion and res- cue, you shall also find that as a pupil and learner in His school, each one of you has here a sacred work to do, a heavenly cause to serve. Not renouncing any up- right earthly cause or calling, you shall yet see how, in it and through it, you may be serving a cause at once grander and nobler and holier, — the cause of Christ, and of His Redeemed Humanity I

Crossing this mighty continent of ours not long ago, by means of that last marvel of our American engineer- ing whose daily track-laying, as 1 have been told, was wont to beat the slow-moving wagon-trains of emigrants that marched beside it, I found myself again and again exclaiming, '^ What grander calling could there be than thus to write one's name in iron across the unsullied page of those virgin western prairies, as part builder of the highway that shall bind together Pekin and Paris, London and San Francisco, the commerce of Calcutta and the manufactures of Manchester, in one bright zone, whose central gem shall be our own American metropolis ! "

And yet there is a grander calling. May it be yours and mine, my friends, to braid it in with whatsoever toil or study is ours, whether within these University walls or beyond them ; to build those other highways through the stony hearts and desert lives of men over which the Master Builder shall at last come back again, to claim this world and all its treasures for His own ; to bear

26 Waymarks.

along the paths that Christian labor has cast up the saving message of God's love, and so, by steadfast con- quest of all sin and ignorance, to open wide the gates for His enduring sunshine !

" Then comes the statelier Eden back to men ; Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm ; Then springs the crowning race of human kind ! "

II.

THE YOUNG SEER.

Your young men shall see visions. — Joel ii. 23.

In an old book, among the oldest in the volume that includes it, there occur these words. They are the words of one who, looking forward to a time beyond his own, discerns the promise of a day of larger knowl- edge and of nobler life. Out of its old ignorance and feebleness the Israel of the future is to be lifted towards the light. The slumbrous powers, the mean affections, the trailing aspirations, — all these were to be touched, awakened, ennobled.

Well, as we know, they were. The time came when on the spiritual consciousness of a group of obscure peasants there broke a new world. Gathered one day in that city which had been for generations the centre of their national life, waiting in expectant silence and pause, there came to them the vision of a new life, a new hope, a new earth. Suddenly, and in a moment as it were, the veil of old prejudices and prepossessions fell away from them, and all that they saw was trans- figured. The world was no longer the same, for it was the home of a Divine Society — man was no longer the

28 Waymarks.

same, for he was the child of a Divine Father ; and duty, turned to privilege, became the joy of being. Like men aflame (drunk with new wine, the critics of their time declared !) they went forth from an upper room and conquered as they went. No parallel in the history of propagandism has yet been found to that of the twelve first messengers of the religion of the New Testament. Without the prestige of ancestry or eccle- siastical rank, without the influence of the powerful, without wealth or eloquence or art, they won their way first to a hearing and then to a following so eager and so ardent that in a little while men heralded their coming to some new field of missionary labor with the cry, " These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also ! " And exaggerated as the words must have sounded, they were, in fact, the words of truth and soberness. It was a revolutionary force which came with these young disciples into contact with the older civilizations of their time, and which, wherever it went, " overturned and overturned," and so prepared the way for Him whose right it was to rule. Nothing could resist its power. No class, nor caste, nor nation could deny its spell. There were those who had seen a vision, and their vision had illumined and transformed them !

But to this remarkable result there had been a con- dition precedent. We own, I take it, the force of that argument which in nature urges that the existence of a faculty implies the sphere or medium in which it is to find its exercise. The construction of the eye is itself

The Young Seer. 29

the clearest proof that somewhere there must be that thing which we call light, in which it finds at once its origin and its interpretation. And, in the same way, we who are here, at any rate, are accustomed to main- tain the existence of what we call a spiritual faculty, and to argue from it for the existence of that spiritual realm of which it is at once the complement and the prophecy. " Like the peasant-poet, Clare, who in his childhood set out from his father's cottage, in order," as a gifted Englishman has lately reminded us, " to touch, if he might, the point where earth and sky meet," so, we are wont to say, " we are drawn toward far horizons, clad in colors of the air," by the impulse and sentiment w^hich comes from the Father of Lights.

Yes, but there is, I repeat, a condition precedent. i\\ those domains of knowledge which are lower than spiritual knowledge, what is it which goes before the vision, of whatever nature it may be ? I answer, It is culture, — culture which prepares the way for the vision, and which makes it at once possible and imminent. Go back to the illustration of the eye, and of that lowest group of powers, the senses, for which the eye stands. There died, the other day, in our own Cambridge, a man who on its mechanical side had done almost as much, perhaps, to advance the science of astronomy as any one of his generation. His telescopes were the wonder of the curious, and the matchless treasures of the learned and expert. Two hemispheres paid tribute to his skill, and his handiwork found recognition in the foremost observatories of the world. Do you know,

30 Wat/marks.

now, how he finished those marvellous lenses which, beforehand, it was declared, were beyond the possibil- ities of constructive skill ? He was indeed familiar with the scientific technique of his calling ; but I have been told that it was not alone by the nice measurement of any instrument, however delicate or minutely accurate, that he achieved his result, but by the marvellous accu- racy of his eye and marvellous delicacy of his touch.

But were either of these aptitudes born in him ? Their germs undoubtedly were; but, just as surely, their ultimate perfection was the result of a long course of training and development, — of that thing, in other words, which we call culture. And, whatever the na- tive faculty, gift, endowment, this is the invariable con- dition of its highest exercise, and, ordinarily, of its successful exercise at all.

In fact, it is this which explains our presence here to-day. Unlike most institutions, this University owes its existence under God to one man. He was one who, both by what he was and by what he achieved, revealed himself as the possessor of exceptional pow- ers. The history of this region, in which his wise forecast, his large grasp, his courage, resolution, and eminent capacity of organization and administration found their fitting opportunity, is a record, in the de- velopment of its vast resources and in the extension of its great arteries of traffic and travel, of his pre- eminent gifts. But great as those gifts were, and conspicuous as was the success which they achieved, their possessor was above the petty vanity which

The Young Seer. 31

imagined that they could not have been bettered by a previous and adequate culture. On the contrary, as the bishop of this diocese said of him on the first "Foun- der's Day," " he had met many occasions on which he would have found great advantage if to his practical skill he could have added that scientific knowledge of metallurgy, mining, and civil engineering which is now freely imparted in this University." ^ And it was the recognition of this fact which inspired him to undertake the noble enterprise which we assemble to promote to- day. His keen discernment recognized that, vigorous and adroit as may be a human hand by native endow- ment, both vigor and skill are developable qualities, with a capacity of enlargement almost indefinite.

And so of whatever else the human hand may stand for. Whether it be the ear of the musician or the brain of the philosopher, just in so far as you can add to the original gift the skill, the delicacy, the trained discrimination, which come witli culture, by so much you have greatened that gift. The eye of the artist and the eye of the peasant are as similar in construction as any human eyes can be. But tlie vision which they see is as different as chaos from Eden, or light from darkness. Indeed, the capacity to see any vision of beauty or nobleness at all is largely conditioned upon the training which has bestowed it.

And even so it was with those who one day saw their vision, as they waited in an upper room. We are ac- customed to speak of tlie founders of Christianity

1 Memorial discourse of Rt. Rev. M A. De Wolfe Howe, D. D., 1879.

32 Waymarks.

(though from a different motive) as their earliest and least friendly critics spoke of them, as ignorant and un- learned men. But, in fact, theirs was a culture the like of which the world has never known. It was their high privilege to sit at the feet of a Teacher whose peer humanity has not seen. Says Mr. Lecky, in his " His- tory of European Morals : " " It has been reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which, through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love ; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions ; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive to its practice, and has exercised so deep an influence that it may truly be said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate . . . mankind than all the disquisitions of philoso- phers and all the exhortations of moralists."

But these three years of active life were spent in the close and constant companionship of twelve men, whose whole future w^as revolutionized by the contact which fchat companionship involved. Consider for a moment the enlargement of powers which came to these men from daily contact with their Master. We know how blind and narrow and unspiritual they were in the first days of their discipleship. But that which came to pass with two of them when, after that post-resurrection meeting on the way to Emmaus, their eyes were opened and they knew Him, their Lord, happened to all the rest. The shrunken hearts were somehow deepened

The Young Seer. 33

and enlarged. The stifled aspiration took to itself wings and soared, and thus they became men of power. It was not the vision alone, but it was culture, training, nurture, preparing the way for the vision.

We, in this age, are not in any very imminent danger of underestimating this truth in its relation to our intel- lectual and physical life. Inventive genius and scien- tific cunning have united their forces in order to give to man the highest possible development of his powers and the most adequate training of his gifts. In every de- partment of inquiry the native faculty finds itself supple- mented by tools and a nurture which daily grow more various and many-sided. Our educational systems for our poorest are ampler in their resources than those which wealth could command a century ago for the rich. That no gift is to be left to its original limitations of ca- pacity, that every sense, taste, intellectual power and endowment is to be enriched by a nurture which begins in infancy and endures with conscious existence, this has come to be, at any rate, the ideal conception of education.

3nt with what powers shall this culture mainly deal, and what faculties shall it develop ? We have a new philosophy of the culture of the body, or rather it may be more accurately called the revival of an old phil- osophy, which tells us, in tones which are daily more imperious and more aggressive, that the culture of our forefathers was narrow and meagre and one-sided, — that it made no provision, or no due provision, for the development of the biceps muscle and the true ennoble- ment of one's flexors and extensors. So loud and domi-

3

34 Waymarks,

nant has this philosophy become that venerable colle- giate dignitaries are to be seen on every hand standing cap in hand and saying to their pupils : " Yes, young gentlemen, undoubtedly your conception of culture is the true one. The divinest thing on earth, or almost the divinest, is a foot-ball, a tennis racket, or a cricket-bat. Give yourself largely if not wholly to these things, and then graciously vouchsafe to us tlie fragments of your time for such other education as you may condescend to submit to. Greatness is in bulk and your body is the biggest part of you ! "

Let no one assume that because some of us think that that culture which is physical has too large a share in the modern curriculum of collegiate training, it should have none at all, or that its advantages are not consider- able though they may not be pre-eminent. " Mens sana^^ and the rest of it is excellent doctrine at all times, and it only becomes sophistical when it is fool- ishly exaggerated. 1 am not, indeed, sure that it might not be well to substitute for at least a part of it a culture of manners, which, while it cannot be purely physical, might wisely be encouraged if only for the amelioration of that undergraduate savagery which threatens to bring back upon us an era of barbarism under the disguise of " sport. " What I am contending for now, however, is something of larger consequence and far loftier concern than manners. By all means let us have the culture of the body as well as of the mind. Let us train young men to respect the instrument as well as that of which it is to be the instrument. But that of which the body is

The Young Seer. 35

ordained to be the instrument is not alone the instinct of pleasure, nor merely the intellect or the powers that tliinlv. Enthroned above these, and reaching out to reo-ions on the threshold of which mere intellio'ence

o o

stands in questioning silence, simply because it can go no further, there is another faculty, another range of powers which speak to the aspirations of nobleness, which speak to the conscience of duty, which speak to the soul of God. The culture of the body and of the brain may quicken the reason and enlarge the mind ; it may refine the senses and the tastes ; it may greaten that wdiich thinks in vigor and acuteness, — but what of the moral nature ? " In the most brilliant period of Athen- ian greatness," as a gifted Englishman has lately de- scribed it,^ when art had reached its acme of noble simplicity, when poetry and oratory shed over the public life a glowing atmosphere of grace and beauty, when in- tellects unrivalled in force and subtlety discussed ques- tions which men are debating still, — evils which are not so much as named among ourselves were 'sapping the very foundations of moral order, and were made by men whose own personal purity is above suspicion the subject of jest and witticism. And other ages, splendid in art, bright with intellectual achievement, — in Rome, the age of Augustus ; in Italy, the age of the Medici and of Leo the Tenth ; in France, the age of Louis the Fourteenth, — these too have been ages of a culture which was quite compatible with heartless frivolity and with " rank cor- ruption ruining all within. "

^ St. Paul at Athens : Chas. Shakespere, p. 38.

36 Wayinarks,

Or, to come a little nearer home, are we quite sure that in our own country and in our own day the cultiva- tion of the understanding, combined though it be with the cultivation of taste, may safely supersede the faith and the culture of the soul ? Says a witness whose par- tiality for the spiritual powers of man is certainly not extravagant — 1 mean Mr. Herbert Spencer : " The be- lief in the moralizing effects of intellectual culture is flatly co7itradicted by facts. Are not fraudulent bank- rupts educated people, and getters-up of bubble com- panies, and devisers of corners [and syndicates of opera- tors, he might have added], and makers of adulterated goods, and users of false trade-marks, and retailers who have light weights, and owners of unseaworthy ships, and those who cheat insurance companies, and those who carry on turf chicaneries, and the great majority of gam- blers ? Or, to take a more extreme form of turpitude, is there not among those who have committed murder by poison within our memories a considerable number of the educated, — a number bearing as large a ratio to the educated as does the total number of murderers to the population ?" 1

Mr. Spencer's illustration may be extreme, but it is his, not mine ; and it is certainly of value in view of its source.

But be its value great or small, there is little room for controversy concerning the fact for which it stands. No nation in the world believes so profoundly in the popularization of mental culture as our own, and no

1 The Study of Sociology, p. 363, Eug. ed.

The Young Seer. 37

people has provided for it with such princely liberality. To give to everybody who wants it, not only the rudi- ments of an education, but to make the training of youth include the higher accomplishments as well as elementary instruction, — this is the ambition of a popu- lar system of intellectual culture whose reach and range we claim to be the glory of our American republic. 1 may not discuss that system here, nor review its influ- ence for good or evil upon our social and domestic life. But this at least may be said, that it does not concern itself greatly, if at all, with the powers in man which are the highest, and that it offers little or nothing to quicken his nobler aspirations or to satisfy his deepest longings. With this culture the aim of life is to teach men how to " get on," and to brighten existence with en- joyment. But it does not take a great while to discover that success is not satisfaction, and that in the matter of one's inmost consciousness pleasure and peace are not synonymous terms. There comes a time with every earnest soul when it is filled with a profound dissatis- faction, and when the youthful powers and the fresh en- thusiasm long for a nobler field and a loftier range of action. I appeal to the young men who are here before me to-day. Is it not true, my brothers, that there are times when you turn from the ordinary course of your studies and your amusements with a discontent that is not born of failure, and a weariness that is not mere satiety ? Is it not true that there are times when some- thing within you cries aloud to be ennobled, and longs for a voice of command ? Sitting alone, when the day

38 Waymarhs

is done, and the busy round of tasks and amusements ceases its noisy hum, — when, like a garment, the pres- sure of things outward falls away from you and leaves the soul alone, — are there not moments when a A^oice within you cries : '' Is this the whole of life ? Is there not somewhere something, nay, some One, with touch compelling and with voice resistless, who can bid me rise up out of my meaner self and be a hero for the right ? Oh for a cause so noble and a leader so sub- lime that, forgetful of myself, I might go after him, — seeing in such an one the incarnation of my highest ideal, and trusting him so utterly that any cost or sacri- fice incurred in following him would only be a joy ! " Ah, believe me, my brothers, this inmost hunger of the heart is not without the bread that was meant to satisfy it. Over against our soul's cry for the vision of a Divine Master there stands the form of Him who has come to make us see that vision.

And this is the meaning and office of that sanctuary which we consecrate to-day. Not to meet the require- ments of any mere conventionalism, however vener- able ; not to erect a tribune where any merely human eloquence, however commanding, may display itself ; not to recognize what some one has called the " value of the religious sentiment as a conservator of social order," but to make a place for the vision of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, in His Church, in His Word, in His Sacraments, — for this, unless 1 have mistaken utterly the aim of that beneficence which has been busy here, has tliis building been reared. " Your young

The Young Seer. 39

men shall see visions." Yes, and the one vision of all others which beholding they shall find themselves transformed and ennobled by the sight, is the vision of that Divine Nazarene who loved us and gave Himself for us, and '' whose pierced hand," as Jean Paul wrote of it, " has turned the gates of centuries on their hinges, and opened to us the pathway of an immortal life." But to see such a vision, nay any vision, w^e must make a place for it. Crowding our life full all the time of tasks and pleasures, there is no room for Him to draw near w^ho will not strive nor cry. Do men ask of us, " What need is there in this spiritual religion of yours, as you proclaim it, for visible temples and outward ordinances and audible worship ? " Precisely, I answer, that need, only infinitely higher in its degree, that there is for something visible, something tangible, some- thing audible which shall express domestic love, and social beneficence, and civic loyalty, or national patriot- ism. These are spiritual things, but we take care to house them fitly and to build our thoughts of them into grand and stately fabrics. And is the religion of an incarnate Christ to have no visible incarnation in the sanctuaries that shall proclaim it ? For myself I am constrained to say that the poverty and meagreness with which thus far we have builded in this land for God is not a thing to be proud of. When the people lived in cabins it was not incongruous that they should worship God in a barn. But our great cities are be- coming cities of palaces, and our marts of trade are adorned with costliest splendor, while as a rule our

40 Waymarks.

sanctuaries are cheap and, though sometimes preten- tious, and often tawdry, not solid, not real, not rich, — in one word, not our best. I am told by those who know, that the costliest building for its size on this continent is a building for insuring men's lives. The satire, if the fact be so, which it suggests is too obvious to need amplification here. There is a life, and there is a full assurance of that life, which One alone can give. What ought to be the temple which we rear for such a Being, and for the disclosure of such a vision ! Surely, no mean and starved abiding-place befits the King of Glory.

And so we may well bless God for the unstinted love and reverence for His honor which have reared this house, and for her whose heart was moved to build it. The filial gratitude, the sisterly devotion which have here expressed themselves have surely chosen wisely in erecting such a monument to loved ones now departed. And that which lends, I think you will agree with me, an especial charm to the gift which is this day made to God and to this University, is that it is a gift, for the highest good of young men, from a woman ; and that even as a woman was honored and forever ennobled in giving to the race the Saviour whom we worship here, so a daughter of our Israel opens to her young brothers within these courts a place of access to His presence.

May those for whom this holy house is builded often turn their steps this way ! May they find within these walls, in psalm and sacrament and sermon, that en-

The Young Seer. 41

iiobling culture which shall strengthen and upbuild their souls ! May they make a place in each day's life for this divinest nurture ! And approaching here, in reverence and awe, may there come forth the quicken- ing vision of their Lord, until, with those foretold of old, they too shall cry, " Lo ! this is our God, we have waited for Him and He will save us ; this is the Lord, we will be glad and rejoice in His Salvation."

A DEAD PRESIDENT.

Citizens of tlie Republic who lived througti the summer of A. D. 1881 will never forget it. Ushered in by a traged}' whose horror and shame made men everywhere in the land to bow their heads, it was a season of anxious watching which gathered a whole people about a single couch. On the 2d day of July the President of the United States, James Abraham Garfield, while leaving the national capital on his way to a distant city, w^as shot down in the railway station by an assassin who had concealed himself in a waiting-room through which it was known the President would pass, for that purpose. The wound which the Presi- dent received was fatal, but not immediately so. On the contrary, he lingered for several weeks, endured a journey to the Atlantic coast, and as his symptoms alternated from day^ to day filled the hearts of his countrymen with alternate hope and dismay. Never was there witnessed in the history of a great people a more suggestive or pathetic spectacle. A whole nation was moved by one thought, and touched by one loyal and tender aspiration. Amid all the passionate ex- pressions of outraged national dignity and horror, — for, men everywhere felt the keen shame of the taunt, not unnaturally provoked by the humiliating fact that within sixteen years two Presidents of the republic had been assassinated, which monarchical peoples flung across the sea, that apparently our freer form of government was no less unstable and volcanic than their own, — amid all the angry resentment at the crazy political fanatic, if he was a polit-

A Bead President. 43

ieal fanatic, who had wrought the cruel butchery, there throbbed a deep undercurrent of steadily broadening sympa- thy, which prayed, and hoped, and waited, with eager and passionated steadfastness.

It prayed and hoped in vain. When at length the end came, it was seen how certain it had been from the begin- ning. But meanwhile the nation had been educated, first, in a fine and just appreciation of its suffering mart^'^r, and then in that habit of patient submission of which he himself was so rare and noble an illustration. When Garfield died the Civil War had been ended nearly twenty years. But it remained for a President chosen by that party with which the vanquished South was least in sympathy to do more in bringing into touch the parted hearts of the people of the two sections than anything which had haj)pened since the day of Lee's surrender. The assassination of Lincoln fol- lowed too close upon the defeat of the Confederacy for that. The passions engendered by the war were too deep to allow the horror of that calamity to be looked at with other than large indifference bj^ multitudes of his fellow-countrj^men. But with Garfield it was different. His rare personal char- acteristics, his conspicuous magnanimit}' in the treatment of those hostile to him, his manly resignation in the face of his bitter fate, — these won to him the farthest as well as the nearest, and made the closing days of his life memorable in their record not alone of heroic suffering, but of a beau- tiful and fraternal sympathy, — a sj-mpathy which rang at the slightest touch like the tense strings of a liarp, and which revealed the great soul of a great people as quivering behind it. The two sermons which follow were preached, the first on the Prayer Day for the stricken President, Sept. 11, 1881, and the other on the Sunday following his death, Sept. 25, 1881.

III.

A NATION'S PRAYERS.

He that planted the ear, shall He not hear ? or He that made the eye, shall He not see? — Psalm xciv. 9 (Psalter).

There are two ideas of God, which are held to-day by thinking men of different minds, with equal sincerity and tenacity.

The one regards Him as a force or power behind nature, in which it takes its rise or finds its origin. The school which admits nothing that it cannot demon-, strate has not thus far, if we are to believe its most candid teachers, succeeded in demonstrating that life is self-evolved ; and since this cannot be demonstrated, it is not unwilling to admit that there may be, somewhere, some force which, for want of a better name, may be called God, and in which man as we know him, and things as we see them, take their rise. But the most that it is willing to admit concerning this force or power is that it is a force or power that " makes for righteousness," — an influence, a tendency, a law if you please, the result of whose operations is in the direc- tion of good rather than evil. That this influence, or tendency, or force, is a Personal Being, — that it is af- fected by our appeals to it, that it hears a request which

A Nation's Prayers. 45

we make to it, or answers what we call our prayers, — this it explicitly denies.

And it does so for two reasons : first, that if God be such a Being as it understands Him to be. He cannot answer prayer; and then, that as a matter of experience, He does not. If, in other words, God be simply another name for law, then it is not of the nature of law to operate by mere caprice. But that would be caprice, and not law, which should effect one thing to-day from its own impulse, and another to-morrow because some- body asked it to. In fact, however, this impersonal theory of God is best of all demonstrated (its disciples maintain) by experience, since experience furnishes no consistent argument for believing in a personal God who hears and answers prayer. Observe that the phrase is '• no consistent argument ; " since the disciple of an im- personal force or power, as being all that we know as God, does not deny that there are coincidences between men's prayers and subsequent events, such as look like an answer, on the part of the Being to whom those prayers were addressed, to their requests. But these he explains by maintaining that they are no more than coincidences, and that they are offset by innumerable instances where prayer has been persistently and utterly disregarded. Ships have gone down in mid-ocean, and men have cried to God for succor as they never cried before. But, as with the priests of Baal, crying for hours together to their God, " 0 Baal, hear us I " so here, there was " no voice, nor any that answered, nor any that regarded." Good men have pi-ayed, and prayed

46 Waymarks.

for reasonable things. A parent has asked for his boy, not wealth, nor eminence, nor cleverness, but only a sanctified character, and has seen him go down, smitten and accursed, into a drunkard's grave. A widow has cried to heaven, not for ease or luxury, but only for her daily bread, and has been hastened to a premature grave by the employer who starved and robbed, because he could not corrupt her. The heavens have seemed as brass to sufferers who lifted thitherward their prayer and have seemed to get no answer back. " Let us have done, then," says the student of all these things, " with your dogma of a personal God, and most of all with the notion that He does anything in this world because any man or woman asks Him to."

And yet, that other school to which I began by refer- ring will not have done with such a notion, nor refrain from acting upon it. There are hours in every one's life when prayer seems almost a mockery, and God almost a myth. And at such times the arguments against both which I have referred to seem potent, if not conclusive. But there are other hours and other eras, when the conviction of a man or a nation is a very different one. And this is not because at such a time one can tabulate statistics which demonstrate God's dis- position to be influenced by men's prayers, nor because the difficulty of answering a great many prayers in the way that a great many people expect them to be an- swered is not seen and recognized. But at such times such persons* remember this : that if it be granted that man is a creature of imperfect knowledge, — that he is

A Nation s Prayers. 47

apt to want a great many things tliat are not good for him, and that he is apt to want things that are good for him selfishly, and without regard to the welfare of other people, — If it be still further true that, in the case of a child who comes with his petition to you, you serve him best, oftentimes, by denying, rather than by granting his request, then, certainly, nothing is proved as against prayer by insisting that in certain emergencies certain requests were denied instead of being granted. Said a missionary bishop once, " Soon after 1 went to my mis- sionary jurisdiction, 1 wanted twenty thousand dollars, with which to build five cheap churches in as many growing towns. Oh, how 1 prayed and prayed for it, but, thank God, it never came I Yes, thank God ; for in six months the population of these five mining towns had moved away, and then I saw that if I had had it the money would have been simply wasted by me, and that God knew better than 1 did."

And in that plain and homely sentence there is the essence of the whole matter. " God knew better" than the bishop did. Do you suppose he stopped praying, this missionary bishop, because lie did not get his twenty thousand dollars ? No, his faith went down a great deal deeper than that ! He believed first that God knew, — that is, that He took account of what His ser- vant was doing for His truth out in those mining towns, and was interested in it. And it is that conviction, far more than any visible or particular answer to prayer, which has been the spring of it ever since the world began. There are men, as J have said, who believe that

48 Waymarks.

God is a mere force, or law, or soulless tendency. But there are other men who believe that He is a living Father, and the strongest argument for that faith they find, after all, in themselves. There is no more mag- nificent statement of that argument than we find in the 94th Psalm. It was written in a time of cruel oppres- sion, when wickedness stalked unabashed in high places, and when the earlier fear of God had died out from the breasts of even the rulers of Israel themselves. There were men who ought to have protected the weak, who used their power to outrage them. And so David cries out, telling up this infamy to God, " They smite down thy people, 0 Lord, and trouble thine heritage. They murder the widow and the stranger, and put the father- less to death. And yet they say, ' Tush, the Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.' " And then comes that swift reply, which, as Herder has said, is as pertinent to the faithless philosophy of our own day as of David's day, " 0 ye fools, when will ye understand? He that planted the ear, shall He not hear ? and He that made the eye, shall He not see ? " You have in yourselves a power that sees and hears. Where did you get it ? What does it imply, if not that, somewhere, there is One who hears with an unerring ear, and sees with an all-searching eye ? Be sure that whatever comes to pass here in the world, there, is one Being who sees and knows it all, and w^ho is no indiffer- ent spectator of the wrongs and sorrows of His children. Do not forget Him, or leave him out of account ; but rather remind yourself how your own nature is at once

A Nation's Prayers. 49

the image and witness of His. You see and hear. Be sure that He, whose child you are, sees and hears you I

It is that larger truth which is implied in these words of David of which we have lately been having such interesting evidence in connection with our stricken and suffering President. A great calamity, with elements in it which furnish motives for abundant self-scrutiny and mortification, has brought this people to its knees with an earnestness and unanimity which are wholly without a parallel. These last seventy days have been an era of tender sympathy and earnest prayer, which will always be memorable and precious. And both these characteristics are to me an evidence for the be- ing and character of Him who, as I am profoundly persuaded, has inspired them.

1. Look, for instance, at the tokens of universal sympathy. I do not know how it may have been with most of us, but I think there is more than one here who must own that he could hardly read that story of the journey of the President from the capital to the seaside without a sob in the voice and a mist in the eye. That long lane of watchers stretching two hun- dred miles, that lined the way by which he journeyed, silent, bareheaded, tearful ; the woman who stood in the station at Wilmington (was it ?), with her babe at her breast, straining her eyes for one glimpse of that stricken son of another and more aged mother, and who, when her child cried, turned instantly away, and, without a word, vanished out of sight and hearing, lest even her child's cry should disturb the sufferer; the

4

50 Waymarks.

little fellow at Elberon who asked permission to drive one spike in the temporary track, that so he too might share the privilege of smoothing the way for the na- tion's patient ; the cottager who, when the foreman of that same track-laying company said to him, " Sir, 1 fear we shall have to carry the track through yonder flower-bed," answered quickly, '' Carry it through the house if it will better serve the President I " — these are but one or two of uncounted and countless evi- dences of a sympathy so tender, a generosity so eager, a gracious and beautiful unselfishness which gives one a new faith in humanity, and makes him prouder of his kind.

2. But there hag been more than sympathy ; there has been earnest and almost universal prayer. How are we to explain it ? In a moment of panic on ship- board, in an earthquake, in the presence of any sudden and appalling calamity, men will fling themselves upon their knees, and cry out in an ecstasy of panic and ter- ror. And under such circumstances, we should hardly maintain that their conduct was evidence of their faith in God, or in the power of prayer. Such an act, we might rightly say, would be apt to be more the fruit of a blind fear than of sound reason.

But in the case of the country it has been different. There has been no panic and no sudden danger to indi- viduals or the nation. If the President were to die to-morrow, there is no one of us who believes that the government would go on otherwise than in an orderly and peaceful way, without the smallest peril to any single citizen. And yet, in spite of this absence of

A Nation's Prayers. 51

panic, there has been a steadily growing impulse and tendency toward prayer. These seventy days that have come and gone have not weakened, they have deepened it ; and men who have not said a prayer for twenty years have been seen, during the past week, in the House of God, and on their knees.

Surely the meaning of all this is not hard to see. Our own sympathies, by a combination of circumstances unusual and most impressive, have been appealed to in a very marked and singular way. The patient and manly sufferer, the aged mother, the heroic wife, whose fine fibre, tense as steel and steadfast as a star, is the stuff of which great nations are made, — these have combined to elicit a feeling which has been a glory and beauty to the people in whom it has found expression. And what is it that has followed upon this sympathy ? A steadily deepening conviction of God's sympathy. Men and women have argued from their own softened hearts up to God's heart. They have said, " If we feel in this way, how must God feel ? We have a thou- sand things to make us hard and selfish and indiffer- ent, that cannot possibly affect Him. And if we are so drawn together and softened by this common sor- row, surely it must make its appeal to Him ; and just because He is our Father, and the President's Father, and the Father of that vast army of sufferers of whom, after all, we must not forget the President is not the chief. He cannot and will not be indifferent."

What is there now which follows inevitably from this ? Keep in mind all along here, that, in accord-

52 Waymarhs.

ance with the spirit of those words of David with which we began, we are arguing from our own nature up to God's. He must have a heart of sympathy, we say, because our natures are an image of His, and because, deep in even the most selfish human nature there are some possibilities of sympathy. Yes, and there is more. There is an instinct of generous response when our sympathies are appealed to. There is that — and we know perfectly well that it is the best and noblest ele- ment in our nature — which, when another asks help of us, prompts us to give it ; which, that is to say, when another prays to us, prompts us to hear his prayer, and to grant it if we can. But He that made the ear, with which we hear another's prayer, can He not hear that prayer when it is addressed to Him ? And He that made the eye, with which we see another's sorrow, and feel for it, cannot He, too, see that sorrow, and feel for it with an infinitely greater tenderness ?

It is thus that those deeper instincts of the human heart, which witness to the Fatherhood of God and His sympathy with His children, are, as I read them, a stronger argument for prayer than any other. We may stumble amid the seeming contradictions between prayer and natural laws, or between a predestinating Providence and the soul's personal cry ; but wider than all of them — nay, all-inclusive, and all-encompassing — is the mighty heart of God, to whose paternal conscious- ness all these seeming contradictions now appear, even as one day, it may be, they will appear to us, the veriest dreams of a disordered imagination.

A Nation's Prayers. 53

And so let us thank God that He has given us, in our own natures, this witness of our right to pray to Him. As we hear, so, the soul tells us in our doubt- ing moments, does He who made that with which we hear no less hearken and listen Himself. There are moments when, in some darkness, some secret, un- shared trouble, you cannot speak to any one else. Do not forget then to speak to Him. Remember that you are His child, and refuse to live as if you were only a dumb and voiceless brute.

" For what are men better than sheep or goats, That nourish a blind life in the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer. Both for themselves and those who call them friend 1 For so, the whole round world is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God ! "

So has wisely sung a voice which finds an echo in uncounted hearts. And the words suggest one other fact which must needs chasten our thankfulness in that evidence of a nation's faith in the power of prayer which has lately in so many ways been given to us. Unless our experience in this community has been exceptional, the observance of last Thursday was conspic- uous by the absence of the one class which, of all others, is the most numerous among us. I mean the working class. Banks and shops and offices were closed, but so far as one could see, the day-laborer went as usual to his toil, and nothing was done to make it easier for him to find his way into the house of God, or to give him a chance to pray after he had done so. I do not under-

54 Wai/marks.

take to say whose fault this is, but one thing greatly needs to be said, and that is that no theory of social ethics is a sound one which keeps prayer, or opportuni- ties for prayer, as the privilege of any one class or caste in the community. If we cannot stop building and loading and unloading and ploughing and reaping and digging long enough both to pray ourselves and let our toiling fellow-man kneel down beside us also, then we had better not build nor dig at all. Our foun- dations will be but sand, no matter how deep down we sink them. A nation which keeps religion or the offices of religion for any one part of its people, to the neglect of the rest, has begun to declare that it does not believe in God at all. For if it did, then it would remember that any system of religion which leaves out His neediest and most dependent children, is at once a mockery and a sham. "The poor crieth and the Lord heareth him " is a promise which, as I remember it, is not made in any such general and unqualified terms to either the rich, the clever, or the respectable.

See to it, then, I beseech you, just, in so far as your own lot is easier or more privileged than any other, that you guard the rights of that other to commune with his Maker and his Saviour. Help other men and women to pray — the servants who serve you, the laborer who toils for you, the outcast whose soul no man cares for, though philanthropy may feed his body — by keeping sacred for these some hours of approach to God. In their fnterests, as well as in your own, guard Sunday from the hands that, upon whatsoever

A Nation's Prayers. 66

pretence, would make it no different from any other day. You want and they want, believe me, to be drawn nearer to their unseen Father. These are pros- perous times, they tell us ; but oh, what sorrow there must be in human homes when life is held so cheaply, and when men and women who have not the heart to face their cheerless future are ending it so soon and so awfully. What must they think, these poor, be- nighted ones, of the Father who is over them ? Do they believe in Him at all ? Do they care to find Him and to be helped by Him ? And yet, in all their blind groping and stumbling and falling, they are your brothers and sisters, and mine, and He who prayed for them from His cross is praying for them still.

Be it ours to pray for them no less. There are clouds about our own pathway, it may be, that do not break or lift. We have prayed for light, and yet it has not come. Let us think, now and then, if it be so of those whose way is darker even than our own. Let us learn not only to pray, but to pray unselfishly for them ; for so — I know not by what strange alchemy it is, but, believe me, it is true — so shall we often find our own doubts hushed, our own fears dispelled, and our darkness turning into day. Forgetting our- selves for a little in thought and prayer for others, we shall find that He whose name is Love has not forgotten us !

IV.

A NATION'S SORROW. Blessed art thou, 0 land, when thy king is the son of iiobles !

ECCLESIASTES X. 17.

It is a king himself who writes these words, and whose ancestry, only a single step backwards, found its root in a royalty no nobler nor more imperial than a shep- herd's boy. For Solomon is the preacher here, and the father of Solomon was David, the shepherd lad of Bethlehem.

And so, when he writes, " Blessed art thou, 0 land, when thy king is the son of nobles," we know that in his thought there is something more and greater than the mere nobility of rank, or the titled eminence that comes with ancient and lofty lineage. Such a lineage is not without its blessings, and it is only a prejudiced and unintelligent judgment that can despise its value. If we believe that a pure strain, that courage and en- durance and a kindly disposition may be passed on by a horse or a dog, it is a stupid and unreflecting radical- ism that despises the same principle when it is applied to men. To be born of noble and kingly parentage ought to carry with it something of the instincts of nobility, even if always it does not ; and we republicans

A Nation' 8 Sorrow. 57

do not need to disparage a princely lineage, even though in dispensing once for all with kings and princes and nobles and the privileges of inherited rank, we have found, as we believe, a wiser and " more excellent way."

But while this is true, it is, as I have implied, of nobility in some larger and loftier sense that Solomon is speaking here. Behind all character there are en- during principles, and it is by these principles, handed on often from sire to son, but developed for the first time sometimes by him in whom they are illustrated, that greatness is nurtured, and the truest kingship achieved. We see, now and then, men of the humblest lineage, as the world reckons such things, who mount to the loftiest eminence from lowliest and most obscure beginnings, and we see all along, in the history of such men, certain dominant aspirations, certain clear convic- tions, a faith and courage and majesty of rectitude, which rule and mould them from the beginning. Such men, whatever their origin, seem to be born of great truths and nurtured by grand ideas. In the womb of these their intellects were nourished, their wills disci- plined, and their consciences enlightened. If we go back to the mothers who bore them, no matter in what humble station they lived and toiled and nourished their little ones, the same noble qualities appear, and these are the influences that rule and mould the man. Such a man, in whatever high station he stands, is great and noble, because he is, most of all, the son of noble beliefs and noble convictions.

58 Waymarhs.

It is such a man that this nation mourns to-day, and whose memory we honor, not merely nor only because he was President, but because kinglier than his official position, more royal than his ancestry or lineage, noble and heroic as is the mother who bore him, was the man himself. And of him I would speak this morning, not so much in a strain of grief, nor with the thought of our common bereavement, as in thankfulness to the Provi- dence who gave him to us, and in gratitude for the benediction of his example. With a wise appropriate- ness the Church and the State unite in calling us to- morrow to a day of humiliation and fasting and prayer. Our past as a nation is not so stainless that we do not need to humble ourselves. Our present is not so cloud- less nor so aspiring that we do not need both to disci- pline and ennoble it by fasting. Our future is not so secure that we may not wisely and earnestly pray for a loftier guidance and a more unerring wisdom than our own. But, meantime, the life and work of our dead President are completed, and as the nation watches round his bier, every citizen in it of kin to him who is gone in this common grief of ours, and every man, woman, and child a mourner, let us gather the lessons of a royal life, and bless God to-day that our dead king was the son of nobles.

Happily, our theme for these few moments is bounded and circumscribed by this place and this hour. It is not mine to speak of Mr. Garfield as a teacher, a man of letters, a soldier, or a statesman. Nor am I called to sketch the romance of his swift and sure ascent.

A Nation's Sorrow. 59

with no step backward in it all, from the tow-path to the White House. These are aspects of his history which will get abundant recognition elsewhere, and which are in no danger of being lost sight of in the eulogy of the forum nor the pages of books and news- papers. But, howsoever worthy of commemoration they biay be, — and most surely they belong to the history of our time, and of this people, — they are largely foreign to those interests and truths for which the pulpit exists to witness, and with which it should chiefly be con- cerned. In this place, at any rate, it is of moment to ask, not how high a man climbed, nor from whence ; not how many offices he held, nor how soon he grasped them ; not even how much learning adorned him, nor how gracefully he used it; but behind and within all this scaffolding of outward activities, how grew the man himself ? What of his character in its inmost fibre and quality ; not what did he do, but what did he come to be, and how ? What of the Godward side of the man, — that side of every man which was made to reach out and up, — his moral nature, his faith in the unseen, his wealth in that kind of character which, when we come to open the pages of the New Testament, seems oftenest to confront us there. It is of these aspects of the life and work of our dead President that I would speak to-day. In other words, I would recall this morning, and this morning bless God for, his good example : (1) of fidelity ; (2) of manly Chris- tian faith ; and then (3) of Christian heroism and patience.

60 Waymarks,

1. Says the great apostle to the Gentiles, writing to the church at Corinth, '' It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful ; " and when Saint John is gathering up for our instruction those wonderful echoes of the Apocalyptic vision which came to him on Pat- mos, he is bidden to write, " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." What a faithful life it was that breathed itself out at Elberon last Monday ! That story of the orphan lad fighting his way through every difficulty ; first to an education, and then to eminence in three distinct vocations, teacher, soldier, statesman, and genuinely great in all of them, — what is there in it that so much enlists us as its fidelity ? There are men who advance to emi- nence borne on from the outset by gifts of genius and force of will, which make distinction inevitable. But the ruler whom we have lost was in no sense a man of genius, and had a nature as gentle and considerate as a woman's. He did not climb up simply by thrust- ing others down, and he did not achieve without the strain and toil of brave and faithful endeavor. In a sketch of him from the pen of an Englishman, there occurs an incident which, until I read it there, was new to me, and which I venture to recall here, though to some of you it may be familiar, because it illustrates so aptly this special quality of General Garfield's hab- itual fidelity : —

At an early period in our late war, the State of Ken- tucky was threatened with invasion by a large body of Confederate troops, who had in fact, some five thousand

A Nation's Sorrow. 61

of them, already crossed its eastern border. In Decem- ber, Colonel Garfield (as he then was) was ordered to report himself and his regiment to General Buell, at Louisville. The historian of the Forty-second Regiment relates his interview with Buell and the result. In the evening Colonel Garfield reached Louisville and sought General Buell at his headquarters. He found a cold, silent, austere man, who asked a few direct questions, revealed nothing, and eyed the new-comer with a curious, searching expression, as though trying to look into the untried Colonel and see whether he w^ould succeed or fail. Taking a map, General Buell pointed out the posi- tion of Marshall's forces in Eastern Kentucky, marked the locations in which the Union troops in that district were posted, explained the nature of the country, and then dismissed his visitor with this remark : " If you were in command of the sub-department of Eastern Kentucky, what would you do ? Come here to-morrow at nine o'clock, and tell me." Colonel Garfield returned to his hotel, procured a map of Kentucky, the last Cen- sus Report, paper, pen, and ink, and sat down to his task. He studied the roads, resources, and population of every county in Eastern Kentucky. At daylight he was still at work, and had been at work all night; but at nine o'clock in the morning he was at headquarters with a sketch of his plans. Having read the paper carefully. General Buell made it the basis of an immediate order, placing Garfield in command of a brigade of four regi- ments of infantry and a battalion of cavalry, and ordered him, to Eastern Kentucky to expel Marshall's force in his

62 Way7narhs.

own way. The result of this appointment Was the battle of Mill Creek, the first victory gained by the Union troops in that part of the country, and this by men inferior in numbers to the troops to whom they were opposed, and who had never before been under iire.

The significance of such an incident as this is larger than at first appears. It is the eternal law that he who has been faithful over a few tilings shall be made ruler over many things ; and it was here the fidelity in the immediate task which opened the way for those larger honors and responsibilities that lay beyond it. To do that task well, nay, best, — not to slight it, nor to shirk it, — to turn on the problem given him to solve every light at his command, and then to sit up all night working at its solution, this revealed a manhood whose strongest instinct, nay, whose settled habit had come to be fidelity. Think back, now, along the earlier his- tory of the young soldier (for he w^as then scarce thirty years of age), and remember by what earlier fidelity that habit had been strengthened and disciplined. To do his duty, and to do it with his whole heart, this seems to have been the eager purpose of boy and man alike.

And so it came to pass that other men trusted and leaned upon him. He never addressed himself to any question without doing his best to master it, and the thoroughness with which he wrought has been one of his characteristics which has, 1 think, been but partially and imperfectly appreciated. He was not an elegant scholar, and little inaccuracies of his in a Latin quota- tion, for instance, have led some of us to smile at the

A Nation's Sorrow. 63

claim which others made for him of eminent culture. But he had something better than the learning of mere technical accuracy or literary nicety , he had the learn- ing which reveals that a man has mastered what he is talking about. His financial speeches are a striking illustration of this, disclosing a knowledge of the history of finance in older nations which is equally rare and valuable. But he only got this, as alone he got other things, by digging for them. He had a ready command of words, but they were worth listening to because he had packed into them the result of long-continued and painstaking assiduity. And hence it was that honors sought him, and larger burdens were given him to bear. It did not matter what task was assigned to him ; no sooner was he called to it than it became a trust, and he himself a steward who must give account.

I take it, this is the practical difference between those who do the work of life and those who fail to do it. Make every allowance that utmost charity can claim for feeble powers and narrow brains and broken health and inherited disabilities, and the fact remains that the world divides itself into the faithful and the faithless, — those who face their work and those who evade it. And so, at last, when the account is made up and the verdict pronounced, it runs, " Well done, good and " — not good-natured, or eloquent, or well-meaning, but — "Well done, good and faithful servant."

2. In President Garfield this fidelity was united to — ought I not rather to say it was rooted in — a manly and courageous Christian faith. A manly and courageous

64 Waymarks.

Christian faith, I say ; for there were features in the relig- ious life of our late Chief Magistrate which were in many respects exceptional. It is not uncommon for public men to be, at any rate, nominal Christians, and to indicate their belief by at least acquiescence in Christian usages and traditions. But in General Garfield there was some- thing more than acquiescence in something more than a tradition. He belonged to a communion whose name was by the great majority of people unknown until they heard it in connection with him, and whose tenets and fellowship were alike obscure. It was a communion ut- terly without prestige either of numbers, wealth, or influ- ence. A man may be proud to be of the Methodists or Baptists, because they are so numerous, or to be of the Presbyterians, because they are so orthodox and respect- able, or to be a Churchman, because it is so historic, or a Unitarian, because they are so clever ; but to be a mem- ber of that little and obscure sect that called itself the Church of the Disciples, with its brief history and sim- ple rites, and meagre and homely brotherhood, there was no distinction in that, but rather something which, to superficial minds, might seem to border upon the reverse. And so it was to the honor of the President that all along he clung to that earlier fellowship in which, in the first flush of his opening manhood, he had found his way into the enkindling fellowship of his Master and Saviour. In that humble communion there seem to have been good men who strongly influenced his childhood and youth alike. He never forgot them. He turned to them all along, with deepening reverence and

A Nation's Sorrow, 65

gratitude ; and his love for his Bible, his habit of getting wisdom and strength for each day's duties on his knees, which he had early learned of these men, these, too, he never forgot nor outgrew. It is the vice of our American manhood that in matters of religion it is so often so fur- tive and secretive. We are ashamed to be seen reading a good book, and, most of all, to be seen reading the best book. A merchant who should keep a copy of the two Testaments at his elbow would be thought, by many people, a fanatic or a Pharisee. And yet he would find better advice in either of them, often, than he would get from the most learned treatise on banking or the most profound disquisition on laws of exchange. Has it ever occurred to us why there has been such rare earnest- ness and reality in all our praying for the President ? Though we have not been conscious of it, I am per- suaded that it has been because, in the common heart and thought of the people, there has been the deep sub- consciousness that he for whom they were praying believed in prayer himself, and that while they were asking God to heal him, he himself was trying every hour to say, in the spirit of that Master who said it Himself, and who taught us all to say it, Not as I will but as Thou wilt : Thy will be done !

3. And this brings me naturally and obviously to speak of that last trait in the leader whom we have lost, which, as I think, it belongs to us in this place pre- eminently to recall. It has been said that if the Presi- dent had died on the day that he was shot down by the assassin's hand, the outburst of indignation would have

5

66 Waymarks.

been far fiercer, but that the feeling elicited would have been alike more ephemeral and more circumscribed. It is not difficult to see why. Never was there a nobler triumph of the grace of patience than in this man. There is a great deal that seemed trivial or insignificant at the time that it happened, which now, looking back on it, we can estimate at its true worth. The play- ful greeting with which he welcomed his friends to the sick-chamber, the cheery word or look, that at the time we took for tokens how much less grave was the emergency than we dreaded, — ah, how different they all read now ! To bear pain is hard enough, and men who can be brave in danger, and can endure without a quiver some brief operation, are apt to break down very soon in those long stretches of suffering which women have oftener to bear than men, and which they bear usually so much better. But here was a sufferer whose patience and courage were co-equal. Remember what message he sent from his sick room to the wife who was hastening to his side : " The President is wounded — how seriously he cannot tell. He asks that you should come to him, and sends you his love." No note of panic, no half savage shriek of command, — innate dignity, sweetness, self-control, tenderest thought for another. And so it was all along. When they lifted him into the car at Washington, some awkward hand jarred the stretcher against the doorway. A pang of intense pain flashed its brief signal across the face of the sufferer, ^ — how keen a sufferer we know, now that we have read the story of that pierced and shattered

A Nation's Sorrow, 67

spine, — but no more — no word of impatience or com- plaint. And later on, when the wasted invalid is lifted for a brief vision of the sea — fit symbol of that wider ocean on which iie was so soon to launch — as the passing sentinel, catching a glimpse of the President, straightway salutes his commander-in-chief, the old instinct of courtesy carries the shadowy hand to the visor, and once more the brave and patient sufferer forgets himself. Ah I my brothers^ this sweet and steady self-command I this tireless and heroic patience I — these were the noblest of all. We lift our eyes from that sick bed to the cross of One who was once wounded and who suffered for us all. And it is the same spec- tacle of patient and uncomplaining suffering that at once wins and conquers us there. To do, that were indeed noble if there were nothing nobler in life. But to bear, to lie still and patiently endure, that is grander still.

And so we thank God to-day for that good example of this His servant, who has finished a course so heroic. Fidelity in duty, faith in Christ, and patience in suffer- ing, — surely these are the elements out of which the most lasting greatness is builded. Blessed, thrice blessed, 0 land, whose king is the son of such nobili- ties as these. Kingly verily he was who could prove his right to rule by gifts so royal as these. Who shall say that they or he have done their glorious work ? As we stand to-day and look down into that open grave where to-morrow he is to be laid amid the tears and lamentations of fifty millions of people, who shall say

68 Way marks.

that his kingly work is ended ? That vigorous intellect, those generous sympathies, that patient courage, that simple and reverent faith, — are all these forever hushed and stilled ? As the low-browed portal swings upon its hinges, does it open upon nothing beyond ? " And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying. Alleluia ; for the Lord God omnipo- tent reigneth I And one answered me saying. What are these which are arrayed in white raiment, and whence come they ? And I said unto him. Sir, thou knowest. And he said unto me. These are they which came out of great tribulation." The long fight is ended. The bitterness of death is passed. Standing some of them in low places and some of them in high ones, bearing their burden, doing their task, owning their Lord, they have toiled and striven and endured, and so have fallen asleep. And therefore, tarrying but a little in their earthly resting-places, they stand, at last, before the throne of God ; they serve Him day and night in His temple, and " He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them." No pang can touch them now. '' They shall hunger no more ; neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on them ; nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters ; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

PREFATORY TO NEW YORK MERCHANTS.

The history of the city of New York would be very im- perfectly written if it did not include some record of a class of men whose names have rarely been conspicuous for civic place, or in the realm of art, or letters, or science. It has often been described, as though it were to its disparagement, as a commercial city, and undoubtedly that has been its conspicuous distinction. But that it has been a ver}^ noble and honorable distinction is best known by those whose privilege it has been to watch the career of men eminent in business and finance who have brought to the large and difficult problems of the commerce of two hemisi^heres gifts which would have made them distinguished in any calling, and which, best of all, have been exercised, from first to last, without one taint of duplicity or dishonor. The financial history of any great city is inevitably a history of financial crises, and of the rise and fall of great enterprises, great houses, and strong and commanding personalities. Some of these are included within the period covered by this volume, and the inner history of them has become known to those who in the pastoral relation have enjoyed the confi- dence of merchants, bankers, and other men of business who were their ^larishioners.

The two sermons which follow commemorate men of this class. Both of them were largely identified in every best way with what may be truly called the higher history of New York; both of them were the stewards of large means; and both of them knew something, one of them exceptionally

70 Waymarks.

much, of the vicissitudes of commercial life in an American financial centre. It is interesting to recall them now, after the lapse of nearly a quarter of a century since they came into official relations with the city rector who desires here to commemorate their virtues. Both of them enjoyed the singu- lar felicity of an intimate friendship with much the most picturesque and original figure in the history of our American Christianity; I mean the late Dr. Muhlenberg, a man who achieved during his lifetime the unique distinction of being the father of the Church School movement, the Free Church movement, and the Church Hospital movement, and also the founder of that interesting experiment in Christian social- ism, with which as his generous helpers, both Mr. John David Wolfe and Mr. Adam Norrie were associated, known as St. Johnland.

It would not be easy to estimate how much Dr. Muhlen- berg's influence had to do in educating the sympathies and widening the vision of these two men. But behind the aptitudes to see and feel, there were in both of them those sturdy bases of character, unbending integrity, incorrupt- ible honesty, and a devout and reverent soul, which formed the foundation for all the superstructure of conduct and service that through long years lifted itself increasingly into the recognition and respect of their fellows. They were, both of them, merchant princes in the best sense, — men of princely ideas in the realm of all noble doing, and of princely beneficence in the illustration of those ideas. Men come and go in the marts of commerce, but the memory of such men remains, an enduring fragrance through all the dusty highways of commercial life. •

The first of the sermons that follow was preached in Grace Church, New York, on Sunday, May 26, 1789, and the second in the same place on Sunday, Nov. 12, 1882.

V.

SERMOX COMMEMORATIVE OF JOHN DAVID WOLFE.

And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation. — Acts viii. 2.

This was something more than a conventional funeral. The people among whom it occurred were given to burial rites of elaborate and studied ceremonial. Like all orientalists, their mourning was chiefly marked by a painstaking and intentional publicity. It sought the general gaze, and not content with the cries and tears of friends, it hired professional mourners, with whom the dramatic exhibition of feeling was a trade, and who were, in the expressive language of the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes, " skilled in lamentation." Nothino; could mark more strongly the wide difference between the social customs of oriental nations and our own than the usages of the burial of the dead. With us, demon- strations of mere emotion on such occasions are at once unusual and unlooked for ; but among the Aryan and Semitic races alike, grief, whether actual or simulated, was demonstrative, and even boisterous and obtrusive. Wide apart as were the Greeks and the Egyptians, and

72 Way marks.

widely as were the Hebrews distinguished, both by their religion and their customs, from either, these three great and representative peoples of the elder world were almost identical in the usages of their mourning. With all of them, grief for the dead meant baring and beating the breast, sprinkling or sitting in ashes, songs of lamentation, and the employment of mourning women.

And so, when the martyred Stephen is buried, the customs are not changed. True, he was not merely a Jew, but a Christian ; yet the infant church still clung to the cherished ceremonies of the elder, and what was usual was followed here. It was indeed the hatred and vindictiveness of Judaism which had slain this godly man ; yet, when he is dead, the manner of his burial is the usage of Judaism itself. To have changed it would have been to have surrendered his claim as a veritable and loyal Israelite ; and doubtless, also, to have grieved and wounded his surviving relatives. All the more because his death had been so cruel and distressing, would they have his burial decent and reverent and painstaking ; even as when the nation buries some honored soldier she surrounds his funeral cortege with every element of pomp and state and ceremony, as though she would atone for the hardships of his bitter and lonely end upon the field of battle by utmost tenderness and reverence in dealing with his lifeless body.

And thus it was with the bruised and mangled form of Stephen. The funeral order of his race was care-

Commemorative of John David Wolfe. 73

fully observed. There were not wanting trains of mourners, a funeral escort, nor the tones of loud-voiced lamentation. Everything that mere custom demanded seems to have been scrupulously and painstakingly observed.

But there was this difference, — and it comes out with a singular and touching significance in two Greek words, used here only in all the New Testament: the mourning at Stephen's funeral was the mourning of unaffected feeling, and the attendants who followed him to his grave were not hired mutes nor paid mourn- ers, but grief-stricken and godly men. I presume that every slightest ceremony that Judaism, with its elabo- rate ritual, demanded, Avas performed without an omis- sion. But no careless or perfunctory hands touched the martyr's scarred and shattered form, and " devout men," who knew and loved the saint and hero sleeping in his blood-stained shroud, "made great lamentation over him."

Such a scene at once suggests the thought of the difference that there is in funerals. The Church of which we are members, unlike the Christian bodies about her, follows the usage of the elder Church in having one common ritual for all her baptized dead. She does not attempt to discriminate either in her customs or her utterances. All who die within her pale are buried with the same Office, and have said over them the same incomparable words. She is not a judge, with such infallible insight that she can weigh character and prophesy of destiny. There are some

74 Waymarks.

of us who deplore that "liturgical stiffness," as it is called, which leaves no room for the play of individual pastoral utterance in our funeral customs, and affords no opportunity for converging the general lines of thought and emotion appropriate to the occasion to the individual case or character. But the candid testi- mony of those who enjoy such liberty, and who are free to conduct the funeral offices of religion unreservedly at their own discretion, is almost unanimous in declaring the exercise of that discretion to be at once painful, embarrassing, and in its results very often, most unfor- tunate. Where prayer and hymn and eulogy are left free to be ordered by the supposed demands of every individual instance, they will be very apt to become presumptuous in their condemnation, or else unreal in their praise. The minister of Christ becomes either a judge or a eulogist, and the congregation before him are apt to be a jury of critics rather than an assemblage of mourners. On the one hand are those whose grief makes them eager for commendations, the want of which breeds resentment if they are not spoken ; while on the other are those whose less interested but per- haps not less prejudiced judgments denounce or deride such commendations, if they are.

Most wisely, therefore, does the Church use one com- mon Office for all her dead, leaving scarce any discretion to her ministry, and uttering one uniform voice to her people. Her language is general, not specific. She writes as Inspiration has written before her, " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ; " but she utters no

Commemorative of John David Wolfe. 75

verdict of application in connection with their use. She speaks words of Christian hope ; but they are coupled with the Scriptural conditions of all Christian hope. Hers is not a heathen, but a Christian burial ; and its lan- guage, as Dr. Vaughan has admirably said, in defending the English burial service, is language which, said, as it only can be said, over a baptized disciple of Christ, " ought to be true of such an one, if it is not. " In a word, it is the language of Christian faith and trust ; and while it is utterly devoid of any specific application of its very general terms, we feel that its tone is only what the tone of anything save a heathen burial ought to be.

And yet, when we come to use it, we recognize, as I have already intimated, what a really tremendous differ- ence thei'e may be in even the Church's funerals. As with Stephen's burial by the elder Church, there are the same preliminaries, the same customs, the same words, and yet, as there, there may be the widest and most radical difference in what those words and customs ex- press. Have we not all witnessed funerals Avhere even the sublime ritual of the Church seemed powerless to touch the heart or lift the thoughts ? The pathetic words of prophetic confidence, of divine assurance, of pa- tient acquiescence, the incomparable argument, the pleading entreaty, the hopeful committal, the fervent thanksgiving, have alike fallen upon the ear, only to leave behind them a sense of ghastly and painful incon- gruity. Christian symbols stood around ; flowers, cun- ningly fashioned into emblems of faith and hope, bloomed upon the bier, but all the while our thoughts

76 . Way marks.

have been full of their utter meaninglessness. The trumpet tones of that grand demonstration of the doc- trine of the resurrection which Saint Paul pours forth in his epistle to the church at Corinth fall upon our hear- ing, but in vain. With utmost charity, with every will- ingness to leave the vanished life in the hands of a Love at once deeper and wiser than ours, we cannot bind that life and the Church's tones together. Somehow, they do not fit into, and form a part of, each other. Verily, " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ; for they rest from their labors." But if they have not lived in the Lord, nor labored for Him — We may say these questions are useless ; but we cannot help asking them.

On the other hand, there are other funerals where we use precisely the same ritual ; where there is no diversity in usage or custom from what is wonted, unless it be in the direction of greater simplicity ; where merely the Church's appointed words are said, and no others, and yet where the emotions of our own hearts and the very atmosphere of the whole occasion are utterly and wholly different. There is deep and wide-spread sorrow, but it is a grief gilded with light. We listen to the words of inspired hope and promise, and, as we lift our eyes from the bier before us, lo ! the clouds are parted, and we see how, to a Christian, the grave is only a low- browed portal, through which, bending as he passes, he emerges into larger life and freer. The Apostle's words, in that which forms the Church's burial Lesson, are no longer a mere argument, a piece of dialectic skill ;

Commemorative of John David Wolfe. 11

they are a heaven-inspired prophecy and revelation , and, mounting step by step in thought with him as he advances, we cry at last, in his own words, even out of the valley of our bitter grief, " Thanks be to God, for death is swallowed up in victory 1 " Such a funeral service has taken place within these walls since we last gathered here, and was marked by features so signal and exceptional, that to fail to note them would be to miss the significance of one of the most suggestive assemblages which these walls have ever embraced. 1 have seen children belonging to public institutions present on such occasions, when a benefactor had been called away ; but 1 never before saw little chil- dren weeping for the death of one who in age stood at a remove from them of all but four-score years. I have seen the clergy gathered to do honor to men in public life ; but I do not think I ever saw so large a body of the clergy, of every shade of opinion, gathered in attendance upon the funeral of a layman who never left the most retired walks of private life. I have seen institutions of charity largely represented on such occasions ; but I doubt whether there have been many occasions in the entire history of this community where representatives of such varied and diverse enterprises, homes and ref- uges, hospitals and asylums, museums of art and science and literature, schools and shelters and colleges, nay, the friends of the dumb brute even, as well as of neg- lected or over-driven human beings, were gathered in such numbers, or with such unmistakable evidences of feeling.

78 Waymarhs.

Why was it ? Was it because he to whom I now refer was a rich man ? On the contrary, rich men are no novelty nor rarity in New York ; and whatever may be the respect which mere wealth inspires while its possessor is living, we all know that nothing is more powerless to secure the genuine and unbought homage of love when he is dead. We are said to be great wor- shippers of money in America ; but it is at once an in- structive and a cheering fact that the mere possession of money alone goes but a very little way to endear its possessor to the esteem and regard of his kind. Rich men die in our great cities every day, and dying,

" Vanish out of sight And are forgotten ; "

but here was a private citizen whose wealth was not greater than that of many others around him, and yet the sense of whose loss, betraying itself as it did in the exceptional and almost pathetic character of his obse- quies, will, I venture to declare, go on deepening and increasing as the days and months go by.

Again I ask. Why was it ? It will be answered more confidently and more generally perhaps, "- Because it was not merely the loss of one intrusted with wealth, but the loss of one who freely gave of that wealth to every good and Christ-like cause ; one who scattered his benefactions with a royal hand, and who knew no stint in the measure of his gifts, or the range of their objects. "

And as a partial explanation of so wide-spread and un- wonted a sense of bereavement, this is undoubtedly true.

Commemorative of John David Wolfe. 79

Mr. John David Wolfe was a man of catholic benevo- lence, and of wide-reaching and comprehensive gifts. Some men, situated as he was, would have touched the great circle of religious and philanthropic charities strongly, but at a few points. He never did anything penuriously ; but at the same time his range was al- most boundless. If he had " pet " charities, they did not shut others, less engaging or less romantic, from out the range of his vision. He saw with as vivid a discern- ment the claims of the cause of Christ on the coast of Cape Palmas as he saw the needs of neglected and un- taught children in our own crowded streets.

And yet it was something more than the profuseness or catholicity of his charities which so greatly endeared him to others when living, and which makes him so unaffectedly lamented now that he is dead. It was rather the rare and happy combination in him of great practical wisdom, of habitually sound discrimination, of a warm and generous and sympathetic heart, with untir- ing activity in carrying out its impulses. His benefac- tions were freighted with good-will, and his habitual liberality won its choicest perfume from the personal interest, and constant and painstaking anxiety for the welfare and succor of others, which always and every- where went with it. I doubt whether any other man in the community gave so much time to visits among our public and private institutions of charity as did he ; and I certainly have not been privileged to meet any one who was so thorouo^hlv at home among; them. He knew almost every physician, nurse, attendant, and, in many

80 Wat/marks.

institutions, even their patients. When he entered such homes for destitute childhood as St. Barnabas' House or the Sheltering Arms, the shouts of welcome that greeted him, and the thronging of little ones about him was a spectacle never to be forgotten. It was a devo- tion unpurchasable by money, and it was the only thing that 1 ever greatly envied him. Children intuitively and instinctively recognized and loved him, and their faces reflected the tenderness and benignity that shone upon them from his own, with a warmth and kindliness that could not be mistaken. I owe to him, almost ex- clusively, my personal knowledge of the charities of New York ; and, as 1 remember how it was his custom to go among them, especially on seasons so exclusively devoted, ordinarily, to private festivity as Christmas and Thanksgiving day, I do not wonder that one who knew and valued him most warmly said to me the other day, " We have no one to take his place among the children."

It was this same spirit of warm, personal interest, and of painstaking and discriminating charity, which marked his benefactions when they took a wider range. More than any other layman in the whole history of our American Church, Mr. Wolfe was concerned in laying its broad and deep foundations in our distant West.

The dioceses of Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Utah, Nevada, and Oregon owe more to his gifts and personal interest than to those of any other layman. In some of them, almost the whole educational structure of the diocese was his exclusive work. Here at home this was but little known, for Mr. Wolfe's benefactions were

Commemorative of John David Wolfe. 81

as free from ostentation as they were princely in meas- ure ; but the missionary bishops of this Church have sustained a loss in his departure which is simply and utterly irreparable. 1 dread to hear the cry of grief and dismay which I know is already on the way to me from those far-distant frontiers. The valiant hearts that are fighting there, almost single-handed, for the Master, will know no keener pang than that which has come to them with the tidings that their friend and fellow-worker is no more.

For it was because, as I have already implied, he was so truly this last, that he will be most of all missed. It is a very interesting, and to me a very precious fact, that, while Mr. Wolfe had very strong and decided con- victions of his own on all points of Church doctrine and polity, this did not exclude from his sympathy and in- terest men who often widely differed from him, so long as they were men, and men in earnest. He was not hasty in his judgments, nor impulsive in his confidences ; but when he was once persuaded that a missionary bishop or presbyter was honestly working for Christ, and when he saw that the opening was a good one, it was, with him, enough. He exercised the same pru- dence in making a charitable investment that he did in making a business investment, and the schools and churches which he reared now stand in flourishing pros- perity to witness at once to his wisdom and his liberal- ity. His correspondence was large and various, and he kept himself constantly informed of the interests of the church of Christ and Christian education on our most

6

82 Way marks.

distant outposts. Who can wonder that he made him- self widely felt, or that, now that he is gone, he will be widely and sorely missed ?

One of the most interesting illustrations of his wis- dom and discrimination, in co-operating in the mis- sionary work of the Church, is to be found in a little pamphlet known as the " Mission Service," a compilation made and published by himself, and issued in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. For twenty years the Church has been discussing the question whether it could safely allow its ministers some slight liberty in modifying the order or abbreviating the length of her services, and up to this day has, with a timidity and stiffness which do her little honor, practically re- fused such liberty. Mr. Wolfe, with a courage and practical good sense which were alike worthy of the emer- gency, cut the Gordian knot by himself preparing and printing such an abbreviated service. I have ne^^r yet heard of any bishop or presbyter who refused to give it practical approval by making use of it; and among those who have demanded it most eagerly, in their missionary operations, have been some of the most unbending churchmen, whether prelates or presbyters, in the land. Hundreds of thousands of copies of it have been scat- tered from Maine to New Mexico, educating strangers to her fold to love and long for the prayers of the Church, and to accept thankfully and reverently a fuller ritual, when at length it could be permanently provided for them.

I may not, within these limits,. undertake to speak of

Commemorative of John David Wolfe. 83

Mr. Wolfe as I should wish to, in his relations to this parish, and I d|^re not trust myself to speak of him as I would, in his more intimate relations to myself. The senior officer of Grace Parish, he was its faithful and unswerving friend and servant for more than a quarter of a century. A member of its vestry when the present edifice was erected, his connection with that body con- tinued, without interruption, until the day of his death ; and it is but a few weeks since he came to me to submit a plan for the future of the parish, which showed how alive he was to the importance of rightly shaping that future, though he could not hope to share in it himself. A man of four- score years, he yet took an active and dis- criminating interest in every living question, and in his relations to the vestry of this church, as well as out of it, he was singularly free from that coldly retrospective conservatism which settles torpidly upon the lees of the past, and is equally indifferent to the wants of the pres- ent and the exigencies of the future. Above all, he was distinguished by an unswerving loyalty to the interests of the parish, and to every least obligation which his official connection with it involved ; and the harmony and unanimity of official action which have long been the rare and honorable distinction of the corporation found in him one of the happiest and most steadfast illustrations. If I or others differed from him at any time concerning certain lines of parochial policy it never, for one moment, made him obstructive in his action, or cold or reserved in his bearing. He never took advantage of his official position to seek to coerce

84 Waymarhs.

the judgment or action of others ; and where he could not approve a certain course himself, he acquiesced promptly and cheerfully in the prevailing opinion of those with whom he was associated.

If 1 were to attempt to speak of him as I knew him personally, I would have to trench upon the privacy of his home, and to speak of some things almost too sacred for utterance. But I may at least venture to declare that all that was best and most ena-aoinff in him was deepened and consecrated by the grace of the Gospel of Christ. He was a consistent and devout disciple of the Master, and his reverent bearing here in this holy house, and his godly walk and conversation elsewhere, were too clear and unequivocal in their testimony to be mistaken. Not naturally impulsive or emotional in his temperament, an eager business man for many years of his life, the grace of Christ so wrought upon him as steadily to enlai'ge his kindly heart, and open, more and more widely, his generous and untiring hand ; and when at last he lay down to die, his thoughts were still busy with schemes of good for others, and almost his last words to me were concerning those schemes and his own earnest desire for their speedy realization, "xind so he fell asleep, and was not, for God took him."

Who among us will not bless God for a life so beauti- ful and benignant ? Men of wealth, young men whose earnest and hourly ambition it is that you may be men of wealth, see in such a life, I pray you, the portraiture of a Christian stewardship. We may pile up vast and

Commemorative of John David Wolfe. 85

exceptional fortunes, we may startle other men, alike by the boldness and by the success of our business ventures ; we may excel ever so conspicuously in the mad race for gain and moneyed precedence, sacrificing rest and health and strength in the strife. When the struggle is over what will it all be worth if we have never used this mighty agency of good or of evil for Christ and for God ? On a tombstone in an Italian churchyard, as 1 have been told, there is this inscription : " Here lies Estelle, who, having transported a large fortune to Heaven, in acts of charity, has gone thither to enjoy it." Is not this to use our stewardship, whether of wealth, of intellect, or of opportunity, at once Christianly and wisely ? Blessed privilege, to spend and be spent for the Master ! Ours be it to imitate their " good exam- ple " who, whatsoever were the talents which their Lord had given them, have so used those talents that, at the last, their ears shall hear their Lord declare, " Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things ; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord ! "

VI.

SERMON COMMEMORATIVE OF ADAM NORRIE.

/ myself have seen the ungodly in poiver, and flourishing like a gree7i bay-tree. J went by, and lo ! he ivas gone ; / sought him, but his place could no more be found.

Mark the perfect man and behold the upright. For the end of that man is peace. — Psalm xxxvii. 36-38.

If there were no other evidence that the Bible came from God, we might find it in that inspired insight with which it binds together the two worlds of matter and of mind, — the realm of nature and the realm of man. " I have seen the wicked in power," says David, '' and flourishing like a green bay-tree ; " and we have in the words a perfect image of something of apparent vitality, strong, lusty, and obtrusive, but essentially short-lived and evanescent. For though we may not be certain just what the writer means here by a " bay-tree," it is plain enough that he has in mind some one of those hasty- growing shrubs in which the East is so rich, which shoot from their seed in a night, and which assert an apparent vitality that is seemingly invincible. We all know them here in the West. Though they may not bear the same names, there are in every forest and

Commemorative of Adam Norrie. 87

garden these quick-growing plants that swiftly over- shadow their humbler neighbors, and which assert them- selves by a kind oi domineering and extinguishing pre- eminence. And we kno\y, too, that these are the growths that have no staying power. The frost nips them. The sun scorches them. The wind uproots them ; and then the gardener gathers them up and throws them over the wall. " We go by, and lo ! they are gone. We seek them, but their places can no more be found I "

Is there anything that answers more precisely to this than, for example, that intellectual quickness in which our time is so rich, and which seems to achieve so much ? Was there ever in all the world such nimble-wittedness as makes itself heard by a thousand voices and pens to-day ? What a gift our modern literature i^eveals of quick growth and large and self-asserting expansion ! How it plants itself in all the paths of thought and hurls its keen shafts of criticism at all things sacred and secular ! Here is some one whom yesterday nobody had ever heard of. To-day he is dictating " leaders," indicting a creed, expounding a philosophy, or inaugu- rating a school of reform. Stop a moment, and think of the teachers of science, of art, of theology (or of something that they called theology), who have come and gone since you and I were children ! Where are they ? Where are the systems that they propounded^ the seeds that they sowed, the trees whose leaves they were so sure were for the healing of the nations ? The question is easily answered. In every library there is

88 Waymarks,

a rubbish shelf. Climb up to it, if you will, and read the titles of the books that you will find there, and ask yourself if by any chance anybody will ever read them again, except as curiosities of literature or encyclopae- dias of human folly. They grew, they spread, they challenged men's wonder and admiration. And then, m a night, their power was gone, their leaf withered, and out of the places that knew them they have van- ished forever.

But the Psalmist reminds us that that world which, in contradistinction to the world of matter, we call the world of mind, or of man, includes not only an intel- lectual but a moral element. Men are not only clever or stupid, they are good or bad. And it is not of the clever people that he is chiefly speaking here, but of the wicked people. " I have seen the wicked flourish- ing like a green bay-tree." And who of us has not seen that too ? The prosperity of people who do not deserve to be prosperous, — is there any commoner spectacle, or, as it seems to most of us, more perplexing than that ? Indeed there are plenty of persons who are daily saying, in substance, " Do not tell me that God is a good God, and that He is on the side of righteous- ness. Do not tell me that there is a God at all. I know better ! A Being who was great enough to rule the world, and who was on the side of virtue, would not suffer virtue to walk and vice to ride. If He ever looks down on the world that you say He has made, He sees selfish power lifting itself into the high places, and honest poverty ground into the dust under its chariot-

Commemorative of Adam Norrie. 89

wheels. He sees an ignoble nature drawing to itself all the juices of that associated life in the midst of which it lives, and enriching itself at the cost of virtu- ous and defenceless weakness. And he suffers it to be so. He never interferes to hinder it ! "

Stop, I beseech you, right there, my brother, and ask yourself whether that is true. On the contrary, is it not true that just as certainly as there are physical tornadoes in which the bay-tree and its kind are torn up by the roots and blown away into everlasting oblivion and nothingness, so there are moral tornadoes, irregu- lar and long-delayed it may be, but coming in the his- tory of every nation, every community, every man, when the thing that is not rooted in righteousness comes in its turn to be swept from what seemed to be its strong foundations, and made to vanish as though it had not been ? Verily, I think if we have never been able to own that before, we might have the candor to own it this morning. No people ever had more wholesome illustration of the existence of moral forces in society than we have had in this very land and commonwealth of ours. Whatever else is uncertain, this is certain : that no bad thing, no matter out of what noble tradi- tions and policies it may seem to have grown, has any power of survival, when once it has been false to those great moral ideas which were originally its strength and glory.

And this, which is true of policies, is supremely true of men. Does any one say that wickedness is stronger than goodness, and that the thing that succeeds is the

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thing that has the elements of success in it, — popu- larity, social following, wealth, force of will, cleverness, everything or anything that goes to make success ? Then I ask him simply to sit down for a little, and imi- tate the example of the writer of this Psalm. He was an old man. He tell us so himself, in an earlier verse when he writes, " 1 have been young and now am old ; " and he is not delivering his opinion from the oracular standpoint of the man of twenty-five or thirty, who, having seen his first ideals shattered, is settling down to the cynical faith that society is a fellowship of false- hood, and that the prosperous man is the man who is the shrewdest and the strongest and the most hard- hearted. No 1 He has lived through that earlier period of distrust of goodness, — it was the period in which, as he tells us, he said in his haste, " all men are liars," — and he has come to that loftier table-land which is reached with a ripe old age, and from which he can look back on a lifelong and thoughtful experience. And from this standpoint it is that he says, " I have seen the ungodly in great power, and flourishing like a green bay -tree. But I went by, and lo I he was gone. I sought him, but his place was nowhere to be found ! "

To you, 0 sons of men, I call this morning. Answer me out of your own mature experience, is David right or wrong ? You have lived, let us say, in this community, or some other. It is no matter. You have seen the rise from obscure beginnings of many men who have come at length to be in great power. Some of them

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were men about whom you could not speak certainly ; but of some of them you could. There was no doubt about their aims, or motives, or character. They were wicked men. What has become of them ?

On the other hand, says David, " Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace." Hold fast here to the image with which the writer begins. It is an image borrowed from the growth of a tree. There are things that grow superficially, and then there are trees, that have roots ; and there are men who are just like such trees. David calls them perfect men, not because they were without a flaw, — there are flaws enough in the bark of an oak if you will look for them, — but because they live their life after the law of a perfect ideal. An oak is the noblest thing of its kind, and that which strikes us in it is that in root and trunk and branch it is so intrinsically grand and steadfast. Men have worshipped it as a symbol of strength, and they might have worshipped it as a symbol of perfec- tion. It is built on a great scale, and it lives in obe- dience to a high ideal, or as we prefer to say in nature, to a great law.

And there are men who are like oaks. Faults they may have, for they are human, but they are domi- nated by a Perfect Ideal. His life rules theirs. It is that in which theirs is rooted, and by virtue of it they endure. " Mark the perfect man," — the man who believes in a perfect law and a perfect Friend and Saviour, and who aims to be like Him, and in him you will behold the upright, — something that stands erect,

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that has columnar qualities, and that has not only leaves but roots. Such men do not disappear. They die, but their virtues live. And when they die the cur- tain falls upon a serene and peaceful hope, the pupil passing out of the school-room into the Head Master's house, the ripe scholar in the university of human dis- cipline taking at last his good degree.

It is of such an one that I would fain speak this morning and so reassure your faith and my own in the face of a great and irreparable loss which within the past few months has come to this church. By virtue of his office as senior warden of this parish, Mr. Adam Norrie was known to almost every one in this congregation ; which, when he passed away last June, must have read with something of surprise of the great age to which he had attained. His presence was so fresh and vital, his step was so quick and elastic, the light that played in his eyes had so much sometimes that was almost boy- ish in its vivacity, that few persons would have sus- pected that when Mr. Norrie left us he was nearly ninety years of age. For myself, I lived to see in these physical tokens the triumph of that inward law of renewal which gives to a Christian old age a perennial freshness, and which tells of a peace of mind and a manly simplicity of faith that blossom out thus with the tokens of a life that is immortal. Mr. Norrie never grew old, and so when he passed away there were some of us to whom his departure seemed something to which we could not soon or easily become accustomed.

It belongs to us to-day to remhid ourselves, in view

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of that departure, of the positive witness which is to be found in such a life as his to the words of this thirty- seventh Psahn. It is due to him, to his place in this community, to his services to this church, that we should recall the story of his career, and give expression to our loving admiration of his personal character.

Mr. Norrie was of Scottish birth and descent. He was born in the year 1796, in Montrose, Scotland, and he never forgot it. He went in early life to Gottenburg, Sweden, and nine years later he came to New York. But he never grew cold to the land or the city of his birth, and with a punctual regularity which was his con- spicuous characteristic, made the poor of his native city the annual recipients of his thoughtful bounty. It shows in what estimate he was held by the people of his birth-place that he received at their hands the gift of the freedom of the city, a dignity reserved in its annals for men of no lower rank than Richard Cobden.

Of Mr. Norrie's career as a merchant in New York I would that 1 might speak at length. It was not one wholly without reverses, though it was one of substan- tial and permanent success. But the aspect of it which may chiefly interest us here is that which reveals to us the progress of a Christian merchant, shrewd, prudent, diligent in his daily business, but, better than all this, dominated, from first to last by lofty and resolute prin- ciples. Mr. Norrie came speedily to be known in New York after he had removed here, and won quickly an honorable and eminent position among New York mer- qhants. But from the beginning to the end it was sim-

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ply true of him that no one ever came to know him, without feeling that the man was a great deal more than his belongings, and that his personal character was one of exceptional purity and nobleness.

Such a man had great opportunities for usefulness, and he did not neglect them. Thirty years ago there was living in this city a clergyman whose name will never be forgotten in this community, and who had the rare gift of drawing to himself the sympathy and co- operation of earnest Christian laymen. Dr. Muhlenberg would have left his mark upon the Church, under any circumstances, but he would never have been able to build St. Luke's Hospital and found St. Jolmland if he had not been able also to dratr to his side such men as Robert B. Minturn, and John David Wolfe, and Adam Norrie. Mr. Norrie became the Treasurer of St. Luke's Hospital from the outset, and his absolute identification with its work continued from that hour until his death. Between himself and Dr. Muhlenberg there grew up a most tender and intimate friendship, and a friend to whose graceful pen I am indebted for many of the data of his life records how Dr. Muhlenberg was wont to speak of Mr. Norrie's rare qualities of head and heart, often summing up the whole with the words, "And such a gentleman I " It was one of those finer touches of which Dr. Muhlenberg alone was capable ; and it recalls that rare union of courtesy with dignity, of gentleness, and often playful kindness, with uprightness which make Christian manners the exponent of the Christian man.

Commemorative of Adam Norrie. 95

It was owing to Mr. Norrie's association with Dr. Muhlenberg in the work of St. Luke's Hospital that he came, later, to share with him the large responsibilities of the beautiful charity known as St. Johnland. An experiment which to many minds seemed wildly vision- ary was made, through the munificent co-operation of those personal friends of Dr. Muhlenberg to whom I have just referred, and their immediate kindred, a sub- stantial success. But when Dr. Muhlenberg was taken away from the head of St. Johnland, it is not easy to see how it could have continued its work if it had been deprived of the wise counsel and unwearied personal interest of Mr. Norrie. He was the calm adviser in all perplexities ; the gentle healer in all dissensions ; the sympathizing friend in all discouragements. When one of the sisters who had charge of the work at St. Johnland, was robbed in the cars of a sum of money, she received it back again a few days later, enclosed in an envelope addressed in a disguised hand, and containing a note with these words : " If he had known who you were when he picked your pocket, he would not have been guilty of so sacrilegious an act, and he now desires to make restitution." That was, I im- agine, the only anonymous letter that Mr. Norrie ever wrote !

But all the while that he lived among us he was making a permanent record, a record of good deeds, and of blameless and upright living. He was for more than fifty years a communicant of this church, and from first to fast adorned his Christian profession

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by a consistent and exemplary walk and conversation. He had a clear, simple, and masculine Christian faith, which, in the substance of it, was worthy of his Scottish training and ancestry. The fogs into which mere speculatists find their way, he knew nothing of. God was a present reality to him as a righteous Governor and a loving Father, and, in those sorrows which came to him, he knew what it was to lean, in a faith at once manly and childlike, on the arm of that Elder Brother, whose cross was to him a message, first, of forgiveness, and then of strength and of hope !

And so we remember him to-day, the warm heart, the kindly hand, the upright and honorable man of business, the trusted counsellor, and, best of all, the loyal Christian disciple. This community will miss him at many a Board and in the wise conduct of many a corporation with which he was identified. His church will miss him from his post of senior warden, in which he was the worthy successor of Wolfe, and Aymar, Bar- clay, and Bradish, and others who have passed on to their reward. The home and kindred to whom he was so much will miss him most of all. But to us and to them it belongs to remember that nothing that is really es- sential in such a man has perished. The peaceful departure of such a presence is not death but advance- ment. We know that it survives under conditions of enlarged and ennobled activity. And meantime its in- fluence endures, a living and helpful power, and will endure. How many men there were whom Mr. Norrie saw as they came — and went. What fortunes and

Commemorative of Adam Norrie. 97

what reputations were made and lost during his long life in this community. It does not need to be very old to recall some of them — their brilliant promise, their swift rise, and seemingly splendid successes, and then the end — tragic sometimes, but always significant and inevitable. Over against such histories there stands such a life as his whom we recall to-day. What a message in it for young men in New York, what a messasre in it for all of us who are tempted to mistake short-lived success for enduring growth, and sudden prosperity for the priceless treasure of an unstained personal charac- ter ! In the presence of such a character we learn what it is that lasts, and remembering in what faith and prayer it was nurtured we see how heaven's law, that runs through earth and air and sky, is one and is eternal. The life that lasts is the life that has roots. The character that lives and grows is a character im- bedded in righteousness. Great fortunes may crumble into ruins. Human cleverness may be beaten with its own weapons. The triumphs of to-day may herald the dishonor of to-morrow. But God is from everlasting to everlasting. His righteousness endures, and the man who has planted himself on Him shall not be moved. The winds may blow, but he can calmly face them. The floods may arise, but he can defy the floods. For his feet are planted upon the Rock, and that Rock is the Rock of Ages. Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for ihe end, nay the beginning and the middle and the end alike with him, are peace.

INTRODUCTORY TO A PLEA FOR THE AMERICAN SUNDAY.

The problem of higher civilization in the United States is, and seems likely more and more to become, a problem of assimilation. Whatever may have been the purpose of the founders of the republic, and however large may have been the dream of empire which they cherished, it is doubtful if they ever anticipated the assemblage on these shores of a multitude so heterogeneous as that which to-day throngs them. They believed that they were escaping from certain forms of oppression, indeed, but not in order to part company with that whole conception of social order, of religious faith, of domestic obligation for which the worship and habits of their forefathers so largely stood. If anything is plain in their history and conduct it is that they meant to lay the foundations of the State in reverence and upward looking trust, and, as conserving these things, in a social order which conserved sacred days and places and a due recogni- tion of their enduring relation to belief and conduct.

It has, indeed, been attempted to show that even in the beginning of the life of the republic this was only partially true; that as, in fact, as a recent writer has striven to make out, the term Anglo-Saxon applies only in a very limited and partial sense to those whose were the first steps in the direction of a more completely organized State on this con- tinent, so there was from the beginning a great variety of traditions as to those institutions, such, for instance, as the observance of the Lord's-day, concerning which the tradi- tion is commonly supposed to have been so uniform and consistent.

Undoubtedly there is something in such a claim, but far less than those who make it would have us believe. There

Introduction. 99

were indeed Celts as well as Saxons, Frenchmen and Irish- men as well as Englishmen and Hollanders among those who were concerned with the beginnings in the English colonies. But that last jjhrase describes the whole situation in a way with which only a disingenuous logic can dis- semble. Those who colonized these shores, — those whose energy and daring and God-fearing loyalty to their own consciences brought here the men and the manners that give to this New World for many a long day its best repute, — were not divided nor in doubt as to what they wanted to do, for instance, with the Lord's-day or the ten commandments.

That the United States is being flooded, to-day, with multitudes of people who, from one cause or another have in other lands learned to be profoundly indifferent to either, can- not for one moment be doubted. That such persons are most impatient of those restraints which prevent them from dese- crating the day of all others most sacred to Christendom as the Lord's-day, cannot be seriously disputed. It was in the interest of its defence that the sermon here following, on the American Sunday, was preached. It is an interesting and suggestive commentary upon its deliver}^ that, as the preacher was subsequently informed (he did not himself see the article quoted), the leading journal of perhaps the most numerous foreign element in Xew York gave notice to the preacher and his co-religionists, of the intention of those for whom it professed to speak to do with the American Sunday ''precisely what they pleased." Subsequent events would seem to indicate that that threat was well on the way towards its fulfilment j and the gradual secularizing of the day once so largely consecrated to rest and worship is not the least grave among our higher social problems.

The sermon that follows was preached in Grace Church, New York, on Sunday afternoon, May 19, 1878, before the New York Sabbath Society.

VII.

A PLEA FOR THE AMERICAN SUNDAY.

He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. — Romans xiv. 6.

I TAKE these words, as at any rate a point of departure, because they are commonly accounted the strongest argument from the Book which we honor against the day which equally we honor. It will clear the air if we can succeed in understanding what they mean and how much they prove.

We are usually referred to them as conclusively dis- posing of Sunday. It is urged that their plain meaning is that the regarder and the disregarder of any partic- ular day may equally be influenced by a devout and reverent motive. And if this be true, then it is further urged that any one who disregards our holy day, or Sunday, may be as truly religious as he who observes it. Nay more, it is claimed that the observance of any particular day as especially sacred or holy is a usage which Saint Paul disesteems, and is founded upon a principle which he disowns.

To see whether this is so, we shall do well to look at the circumstances under which these words of the

A Plea for the American Sunday. 101

Apostle were written. He is addressing, you will remember, those converts from among the Jews who had become Christian disciples, ^'ow what was the difficulty in the minds of these ? It was, briefly, that they had been educated to observe the Jewish Sabbath, or the seventh day of the week, as sacred, while the Christian converts in Rome, who were converts, not from Judaism but from Paganism, had been educated to follow the usage which grew up from the time of the Resurrection, of observing, not the seventh day, or the Jewish Sabbath, but the first day of the week, the Christian " Lord's-day," or Sunday. It was natural that this difference in a religious usage of such a nature should have provoked controversy and begotten hard feeling. The Jew has never easily let go his religious traditions, and the Gentile converts were even less inclined to yield their Christian customs to the dicta- tion of a despised race.

What now has the Apostle to say upon this issue ? Just precisely the large-minded and impartial words which we might have expected of him. As between the seventh day and the first day, he declares, there is, as a matter of principle, nothing to choose. If one man regarded Saturday, and disregarded Sunday it mattered not. And, equally, it mattered not if another dis- esteemed Saturday and esteemed Sunday. No man was to force his conscience. " Let every man be fully per- suaded in his own mind." As a matter of fact he him- self had evidently surrendered, already, his old Jewish usage, and had elected to keep the first day. And,

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equally as a matter of fact, the Jewish converts to Christianity, sooner or later, universally followed his example. There is no reason to doubt that by the end of the first century the observance of the seventh day as a holy day by the Christian Church had virtu- ally ceased. But meantime it was the unequivocal position of the Apostle that those who had scruples as to that change must not be forced to violate them, but must rather be left to outgrow them.

So much^for those circumstances which furnish to us the clue to the words of the text. How much authority is to be found in them, thus rationally inter- preted, for the abolition of the Lord's-day ? Not a shadow. In the words immediately preceding the text Saint Paul declares, " One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day." (There is no " alike," in the Greek, the word having been arbitrarily inserted by the translators.) In this verse the word translated " esteemeth," means rather " sepa- rates," or " distinguishes ; " and the idea is, " one man hallows one day, another hallows all days." " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Plainly here the only question is between persons disposed to hallow different days, or, in some cases, even all days. But it is not easy to see how it furnishes any authority for secularizing all days. If the Apostle had said, " One man disesteemeth one day, another man disesteemeth all days," then there would have been some warrant for inferring from the following words, " let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind," some authority

A Plea for the American Sunday. 103

for abolishing Sunday. But anybody who looks into the New Testament to find there any faintest intimation that Saint Paul regarded it as a matter of indifference whether one should keep any holy day at all, will look in vain. Here, as elsewhere, he gives the Jew a right to cling to his ancient usage mitil he should outgrow it for the Christian usage, and, meantime, he himself commends that Christian usage by the way in which he inculcated and practised it among the gentiles.

But more than this Saint Paul could not have done, even had he been minded to. The consecration of one dav in seven to uses other and more sacred than those of the rest is ordained by a law which lies a long way behind either the religion of Christ or the religion of Moses. That law is imbedded in the very constitution, physical, mental, and moral, of human nature, and as human nature has awakened to its consciousness and its significance, just in that proportion has it ennobled and advanced itself. The first nations in the family of nations to-day are those who, whether early and quickly, or slowly and late, have learned to hallow one day and keep it sacred ; and the loftiest achievements in arms, in literature, in science, in philanthropy, in missionary enterprise, and in social advancement, be- long to that Anglo-Saxon people whose observance of Sunday is to-day the wonder and the admiration of every intelligent traveller.

We who are here this afternoon received that day from those Anglo-Saxon ancestors. How they in turn received it from those first missionaries who

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found their way to Britain by way of France from Asia Minor, I shall not tarry now to remind you. I am aiming at another point, and that I pray you to observe.

This is New York, — so-called because its early inhab- itants came, some of them, from Old York. Yonder is New England, whose early settlers found their way to its rock-bound coasts from Old England. To the south of us is Pennsylvania, or the English Quaker Penn's Woods ; and Marj^-land, or the land of Queen Mary ; and Virginia, or the land of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth ; and the Carolinas, or the land of King Charles ; and Georgia, or the land of King George. Were these names given to the original States of this Union by accident ? Who gave them, and what do they mean ? They were given by the men who first settled those States, and they were meant to proclaim where those men had come from and what they were. They were not Frenchmen, nor Dutchmen, nor Italians, nor Swedes, nor Russians. They were Anglo-Saxons. I do not for- get that you can find plenty of Dutch names in New York, and plenty of French names in South Carolina. I do not forget that, from the beginning, these shores have hospitably welcomed people of every race and language and religion. But the fact remains that, from that beginning, these colonies and States have been the territory and the homes of an Anglo-Saxon people. Its language is the English language. Its laws are Anglo-Saxon laws, tracing back their lineage if you choose to Roman law, but coming to you and me to-

A Plea for the American Sunday. 105

day not because of their Roman roots but because of their English roots. And, finally, its religion is an Anglo-Saxon religion, — Syrian first, if you prefer to call it so, and then it may have been French, in so far as it found its way from that East which was the liome of the Master, to English shores across French territory, but English, so far as you and 1 are concerned, in this, that, whether Puritans or Prelatists to-day, we received it from English forefathers who brought it with them to these shores.

Now, then, one conspicuous feature of that Christian faith and worship which you and I have received from our ancestors is the reverent observance of the Lord's- day. So deeply imbedded is that reverence that it has become a part of the common law of the land and a contract made on Sunday and a deed of sale given on that day are equally invalid. ^ By a common consent, which (so far as the memory of civilized man upon this continent can testify) knows nothing to the con- trary, Sunday is a hallowed day, marked off from unhal- lowed worldly and common usages, if not by universal custom, at least by common and undisputed tradition.

But of late we have been hearing a new gospel upon this subject. Within the last fifty years, and especially within the last twenty, this country has received an enormous immigration, principally of Irishmen, Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Italians, French, and Chinese, not to mention scores of other nations who are now repre-

1 See the case of Lindmiiller vs. The People, 33 Barbour's Reports, p. 458.

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sented among our cities in lesser numbers. Let me speak of every one of them with heartiest respect. It is not easy to estimate the indebtedness of a land like ours to these strangers, of various speech and divers faith. If Irishmen have built our cities, Germans have taught us how to live in them with thrift and frugality. If sunny Italy has sent us the torturing peripatetic whose vagrant organ has been the enemy of repose and the terror of the invalid, it has sent us also a vast num- ber of hard-working and orderly citizens. And who have so successfully conquered our northern and west- ern wildernesses as our Swedish and Norwegian immi- grants ? — even as the despised Chinaman has built the railways over which they have travelled to reach those wildernesses. In a word, there is no foreign element which Americans have not welcomed with cordial greet- ing and equal protection.

We are approaching a point, however, where there seems to be growing among us a demand for more tlian this. We are told that some of our national customs are puritanical and illiberal, and we are bidden, in some quarters at least, to surrender them. It has happened once, if no more, in our community, that a congregation of Christian worshippers conducting its religious services on the Lord's-day has found itself all but powerless to protect the sanctity and decency of these services from being invaded by the noisy revelry of a beer-garden and concert saloon, in which tlie click of beer glasses and the coarse shouts of the guests mingled with the coarser melodies of the opera bouffe. Nay more, it has hap-

A Plea for the American Sunday. 107

pened more than once, when some word of remonstrance has been raised against this steady encroachment upon our national customs arid our municipal laws, that that word of remonstrance has been met with a louder and angrier word, which has bidden us to understand that the people will have their rights, and that one of their rights is, on Sunday at any rate, to do pretty much as they please.

This smouldering sentiment among us would undoubt- edly have met with a more prompt and emphatic rebuke if it had not often received tacit, if not open encourage- ment from an opposite social extreme. We have those among us who, having abundant leisure all the week to do nothing, think that they cannot better employ Sun- day than by making it the day for their most ostenta- tious pleasure-seeking. Accustomed to borrow the fashions of their raiment and the seasoning of their viands as well as such dubious literature as they are capable of mastering from a land in which Sunday is conspicuously disesteemed and dishonored as a day of Christian worship, they have lately undertaken to bor- row also its Sunday customs. And thus that great intermediate class, the enormous majority in numbers, in essential stability of character, in moral worth among us, finds itself between two opposite forces equally and openly hostile to our American Sunday.

I cannot greatly admire the spirit in which, too often, they have met them. Beginning at first with austere conceptions of the character and authority of Sunday, they have ended, not uncommonly, in surrendering any

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claim for its sacredness whatever. It was one of the hundred good resolutions of Jonathan Edwards, " never to utter anything that is sportive or matter of laughter on the Lord's-day ; " and because we have come to the con- clusion that the old Puritan strictness in such matters was extravagant, we have, in many instances, abandoned it for an habitual levity. Nay more, when one is met and challenged by that somewhat imperious demand that our foreign-born brethren shall have liberty to take our American Lord's-day and convert it into a Berlinese or Parisian Sunday, it is pitiful, sometimes, to see the weak-kneed acquiescence with which such propositions are met. I A^enture to submit that it is time that we took our bearings a little more clearly in this matter. It is surely a pertinent inquiry, whose country is this, and what language does it speak, and by what sacred traditions is it hallowed ? Who first sought it out, and settled it, — subduing its wildernesses and founding its cities, and opening its sea-ports ? From whence got it its law and faith, and its Christian civilization? Who have hallowed its hills and its valleys by their blood, shed once and yet again in its defence ? Call it fanati- cism, call it intolerance, call it political infatuation, what you will, I venture to declare that it is high time that our brethren of other lands, and otlier races, and other religions, or no religion at all, understood clearly and distinctly that while we welcome them to assimila- tion to our national life, America is for Americans, and that while we will welcome every foreigner, Christian or Jew, Pagan or Positivist, to our shores, they are our

A Plea for the American Sunday/. 109

shores, not his, and are to be ruled by our traditions, not those of other people. It is, in fact, as utter an imperti- nence for the German or the Frenchman, for the Jew or the Mohammedan to come here demanding that we shall waive the customs and repeal the laws that hallow our Lord's-day, as that we shall surrender our language for the dialect of the Black Forest, or our marriage rela- tions for the domestic usages of the Sultan. No one comes here in ignorance of American usage or tradition on these points. It is, I repeat, a solemn impertinence when any foreigner demands that we shall surrender those usages because they do not happen to have been his. And it does not become less of an impertinence because, in any particular community, — in New York for instance, — the numerical majority may happen to be in favor of radical changes in, or even the utter abolition of, our Sunday laws. A half a dozen ship- loads of people landed at New Bedford, on the coast of Massachusetts, might convert that decent and self- respecting and monogamic community in twentj^-four hours into a city in which the majority of the people were in favor of the religion of Joe Smith and the domestic usages of Mormonism. But I have yet to learn that that would be a valid reason for repealing the laws of Massachusetts so far as they applied to the town of New Bedford, in regard to the matter of polygamy. There is something besides the accidental presence of mere numbers to be reckoned in estimating the moral sentiment and intelligent determination of the com- munity ; and it is the majority, not of the idle, and

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vicious, and thriftless, of the ignorant, of aliens and of agitators, but the majority of the upright and industri- ous, the frugal and temperate, the thoughtful and the self-respecting, whose voice should, on this point, be potential. For one, I have no apprehension as to its verdict, if only it shall insist upon being heard.

But that is the duty of the hour. It is one of the most remarkable facts of our time that those older nations from which some of us propose to borrow our habit of disregard for the Lord's-day, are striving at this very moment with most impressive earnestness to restore the earlier sacredness of that day. In Germany, in Switzerland, and in France, there are already organiza- tions of serious and thoughtful men who are seeking to banish the Continental Sunday. They have seen, on the one hand, as any one may see in France to-day, that the removal of the sacred sanctions, which with us, hold the first day of the week in a kind of chaste re- serve, have eventuated not merely in degrading it to the level of a vulgar holiday, but also of degrading and enslaving him for whom its privileges were, most of all, designed, — the wearied, over-worked and poorly paid, laboring man. They have seen that in such a capital as Paris, it has already come to pass that the working-man's Sunday is often as toilsome a day as any other ; and that since the law no longer guards the day from labor, the capitalist and contractor no longer spare nor regard the laborer. He is a person out of whom the most is to be got, and if he can work six days lie may as well work the seventh also, so long as there is

A Plea for the Americmi Sunday. Ill

nothing to forbid it. Such a condition of things may not directly threaten those of us who are protected by wealth from the necessities of daily labor, but, if ours is this more favored condition, all the more do we owe it to our brother man who is less favored, to see to it that he shall have every sanction with which the law can furnish him to guard his day of rest from being perverted and revolutionized into a day of toil. And if he himself does not see that the more that we assimi- late Sunday to other days by the amusements, the occu- pations, the teaching and reading and thinking with which we fill it, the greater is the danger that ultimately we shall lose it altogether, the more earnestly are we bound to strive to disseminate those sounder ideas which shall set this first day of the week, and its devout ob- servance before our fellow men and women of the labor- ing classes in its true light, and so help and teach them how, not to lose, but to keep it.

And if it is asked how best we can disseminate that sounder and more conservative sentiment in regard to this day, I answer first of all, by our example. There is nothing in all the world so potent or so contagious as that. Any one of us who has been much in other lands must recognize its peculiar influence in this particular matter of Sunday. I have heard of a clergy- man as strolling into a bric-a-brac shop in Briissels, and entering into negotiations for something that had caught his eye in the shop-window, without ever realiz- ing, till he took out his purse to pay for it, that he was .chaffering with a tradesman for a bit of old carvinar

112 Waymarks,

on Sunday morning. The whole atmosphere of a con- tinental city is usually so full, on the Lord's-day, of the sounds and symbols of traffic, that one has to re- call himself to the consciousness of Sunday, oftentimes, by a positive and conscious effort of the will. And it is not always greatly otherwise even at home. There is in om' air a relaxed sentunent in regard to the observ- ance of this day, and we are constantly challenged to answer whether we regard the minute prohibitions of the Fourth Commandment, and of the old Jewish law, as binding upon Christians in this year of grace, 1878. Let us not be afraid to admit that . our reverence for this day stands upon different, and as I conceive, upon higher ground. The institution of the Jewish Sabbath, with its microscopic prohibitions, was undoubtedly part of that educative system appropriate to a race in a state of almost barbaric bondage, which has long ago passed away. And we Christians no longer hold to that Mosaic system, not so much because it has been for- mally repealed as because it has been spiritually out- grown. We are no longer under its law, but under the Master's law of love. But, all the same, love will provide a day in which the soul's highest aspirations shall have a chance to find expression, and the truest and most unselfish love will most jealously and sacredly guard that day for others. And so, though a certain liberty in things indifferent might, perhaps, make no great difference, if you and I were to take it, we will be careful how and when we take it, not merely for our own sakes, but equally and always for our brother's

A Plea for the American Sunday, 113

sake. Instead of driving to church on Sundays we shall be willing to walk, and so to let men-servants and cattle rest, as well as ourselves. Instead of giving din- ner-parties on Sunday, we shall try to let the cook be- low stairs realize that it is Sunday, as well as the master above stairs. And by the retirement that we cultivate, and the books and the papers that are seen in our own hands, and placed in the hands of our guests or our children, we shall strive to indicate that there is a difference between Sunday and other days, instead of striving rather to obliterate that difference. No one who can recall the Sunday usages of the American people twenty years ago, and compare them with those of to-day, will be insensible to the change which has everywhere taken place. Undoubtedly that change is largely traceable to the excitements of war-times, which so blurred the week during their feverish continuance that Sundays and week-days became equally secular. But, whatever the cause, that the moral tone of the community has been elevated and improved as this earlier reverence for Sunday has decayed, there is no one among us, I think, who will care to affirm. In losing our old-fashioned Sundays, we seem to have lost something else and more besides.

And hence it is that there is needed the influence of our personal example to honor and conserve the sanctity of the Lord's-day. Nor only that. We want an ear- nest and united endeavor for the wider dissemination of a sound teaching and literature upon this Sunday ques- tion. If the drift of the social customs and average

8

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thinking of other lands is so largely in a direction con- trary to that which we have been taught to account as wliolesome, all the more must we strive to stem that drift with a wiser and a healthier, and a more intelligent sentiment. There exists in this city a committee of gentlemen, who have, for some years, given themselves most unselfishly to this work. I cannot too highly commend the spirit and temper with which they have done so. Theirs has not been a popular undertaking. Nothing is that seems to interfere with the liberty of the individual in things comparatively innocent. And so this committee has sometimes been sneered at, and sometimes denounced. All honor to them for the manly courage, the dignified reserve, and the unswerving firm- ness with which they have persevered in their work ! Let them not feel that in doing it they are standing quite alone. They have already had the generous co- operation and sympathy of some of the most earnest Christian men and women in this community. Give them a continuance of that sympathy, and let their treasury be enriched by the expression of your sub- stantial support ! They are striving for the preserva- tion of our American Sunday. God help this land and this people, if ever the time shall come when their labors shall prove to have been in vain !

For when that time shall come it will be because the sentiment of religion, and the aspiration of an upward- reaching faith will have perished among us. We may declaim as we please in behalf of a philosophy which makes all days holy to the universal worship of hu-

A Pita for the American Sunday. 115

manity by making no day holy to the worship of a per- sonal God ; but the decay of stated times and seasons for the offering of that worship presages a day when neither God nor man, neither life nor property, neither human weakness nor human needs, have any rights nor any scantiest respect. To learn that fact we need go back no farther than the history of France in 1788. Ought it not to be enough that God has taught the world so stern and tragic a lesson on this subject and taught us that lesson so lately ?

For, after all, the question is not so much one of the safety and well-being of life and property as of the higher well-being of the personal soul. A great states- man is reported to have said to one who sought of him an interview concerning secular matters on the Lord's- day, " I MUST keep one day in which to realize what lam, a7id where I am going I^"* Ay, "where I am going." Does that question ever occur to us ? We are passing with steady tread and never-pausing foot-steps to the threshold of that low-bowed portal through which we must, the youngest of us, soon bend our heads to pass, and so be lost from the sight of our earthly friends forever. As we shall emerge beyond it, it is our hope and expectation to emerge into the companionship of a Being who has made us, and of His Son who has re- deemed us. Have we ever paused to ask ourselves how far we have attuned our lives, our thoughts, our affec- tions, to that loftier fellowship that is to be ? Oh, to be in that unseen home that lies beyond the heavenly horizons, — to seethe form of Him who walks amid

116 Waymarks.

the golden candlesticks, and yet to be a stranger to its King, and an alien from its spirit and its speech, this, it seems to me, would be the most dismal of incongrui- ties, and the dreariest of fates !

And therefore thank God for Sunday, and for all that, in this our free America, it stands for ! May He make us grateful more and more for this inheri- tance, and may He give us courage and resolution to guard it sacredly and to cherish it tenderly, and so hand it on and down, unchanged and unimpaired, to our children and our children's children !

CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION.

The traveller who goes up and down, whether in New Eng- land or elsewhere in the older States of the republic, will remark a characteristic which in small as well as large com- munities is widely apparent. The cities and villages are, in many of their more conspicuous features, being rebuilded; and this rebuilding is especially noteworthy, in contrast to that which one sees in the old world, for its departure from earlier types. In parts of Cologne and Munich, indeed, and in some other European cities, one may see the appearance not only of modern structures, but of structures of modern rather than antique design. But usually, whether in domes- tic, civic, or ecclesiastical architecture, the local tradition is adhered to, and the new is new only in its material and not in its idea. Indeed this may be seen frequently in those cases where communities from the old world have settled in considerable numbers in our own land. The church or the inn looks often like a veritable transplantation from beyond seas.

The American usage, however, is in marked contrast to this. Partly, it is true, this is to be explained by the poverty, meagreness, and absence of all architectural character in our earlier structures. But far more is it to be explained by that advance in popular ideas and ideals which has largely broken with our immediate past and has come under the influence of other and most dissimilar impressions.

In the discourse which follows this is indicated as an il- lustration of that other transformation which has come to pass in the intellectual and religious life of New England,

118 Waymarks,

and it might have been shown, had' the occasion called for it, in other parts of the country. No candid observer can be insensible to the fact. The more urgent question with many earnest and devout minds is and will be, for some time to come, as to its tendency. That there are dangers in that tendency no one will care to deny. The simplicity, the austerity, the rigidity, of which the New England meeting- house was a symbol, stood, unquestionably, for certain great ideas, the conservation of which is essential to the integrity, and indeed to the very existence, of a Church or a nation. That with the growing complexity, luxury, and changeful- ness of our modern life, such ideas are seriously threatened, no one who knows some prevalent notes in social, commer- cial, and political life will care to deny. And so some have made haste to say, ^'Yes, we are going through a process of reconstruction, but it will cost us more than we shall gain. Life is richer, theology is more tolerant, worship is more beautiful, art is more reverenced, but God is not in it all, or, if He is, some of His most distinctive attributes are becoming sadly obscured."

It is because I believe that that Scriptural and Apostolic faith and order in which was set apart the Church at whose consecration the sermon here following was preached, has su- premely a message of hope and of re-assurance to such fears, that I have included it in this volume. A faith and order which shall at once discriminate between the permanent and the variable, letting go the latter when need shall be, and steadfastly holding fast to the former, — which shall not cling so tenaciously to its past as to misread the needs of the present and the opportunities of the future, — this is the faith and order, at once conservative and reconstructive, which can best serve the Church, the State, the individual.

The sermon which follows was preached at the consecra- tion, June 19, 1888, of the new edifice erected for Trinity Church, Lenox, Mass., to replace that erected a. d. 1816.

VIII.

THE RECONSTRUCTIVE POWER OF CHRISTIANITY.

Then came the zvord of the Lord by Haggai the iwophet^ saying^ Is it a time for you, 0 ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses and this house lie waste ?

Now therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts ; consider your icays. ... Go up . . . and build the house; and I icill take pleasure in it and . . . will be glorified, saith the Lord. . . .

And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, . . . and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jose- dech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people ; and they came and did work in the House of the Lord of Hosts, their God. — Haggai, i. 3-5, 8, 14.

So it was of old, and so it is to-day. I shall speak to you this morning of the reconstructive power of revealed religion, and its relation to this occasion.

And at the outset it may be well that I should remind you of that double process which from the beginning of history has been going on in human society.

When we trace that history to its vanishing-point we find that it disappears where there is no longer any trace of law and order and organized life. There was a time, doubtless, though there are only the most meagre records

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of it, when people roamed about without rule, without homes, without plan or purpose. The beginnings of his- tory are where that condition of things began to cease. There was a patriarch, a chieftain, a law-giver, who con- ceived the idea of a State ; who saw the might and the beauty of order, to whom was revealed the power and the peace of government. And such a man, in some far-off age, began to turn his vision into fact, — to rule, to set in array, to make symmetrical, in one word, to build society. No matter who he was, — Moses, Alexander, Caesar, Peter the Great, William the Silent, Washington, — this is the large idea that shines through all that he did and was. Civilization, in a word, is constructive, and that is the supreme distinction between it and bar- barism. A great State, like a great family, has its periods of rise, of growth, of achievement, and of de- cline. But, in the one case as in the other, you may trace these periods by what they constructed. The domestic architecture of England or Italy is a history of great households that built themselves, their ambitions, their idiosyncrasies, their triumphs, into the homes in which they lived.

And so of States and of the institutions which they create, or perpetuate. In these you may read the march of ideas, the evolution, noble or ignoble, of national ten- dencies,— the expression, in one word, of national char- acter. Doric simplicity, — Corinthian luxury ; we take a column from a temple of the one era, or the other, and it tells the whole story.

And this fact, which we may trace anywhere that men

The Reconstructive Power of Christianity, 121

have lived and wrought and fought, we may trace, pre- eminently, in that story of the Hebrew people from whose pages I take the text. In the beginning of its national and religious life there is no temple, no taber- nacle, no tent, — nothing but an Arab sheik with a vision of God, to whom there comes one day the mes- sage " Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceed- ing great reward," and " I will make of thee a great nation, and thine offspring shall be as the sand upon the sea shore."

And then there come the successive steps : the vision at Peniel, as we have read it this morning, with the gleaming ladder reaching from earth to heaven and angels going to and fro upon it ; the tabernacle in the wilderness ; the visible Shechinah ; the Ark of the Cove- nant ; the Temple of Solomon ; and, rising side by side with these, a tribe, a group of tribes, a leadership of patriarchs, a rulership of priests, a government of judges, a sovereignty of kings. Social progress, structural pro- gress ; these are the two things that move forward hand in hand, and the story of the one is forever repeated to us in the characteristics of the other. Besides what Herodotus tells us, how little we know of Egypt ! But we go there, and along the banks of the Nile, in those tombs and palaces which the sands of ages have at once buried and preserved to us, we read the least and home- liest details of a nation's religion, of a nation's daily life.

Such considerations prepare us for a line of reflection which, 1 hope you will agree with me, is not inappropri-

122 Waymarks.

ate to this place and this occasion. We who are Ameri- cans may not disassociate ourselves from our remoter past, — that past which runs back into distant centuries and distant lands. But neither may we forget that we have a distinct and distinctively national life and national history. And in the light of that history, the act for which we are gathered here to-day becomes, I venture to submit, profoundly impressive.

The ancestors of most of those to whom I speak this morning came to these shores for a definite reason and with a tolerably distinct purpose. Oat of an age of luxury, of wide-spread corruption, of ecclesiastical in- tolerance, they came forth to found in a new world, a new commonwealth for God. They were, as a rule, without wealth, without social prestige, without force of arms or numbers. They had certain profound convic- tions and an intense though narrow piety. The ideas of toleration, of religious liberty, of true catholicity of temper which some of us fondly impute to them, they neither held nor dreamed of, and such ideas were as much in advance of their time as the developments of modern science.

But they had a profound conviction of God, and of the binding obligations of duty. And these began to find expression just so soon as they began to build. They appear in their laws, harsh enough doubtless in many particulars, such as those relating to the observance of Sunday, and the convenient jest of our modern license, but shot through and through with the golden thread of a reverence for what they understood to be divine sane-

The Reconstructive Power of Christianity. 1*23

tions. They appear no less in their structures, wherein, whatever was the meagreness and bareness of their homes, — ihade so by their struggles and their poverty, — their sanctuaries were always somewhat less mean. The New England meeting-house, standing usually, as with you, upon some commanding hill, dominated the community in more ways than one. Thither the tribes were wont appropriately, CA'en as the Psalmist sings, " to go up ; " and bare and austere as they were, there was always something of sober dignity, a touch of richness and costliness, not usually to be found elsewhere. Much of the first mahogany that came to our part of the world went into the desks and handrails of New England pul- pits, and the velvet hangings and fringes were, to many a youthful imagination, the only interpretation that it knew of the fringes and draperies of the Tabernacle and the Temple. Our fathers had not much of worldly sub- stance to give, but they gave to God of their best.

Well, the old era has come and gone. On what a new world the American of to-day looks out, when he contrasts its aspect with the past I I have seen a statement by Mr. Gladstone that the increase of the world's wealth during the last fifty years is greater than the sum of all the accumulated and transmitted wealth at the beginning of the Christian era. And in no nation on earth has this increase been so rapid and so gigantic as in our own. It is needless to say that such a fact as this has revolutionized our national life. We have come, in art, in architecture, in manners, as a little while ago in the State, to the era of reconstruction. Our cities,

124 Way marks.

builded once, are being rebuilded. On every hand the old is giving place to the new. The narrow proportions, the meagre space, the simple decorations are all disap- pearing before a movement of renewal which pulls down that it may build again, larger, statelier, costlier than our fathers ever dreamed of. Culture enlarges itself, the tasks widen their horizon, and all that ministers to these grows ampler, richer, and more expensive.

I do not know that there is anything greatly to fault in this. A certain harmony between powers and envi- ronment is w^hat we see in nature, and there is so much of really helpful education in the exercise of the con- structive powers that we may not deny them exercise.

But at this point there arises the question " What is their worthiest exercise?" Given wealth, knowledge, enlarged tastes, the genius of the designer, the trained skill of the builder, art, and opportunity, how may these be best employed ? To be sure, even in a great ware- house there is a chance for such constructive skill as shall express solidity, adaptability, a certain dignified refinement, as though the building had said, " Yes, I am in trade, but my tastes are not at all mercenary, my aims are not merely utilitarian." A steamship may be so designed as to look like a hideous hulk, and again, it may be so drawn and modelled a? to seem a very race- horse of the sea. A house may be planned with every convenience, and so constructed as to hold within its walls every needed facility of eating, idling, and sleeping, and yet be an uncouth and tasteless thing that disfigures the landscape and offends every eye that sees it, We

The Reconstructive Power of Christianity, 125

have learned all this very thoroughly. Our domestic architecture in America is, whatever its frequent faults, and they are obvious enough, that which foreign critics most praise.

But there our distinction ceases. Our institutional architecture shows tokens, here and there, of marked improvement, and there are halls of science and learn- ing in many places worthy of hearty admiration. But we have not, even here, done as yet our worthiest work, and when we come to those ideas which should have the noblest housing of all, the deficiency is at once the most general and the most conspicuous. For the noblest idea of all, I take it, is the Divine Idea, — that your life and mine is related to a Being above us from whom that life is derived ; that this Being is at once Creator and Father ; that He has revealed Himself in the person and work of His Son Jesus Christ ; that He quickens man by His Holy Spirit ; and that to Him who unites in Himself these powers and person- alities, we owe our love and service, and our homage. This, as I understand it, is Religion, — the religion whose disciples we are and by whose inspirations man is to be redeemed and transformed. This, if I understand aright, is the Force of all other Forces, pre-eminent and supreme, with the mightiest lifting power that has ever entered the world. We turn the pages of history, and see them scarred by warfare, treachery, and sin. We see the horrible tread and trend of evil, cursing, blackening, and destroying. And over against this evil we see but one force strong

126 Waymarks.

enough to face it, to subdue it, to banish it. I speak of the pages of history ; there is a single book which, dismissing all others, is here enough for our purpose. Take Mr. Lecky's History of Civilization, and read the story of Roman decadence and Christian reconstruction. Make every allowance that you please for the favoring force of circumstances, and yet here was a power, so new, so resistless, so triumphant, that not to own its transcendent character is to trifle with facts and to disparage our own intelligence.

At any rate, we who are here are in no doubt what

*

that power Tj^as, nor whence it was ! We are in no doubt that to it we owe all that is best in our own lives, and brightest in the world's future. And as little are we in doubt, I venture to affirm, whatever may be the not always reverent persiflage of our lighter moments, that this power has not lost its capacity to lift men out of their meaner selves and to transform and ennoble the race. The earlier formulas in which especially our American forefathers were, many of them, wont to state their beliefs and transmit their sacred traditions are undoubtedly largely disesteemed if not absolutely disowned. The theology that was taught by men who lived among tliese hills a hundred years ago is in many features of it an extinct species, whose peculiarities most people scan curiously, but disown unreservedly. To many amiable and devout minds there is in this fact, doubtless, much that is disquieting and alarming, and as a consequence of it, there is unquestionably a good deal of rash and irreverent and unsettling speech and

The Reconstructive Power of Christianity, 127

teaching. It is the law of reactions that it should be so. You cannot reconstruct without pulling down something, and rashness is as common in dealing with ancient theology as it is with ancient architecture. It requires almost more genius to restore a cathedral wisely than to build it. But that on the whole this process of theological reconstruction is going on among us wisely, — that religion is vindicating its possession of that capacity for reconstruction of which I spoke at the outset, — of this I think no candid observer of the situation can be in any honest doubt. The awakening among us of what may be called the historic instinct in matters of religious form and worship, the conception of the Church as a Divine institution and not a human society, the impatience of those needless and harmful divisions in Christendom which are the fruit of self-will and exaggerated individualism, the longing to recover out of the past whatever is true and beautiful and good, and to prize and venerate it for its associations as well as for itself; the disposition to own frankly that ages which we have been wont to despise bore fruit for God and for humanity, and that we can afford to own and honor sainthood and service without embracing the errors with which they were disfigured, — all these signs are tokens of that reconstructive process in religion which is not indeed without its perils, but which God is ordering and overruling, I verily believe, for His own greater glory. When they built the beautiful All Saints' Church in Worcester not long ago, my Right Reverend brother, your Bishop, will remember that

128 Waymarhs.

they wrought into the walls a stone which they had brought from Worcester Cathedral, and in the cloister of Trinity Church in our Boston (is it effrontery for a New Yorker to speak so of that fair and stately capital of your commonwealth in which I think all Americans have a genuine pride ?) there are, unless I am mistaken, stones which were once inwrought with the fabric of the old parish church in the English Boston. Such incidents are symbolic and prophetic. How some of the Puritan fathers hated the Prayer-book ! How mul- titudes of their children and their children's children love it ! How abhorrent to elder New England was what we mean by the Christian year, — Christmas-tide and Passion-tide, and Easter-tide, and the rest ! And to-day these holy feasts and fasts are cherished in sanc- tuaries and homes all over this commonwealth where the beauty and blessedness of the Church idea has come, and has come to stay. This is what I mean by the process of religious reconstruction, — a larger vision, a more reverent retrospect, a more dispassionate and therefore a juster judgment, and therefore again, a more intelligent and a more hopeful missionary activity.

And out of this it has come to pass that while we know less than our fathers knew about the damnation of non-elect infants, we know more of the calling of the Church of God as a Divine society in the world, sent here to grapple with its miseries, to uplift its fallen ones and to conquer its sin. This is the new note of hope- fulness which, unless I mistake its strain, rings through all our Christian work and life to-day. We are not

The Reconstructive Power of Chrutianity. 129

dealing with out-worn superstitions ; we are not cling- ing to exploded fables. We are feeling anew the thrill of that fresh iraXi'yyeva-La that quickening stir of the Spirit which as it comes once, and again and again in the history of the race, proclaims, " Behold, I make all old things new."

And tliis brings us to that visible result with which we are concerned to-day, in its relations to that national deficiency to Avliich I have already referred. I have endeavored to indicate how the social progress of a great people has written itself in the buildings for do- mestic shelter, for traffic, for science, and for art, which it has reared, and is rearing on every hand. It is a cloud upon the escutcheon of our American fair fame, that hardly anywhere, or at all adequately, have they as yet been matched by buildings for the highest uses of all. There has been, there is, a process and progress of religious reconstruction among us, but structurally (in more ways than one !) it has as yet by no means found adequate or worthy expressions. Here and there, there are one or two buildings (and it is your honorable dis- tinction that two of them are in New England) that are distinctly adequate for a great use, and worthy at any rate, in some degree, of a great people. But as a rule, in our great cities and out of them, our ecclesiastical architecture lags a long way behind our civic, our social, our domestic.

The peril of such a fact is greater than we are wont to recognize. You cannot treat a great personality or a great idea meanly without, sooner or later,

9

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coming to that condition of mind where your thinking is as mean as your behavior. And tliat means, ulti- mately, the death of reverence, the death of faith, the death of religion. If our homes, our places of amuse- ment, our exchanges, and our insurance offices are made, as they are coming to be so widely in this coun- try, stately and magnificent, and all the while the house of God is left to be mean and cheap and shabby, — be sure that our children will understand perfectly well what we think about the whole business ! " God is a Spirit and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Yes, most surely ; but, for the present, you and I are in the flesh ; and unless we are prepared to maintain that when Christ himself insti- tuted that highest act of Christian worship in which we are soon to unite, saying, " Take and eai;^^ ''Do this in remembrance of me," He did not mean that our love and faith and homage should have visible, symbolic, material expression, — and if visible expression, then fit and appropriate expression, — then the best and stateliest that we have, we must give to Him!

And so I bless God that I am permitted to come here to-day, and see in this impressive structure such sub- stantial tokens, not of the death of religion but of its life. Since I first came to Lenox, a stripling in the ministry, from across the border yonder of what was then still a part of the diocese of New York (now Albany), the whole aspect of things here has changed. Your honored Rector had just come here, and only a handful of people sought among these hills for the

The Reconstructive Power of Christianity, 131

health and refreshment which they have since brought to so many tired and overtaxed dwellers in om* great cities. But since then, there has come to be a new Lenox, and, none too soon, I think you will own, has there come to be a new and worthier Trinity Church. I venture to think, dear brethren, that you who have built it will not sleep less peacefully under your own roofs because now you have seen to it that the house of the Lord doth not lie waste ! I congratulate you, my dear and right reverend father, as Bishop of the Diocese, and you my reverend brother,the Rector of this parish, upon a result so substantial and gratifying. The faith- ful ministry which has gone in and out among this people for more than a quarter of a century finds its fitting recognition in what those, mainly, who are stran- gers and not home-born, have done for this parish. Many of them my own people, — children of the diocese of New York, and for a time more than one of them bound by a still closer tie, and others not of our own com- munion, nor all of them dwellers in the great city which some of us call our home, — all these have left on these walls and in these windows, " richly dight," the costly evidences of their generous and large-hearted interest in this church. It is a happy ordering that it should be so. " I believe," we have said together this morning, " in the Communion of Saints." I look for the resur- rection of the dead and the life of the world to come ; and tliis chancel, yonder tower, and all that cost and toil have wrought and expended here proclaim that faith ! God be praised for the integrity of purpose

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which has planned and labored here, and which has builded honestly and solidly, as the old cathedrals — not alone where the eye of man can see, but where alone the eye of God sees. God be praised for the love and gratitude that have wrought themselves into all that, in whatsoever way, has gone to make this holy and beautiful house more fair and meet. Said one who not long ago reared in this beautiful valley of the Housa- tonic another costly sanctuary, speaking to a friend of his the other day, " Nothing that I have ever done gave me so much pleasure as that ! " I can well believe it ! It is a great honor and privilege to build, not for man, but for God.

That privilege has been given to you. May God make it the portal of many others. " This," cried Jacob at Peniel, " is none other than the gate of heaven." May many a tired heart and burdened soul that kneels within these walls find it to be so here ! And out from these walls may there go forth a saintlier manhood and womanhood, strengthened and upbuilded here, to bless the wastes that lie about us, to preach Christ by loving sacrifice and service for their fellow-men, and so to bring more near the day of His eternal triumph.

THE NEEDS OF A LIVING CHURCH.

Divided by their differing political allegiance, the people living to the northward of the river St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and those whose home is south of it, have never- theless much in common. There is not the same all-prevail- ing language, for, in Canada the French colonists have retained their ancestral speech, and with it man}^ of their ancestral customs. But with this exception, the identity of speech, religion, and usages is extensive, and in many ways identically influential. Especially is this true of those in Canada whose traditions connect them with the Church of England, and whose intercourse, therefore, with their eccle- siastical brethren across the American border has been inti- mate and affectionate. The problems with which Churchmen in the United States have been called to grapple have been largely those which have confronted their Canadian brethren, and the fact that more than one American presbj'ter or bishop has been called to a Canadian episcopate is sig- nificant indication of a confidence in American men and methods, as adapted for the accomplishment of Church work even upon a soil which owns the sovereignty of an English queen. In the organization of her synods and dioceses American rather than Anglican models have largely been followed by the Canadian Church, and though, originally, Canadian bishops were appointed by the crown, they are now, as in the United States, though not in precisel}^ the same way, chosen by a synod in which clergy and laity, though voting by orders, sit together.

Nor is this indeed surprising. The conditions of the Church's life on either side are largely the same. On our

134 Way marks.

own, it is true, the original prejudice against the Church was stronger than it ever could have been in Canada; and no one will quite accurately appreciate the hindrances which Churchmen in the United States have overcome who fails to reckon in the dull dislike, in some cases, and the more active antagonism in others, with which during the earlier days of the republic all endeavors for Church extension were met. A profound distrust of the Church's aim and a not unnatural suspicion as to the motives of a communion pre- viously so closely identified with that civil powder which strove to smother the life of the infant republic and to reduce it by force of arms to its previous vassalage, — an in- tense Puritan antipathy to its doctrines and worship, and a wide-spread disbelief, not alas, wholly without foundation in those earlier days, as to the genuineness and reality of its spiritual life, — all these things conspired to make a task which was difficult enough in Canada all the more difficult in the United States.

But substantially, as has already been intimated, the task was the same. In a time and among a people who, in either country, were much exhorted, but not always or often wisely taught, — under conditions in which temporary religious ex- citement was made to do duty for calm and faithful instruc- tion, in places where there was indeed a ministry of the Word, but wide-spread neglect of the sacraments, where there was need not alone of a zealous, but of a learned min- istry, and where not more, perhaps, but not less, certainly, than anywhere else, there was the urgent necessity of an active, intelligent, and co-operative laity, — the requirements of a living Church whether in Canada or in the United States, have been largely the same. The sermon which fol- lows was an endeavor briefly to emphasize some of them, and w^as delivered at the Cathedral in London before the Synod of the diocese of Huron, June 19, 1877.

IX.

THE CHURCH'S NEEDS.

And the Apostles and Elders came together to consider of this matter. — Acts xvi. 6.

Whatever may be our various theories of Holy Orders, we are all agreed, I presume, that the Apostles who are mentioned in these words were exceptional men. What- ever measure of inspiration and guidance the Church and her priests and chief pastors have enjoyed in later days, it can hardly be doubted that it has been in every way inferior to theirs. The men who laid the founda- tions of the Christian Church were men who had been girded for their work by rare and exceptional endow- ments. Whether we look at their personal characters, or their official careers, we feel instinctively that we are in the presence of extraordinary and transcendently gifted men. Theirs were mighty powers for a mighty work.

And yet it is instructive to find that even, these men did not dispense with the help which comes from mutual counsel and conference. Called as they were by excep- tional experiences to an exceptional office, — guided, as they had a right to believe they would be, by the especial manifestations of the Holy Spirit, — they yet turned from

136 Way marks.

the strain of separate and isolated responsibilities to the help and comfort to be found in fraternal intercourse and mutual counsel. Their work was vast and urgent and vital, but they unhesitatingly put it aside, and bid accustomed duties wait while they paused to confer with one another. They recognized the wisdom of mutual deliberation and of combined action ; and in this, one of the earliest of the infant Church's councils, they have set an example for all churches and for all times. We do well, therefore, that we are here to-day to follow it, and that from the grave and urgent work of the Church, in so many and such various fields, this thoughtful body of clergy and laity — the representatives of the Church in this young but powerful diocese — has come together to deliberate and confer anew. Through the kindly courtesy of your Bishop it is the province of a " stranger from across the border " to stand in this place and to give you this greeting. If he does so with something of diffidence, and something more of sell- distrust, he does so, nevertheless, with this inspiring consciousness that, after all, his work and yours are one ; that his most sacred traditions and most venerable sanctions are drawn, as are yours, from the same re- vered mother, — that mother whom John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts, writing in the sixteenth century, called, " Our dear mother the Church of Eng- land, to whom we owe a long course of loving watchful- ness and care." It is true that the Church in Canada and the Church in the United States exist to-day amid very different civil conditions and under widely dissim-

The Church's Needs, 137

ilar political systems. But theirs, thank God, is a dearer bond than any begotten of the State, and a closer sympathy than any that kindles at the sight of a flag. It is the sympathy begotten of a common faith, a com- mon language and liturgy, and a common ministry and sacraments. As an American Churchman stands in some ancient English minster, awed by its majestic proportions and its chastened and venerable beauty, he finds himself reminded of the legend of that young artist of Padua, who, standing before a masterpiece of RaphaeFs, cried out in irrepressible pride, " And I too am a painter." For then it is the impulse of such a one, though he may stand upon English soil for the first time — yet remembering who are his ancestors, and from whence have come his literature and his religion — to cry out with equal warmth and pride, " 1 too am an Englishman." Even so when we, who live to the south and east of the lakes and of the St. Lawrence, find our way north and west, as we gather in some such holy and beautiful edifice as this with brethren of the same Scriptural faith and apostolic order, we too are tempted to exclaim, " Ours also is an Anglican mother and an English prayer-book ; ours the blessed heritage through those pure and reformed standards of the one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism." And though, if you who are Canadian Churchmen should choose, with the men of Israel of old, to protest, " We have ten parts in the king, and we have also more right in David than ye," we could not venture to gainsay you ; yet still I think you will not refuse to own the closeness of the tie

138 Waymarhs.

that binds the two Churches together, nor upbraid me for here recalling it.

I confess that I do so with a motive. This oneness of sonship and lineage, of faith and order, is but a simile of that other identity of our circumstances and work. Your Church in Canada and ours in the United States are, each of them, conditioned by various accidental differences of circumstances and surroundings, which give them certain features of obvious unlikeness. But when you have made allowance for these, there remain other and substantial resemblances in those circum- stances which are far more important and influential. Yours, for instance, like ours, is a new country and a comparatively virgin soil. The Christian civilization which you are contributing to rear in this diocese is, like ours, embarrassed by no traditional influences of the people and the soil. On the other hand, yours, like ours, is a population gathered by immigration from many lands and widely different races. The German, the Irishman, and the Negro jostle one another in your streets as they do in ours ; and with you, as with us, there is the same eager race for wealth ; the same too common impatience with modest means and uneventful experiences. The same bracing breezes (dry, searching, and exciting) that have made, as scientists tell us, of the phlegmatic Old Englander, the restless, nervous, interrogative New Englander, blow across your hills and valleys that blow across ours, — indeed, in their eastward progress from the great lakes and the Rocky Mountains they reach you first. In a word, the conditions under

The Church's Needs. 139

which Churchmen in Canada and in the United States are called upon to do their Master's work, and build up the Church's walls, are much the same. And, therefore, if I speak on this occasion of some of the Church's needs, as we have learned them in New York, I think you will own that they are no less her needs as you have learned them in this newer London.

I. And first among them (as one who speaks to brethren, many of whom have been clothed with the same priestly office) I would venture to name the need of an educated and thoughtful ministry. It is the glory of our mother, the Church of England, that while she does not despise the simplest and homeliest phraseology, she yet bids her ministers arm themselves for their high tasks with those weapons of an ample learning and a genuine scholarship, in which she has always been so rich. And it is to-day her pre-eminent distinction that the products of the literary labors of her sons do more if not to shape, then to stimulate the religious thinking of our time, than all other influences put together. An eminent divine of one of the most influential religious bodies in the United States said to me not long ago, " When I am asked ' to what living literature I am most indebted,' I do not hesitate to say 'the literature of the Church of England;' there is nothing like it in Ger- many or anywhere else." And there is nothing like it. Whether we take the Bampton Lectures of Liddon or the Sermons of Mozley, and other volumes which I might name, holding the same rank, what nobler evi- dence could the Church of England give us that she is.

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as of old, the friend of learning and of learned men, — tlie mother of teachers, and the source and fountain of profound attainments and a devout scholarship ? But from what has all this come ? It has come from those wise provisions in her system which afford to her clergy both the leisure and the opportunities for study and for reflection ; and it is one of her chief dangers in this hurried and utilitarian age that, from a false spirit of economy, or from a mistaken estimate of the real value of such a ministry, she will so abridge their opportuni- ties and so increase the demands upon them, as to make such distinction in learning and thoughtfulness no longer possible to her clergy. Says Dr. Farrar, Canon of Westminster, and lately head-master of Marlboro, in a recent King's College lecture on Jeremy Taylor : —

"To the acquisition of such a learning as was Jeremy Taylor's, this age — hard, exacting, jealous, without concen- tration, without self-recollection, without leisure; utilitarian, mistaking a superficial activity and a worrying multiplicity of details for true, deep progress; quite content with vapid shibboleths, archaic ritualism, or emotional emptiness; jeal- ous of a labor which, because it is retired, is mistaken for idleness; and robbing every one it can of all means for the exhaustive pursuit of learning — is wholly unfavorable. Two hundred years have passed since the publication of the 'Liberty of Prophesying;' and we are still quarrelling about copes and chasubles, and making it a matter of im- portance whether the sacramental bread should be cut round or square. When men are absorbed in such controversies, and, above all, in the grinding littleness of endless and elaborate agencies, often wholly disproportionate in number and in the toil they involve to any possible good which they

The Church's Needs. 141

can achieve, there is little possibility of a learned clergy, — there is indeed a fatal certainty that such will not be produced."

Yet, in spite of such an indictment, there are still in the Church of England some quiet nooks, some calm retreats, where one may read and digest and think. But how is it among ourselves, whether in towns or out of them ? How manifold and how engrossing are the cares which are bound upon the clergy, over and above their distinctly ministerial duties ? How often is the whole financial system of a parish made to rest upon the clergy V Who beg or borrow the money that builds our churches ? Who superintend their construction and erection, and care for the " fabric " after it has been reared ? Who train our choirs and organize and largely vitalize our schemes of parish w^ork ? Who drudge, often with hand as well as brain, in the discharge of a thousand petty details, to which the ministry was not called, and on which, verily, it has no warrant for wast- ing itself ? God forbid that I should seem to discourage any pastor from cordial co-operation in every laudable undertaking, but I appeal to the experience of the clergy whether there has not often come to them the sense that they were frittering away their lives upon countless secular minutiae, which are almost as remote from the tasks to which by their ordination vows they were set, as would be dancing or fox-hunting. There is many a clergyman in our day who finds it impossible to spend five hours in the week in his study. He is set to be a teacher and guide to others, and yet in an age which,

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more tlian any other that has gone before it, challenges the clergy to the production of their best weapons and their utmost strength, such a one finds himself going into the pulpit on a Sunday morning with a string of commonplaces at once vapid and impotent. I know it will be said that the Church and the pulpit in our day want some other things more than they want learning and thought; and I freely grant it. The Church and the pulpit want most of all in her ministry sanctified character, — souls on fire with the love of Christ, and longing to reach and rescue those for whom Cln-ist died. But while the Church most truly wants awakened and deepened feeling, she wants something more besides. To give feeling its due influence it must rest upon pro- found conviction, and in order that conviction may be profound it must rest in turn upon reasonable and intel- ligent foundations. There is a certain chastened and affirmative earnestness in the pulpit which is perhaps more impressive than all other things combined ; for it gives you the impression that he who speaks is saturated with a sense of the certainty and authority of that which he preaches. But one can never be so penetrated with the profound sense of a truth until he has searched it to the roots and viewed it in every light. Earnestness of feeling is, verily, not without its value ; but when it has awakened a corresponding earnestness of feeling it must be prepared to answer the questions which that awak- ened earnestness will inevitably provoke. We may wish that we were back in those simpler days when learning was the property of a class, and when the people took

The Church's Needs, 143

the teaching that was given them with simple and un- questioning faith. But wishing will never bring those days back again ; and meanwhile our business is rather to readjust ourselves to the new conditions amid which the Church finds herself. If it is said that she must meet the too common tendency to a relaxed faith merely by a louder reassertion of her ancient symbols, 1 answer that this is to repeat the error of Rome in the decrees of the Vatican Council, without the splendid discipline and consistent traditions of tlie Church of Rome to warrant it. Ours is a Church which stands as a witness to the freedom of the right of enquiry, and we shall never successfully stifle that enquiry by despising or ignoring it. On the contrary, the Church must meet living ques- tions with an intelligent and generous candor, and must answer the assaults of unbelief with a might and learn- ing at least equal to theirs by whom such assaults are made. It may be that we suppose the critical and scientific scepticism of our time to be unknown to the great mass of those to whom in this land the Church is called to minister ; but if we do, it is because we do not take the trouble to read the books and look into the magazines, which are bought and read nowadays by everybody. Do we forget that one man of genius in our day has written a novel to prove the moral identity of our own race with that of the races below it ? Do we forget that one of the cleverest serial stories of our day is aimed obviously against a theology which, though I do not hold it, has had more than one eminent and learned disciple in our Mother Church, yours as well

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as ours? Do we realize that girls and boys read and ponder such teachings just at an age when their minds are most susceptible and most alert ? And meantime, what are too many of us doing, but heating the old broth over again, or firing blank cartridges at the ghosts of errors which are alike dead and forgotten ! Surely it must be owned that something else is called for in our day, and that somehow the Church must meet so obvious and pressing a want. How shall it be done ? How shall we secure a learned and thoughtful clergy ? In Canada and in the United States alike, the Church has no venerable endowments, no ancient seats of learning, no income-yielding scholarships or amply-paid Cathedral stalls for her clergy, — nothing, usually, but the parish glebe and the modest parsonage, and an endless round of hard work, poorly and often irregularly paid. It is true, it will be said, that upon the clergy are imposed innumerable burdens which do not really belong to them. It is true that they are distracted by engage- ments and fretted by details which make it simply im- possible for them to obey the injunction of their Bishop at their ordination, to " draw all their cares and studies ' one way.' " But how, it will be asked, do you propose to better this state of things, not later and elsewhere, but here and now ? I answer that we are to do so, if at all, by borrowing the wisdom of those who are about us. This wisdom, as it has illustrated itself in the history of almost every communion in this land, but especially of that one which, of all others on our side of the line, is the most numerous and well organized, consists in de-

The ChurcKs Needs. 145

veloping and utilizing the effective co-operation of the laity. And this brings me to the second of those needs of the Church in our day of which I would speak this morning.

II. It has been said somewhere that we, in our communion, profess to believe in three orders of the ministry, and falsify it by being content with two ; and unfortunately the charge is true. We have bishops and priests in our day ; but we have no deacons, — or if we do have them, they are not in any sense the representa- tives of a distinct office, performing a distinct function, and ordained for a particular work, but simply presby- ters in a chrysalis state, with an impatience to be ad- vanced to that good degree of the priesthood which is not always quite consistent with their having earned it. Said a learned and venerable pastor in my hearing not long ago : " We have no longer any deacons in the American Church. They have so large a sense of their own dig- nity, and so scanty a respect for authority, that I have reached the conclusion that they must all be archdea- cons." And the worst of such a sarcasm is that with us it is so often and so largely true. The pressure of new fields ; the frequent disposition of parishes to prefer young men, whose energy is not always, however, a sufficient compensation for the blunders of their inex- perience ; the spirit of our age, impatient of subordina- tion, and too eager to rule to be willing to learn how by consenting to serve, — all these have conspired to make the diaconate, at least in our brancli of the Church, only a hurried novitiate, hurriedly entered and quickly ter-

10

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minated. As we turn back the pages of ecclesiastical history, we read that at the time of the Council of Chalcedon there were some forty deacons in Edessa alone, and that Constantinople had over one hundred. We read of them as a permanent and distinct office, sometimes combining tlie exercise of their ministry with some secular calling in which they were engaged, and because of their closer contact with the people, acting as guides to the presbyters in the ministration of relief to the sick and destitute, and in the exercise of discipline toward the profane and irreligious. And as we read of such things in other days it is impossible not to wish that we might reproduce them in our own. How invalu- able, especially in fields in which the ministrations of the presbyters are more or less itinerant, to have a resident deacon, who could maintain the services, visit the sick, look up the wandering, and, like the first seven, have charge of those collections made for the charitable ministrations to widows and others. Indeed the diffi- culty is not to see how such an officer in the Church might be usefully employed, nor how a perpetual diaco- nate might increase the efficiency of her ministry, but rather to avoid such exaggerated demands upon the office as shall lead to its practical extinction. Of course, if we will persist in laying upon the diaconate all the burdens of the priesthood, there can be no reason why it should not take the rank and responsibilities of the priesthood. The problem is how to develop a class of devout and earnest men who shall be clothed with re- stricted powers and authority, and set to do a restricted

The ChurcNs Needs. 147

woi'k ; and how, when necessary, to unj^e such an office with a secular calling. If it is said that such a thing cannot be done, it is enough to answer that in the Methodist communion it already has been done. One of the founders of that communion in this country was Elisha Hedding, for many years its senior superinten- dent or bishop. It was my fortune, a few years ago, to stumble in a strange house upon his biography ; and if one would know what Methodism in this country owes to what are called " local preachers," he will do well to read that volume. It shows what vast results may be accomplished by persons clothed with restricted powers, if only they are wisely chosen and prudently employed ; and it points to an agency which, in our pioneer work in this continent, is almost indispensable.

But if we cannot have it, — and experience would seem to imply that we cannot, — then we must have that thing which is nearest to it : I mean a more cor- dial and a more general spirit of lay co-operation. At present it would seem that the laity has but one function to perform, and that is the function of contributing of its means. Our Sunday-schools, our parochial societies elicit, it is true, a certain measure of lay co-operation, but usually only from the very young. For some un- known reason, it seems to be accepted that just when a layman has reached that ripeness in years and experi- ence which fits him to instruct and counsel others, he ordinarily ceases to do so. " Pure religion and unde- filed," declares the Apostle, " is this, to visit the father- less and widows in their afflictioyi^^ as well as to keep

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one's self " unspotted from the world." Is this only a duty of the clergy ? Is all other activity, save activity in one's week-day business, excluded from the New Tes- tament conception of Christian living ? Has not every man received some gift ? And are not men bidden to " minister the same one to another ? " If there is one thing more striking than another in looking at the con- dition of the Church to-day, it is the disproportion be- tween the gifts and opportunities of the laity and their exercise. In other days, when the priestly class was the only learned one, it was fit and natural that to them should be confined the missionary work of the Church ; but in our time, when learning and books are the equal inheritance of the laity as well, there is a definite re- sponsibility that goes along with them. Who can speak to one immersed in business with such directness and efficacy as some companion who from practical experi- ence has touched the core of the same temptations ? Not long ago, you will remember, there was a proposi- tion looking to the admission, under certain restrictions, of laymen in the Church of England to its pulpits. I confess, for one, I cannot but feel that the dangers of such a plan, if dangers there are, would be far more than counterbalanced by its advantages. But if tliis should be otherwise, there is no layman among us who may not wisely remember that it does not need a pulpit in which to serve Christ and His Church. The Church calls for many varieties of service from her loyal laity, some of which are directly in the line of their secular training. To relieve the clergy of anxiety for the

The Church's Needs. 149

financial administration of their parishes ; to give per- sonal help to the due order and decent maintenance of the Church's services ; to visit the destitute and gather in the stragglers and instruct the ignorant, — all these are tasks which are within the reach of the most modest and retiring ; and suffer me to say that it will not be until we have elicited such a spirit of co- operation that the vast arrears of the Church's work can at all be overtaken. That conception of the Church which regards the clergy as called to do her work, and the laity as called to sit and watch them do it, is not more false than it is impotent. Above all this passive theory of the Christian life, which makes the individual disciple a sponge to absorb sermons and services and pastoral visits, an ecclesiastical leech crying, " Give, give ! " and yielding nothing back, — this is a theory which means, to the soul that acquiesces in it, only spiritual dyspepsia or paralysis. It is an open question whether there is not too much preaching and ministering, in view of the meagre outcome of answering endeavor and activity. To be continually listening to arguments and exhorta- tions which lead to no fruitage of Christian activity, — this is not merely negatively but positively evil. Out of it there comes, sooner or later, a dismal sense of unreality, which hardens the hearer and paralyzes or disheartens the preacher ; and therefore the co-operation of the laity in every form of the Church's life becomes essential alike to their own spiritual life and the lasting efficiency of the clergy. Even apostolic hearts would have fainted and faltered if, in the first ages of the

150 Waymarks,

Church's work, it had not been for the Aquilas and Priscillas, whose loving labors so cheered them.

III. ^ I know what will be said by a great many hon- est and earnest men and women in all our congregations when we come to them with this plea for an increased activity on the part of the laity in the Church's work. It will be said that such activity implies a religious enthusiasm which is not theirs, and which they can- not but feel that it would be hollow and unreal to affect. Undoubtedly of many persons this is true, and if it is, then does it not bring us to that which is after all the Church's most urgent want, — the deepen- ing of her spiritual life ? Ours is an age of great mental activity, and especially of organized activity. The Church never had so many agencies, — so much machinery for the doing of her work, until it has come to be a question whether running the machinery has not exhausted that vitality of which it was meant to be the expression. I have heard a parish clergyman much commended for holding seven services, including three celebrations of the Holy Communion, in a single day. I wish I could see their virtue. It is impossi- ble, where there are so many mechanical duties to be performed, that the spirit in which they are performed should not be mechanical also ; and it has certainly sometimes happened that our often-church-going has not deepened seriousness or earnestness of character. And so behind all our other needs as Churchmen and Christian disciples there stands — I am sure there is not one of us but is conscious of it — the need of deepening

The Church's Needs. 151

the spiritual life ; to come closer into the presence of that Lord whom we profess to serve, until, like her who grasped the hem of His garment with her timid but trustful touch, virtue from Him shall quicken and awaken us. You remember that legend of Leonardo da Vinci, which is told in connection with his painting of the Last Supper. As I recall it now, it runs that when the wall of the convent in Milan on which he had painted it was first exposed to view, the monks gathered round the picture, eager to criticise its details and to ad- mire and applaud its most insignificant accessories. There were loud voices and fierce disputes, until it was with one consent agreed that, if there was one thing better than another about the picture, it was the draw- ing and coloring of the table-cloth. The impatient painter listened, with flushed cheek and flashing eye, until the last of the order had spoken, and then seizing his brush, with one dash of color blotted every admired detail of the table-cloth out. He had brought them to look upon the face and figure of Christ ; and they could be so absorbed upon so paltry a thing as the painting of a bit of cloth ! Even so, I think, in these days of rest- lessness without devotion, of bustle without faith, we are absorbed in a thousand small details, well enough in themselves, it may be, but oh, how far removed from the central fact of that relisrion of which we claim to be disciples. And all the while the Master is looking calmly down upon us, waiting until we shall consent to withdraw our eyes from these and lift them to Himself. For then how surely shall it come to pass that, drawing

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our inspiration straight from Him, our work, our duty, our shortcomings, will all alike stand forth in a new and clearer light. If we are the pastors of His flock, we shall, as we lift our eyes to Him, find ourselves moved to feed them more diligently and lead them more pru- dently than we have ever done before ; and, whether clergy or laity, looking to Him we shall catch the spirit of Him who said, " I must work the works of Him who sent me while it is called to-day ; the night cometh when no man can work." Show us, therefore, 0 Thou Mighty One, first of all Thyself, and so arouse us to the work which Thou hast given us to do."

THE CATHEDRAL IDEA.

The growth of the Cathedral idea in America is among the most interesting illustrations of the development of what may be called the historic sentiment in connection with religion which have thus far appeared.

Until the latter half of the century had been entered upon, it cannot be said that the Cathedral idea existed in America otherwise than as a local impossibility. If there were devout Churchmen who saw its meaning and intel- ligently apprehended its uses, and if there were others who, moved by the stately dignity of some ancient minster, longed for its ennobling influences, neither of these ventured to believe very confidently that the Cathedral apart from alien and un-American beliefs and associations was possible in America.

But the growth of a more just conception of the office of the Church in the world, of its relations to wealth, to the complex web of human society, and also of the Episcopate to the people, produced in time a very different conviction, and prepared the way for an appeal in the year 1887 to the citizens of New York of which the following is a copy : —

TO THE CITIZENS OF NEW YORK.

Men and Brethren, — It was the just pride of a great Hebrew scholar, apostle, and missionary, that he was " a citizen of no mean city ; " and it may justly be the pride of those whose lot is cast in the metropolitan city of America that their home has a history and a promise not unworthy of their affectionate interest and devotion.

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A commercial city in its origin and conspicuous characteristics, it has yet come to be a centre of letters, of science, and of art. Adorned by the palaces of trade, it is not without ornament as the home of a large-hearted and open-handed philanthropy, and as the guardian of noble libraries and rare treasures of painting and sculpture. More and more are the faces of men and women, all over this and other lands, turned to it as a city of pre-eminent interest and influence, the dwelling place of culture, wealth, and of a nation's best thought. Never before in its history was there so cordial an interest in its prosperity and greatness ; and recent benefactions to literature and art have shown, what earlier and scarcely less princely benefactions to science and humanity have proclaimed, that its citizens are determined to make it more and more worthy of that foremost place and that large influence which it is destined to hold and exert.

It is in view of these facts that its influence not only in the direction of culture and art but on the side of great moral ideas becomes of pre-eminent consequence. It is faith in these, rather than wealth or culture, which has made nations permanently great ; and it is where all secular ambitions have been dominated by great spiritual ideas, inculcating devotion to duty and reverence for eternal righteousness, that civilization has achieved its worthiest victories, and that great cities have best taught and ennobled humanity.

But great moral and spiritual ideas need to find expression and embodiment in visible institutions and structures, and it is these which have been in all ages the nurseries of faith and of reverence for the unseen. Amid things transient these have taught men to live for things that are permanent; and triumphing over decay them- selves, they have kindled in the hearts of humanity a serene patience under adversity, and an immortal hope in the final triumph of God and good.

Said a teacher of rare insight in another hemisphere, not long ago : " What are the remains which you can study in the land of the Caesars and the Ptolemies? The buildings devoted to the conven- ience of the body are for the most part gone, wliile those that represent ideas of the mind are standing yet. The provisions for shelter, the places of traflSe, the treasuries of wealth, have crumbled into the dust with the generations that built and filled them. But the temple, answering to the sense of the Infinite and Holy, the

The Cathedral Idea, 155

roek-hewn sepulchre where love and mystery blended into a twili2:ht of sunrise, — these survive the shock of centuries, and testify that religion and love and honor for the s^ood are inextino-uishable."

For the erection of such a building worthy of a great city, of its accumulated wealth, and of its large responsibilities, the time would seem to have arrived. Xo American citizen who has seen in London the throngs, composed of every class and representing every interest, that gather in St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbev, all alike equally welcomed to services whose majestic dignity and simplicity impress the coldest spectator, can doubt the influence for good of these grand and stately fabrics. Offering to all men, of whatever condition or fellowship, the ministrations of reliirion in a lano-uao-e understood by the common people, bidding to their pulpits the ablest and most honored teachers, free for meditation, devotion, or rest at all hours, without fee or restriction, they have been a witness to the brotherhood of humanity in the bond of the divine Xazarene, and of the need of the human heart for some worthy place and voice for the expression of its deepest wants.

Such a need waits for a more adequate means of expression among ourselves.

We want — there are many who are strongly persuaded — in this great and busy centre of a nation's life, a sanctuary worthy of a great people's deepest faith. That trust in God which kept alive in our fathers courage, heroism, and rectitude, needs to-day some nobler visible expression, — an expression commensurate, in one word, with that material prosperity which we have reached as a people owning its dependence upon God and upon His blessing on our undertakings.

Such a building would meet, moreover, practical and urgent demands.

(a) It would be the people's church, in which no reserved rights could be bought, hired, or held, on any pretext whatever.

(h) It would be the rightful centre of practical philanthropies, having foundations or endowments for the mission work of a jjreat city, and especially for the education of skilled teachers and workers, in intelligent as well as emotional sympathy with our grave social problems.

(c) It would have a pulpit in which the best preachers within its command, from all parts of the land and of various schools of thought,

156 Waymarks.

would have a place and opportunity, thus bringing the people of a great metropolis into touch with the strongest and most helpful minds of the age, and affording presentations of truth wider, deeper, and larger than those of any individual teacher.

{d) It would be the fitting shrine of memorials of our honored dead, the heroes, leaders', and helpers whose names have adorned the annals of our country, and whose monuments would vividly recall their virtues and services.

(e) And finally, it would tell to all men everywhere that " the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment; " that man is, after all, a child needing guidance, comfort, and pardon; and that he best live's here who lives in the inspiration of an unseen Leader and an immortal Hope.

In commending this undertaking to my fellow-citizens, I need only add that it has originated in no personal wish or desire of my own, and that it has enlisted the sympathies of many not of the communion of which I am a minister. These with others have Ions: believed, and stand ready, some of them, to show their faith by their works, that in a material age there is a special need in this great city of some commanding witness to faith in the unseen, and to the great fundamental truths of the religion of Jesus Christ. Such a building would of necessity, under our present conditions, require to be ad- ministered by the Church under whose control it would be reared, but its welcome would be for all men of whatsoever fellowship, and its influence would be felt in the interests of our common Chris- tianity throughout the whole land. It would be the symbol of no foreign sovereignty, whether in the domain of faith or morals, but the exponent of those great religious ideas in which the foundations of the republic were laid, and of which our open Bible, our family life, our language and our best literature, are the expression.

As such, I venture to ask for this enterprise the co-operation of those to whom these words are addressed. A native of the State of New York, and for nearly twenty years a citizen of its chief city, I own to an affection for it at once deep and ardent. An ecclesiastic by profession, I have nevertheless, I hope, shown myself not in- different to interests other than those which are merely ecclesiastical in their character and aims ; and it is certainly not the mere aggran- dizement of the Church whose servant I am, for which I am here solicitous. There is a larger fellowship than any that is only

The Cathedral Idea. 157

ecclesiastical, and one which, as I believe, such an undertaking as I have here sketched would pre-eminently serve.

As such, I earnestly commend it to all those to whom these words may come.

Henry C. Potter.

The cordial response to this appeal in quarters the most un- expected prepared the way for initiating the successive steps for securing a site with incomparable advantages for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine at the corner of 110th St. and Morningside Park in the City of New York, and of beginning the work of securing designs and preparing for its erection. Meantime the sermons which here follow were preached, the one at the consecration of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, Garden City, in the diocese of Long Island, June 2, 1885, and the other at the opening service in the Cathedral of All Saints, Albany, New York, on Novem- ber 20, 1888.

X.

SEEMON PREACHED AT THE CONSECRATION OF THE CATHEDRAL OF THE INCARNATION, GARDEN CITY, L. I., JUNE 2, 1885.

The palace is not for man, hut for the Lord God. 1 Chron. XXIX. 7.

It was a happy ordering that, in the series of services of which this is only one, this service of consecration should be preceded by another. Ah^eady the tribes of this Israel of Long Island have come up to this holy and beautiful house and have compassed these strong and stately walls " with solemn pomp." Already those mutual felicitations which belong to the completion of so noble and memorable work have here been freely exchanged. Already, too, those suggestive historic reminiscences which must needs connect themselves with such a structure reared upon such a site have been rehearsed here in words whose affluent eloquence I may not venture to emulate. A master hand has sketched for those who have been assembled here the memories of the past, and the vision of a nobler future. A humbler duty remains to him who, summoned to take the place of another and more fit, and coming late and

The Cathedral Idea. 159

hurriedly to his task, may at least console himself with the reflection that those words of thanksgiving to God and gratitude for the munificence of His servant appro- priate to this work have already been most fitly spoken, and that those lessons of paternal wisdom which, alone, the father of his flock may inculcate, have already been worthily urged.

But, on such an occasion there is still something that remains to be said, and I am free to own that I am not sorry to be bidden here to say it. For it is im- possible to come here for this service without being sensible that to many minds in our generation, and especially in this our own land, both the service itself and the structure which is the occasion for it, are equally an extravagance and an anachronism. We look back from our higher civilization to other and earlier ages which reared such buildings as this, and remember how much these ages lacked. The age of the great Cathedrals, we are wont to say, was, if you choose, an age of great devotion, but it was also an age of great and widespread ignorance. Tiie times that built Durham and Milan, Canterbury and Seville, Lincoln and Rouen, were times certainly of splendid gifts and of matchless labors, but they were also times of superstition even among the most learned, and of semi-barbarism among the common |7eople. We may cordially admire the enthusiasm of those earlier days, and the stately structures through which it found ex- pression. But it is quite consistent with such admira- tion that we should recognize that since then fresh light

160 Waymarks.

has dawned upon the world, and that a larger wisdom waits to guide our hearts and gifts to-day.

I. There are, we are told, new problems that confront us in America at this hour, and the building of cathe- drals will not help to solve them. There are new tasks waiting for the Church of God in this land, and stately and splendid ecclesiastical architecture is not the agency to achieve them. " This is a practical age, and its evils await a direct and practical solution. We want the college ; we want the hospital ; we want the reformatory ; we want the creche and the orphanage, the trades-school and the trained nurse, the hygienic lecturer and the free library, the school of arts and the refuge for the aged, but we do not want the Cathedral."

Yes, dear brethren, we want all these things, and a great many others for which they stand. But I venture to submit that we want, a great deal more than we want any or all of them, the spirit that inspires and originates them. And if at this point we are told that that spirit is abroad in the world, and that it is that regenerating force which is known as the " enthusiasm of human- ity," the altruism of the positive philosophy, then I commend to any candid mind a recent controversy be- tween two eminent Englishmen, neither of whom believes in God, — I mean Mr. Frederick Harrison and Mr. Her- bert Spencer, — and one of whom has perhaps exercised as much influence over the thinking of his generation as any single man now living. It was certainly not be- cause of any enthusiasm for Christianity that Mr. Spencer lately dealt such crushing blows at the religion

The Cathedral Idea. 161

of the Positive Philosophy. It was certainly not because to his own vision the religion of the New Testament appealed with such resistless spell that one of the ablest minds in our age has confessed lately with such pathetic candor that the enthusiasm of humanity was insufficient for the tasks to which it has set itself ; and his testimony at this point is therefore all the more instructive. We may disparage Christianity as we will, but the helpful and humane activities of Christendom are explicable by no other key. It is because, behind all that men are doing, whether in this or any other land, to lift men up, there is, whether consciously or uncon- sciously, the spell of those miglity truths which are incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ, — the truth of God's fatherhood and of man's redemption ; of God's love and of man's need ; of God's judgment and of man's accountability, — that men have suffered, and wrought and taught, have given of their substance, and have consecrated their lives to make this old world a fairer home for man, and to soften and dispel its griefs. Go where you will, ask whom you please, and the answer must needs be the same. The hands that have reached down to snatch the perishing from the jaws of death and give them back to life again have been Christian hands. The feet that have run swiftest and soonest on all helpful and healing errands have been Christian feet. The eyes that have seen the deepest into all our sore and perplexing social problems have been Christian eyes, and the lips that have spoken the most quickening and consoling words, when all other

11

162 Wat/marks.

lips were dumb, have been those of Christian men and Christian women.

All around us in the two cities which make one mighty camp of tireless and heroic toilers on the side of charity and humanity, there are those palaces of mercy and of refuge which have already made of our American philanthropy the wonder of the world. Who reared them, and who sustain them ? Take out of their sup- porting constituency the men and women who believe in God and in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and they would ere long crumble to the ground. Neither the enthusiasm of humanity, nor ethical culture, nor an en- lightened selfishness, nor any other of those panaceas which are offered for our acceptance in exchange for the faith of the Crucified would sustain them for a single generation.

But whence did they who have been moved by that faith derive it ? Did they evolve it from their own con- sciousness ? Did they dream it in their comfortable leisure ? or did they learn it from the Church of God and in the house of God ? What oracle has taught men the wisdom to devise, and the love to toil, and the un- selfishness to spend, unless it be those lively oracles of which the Church is at once the keeper and the dis- penser ? Say that men have come to own the great fact of the brotherhood of humanity, where in all the world have they been taugVit that fact so eloquently as when, kneeling round the same altar, prince and peasant side by side, they have sat at one table and eaten of one bread and drunk of one cup ? Ah ! how the majesty of

The Cathedral Idea. 163

some mighty temple, august and solemn and still, has taught man the greatness of God and the littleness and weakness of His creature ! And where, in all the world, but in some grand and beautiful Cathedral, have men seen the splendor of things unseen mirrored so majes- tically and persuasively in things seen ? The cathedral an anachronism I And yet what voices have rung through its vaulted aisles since Savonarola thundered in the Duomo at Florence, and Lacordaire thrilled all France from the pulpit of Notre Dame, even as Liddon thrills all England from the pulpit of St. Paul's to-day. What voices of warning and rebuke, what messages of hope and pardon, have been heard within Cathedral walls ; and what tired and aching hearts have climbed up there upon the stairway of celestial song, and com- muning with God, their Father, have been quickened, and renewed, and comforted ! I do not say that these things have not come to pass in other sanc- tuaries humbler and less costly than a Cathedral, but I do say that this is the office of the sanctuary in our human life ; and I maintain that that structure which stands for influences so potent and so supreme cannot be too stately, too spacious or imperial, and most surely cannot be an anachronism in any age or in any land. It is a King's House, nay, the House of the King of kings; it is the visible home and symbol of all those forces that are mightiest in history and most indispensable in our civilization. Shame on us if we be- little its object or begrudge its splendor. Shall we dwell in ceiled houses, decked with cedar and vermilion, and

164 Way marks.

shall the ark of the Lord dwell in a tent ? Shall our princes and nobles, our successful men, our hoarders of capital, and our accumulators of vast fortunes rear their stately and regal pajaces ; and shall they and we dis- parage the building of a palace statelier still, in which to worship God ? Again I say, shame on us if we do so !

II. But once more : It may be objected that such a structure as this is an anachronism because it under- takes to lift what may be called the institutionalism of religion into undue and overshadowing prominence. Granted, it is said, that we want Christian worship, and that we want to give to God our best in offer- ing it, the parish is the true norm of organization, and the parish church the true home, whether of Christian worship or of ministerial teaching. But this is not a parish church ; it is a bishop's church, and as such it is a dangerous illustration of the centralization of power. May we not well be afraid that the Cathedral will over- shadow the parish, and that the power of the one will be the weakness of the other ? Let me say here that if there were such a danger we might well be afraid of it. The parochial system, whatever may be its defects, and I am not insensible to them, has abundantly demon- strated its adaptedness to the land in which we live and the elements among which we of the clergy are called to work. But one finds it hard to refrain from a smile when he hears the Cathedral and the Cathedral system ^spoken of as preparing the way for the undue aggran- dizement of the Episcopate. Do those who utter such a

The Cathedral Idea. 165

warning know how much, or rather how little, power an English bishop has, ordinarily, within the precuicts of an English Cathedral ? xind if it be urged that those an- cient foundations, with their deans and chapters and the rest, limiting the authority of the diocesan at every turn, cannot be taken as the guarantees of equal safe- guards in cathedral foundations of a later date, the answer is simply : Why not ? Is the spirit that spoke at Runnymede in Magna Charta, in the ancient charters of York, and Chester, and Exeter, extinct among us to-day ? Is a Cathedral foundation anything else than the creation of a Diocesan Convention, with its clerical and lay representation, its trained priests and doctors and lawyers, its clear-headed men of business, no one of them too eager to vote power even into the most tried and trusted Episcopal hands ?

On the other hand, the Cathedral is a witness to the true catholicity of the Church such as simply cannot possibly exist under any otlier practicable conditions. As I have said, I prize what is known as the parochial system, and respect it heartily ; but it cannot be denied that one tendency of a parochial system, however effec- tively it may be worked, is in the direction of nar- rowness and fragmentariness and one-sidedness. The Church in the order and variety of her services, and especially in the rhythmic sequence of her ecclesiasti- cal year, does much to preserve what we have been taught to value as the proportion of faith. But who of us does not know that with the best and purest inten- tions the disposition of any single mind is apt to be to

166 Waymarks.

emphasize unduly certain aspects of the Faith, and un- duly to neglect or disesteem others? Who does not know, in a word, how easy it is to fall in love with our own pet views and to set them above all others ? We are fond of ridiculing, good-naturedly, that custom among Christians of other names which speaks of a place of worship as " Mr. A.'s " or '' Dr. B.'s church." But how is this different from or worse than that other usage which confounds the catholic faith with Mr. C.'s or Dr. D.'s weekly expositions of it, and which, loudly proclaiming the ancient canon in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas, nevertheless prac- tically declares that there are no questions which are in dubiis if one's own pet preacher has made up and pro- claimed his mind about such doubtful questions, which henceforth become, forsooth, no longer open questions, but necessary dogmas, of all men, everywhere, to be be- lieved ? For one I am profoundly persuaded that if a Cathedral had no other vocation, it would have a very noble and entirely adequate raison d''etre in that it offers one pulpit, at least, in every diocese where the best and ablest teachers, carefully and wisely chosen, may present those various aspects of the Christian faith, whose di- verse statements, when once they are frankly and cou- rageously presented, will most effectually prepare men to discern that fundamental consensus as to things di- vinely revealed on which they all alike rest. Such a pulpit will be a perpetual protest against '' teaching for doctrines the commandments of men," and in its excep- tional freedom from cramping and irksome shibboleths

The Cathedral Idea, 167

will be a very fortress of freedom for the truth as it is in Jesus. And in sketching such a pulpit I am happy in the consciousness that T am dreaming no fair but im- possible dream of my own, but indicating its settled policy as it has been already here determined upon by him who has been called in the good providence of God to be its organizing and executive head. The example of this day demonstrates that even they who may have made themselves to be widely regarded as objects of suspicion will not be unwelcome in this cathedral pulpit, and that here, at any rate, there shall be witnessed that essential unity, along with apparent diversity, which is the true glory of that Church which began in the diversities as well as the agreements of a Peter and a Paul, a James and a John, and which held and prized them all because underneath them was Another who is the Chief Corner- stone,— Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

111. But yet again, and finally : It may still be ob- jected that, wliile theoretically there may be force in the considerations already urged, a Cathedral in America is still an anachronism, because it is so essentially alien to our national ideas and our democratic principles. These lie, we are told, at the very foundations of our common Christianity ; but the Cathedral is a piece of that exaggerated ecclesiasticism which in the Old World made of bishops and churcJi dignitaries princes and barons, and which forgot in its lust of grandeur the needs of the common people.

" The needs of the common people." It is a phrase

168 Waymarhs.

which, as things exist among us to-dav, and especially in this land, may well make us pause and think ; and as we repeat it we may well ask ourselves the question sometimes, how far the Church of our affections is seek- ing, first, to find out the needs of the common people, and then to meet them. Within these limits I may not undertake to consider that question in its broader as- pects ; but this 1 do undertake to say, that that church can hardly be said to be meeting very effectually the needs of the common people which treats them prac- tically as a pariah caste, to be relegated in her statelier sanctuaries to the back seats, and to be made to feel in the Lord's House that they are not honestly welcome. I undertake to say that one need of the common people is to have, somewhere, somehow, some substantial evi- dence that the Church which reads in her services the Epistle General of Saint James believes it too, and that when she declares with Saint Peter that what God hath cleansed that we are not to call unclean she believes that too. Nay more, I venture to affirm that if the same Apostle said to Simon Magus, " Thy money per- ish with thee ! " when that thrifty capitalist proposed to buy into the Church of God as men buy into it who buy a pew to-day, we who claim to be of the Apostolic suc- cession in our ecclesiastical faith and order may well remember that that temple best meets the needs of the common people which is free and open to all comers, of whatever rank or caste or condition. Observe I am not now holding any man living responsible for that system of buying and selling so many square feet in God's

The Cathedral Idea. 169

House, which no man living created, and from which I am disposed to believe few men living would not gladly be free ; but I do maintain that if anything which re- lates to the practical working of the Church in this age is an anachronism, such a system as I have referred to is in this nineteenth century of the religion of the Gali- lean peasant, Jesus Christ, of all anachronisms the most gigantic.

Turn from it now for a moment to another spectacle, which in our mother Church of England is one of the most suggestive to be witnessed in modern times. Has any one within the sound of my voice to-day been pres- ent at St. Paul's- Cathedral in London, or at Chester, or Worcester, or Ely, or Durham, or in Westminster Abbey, at a people's service ? Are there any such vast and attentive congregations, is there any more vigorous and masculine preaching, anywhere else in Christen- dom? Do we know of tlie wonderful revival of life and energy in the English Church, and of the spiritual quick- ening and awakening of the English people ? 1 would not belittle one of the manifold agencies and influences by which that awakening has been wrought, but I declare here my profound conviction that no one thing in this generation has done more to rehabilitate the Church of England in the affections of the people of England than the free services of her great Cathedrals, and chief among them all the services in her metropolitan Cathe- dral, which, welcoming every comer absolutely without distinction, and giving to him constantly and freely her very best, has made men feel and own that she is indeed,

170 Waymarhs,

as she claims to be, the Church of the people. De- pend upon it, we cannot afford to ignore the signifi- cance of her example. When once we have lifted our fairest and costliest to the skies, and then have flung its doors wide open to the world, the world will understand that what we say of brotherhood in Christ we mean.

And so let us be glad and thankful that this stately and beautiful temple has been builded here, — yes, here, and not anywhere else. The wise and far-sighted founder of this fair city in the fields might easily, had he taken counsel of that utilitarian spirit which rules the age, have dedicated this site to another and very different use. He might have built a factory (the last letter from his hand which ever reached me was one giving me access to the famous silk factories of Lyons), or he might have reared here a hospital, or an inn, or a music-hall ; and if he had, and if he had spent millions upon some such undertaking and blazoned it all over with his own name, who does not know how the air would have rung with his praises as a wise, shrewd, hard-headed, practical, common-sense man ? But he set about instead to rear a House of God ; and other hands, bound to him by the closest and most sacred ties, have taken up his work and carried it on to its noble comple- tion, not to glorif}' any earthly name, but to the glory and honor of the Incarnate Christ ; and thus the palace has been builded not for man, but for the Lord God. No human creature, however worthy, will have homage here, but only God ; and to-day we come to ask Him to take this house and keep it as His own forever.

The Cathedral Idea. 171

Yes, and more than this ; for such a building as this proclaims to all the world that underneath the pros- perity of any community that lives there must be a steadfast faith in the unseen and a steadfast faith in Him who has revealed the unseen to us. It is on this faith that every nation that has endured has first of all been builded. It is in this faith tliat those peasants of Galilee whom their Master sent to preach His Gospel to a scornful and unbelieving generation went fortli and conquered the world.

And if it be said they went without purse or scrip, and that they reared no costly temples ; if, in other words, I am reminded of what is called the simplicity '* of the early Church," — of the upper chamber in Jerusalem, or the unadorned proseuche that sufficed for Apostolic dis- ciples, — I answer, I do not forget them. But neither may any one of us forget that such was the best they had. No more is asked from us ; but less than this no true devotion has ever given. In ages and among Chris- tian people where the sanctuary has been bare (as in the case of our own land and our forefathers), so, too, has been the private' house. But it is ever a fatal sign of art decaying into luxury, and religion into contempt, when men permit the house of God to be meaner than their own, and when they allow to their domestic pleasure what they refuse to the worship of the Maker and Giver of all.

It is because this holy and beautiful house is the most effectual protest against such a tendency — a tendency to which no thinking man who knows anything of the

172 Waymarhs,

scale of expenditure for the splendor and luxury of liv- ing in our great cities can be insensible — that we may well hail this day and this gift of God with deep and intelligent rejoicing. The Church in our land waits yet to see a gift which can at all compare with it ; and while we are here to-day chiefly to consecrate this Cathedral, we may not forget that this sanctuary of religion is but a part of a larger whole, — a whole whose several parts, so wisely planned and nobly executed, demands our unstinted admiration and gratitude. They well called in the elder days any considerable gift for religious or charitable purposes a" foundation." The word is most descriptive here ; for here have been laid foundations broad and deep for Christian worship, for Christian education, and for Christian and paternal oversight. No dreamer is needed here to see in this princely work, all centring in this beautiful cathedral, the promise of quickened diocesan life streaming forth from this gracious centre, — a rallying-point and resting-place for all the clergy of the diocese, an elevated type and example of the Church's worship, a distributing centre of diocesan activities, and a home and seat for the guiding hand and head whom God has called here as its bishop. No dreamer is needed, I say, to see in this work such a promise, for already its seed is here, deep-sown with no mean or stinted hand. May God water that seed with His grace, and so make it to bear fruit abundantly.

It is in view of such considerations that we congratu- late those whose work and gift this is, and bless God that He put it into their hearts to make it. We remem-

The Cathedral Idea. 173

ber with grateful appreciation that this princely benefac- tion comes to-day from her hand who lays it upon God's altar unfettered by halting conditions and unspoiled by unworthy reserve. And we remember, too, with equally cordial appreciation the wisdom and energy that have guided this work in its progress and brought it to its successful conclusion. " Forasmuch as it was in thine heart to build an house for My name, thou didst well that it was in thine heart." " Now, therefore, arise, 0 God, into Thy resting-place. Thou and the ark of Thy strength ! Let Thy priests be clothed with righteous- ness, and let Thy saints sing with joyfulness."

My dear brother, and father, and friend ; ^ this con- gregation of your own people and of mine will surely indulge me in one word more, if I add to those other felicitations which especially belong to this day our loving congratulations to you. To few men is it given to see the end of so large and anxious a work as that which your eyes to-day behold, crowned with such ripe success. May God make this powerful instrument for His service rich and effectual for blessing in your wise and resolute hands ! May He give to you and your flock rest and peace in this holy place, and make it a benediction to all your sea-girt diocese. Here, like a rock above the waves, may it stand, to be a refuge and a beacon for many generations ; and here, amid the cease- less cares and trials, the often loneliness and sorrow- fulness of your weighty office, may you iind strength

^ These Avords were addressed to the bishop, the Kt. Rev. A. N. Little- john, D.D., LL.D.

174 Waymarhs.

and calm within these holy courts, and the dove-like ministries of the Comforter. One at least of yom^ brethren — nay, why do I say one only, when 1 am sure that I speak for all the rest ? — is glad that this happy day has come to you and that this noble gift has come with it. If I may speak for the mother who bore you and whose spires we may almost see from the spot on which we stand, New York is glad in the blessing that has come to Long Island, and — may 1 not say it, too? — a little proud that it has come to you from one of her own spiritual children. If you have reckoned us your debtors in the past, you will surely own that the debt is cancelled to-day, and that with no niggard hand. For if this is, after all, but the gift of one, behind it are the hearts of all ! Truly the lines are fallen to you in pleasant places, and you have a goodly heritage. But none too goodly is the shrine for that Eternal King whose glory we pray may henceforth and always fill it. As we look about us here to-day, those words of Wordsworth's spring un- bidden to the lips : —

" Tax not the royal saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims the architect who planned, Albeit laboring for a scanty band Of white-robed scholars only, this immense And glorious work of fine intelligence. Give all thou canst, high heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more. So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense These lofty arches, spread that branching roof, Self-poised and scooped into ten thousand cells, Where light and shade repose ; where music swells, Lingering and wandering on, as loath to die ; Like thouglits whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality."

The Cathedral Idea, 175

Fair is the house which art has reared amid this rural loveliness. May God's abiding presence make it fairer still. May weary souls, wakened out of their sleep of sin, learn to cry with Jacob, when he came to Beth-el, " This is none other but the house of God ; this is the gate of heaven." And when the end shall come, then may the Lord rehearse it, when He writeth up the bede- roll of His saints, that many souls were ripened here for that more glorious house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens !

XI.

SEEMON PEEACHED AT THE BENEDICTION OF ALL SAINTS CATHEDEAL, ALBANY, N. Y.,

NOV. 20, 1888.

/ was glad luhen they said unto me, we will go into the House of the Lord. For thither the tribes go up, even the tribes of the Lord. For there is the Seat of Judgment, even the Seat of the House of David. — Psalm cxxii. 1, 4, 5.

The choice of the preacher for this day is not felici- tous, and this consciousness cannot be more keenly present with you who hear than with him who speaks. If there were no other nearer in many ways to your Bishop and worthier for such a task, it would still be most appropriately performed by one in whose tones there could be no suspicion of the ardor born of merely personal interests or prepossessions. In the American mind of to-day the question of the Cathedral is still an open question. If there are those who believe that it is something which may have a rightful place in our mod- ern ecclesiastical life, there are others, and among them churchmen, as well as those who are most remote from the Church, who regard it simply as an anachronism, having no good end to serve, nor any right to be. That question cannot well be ignored this morning ; but I

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think you. will agree with me that it would best be dis- cussed by one who was not himself irrevocably committed to one view of it, and least of all by one whose opinions, it may be said, may easily enough be guessed before he has expressed them. There are those in our American Episcopate (and one pre-eminently, whose presence here, as primate of our American Church, must be among our chief joys, — whose task, I believe, I am performing, gladly discharging thus ancestral obligations incurred long ago), who, so far as any personal interest in this question is concerned, stand wholly outside of it. They have not undertaken — there is, so far as I know, no probability that they ever will undertake — any such work as that which we are here to set forward. And their calmer, more disinterested judgment would be of pre-eminent value.

If, however, nothing of such a nature is at my com- mand, I may at least offer in the place of it some words which, though repeated to-day were most of them spoken long ago, and which, when they were originally written, had for their author one who certainly stood as entirely outside of any Cathedral scheme as any bishop, priest, or deacon in the land. Some fifteen years ago, a few clergymen in the city of New York were in the habit of meeting for the reading and discussion of papers on subjects historical, theological, and ecclesiastical. I shall rehearse this morning the substance of one of these papers which discussed the Cathedral in America. Whatever may be the value of the opinions it expresses, they were not the views of an interested person. They

12

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were written to promote no enterprise then present or probable, nor to justify any scheme which was then even so much as dreamt of. They were simply convictions which had been reached by dispassionate reading and reflection, and no boldest prophet would then have cared to predict that their author would ever be likely, under those circumstances which have since then come to pass, to have a personal motive for attempting their realization.

I shall do little more than substantially restate them now, and in view of their history, I venture to think that 1 have a right to ask that in listening to them you w^ill elimiuate the personal element altogether. They are not Episcopal opinions formulated to justify a line of action already entered upon ; they were simply the deliberate conclusions of a parish priest, derived from impartial study and observation, and set down nearly twenty years ago.

At that time the situation was both somewhat like and somewhat different from that which confronts us to-day.

On one side of the Atlantic was to be seen the gradual dawning and development of the Cathedral idea ; while on the other there was a characteristic impatience of the Cathedral reality. It had been in England a period of almost destructive criticism; while in America it was an era of enthusiastic inauguration. On one side of the water the cry had been, " Cathedrals and the Cathedral system are alike failures. The venerable building of the nineteenth century is an anachronism, and its staff

The Cathedral Idea, 179

of more or less studious, but inert, clergy an offensive incongruity." In a Church Congress at Leeds a Dean of Durham related that he had been the recipient of a pamphlet entitled " What is the use of Deans ? " and, in an admirable paper on " Suggested Improvements in Cathedrals," he concluded with an appeal for active co- operation in such improvements, on the ground that nothing less than prompt action would save the Cathe- dral system from " parliamentary attacks." In a word the tone of English criticism was either hostile or apolo- getic ; while, at the same time in our own land, we were assured that the Cathedral was an ecclesiastical, nay, a religious necessity.

Antagonistic as such opinions seem to be, they sprang, in reality, from the same root. During the previous years, the Church of England had witnessed a mar- vellous revival in spiritual life. The stir of awakened vigor had been felt through every remotest member of the whole body ; and thus the criticism of the Cathedral system, as it then existed in England, was at once natural and intelligible. On the one hand it was urged, " Here are stately edifices, not always opened, rarely filled. Attached to them are numerous clergy, very few of whom are resident in the Cathedral city, and almost all of whom are pluralists. This body of clergy con- sumes large revenues, and does very little strictly minis- terial work. True, they cultivate learning and polite letters, and write books, and translate Greek plays; but over against them are clamoring the tens of thou- sands of spiritually destitute and untaught people, men.

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women, and saddest of all, children, with whom Chris- tian England to-day is teeming. " What," it was some- what impatiently demanded, "is the Cathedral system doing for the rescue of the degraded classes, the diminu- tion of pauperism, the evangelization of the masses ? " And the answer then must needs have been, " Not much, anywhere ; and in more than one Cathedral city, almost nothing at all." Was it any wonder, then, that some people were impatient of moss-grown ruins, which, how- ever venerable and interesting historically, seemed only to block the onward march of the Church, and to waste its substance in a sort of devotional dilettanteism ? What were wanted were agencies which should not only centralize power, but distribute it; which should not merely gather learning and numbers, but should send them forth again to do some effective and appreciable work.

And so, in America, what had deepened dissatisfaction with Cathedrals in England had called them into being. The same sense of urgent work to be done, the same need of organized and aggressive activities to accom- plish it, the same want of a diocesan centre of life, a centre Avhich should not be so much conservative as aggressive and distributive, had led in the United States to the rapid multiplication of Cathedrals.

That this was so, we need only look at the Cathedrals then in existence to see. Accustomed, as many of us are, to regard the Cathedral as an elegant and luxurious appendage of a wealthy and venerable ecclesiasticism, the first thing that strikes us on looking at the Cathe-

The Cathedral Idea. 181

drals which have already been reared in this land is that they are in hardly any instance to be found in centres of wealth and culture, where the Church is strong, either in means or numbers. On the contrary, most of them are to be found in communities where the foundations of the Church have barely been laid, where her ideas are, to the vast majority, religious noA'elties, and where neither wealth nor numbers are in any sense available. The dioceses in which a Cathedral, or some- thing answering, in its design and purpose, to a Cathe- dral, are to be found, are Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Chicago, Florida, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Maine, Albany, Western New York, Central New York, Central Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Possibly, there are others, but I do not know them. Now with two or three exceptions none of these are among the older and wealthier dioceses of our Church. On the contrary, but yesterday some of them were not dioceses at all, but unorganized missionary jurisdictions, hardly explored, and equally bare, so far as Church work was concerned of men and means. Nay, even to-day at least ten out of these fourteen dioceses are missionary dioceses, in such a sense at any rate that our Church in them is not strong enough to dispense with constant and consider- able contributions of both men and money from without. How came the Cathedral to be organized in such dioceses, unless the men who have been called to the administra- tion of their affairs, found such an agency indispensable to the prosecution of their diocesan work ?

To this it has indeed been answered that the existence

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of the Cathedral in many of our newer dioceses proved only that slavish devotion to Anglican patterns from which neither American bishops nor presbyters have been wholly free ; or, that it illustrated merely that American passion for a pretentious nomenclature which would fain dignify every clapboard chapel with a stately and sonorous title, — that passion, in other words, for covering up meagreness of resources and poverty of efforts with ecclesiastical parade. But such an answer carried with it a very grave imputation, when it was considered who they were whose motive and action it impugned. Churchmen of whatsoever school, were hardly prepared to explain the existence of a Cathedral in Ne- braska, or in Minnesota, or in Central Pennsylvania, upon such an hypothesis. It was obvious that among the dioceses which have been named were those of the most various ecclesiastic sympathies and affiliations, ad- ministered by bishops of the most dissimilar churchman- ship and proclivities.

If from any of them one might have expected the slavish devotion to Anglican models already referred to, surely among these such prelates as Clarkson and Whipple and Lee and Howe, Huntington and Armitage could hardly have been included. These men and others who might have been named were men saturated with the American spirit, grateful, indeed — as who is not ? — for the fostering care of that " dear mother the Church of England " from whence we sprang (as Gov- ernor John Winthrop, some two hundred and fifty years ago, so filially wrote), but manfully conscious of their

The Cathedral Idea. 183

independence as a National Church, and of the supreme need of adapting the Church's agencies and activities to the wants of a living present, instead of wasting its strength in disinterring and vainly endeavoring to gal- vanize the worn-out methods of the past. No one who had watched their work could have the hardihood to affirm that they had not grappled with the problems of our American irreligion in a thoroughly direct, practical, and intensely earnest spirit. And yet, almost the first thing that some of them did was to set about building a Cathedral.

It was still urged, however, that such a fact simply argued a spirit of ecclesiastical sentimentalism, which may indeed coexist with much earnest and practical endeavor, but which is pretty sure to characterize a cer- tain type of churchmanship. Just as the most matter- of-fact woman has somewhere in her a vein of romance, so, it was said, have even moderate and conservative bishops and presbyters, of a certain prevalent type, a yearning for the poetry and the sentiment of a Cathedral. There would have been something, perhaps, in such an argument, if it had not been a task so hopelessly impos- sible to make it fit the facts. Among our frontier bishops, whose Cathedrals have marked the line of the Church's advance across our western prairies, have been some, perhaps, in whom the emotional, sentimental, or poetical element was by no means deficient ; but the vast majority of them have been men supremely of action, intent upon real, aggressive, persistent work, and to attempt to explain their Cathedrals on any theory of

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religious sentimentalism is to suggest so utter an in- congruity as must needs provoke a smile.

No, the Cathedral, where it exists already in our American Church, exists because it stands for a felt want, and witnesses to the recognition, on the part of its builders, of its definite function. It is no longer a theory among us, but a fact ; and the comparatively rapid multiplication of Cathedrals, especially in our newer dioceses, would seem to imply that the want which they were intended to supply, and the functions which they were intended to perform, were at once real and definite. What that want has been, we may as well let those who have most keenly felt it tell for them- selves. Said the Bishop of Minnesota,^ in a sermon preached at the consecration of a Cathedral in a neighboring diocese some fifteen years ago : —

''The Primitive Church gave to the bishop his Cathedral Church to be the centre of all the work which ought to cluster around a bishop's home. Our American branch of the Church was fettered in her infancy by the ideas of the surrounding sects. The separated clergy stood alone. Each one grew more intensely individual by his isolation. The bishop ivas, in theory, the centre of unity ; but he only met his clergy once each year, and he could not know their wants so as to be, in very truth, their father in God. There was no diocesan unity in great plans of work; and hence many a noble apostle has gone down in sorrow to the grave with a broken heart. In the diocese there were as many ' uses ' as individual tastes might weave into the service; opinions became matters of faith, and brought party shibboleths and party strife.

1 The Rt. Rev. H. J3. Whipple, D.D., LL.D.

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" The Cathedral Church gives the diocese what every parish cannot give, — the daily prayer and meekly Eucharist. No day should ever dawn, or sun go down without its incense of daily prayer. The lonely missionary and the parish priest and the Christians hindered from such devotions by worldly cares, will be strengthened by the increasing worship which here goes up to God. There was a day when men revolted against superstition, and in their zeal for simplicity, thej- stripped the Church to very baldness. The King's daughter should be clothed in garments of beauty. The graceful lines of architecture, the vaulted roof, the stained glass, the carving of the sanctuary, and the precious emblems of our faith, may all elevate our souls, and give us a deeper realization of God's presence in His Church. The law of ritual cannot be left to the fancies of the individual priest. The bishop's watchful care will see that we do not symbolize doctrines which the Church does not teach. Year by 3'ear the service will become more beautiful; and it ought to be the expression of hearts united to Christ. Without this our beautiful ritual will be in God's sight as kingly raiment upon a corpse. The Bride of Christ ought to be clad in garments of beauty; but the fine linen of her adorning is the righteousness of the saints.

^' The Cathedral is the centre of the diocese's ivorJc. Our Lord sent out His disciples two and two. The greatest of the apostles took a brother on his missionary journeys. How much greater the need in these days of doubting faith! In our western fields a bishop's life is one of deferred hopes. He must often work without men or means. If he build a school, a divinity-hall, a hospital, or home of mercy, he must lay the corner-stone with praj^er, and water it with tears, and believe almost against hope that where we are blind to see no way God will make a way. The bishop is a pitiable, helpless man, unless he have the loving sympathy and the kindly aid of all his children in the Lord.

186 Waymarks.

'■^ The Cathedral is the hisJiop^s home. He is the father in God to all his brethren. The best bishop is the truest father. This fatherhood will deepen by daily contact with fellow-laborers. He will have clergy with widely different theological views ; they will have different plans and modes of work; and he will give to all the liberty the Church gives. 'There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.' "

To much the same purport are words which I take from the sermon preached on the opening of the edifice ultimately designed as a Cathedral for the diocese of Wisconsin, by him who was then bishop of that dio- cese, the late Dr. Armitage. Anticipating both popular misapprehension and the fear of local rivalries and jealousies, the bishop goes on to say : —

*'I know that there are prejudices against the name ' Cathedral, ' and grave misunderstanding as to its meaning. Some think it is a dangerous novelty among us, in some way associated with extreme doctrines and practices. The truth is that the first bishop of our Church in Pennsylvania, — Bishop White, one of the most moderate men, — in his memoirs, very solemnly gave the close of what would prob- ably be his last work, to declare his conviction that every bishop must have his own Church, apart from the parishes under his charge. Bishop Hobart in New York soon after tried to enlist his diocese in the purchase of a central site in the growing <5ity, to be occupied for a Cathedral, which in due time would be sorely needed. Had they listened to him then, or had his life been spared a little longer, the diocese would not now be busy, as it is, in raising $1,000,000 for the mere site of a Cathedral. The idea and feeling of necessity

The Cathedral Idea. 187

are old in the Church in this countiy. In England, bishops have always had their Cathedrals, although Church and State have distorted them into warnings for us, rather than models to imitate. The practical realization, from many causes, has been of slow beginning and growth. But to-day, Illinois Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee, Missouri, Maine, Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, Albany, \Yestern Xew York, — all have, in some form or other, a Bishop's Church. And this because experience everywhere shows the same need. Almost all are slow to attempt to give permanent shape to the organization, and are wisely W'Orking on, leav- ing the work to shape itself, just as we are doing. The work is the main thing, and that can be as real in a humble chapel, like the one we have lately occupied, as in a minster like York ; without title and dignity, as well as with a full staff of dean and canons and j)rebendaries, and whatever else. ''Now, the one leading thought on the whole subject which I beg to have indissolublj" tied to this building and to the whole work undertaken on this site is that the Bishop's Church is for all souls, — free and open in every way to all who desire the ministration of the Church. A parish is an association of men who desire these ministrations, and provide them for themselves. If they are wise and Christian, they will make their parish a centre of influence and work for Christ, on the community outside of their own number. If they are selfish and foolish, they will be content to let others provide for themselves as they have done. But the Bishop's Church must have no restriction. The bishop is also a pastor, and, according to the doctrine of the Church, is sent to care for all souls within his field. And while he will wisely multiply parishes, and rejoice in every new congregation which is formed, he will always see the need of having helpers and agencies and institutions, and a free and open Church to reach those who will not include themselves, nor even be included in those bodies. Men sometimes

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speak as if the Bishop's Church and work would interfere with parishes, — would absorb all their energies, and bring about a dangerous centralization. Let any one read our canons, and see how carefully the bishop's power is restricted on every side, and he will hardly fear that. And his Cathedral work will only supplement that of the parishes. The parishes being united in the diocese, and so in the Cathedral, will find there, as results of their combined gifts, perhaps means and agencies which no one parish can provide itself. The diocese will be the gainer for the training of its workers, both clerical and lay, which will naturally be given in the Cathedral, and the bishop can thus properly command a constant supply of helpers in the diocesan Church, which he could not set in one parish in preference to others. Let it, then, be understood that what is here is not the concern of a single parish or congregation, but a general work for the good of all. There will be, of course, a regular body of worshippers here ; but all worshippers are welcome whenever they will come. For the support of the work we depend entirely on the willing offerings of the people. We ask all who will be regular worshippers, and as many more as will join them in this, at least, in order that we may have some basis of income from which to gauge our expenditure, to pledge a minimum sum which they will give statedly to our work. We shall need the united and self-denying gifts of us all to carry it forward with our increased expenses. I hope we shall not need to say much about these con- tributions; for I trust that the spirit is growing among us which will make every one glad to give money and time and work to the Lord. And more direct gifts can hardly be made to Him than in this work, v/hich pays no human being a dollar beyond his bare maintenance, his food and raiment; which makes no outlays in the modern luxuries of worship, so- called, and which is sending out from house to house, and from soul to soul, in this community and its neighbor-

The Cathedral Idea. 189

hood, Christian men and women intent on helping and winning for Christ, which maintains worship in three places besides this, and here will offer frequent and various services, to meet the occasions and opportunities of all.'^

It was because of words such as these, the fruit of the practical experience of men whose wisdom and self- sacrifice the Church had already learned to honor, that your preacher reached that four-fold conviction concern- ing the Cathedral which to-day he can do little more than rehearse. It is this : that in an American Church life there is a place for the Cathedral.

(a) As an elevated type and example of the Church's worship.

(6) As a distributing centre of diocesan work.

(<?) As a school and home of the prophets.

{d) As the ecclesiastical centre of the work and influence of the bishop.

(a) The Cathedral has a foremost function among us as an elevated type or example of the Church's w^orship. Our American Church allows, w4th great wisdom, a very wdde diversity in the manner of celebrating her services. There are congregations where the baldest simplicity may be found, on the one hand, and the most ornate ritual, on the other ; and these differences in the " use " obtaining in different parish Churches contribute to adapt the Church's services to a very various class of worsliippers. But the unreserved indulgence of these differences is not without its dangers. On the one hand a passion for splendor, an aesthetic delight in cere- monial, may carry our services to the verge of an almost

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servile imitation of rites and customs which have no place in our reformed Catholic Church ; and, on the other, these extravagant usages, or a desire to protest against them, by act as well as by word, will provoke many to an almost ostentatious neglect of all regard for what is only decent and orderly. If a clergyman's rld- ing-vvhip and gloves have found a resting-place upon the Holy Table, in the sight of an assembled congregation, it may have been in somewhat coarse and impulsive protest against the obtrusive genuflections and abject prostrations which had earlier been made by some other before that same altar. And thus, as we see in fact, differences are intensified, and a reverent uniformitv is rendered more unattainable than ever.

But what shall prevent increasing differences and a wider divergency of opposing customs ? It has been wisely held that a microscopic and rigid legislation will not do it, and it is doubtful whether anything will wholly displace our present almost endless variety of custom. But if anything can help to that end, it will be a central and stately structure, where the Church's services are rendered in their fulness and grandeur, but with as close an adherence as possible to the Cathedral worship of our mother Church. That worship has been shared in for generations by men of every shade of opinion and every variety of ecclesiastical association. But all hearts yield to its spell, and all minds own its dignity, beauty, and impressiveness. The most familiar tribute to an English Cathedral service which has been written in our day emanated from a divine of the

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Puritan school of theology, and of most rigid Puritan descent. It certainly ought to have set us thinking long ago, that no worship of modern days has been so uniformly approved and prized by Christians of q\qvj name and men of every rank as has the Cathedral service. If such a service has in it elements that touch the most different natures, why should we not employ it among ourselves ; and above all why should not we have it under conditions which would lift it to be tlie type and pattern for the whole Church ? In England, the average parochial worship is in every way better than ours, hav- ing more heartiness, and, especially in the musical portion, more of unison, than among us is anywhere to be found. And the reason is that the Cathedral, with its spirited services, and broad and massive effects, presents a model toward which the parish Churches instinctively turn. From it, these get their best musical com- positions, their finest hymn-singing, and above all, that noble combination of dignity and simplicity, that chaste impressiveness and beauty, which, above all else, are distinctive of worship in the English Cathedrals. An American traveller may find in All Saints', Margaret Street, in St. Andrew's, Wells Street, in St. Alban's, Holborn Hill, the most "advanced" ritual which the Anglican Church can produce. But he will, with per- haps a single exception, look in vain for any exhibitions of it in any English Cathedral. There, as a rule, nothing is tawdry, or bedizened, or glaring; but, as in the noble choir at Durham, the noblest architecture, combined with the most absolute simplicity ; and when

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the worshipper has joined in the services he will find little difference between those in Salisbury and those at Ripon, between those in Canterbury and those in Litchfield.

Surely there is something very significant in such a fact ; for it shows that there is that in a Cathedral Church which tends to the avoidance of extremes and to the maintenance of a dignified and impressive service. And if this is true of the Cathedral in England, how much more is it likely to be true of a Cathedral Church which would be the living expression of the best religious sentiment among ourselves. The manifold novelties that are caught up here and there, and sought to be en- grafted on the services of our parish Churches, would find no place in a Cathedral, administered by a body of clergy representing a common consent and a united judg- ment and approval ; and more than this, what a mission such an agency would find awaiting it in the musical services of the Church! We have in our American Churches a great deal of music that is costly, a great deal that is florid and pretty, and not a little that is vicious and intolerable. As compared with our Angli- can sister, we are nearly half a century behind in the right estimation of hymn-singing, and other much neglected (or perverted) departments of musical wor- ship. And what has made the difference but that in England the choral festivals of the greater Cathedrals and the devotion of a highly skilled and cultivated or- der of men to musical studies and composition in con- nection with those Cathedrals, has lifted the whole

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standard of taste and the whole scale of performance to a far higher level than we have at all approached ? The present Dean of Norwich, in his essay on " The Cathedral a School of Music," observes that " it must be remembered that music has by no means as yet taken that position in our services that it has a right to take. The minds of people in general are not at all disabused of the notion that music is a mere ornamental accessory of worship ; they have not yet at all come round to the view that it is the highest, truest, deepest expression of devotional feelings." ^ True as these words are in Eng- land, it is impossible that they could more accurately describe ourselves. In the last twenty-five years the musical w^orship of our Church has indeed advanced to a higher level ; but it is still in many places pretentious, obtrusive, and bad. It often consumes more time than of old, provokes more comment, aggravates and per- plexes more parish priests, groping blindly and hope- lessly, like Samson among the Philistines, for deliver- ance from its tortures ; but it is far from what it ought to be, and farther still from what it easily might be ; and it will continue to be so until we have some such normal school of Church music as the Cathedrals have shown themselves to be in England, — having about it a prestige which cannot be despised, and illustrating an excellence which cannot fail to provoke a healthy emulation.

And all this the Cathedral can do Avithout the likeli- hood of being beguiled into undue display or betrayed into foolish extravagance. In the parish the vagaries of

1 Principles of the Cathedral System, p. 115. 13

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the individual parish priest or organist may run away with him ; but in a Cathedral there is an impersonality of administration which tends to restrain eccentricity and to make mere individualism almost impossible. True, the Cathedral is the bishop's Church or seat ; but the bishop who administers it must be able to command the co-operation of a body of clergy, whose various tastes and opinions must at least greatly modify his own. Under such a system novel customs will not be apt to find easy admission ; and while there will be, as there ought to be, progress and improvement in the Church's worship, it will be progress in the direction of those things only which have been widely and thoroughly tested and approved.

(6) And next to this the Cathedral has a definite function as a distributing centre of diocesan activities. To us in America it cannot be insignificant, as suggest- ing an example for our imitation, that the Cathedral was called into existence for precisely that end. " It must be granted," says the Dean of Norwich, in his recent volume on the Cathedral system,^ " for it is a matter of fact, that a Cathedral was in its origin nothing more than a missionary station, where the bishop of a partly unevangelized country placed his seat, and that the Cathedral chapter was originally nothing else than his council of clergy grouped around him, whose duty was to go forth into the surrounding district with the mes- sage of the Gospel, to plant smaller Churches which should be subordinate or parochial centres, and to re-

1 Principles of the Cathedral System, Int., p. xviii.

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turn again periodically to the diocesan Church at head- quarters, for the counsel and directions of their chief." Could there be a more exact description than this of the relation which there is (or ought to be) between a mis- sionary bishop (and many diocesan bishops) and their missionary deacons and presbyters ? It is the experi- ence of every bishop that if he could command the ser- vices of a few clergymen not settled in organized parishes, or anchored by other ties, whom he could send at opportune moments to improve new openings, to maintain temporarily the Church's services, to attempt in a tentative way, at new points, a certain amount of Church work, some of the most promising fields might speedily be made centres of ecclesiastical life and activity.

A bishop, like a general, needs to have, somewhere among his forces, troops that can readily be mobilized ; and the bishop's Church or Cathedral is obviously the fitting centre from which such a force may most readily and effectively be distributed. If the diocese or jurisdic- tion be mainly of a missionary character, then the uses of such a staff of clergy as I have suggested are too ob- vious to require argument ; while if the diocese be an old and thickly settled one, with the Church well and strongly established in its principal centres, then the function of such a clerical staff appears the moment we consider the urgent need there is for a body of men who shall be distinctively employed as preachers.

The demands upon the parochial clergy are so numer- ous and complex, the same man, in even the best ap-

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pointed parishes, has to do so many things, that, between the pressure of Sunday and week-day schools, of paro- chial visiting, of superintending and maintaining chari- table enterprises, " the pastor in his study " is in danger of becoming a vanishing memory. " It is not meet," declared the Apostles, " that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables;" and many an overworked parish priest echoes that cry; but the Church cannot give him even a single deacon, and so he struggles on, to the detriment of his own powers, and equally to the detriment of his ill-fed flock, — his energies frittered away amid a thousand distractions that leave him only the merest fragments of time in which to store his own mind, or to prepare himself to stand up as a guide and teacher to his people. What an inestimable blessing to such a man, could he feel from time to time that he might be reinforced by some brother clergyman from the mother Church of the diocese, whose pointed, fer- vent, vigorous utterances would quicken and stimulate both him and his people.

And so, too, in the matter of the charitable and philanthropic enterprises of a diocese. If any one will take the trouble to look over the eleemosynary opera- tions of the Church in one of our great cities, the first thins: that must needs strike him is the immense waste of means and energy that invariably characterizes them. The Church as a fact in large cities is often simply pure Congregationalism. There is rarely the faintest pre- tence of any common interest or effort. The city rector looks over the wall at his brother rector with a feeling

The Cathedral Idea. 197

in which indifference and disapprobation are apt to be mixed in about equal parts. He knows next to nothing of his brother's methods, nor that brother of his. Each one of them perhaps, or, at least, each half-dozen clergy- men, have their pet " asylum " or " home," or orphanage ; and in a community where one strong institution would be at once a power and a blessing there are as likely as not to be half a dozen, each struggling to exist, and each wasting resources which, if consolidated and adminis- tered with unity and harmony of purpose, would do a work four-fold greater than that which is likely to be the sum of their isolated efforts. There is no more cry- ing need in our cities than for something which shall unify the well-meant labors and wisely aggregate and administer the generous benefactions which are often so profusely laid in the lap of the Church. And where can we look with so much hope for such a unifying agency as to the diocesan Cathedral, with its board of trustees representing every shade of sentiment, and its staff of clergy including every phase of theological opinion? - One cannot but anticipate the relief that such an agency would bring to over-taxed pastors, no longer called upon to carry the interests of sundry struggling charitable enterprises upon their hearts, in addition to the inevitable burdens pertaining to their own immediate cure, and relieved most of all by the conviction that money was not being needlessly expended in the main- tenance of useless machinery only half doing work which might be far more economically and efficiently performed. The spirit of the present age was said, in a

198 Way marks.

recent convention of the disciples of " free religion " to be one of " profuse beneficence." If this be so, we may- well anticipate that it will be followed by an era of reaction, when the popular demand will be, ^hat are these " shelters " and " folds " and orphanages doing to vindicate their right to such large benefactions, such costly edifices, and such ample retinues of attendants ? And we shall be fortunate if we do not discover, as the result of the want of organization, and above all, of economic consolidation in the charities of our great cities, that, as was recently actually shown in the case of one of them, the cost of maintaining those whom they shelter is equal to the cost of maintaining such bene- ficiaries at the most expensive hotel in the country.

And yet it is idle to hope for any improvement in this state of things until we can have some central organiza- tion, ecclesiastical in its character, and yet so separate from and unlike the parish Church as to make it wholly impossible that there should be any rivalry between them and it, — an organization which, representing all shades of ecclesiastical sympathies, will administer its charities in a broad, impartial, and truly Catholic spirit, aiming to build up no single parish, nor serve, nor further the ends of any particular school or party. If we are to find any such central organization, it must be in connection with the diocesan Church, or in other words, the Cathedral.

(c) Turning now to another office of the Cathedral, there is pre-eminently a place for it in the life and work of our American Church as a school and home of the

The Cathedral Idea, 199

prophets. "A school and home of the prophets." I know how vague the words sound and how remote is the thought which they suggest. In fact the modern Church, and pre-eminently our own Church in this land, has so largely lost the primitive conception of the min- istry that to many the words are doubtless unmeaning. The confusion of the priestly and the prophetic offices has become so common, and the neglect or disesteem of the gift of prophesying — as the bishop of this diocese nobly witnessed in an address delivered to many of those to whom I speak this morning on the occasion of a recent diocesan convention — is so general, that it would seem as if the Church had almost forgotten the commission which her Lord gave to her. Yet she is " built," declares Saint Paul, " upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.''^ The careless exegesis with which too often we read Holy Scripture has been wont to refer that last word " prophets " to the messengers of the elder Testament. But what the apostle had in mind is plain enough when a few verses later in the same chapter he speaks of a mystery being hidden from the holy men of old, but " now revealed to his apostles and prophets by the Spirit." And to remove all doubt, in the same Epistle he mentions prophets as a foremost order of the Christian ministry. " He gave some apostles and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers," — pastors and teachers for the settled cure of souls, prophets and evangelists for the vindica- tion and extension of Christ's gospel.^

1 Norris, Cathedral Canons and their Works, p. 38.

200 Wat/marks.

I maintain that the Church began her work with this conception of the ministry, and that from apostolic days to our own every great forward movement has been marked by its recognition, and every period of torpor or decline by its obscuration. We pass on from the first fervor of apostolic days and we come to the monastic orders of Saint Jerome. The thought behind that movement was a purpose to revive the school of the prophets. " Let bishops and presbj^ters," says Jerome, " take the apostles and apostolic men as their models ; we monks must look rather to Elias and Eliseus and the sons of the prophets." ^

So was it with the forty Benedictines who landed on the shore of Kent with the giant form of Saint Augus- tine at their head. These men were preachers, before all else, and supremely preachers, journeying to and fro to proclaim Christ to men, and so vindicating their calling as the prophets of their age. Follow up the stream of the Church's life in our mother Church of England. Obscured though the idea was in the Middle Ages, it was never wholly lost sight of. Saint Chad of Litchfield, the thirty Canons of St. Paul's with their Dean, the Friars Minors of St. Francis, to whom the noble Grosseteste of Lincoln looked to " emulate the prophets of old," and to illuminate the land lying in the shadow of death with their preaching and learning,^ the statutes of Bristol Cathedral as enacted at the Refor- mation, one of which reads " Quia lucerna pedihus nostris

1 Ep. 58 ad PauHnum.

2 Robert! Grosseteste, Epistolse, 58, 59.

The Cathedral Idea. 201

est Verhum Dei, statuimus et volumus ut Becanus et Canonici, immo per misericordiam Dei ohsecramus, ut in Verho Dei opportune et importune seminando sint seduli " — all the way along there shines forth, amid whatever temporary loss or exaggeration in other direc- tions marred the. progress of the Church, the gleaming thread of this witness to the paramount necessity of the prophetic office.

We have all but lost it to-day. There is not wanting here and there among us an intelligent recognition of the fundamental relation of the prophetic office — of the preacher's calling (for when I use the one word here I mean just as much the other) — to the Church's life and progress. But the thing itself is rapidly becoming an extinct species.

It must needs be so. Consider for an instant the demands of our modern parochial life to which I have just referred, and then ask yourself what chance there is for the ordinary parish priest to do any real or effec- tive work as a preacher. The most dismal aspect of the whole business is that we have ordinarily so utterly dismissed any smallest expectation that such a one ever will do any serious or worthy work in fulfilment of his prophetic office that we cannot interest ourselves in the subject. And yet, I declare before God, and in the solemn light of His word and all the past history of His religion in the world, that a Church which neglects or ignores the prophet's office and the prophet's message is doomed to decay, to dishonor, and to death. It is in vain that we organize societies, and build parish houses

202 Waymarks.

and multiply services ; there must be a body of men who shall be to their age preachers, " prophets who will cry aloud and spare not," equal to the vindication of God's truth on higher and more public tribunes than the parish pulpit, men of God who will step to the front in times of doubt and difficulty ; who will take a clever but sophistical book and cleave through its subtle false- hoods with the Sword of the Spirit, — " men who will speak the word for which a thousand hearts are waiting, and speak it with the power of one who has thought long and deeply." ^

And where are you to find such a body of men ? How are you to train them ; from what centre shall they go forth ? Pray do not let any one of us be guilty of the impertinence of saying that we have gotten along well enough without any such body of men thus far, and that there is no need of them now. We have not gotten on well enough thus far, and even if we had, there are new needs dawning upon the Church whose children we are, and it is at our peril that we disregard or ignore them. Says Canon Westcott,^ to whose calm judgment and matchless scholarship we may well turn in such a matter as this, speaking of Cathedral foundations in relation to religious thought, " The noblest organization is that in which there is the most complete separation of the functions of the con- stituent parts. Step by step that which was at first capable of manifold adaptations becomes specialized." And again, and most significantly, " The highest develop-

1 Norris, p. 44. ^ Bishop (1891) of Durham.

The Cathedral Idea. 203

ments of society will include the largest variety of distinct offices concentrated in different bodies." ^

Do we get the force of these words ? What is there that has become more complex than our modern life — its needs, its perils, its employments, its relationships ? And we whose office it is to adjust the activities of the Church to the living situation — yes, remember, that is your calling and mine — what are we doing to make the Church adequately a voice of warning, of authority, of instruction to a perverse and evil generation ? There must be an order of preachers and prophets, there must be a centre of operations, there must be a directing mind, there must be adequate training — in one word there must be that which nothing else but the Cathedral, not merely as a building, but supremely as an institu- tion (an infinitely more august and important aspect of the whole question, let me say) can adequately supply.

{d) And that brings me finally to remind you that we want the Cathedral as the home and centre of the work of the bishop. There is a tone with reference to the Episcopate which one often hears in our generation concerning which it is difficult to say whether it is more grotesque as an anachronism or as an imbecility. It is the tone which is fond of depicting the modern bishop as an ecclesiastical tyrant, — self-willed, over- bearing and imperious. Surely this ogre is a creature simply and purely of the imagination. He does not exist, simply because he cannot exist. The days of a " paternal " government, in the technical sense of that

1 Essays, p. 109.

204 Waymarks.

term, are, in the history of bishops, forever ended. We have come to the days of a Constitutional Episcopate ; I do not need, I think, to explain that phrase to those to whom I speak this morning. In the capital of this great commonwealth it is eminently appropriate and sug- gestive. A Constitutional Episcopacy is an Episcopacy " tempered," if you choose, not by Congregationalism, or parochialism, but by Constitutional law. Such law we have {a) in the constitution and canons of the several dioceses, and {h) in the constitution and canons of the General Convention. To these the bishop is subject in precisely the same way, and certainly in as large measure, as the youngest deacon. And if these are not sufficient to restrain him, it is competent to invoke, in matters that touch the material interests of them over whom the bishop is set, the common law. In a word, whatever may be anybody's theory of the inherent powers of the Episcopate, they are limited and hedged in at every hand by the prescriptions and restrictions of law. To these, in the administration of his office, the bishop must have perpetual reference, and in construing and applying them, lies a large part of his responsibility. But, plainly enough, he needs, in so doing, counsel and co-operation. Indeed, when a bishop enjoins anything of a dubious character, unsupported by the voice of his clergy, he acts on lines unknown to the primitive Church, even as the maxim of Saint Jerome plainly in- dicates when it says : " Let the bishop do nothing with- out his presbyters." How, now, is such counsel to be had ? Do you answer through the Diocesan Convention,

The Cathedral Idea. 205

or the Standing Committee ? The one body is too large and too unwieldy ; the other is too small and too remote. The former statement requires no proof ; the truth of the latter becomes obvious when you remember that the Standing Committee is made up usually, of members from all parts of the diocese, rarely convened, and that its members are largely engrossed with local and paro- chial interests, which are, to most of them, not un- naturally, supreme. What we wait for, especially in the due administration of our young dioceses, is the Cathe- dral chapter, to be the cabinet of the bishop, to be made up of preachers, missionaries, rectors, canons, and scholars, each one of whom shall have a double tie, first to the Cathedral, and then to some mission field, to some outlying cure, to some organized parish, to some college, or school, or seminary, to and fro between which they shall go upon a service regulated by rule (Kavcov) and in all of which the bishop shall preside as the guiding, restraining, inspiring mind. This I main- tain is the restoration of the lost ideal of the Episcopate, whereby his office and his seat become of paramount im- portance to the whole diocese, as expressing and im- pressing his influence, as binding togetlier the active life of the diocese, not only in one polity but in one policy, as the centre of institutions which surround the Cathedral and grow out of it, even as in this instance, thank God, they preceded the building of this Cathe- dral Church.

And does any one apprehend that this will issue in the undue enlargement of the bishop's prerogatives and

206 Waymarhs.

powers ? On the contrary, I maintain that it is at once the wisest and safest way to limit them. No diocese will readily consent that the Cathedral chapter shall be other than equitably representative ; no conven- tion will be apt to put itself in the power of a body which does not reflect more than one aspect of thought or one type of policy ; and no bishop, unless he be more than obtuse to those inexorable facts which confront one in this era of Christendom, will care to attempt to sur- round himself with a college of advisers which shall be pledged simply to register his own decrees. The day for that has passed, never to return ; and yet for lack of points of contact with his diocese a bishop may so drift out of touch with its living interests and aims as to be merely an isolated functionary, impotent as a ruler, and more than impotent as a leader. 1 wish I had time here to show how in our mother Church of England this could be demonstrated from the usurpations of the mo- nastic order, where the abbot thrust himself into the place of the bishop, and where to-day the dean, who has inherited the abbot's place and powers, has neutralized the office of the bishop in his own seat, and stultified the purpose of the Cathedral chapter.

But we are hampered by no such traditions. Ours it is, if we will consent to see the need of that more ade- quate organization of the Episcopate which the growth of the Church demands, to create such centres of adminis- tration in Cathedral foundations that, in addressing our- selves to those new tasks which every day loom up before us in such vast proportions, there shall be the due recog-

The Cathedral Idea. 207

nition and utilization of the Episcopate as the organic centre of the Church's aggressive life.

And so I thank God for what has been accomplished here. Noble as is this fabric both in what has been completed and what is projected, it is but a small part of the whole. The great idea which lies behind it, — an idea which rescues the Episcopate from isolation, from the errors of individualism, and so from comparative impotence, — this is the thing of supreme consequence, and of pre-eminent promise.

And I congratulate you, my brother, that in the good providence of God it has been permitted to you, and to the loyal and loving flock that have prayed and striven and given with you, to achieve so much. I do not find it easy to put into words my hearty admiration for a faith which has never faltered, for endeavors that have never tired, for a patience that -^ as I have watched, 1 may not be denied the privilege of saying even in this presence — has seemed to ennoble your whole nature. No one knows better than I do the difficulties you have had to encounter. I was born and reared in what is now the diocese of Albany, and was intimate with its traditions long before you came to it. Some of my most intimate and cherished personal friends are among those who in this whole undertaking have been most remote from sympathy with you. But they must suffer me to say what I think they would some of them be glad to have me say, — that your meekness and gentleness in the face of much criticism and often opposition, your gen- erous magnanimity under circumstances of discourage-

208 Waymarks.

ment and alienation, have, as it seems to me, only made you more and more worthy of our common love and re- spect. You have held to your own opinions, and have advocated them with a courage which is worthy of all praise ; and if you have differed with some of your brethren, you have not suffered either the odium theo- logicum or the a7nor Cathedralis to embitter your speech or your temper ; above all, you have striven here, as we rejoice to believe, not for yourself, but for God and the honor of His Church ; and so we bless God to-day that you have not striven in vain.

May God make this sacred shrine of your own and your people's hopes and affections the place of his abid- ing. May you be spared to finish what to His glory you have so worthily begun. To this House of the Lord may the tribes go up, even the tribes of your Israel. Here is the seat of judgment, even the seat of House of David. May God long spare you to fill it ! And hither, also, may there never cease to come the burdened hearts that hunger for the Bread of Life, and Rest and Peace, and may they never fail to find them !

RELIGIOUS ORDERS.

No more remarkable emancipation from earlier prejudices has taken place in the last quarter of a century than that which has dismissed not only from the Church of England and from its American daughter, hut from other communions having little sympathy with either, the widespread distrust and dislike which for more than two centuries have prevailed everywhere outside the Roman Communion, and indeed in some quarters within it, toward what are called ''religious or- ders. ' ' The monk and the nun have been, not alone with sturdy Protestants, but with many devout Church people, the syno- nymes for fellowships fruitful only of corrupt morals, unreal devotion, and indolent mendicancy. The disfigured pages of mediseval ecclesiastical history, — disfigured by records of mo- nastic luxury, cruelty, and vice, which are witnessed to far more impressively and conclusively by the saintly endeavors of the Port Royalists toward reform than by any testimony submitted by the commissioners for the suppression of monas- tic houses, under the authority of Henry VIII., — records such as these created a hostility not only to the monastic idea, but to everything for which it stood, which not a great while ago was generally regarded as radical and inextinguishable.

Two influences have conspired to reverse that decision, or if not to reverse it, to qualify it. The first has been a more intelligent discrimination between the evils and the excel- lences of religious orders, and the second the pressure of those complex exigencies which are the distinctive character- istic of our modern life.

14

210 Waymarks,

In regard to the first of these, there will always be those who will believe that there can be no such thing as celibate orders, whether of men or women, bound together for devo- tional and beneficent purposes, that will not always be in danger of the evils which at the Reformation period flaunted themselves throughout Christendom. But it may be an- swered to this that almost as much as this may be said of any institution in human society ; so that the question simply arises whether the evil tendency in such orders is too great to be restrained or overcome. Still further: It may rightly be urged that, until it is demonstrated that religious orders and their evils are inseparable, to dismiss the former on ac- count of the latter is simply begging the question. And yet again : It might rightly be argued that modern society, with its unique and unprecedented exigencies would seem to be creating a situation and with it a demand for which religious orders furnish the only appropriate suppl3\ A recent writer^ has shown in a very interesting way how the growth of mo- nastic houses in England, with their accumulated lands and revenues, was partly due to the drift towards them in ages when the world had no use for men who were not warriors, of those gentler spirits, refined, shrinking, lovers of letters, of art, of religion, above all, in noisier and rougher times lovers of peace and quiet, to whom neither the camp nor the field offered anything but discomfort and humiliation. Our age seems far enough from theirs ; but there are gentler souls of both sexes to whom neither the fierce competitions of our modern life, the cares and anxieties of family life, — in one word, neither marriage, nor business, nor politics, nor society in its technical and artificial sense, — have any smallest attraction.

For these the office of a Brother or Sister or Deaconess would seem to offer a place to serve God and to feed their own souls J and the fact that religious orders of both sexes are

1 Rev. Dr. Jessup.

Religious Orders. 211

already at work in the Church, with recognized usefulness and wide and grateful appreciation, and also that the office of a Deaconess seems now, for the first time since primitive days, to be finding its living illustrations in other communions as well as in the Anglican and American branches of the Church, would seem to indicate that already a question popularly supposed to be environed with insoluble practical difficulties had reached a substantial solution.

The sermon which follows was preached in Grace Church, New York, on Sunday, Dec. 17, 1871. Since then the Dea- coness Home and Training-school in connection with that parish have been successfuU}- opened and set in operation by the Eev. W. E. Huntington, D.D.

XII.

WOMAN'S PLACE AND WORK IN THE CHURCH.

In speaking of woman's place and work in the Church it is gratifying to remember that the late General Con- vention of our Church,^ and especially the House of Bishops in its Pastoral Letter, have recognized not only the general expediency but also the Biblical authority for woman's work, and for the definite place in the or- ganization of the Church which to-day it is proposed that woman should officially hold. " In the revival of the Scriptural diaconate of women," says the bishops' pas- toral, " we feel an earnest desire that prudence and good sense may preside over every effort." These words are alike timely and wise. We have all heard a great deal within the past few years of the revival of sisterhoods and other similar associations of women, having in view a more unreserved devotion on the part of those con- nected with them to work for Christ, His Church, and His poor. During the past ten or fifteen years more than thirty such associations have been organized in our mother Church of England, and some seven or eight in our own Church in the United States. Their growth thus far has not been particularly rapid ; but they have multiplied fast enough to provoke among us a good deal

1 Of A.D. 1871.

Woman's Place and Work in the Church. 213

of inquiry, and in some quarters, it is not improbable, a good deal of alarm.

On the one hand, it has been felt and owned that there was in woman an immense power of usefulness, which the Church was at best but poorly employing. The records of Christian work for the past twenty years, both abroad and among ourselves, have shown us how much one such woman as Miss Marcli could do in Enff- land, not merely among her own sex, but among such a discouraging class of men as the English navvies, or most inferior day-laborers ; and what more than one other woman here could do in gathering bodies of a hundred men or more Sunday after Sunday into Bible classes, and so rescuing many a clever mechanic not merely from in- temperance and vice, but also from downright unbelief. It has been felt, too, that earnest women working thus, without a recognized place and definite commission, were working at a disadvantage. It has been felt that that advantage which belongs to a clergyman in having a distinctive office, garb, and status, would, if it could be given to woman, be no less an advantage to her. And at this point it has been common to turn to the sister of charity in the Roman Church, and point to the more obvious advantages which are undoubtedly hers. If we want a sister of charity, we always know where to find her. Her home is not in a private dwelling, from which any one of a host of social or secular engagements may call her away just when we most need her, but in an institution ; and in that institution her duties are such that if in an emergency we need her services

214 Way marks.

promptly, we can promptly and surely command them. She has no family cares to detain her ; no home duties which may (and as in the case of all home duties ought to) claim her first attention ; and when she passes in and out of the dwellings of poverty or sickness, she needs no escort, and is safe from all insult. No most degraded man ever offered, so far as I know, an intentional rudeness to a sister of charity. She bears a charmed life, and blessings attend upon her steps.

Why, then, it has been very naturally and persistently asked, should we too not have sisters of charity ? Shall we be guilty of the weakness of despising a good instru- mentality because we find it in bad company ? Fas est ah hoste doceri. Let us not refuse to learn wisdom even from our adversaries. If there are earnest and capable and godly women who are willing to give themselves to work for Christ and His Church, can we afford to let this misapplied power run to waste because we are afraid of being thought to imitate those with whom we do not agree ? May we not have the agency of organized women without the evils of that agency, as we see them at work elsewhere ? May not we, too, have sisters of charity without imitating the vices of Roman sisterhoods ?

These questions have already found their most satis- factory answer, as many among us believe, in those or- ganizations of sisterhoods in our branch of the Church on both sides of the Atlantic to which I have already referred. It would be idle to deny that a great deal of good work has during the last ten or fifteen years been

Woman's Place and Work in the Church, 215

done by means of deaconesses or sisterhoods among the poor, the neglected, and the outcast, which otherwise would never have been done at all ; and it is equally un- deniable that in the doing of that work many women of earnest nature and sympathetic spirit and abundant en- ergy have found a sphere of activity and a definite rule of life which have been to them at once a help, a privi- lege, and a blessing.

On the other hand, however, we may not overlook the fact that the revival and multiplication of religious orders of women among us has in certain quarters ex- cited not a little alarm and provoked not a little sus- picion. Such organizations are exclusively associated in the minds of many persons with thoughts of an alien and hostile communion, — a communion which has been (in this country, at any rate) until lately the only reli- gious body which has employed them ; and when such persons have turned to watch the operations of religious orders of women, it has happened, unfortunately, that they have seen in them in some instances more eager- ness to imitate Latin than Scriptural models, and more ardor to introduce among us practices that are Roman or mediaeval than primitive and Apostolic. That earnest minds looking on should be impatient of such unwisdom we cannot greatly wonder ; nay, more, that they should condemn those organizations in which such practices, however covertly, have a place, is not greatly surprising either. A system will always be judged — in the popular judgment, at least — as much by its accidents as its essence. If barnacles gather on a ship's bottom, the

216 Waymarks,

passengers will condemn her sailing qualities quite as much as if her sluggishness were due to lier model, and not to the pestiferous insects who have built their cells upon her keel. The alarm which has been awakened in some minds is not therefore surprising, even though it is not altogether intelligent ; and it certainly has not been diminished by the history of certain sisterhoods in our mother Church, which have practically asserted their independence of all ecclesiastical authority, and in some instances denied the right of inspection to the bishops of those dioceses in which they were situated. If we cannot have woman's commissioned help without such serious evils, it is certainly a grave question whether it is worth while to have it at all.

But suppose those evils are not inherent in the system, — is then the question which remains merely one of expediency ; and in deciding it have we no other lights than those of the experience of the past and of the present, about which men may easily and very widely differ ? If this were the position of this question to-day, I think I should still be able to show you many reasons why the Church might wisely and rightly revive such an agency among ourselves, and why we might well employ it. But the ground on which the friends of the present movement for commissioning godly women for work in Christ's Church, either under the name of " sisters " or some other, may plant themselves is, we venture to believe, a much stronger one, and finds its best defence in the words of Holy Scripture itself. Those words of the late Pastoral Letter of the House of Bishops which

Woman's Place and Work in the Church. 217

speak of " the revival of the Scriptural Diaconate of women" are, we may be sure, words which were well weighed, and discriminatingly and deliberately uttered. They imply that there is in Holy Scripture unmistak- able evidence of the official position and work of women in the Apostolic Church, and that our modern proposal to set her apart for Christ's service and to give to her a definite commission and a recognized status is not merely modern, but in truth the revival of something which is alike ancient and primitive and Scriptural. And when we turn to the New Testament itself we find it so. For example, near the close of that loving and beautiful letter of Saint Paul's to the Church at Philippi we read these touching words : " And I entreat thee also, true yoke-fellow, help those ivomen which have labored with me in the gospel^ with Clement also, and with other my fellow-laborers, whose names are in the book of life." ^ Here women are spoken of as not only fellow-laborers, but as " fellow-laborers in the gospel," and their mention is coupled with that of the name of one who was eminent in the ministry of Christ. It would be very hard to believe, even if the New Testament told us nothing more of work for Christ as done by Christian women, that these were simply estimable mothers or daughters of families who gave to the found- ing of the infant Church at Philippi merely such snatches of time as they were able to rescue from other engagements. The very grouping of the verse seems to point to a class who had a definite place in the great

1 Philippiaus iv. 3.

218 Waymarks,

work of proclaiming Christ to Heathendom, and who had done their work lovingly and well.

And, when we turn from this same Apostle's letter to the Philippians to that other which he wrote to the Christians in Rome, we find, not only such greetings as these, " Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord. Salute the beloved Persis, who labored much in the Lord," ^ but also this special reference to another fellow-laborer : " I commend to you Phebe, our sister, which is a servant of the Qhurcli which is at Cenchrea." ^ Here is certainly one woman who has a definite official position, for she is spoken of, not merely in general terms, as " a servant of Christ," but distinctively as " a servant of the Church." And the force of that language is certainly not weakened when, turning from our English version to the Greek we find that the word which is translated servant is hiaKovov^ the plain rendering of which, according to its connection, would be deacon or deaconess ; so that the passage, if properly translated, would read, " I commend to you Phebe, our sister, who is deaconess of the church in Cenchrea," — even as we should say to-day, " our brother John Paul, who is pastor, or assistant, of the church in such a place."

A still more striking and most conclusive passage, however, is that which is found in the third chapter of Saint Paul's first letter to Timothy. In that epistle the Apostle is giving certain specific directions as to what we may call the domestic life of the clergy. He enjoins

1 Homans xvi. 12. ^ Romans xvi. 1.

Woman s Place and Work in the Church. 219

that the bishops and elders be vigilant, sober, hospitable, no brawlers, not covetous, nor quarrelsome; that the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine ; and then he turns to declare what, as our version has it, their wives must be. Now, it has probably struck many a thoughtful reader that it is somewhat strange, to say the least, that the Apostle should be thus particular in declaring what should be the characteristics of the wives of deacons, when he says nothing as to what ought to characterize the wives of elders, or presbyters, or bishops. These latter, as occupying a more conspicuous position, and as being the companions of those of the clergy holding higher rank, would certainly seem most to have needed instruction as to what was required of them in the marriage relation. And yet, if our version is to be believed, the Apostle has nothing to say to the wife of a bishop or a presbyter, and is only very par- ticular as to what traits a Christian woman should exhibit when he comes to speak to the wife of a deacon ! Our perplexity disappears entirely, however, when we come to learn, as a copy of the Greek Testament shows us, that the Apostle is not speaking of deacon's wives at all, but of deaconesses, or, to use his own phrase, of "women-deacons." He had said in a previous verse " let the deacons " — that is, the men-deacons — " be grave " and sober, and the like ; and then he proceeds to add, " Even so must women " of that order, that is, " women-deacons," or, as we should say " deaconesses,^'' be grave, not slanderers, sober and faithful. Such lan- guage ^ which gives such unequivocal recognition to a

220 Waymarks,

religious order of women as already existing in the Church, seems conclusive, and makes us own the force of the remark lately made by an eminent Biblical scholar of our mother Church to the effect that " if the testimony borne in these two passages to a ministry of women in Apostolic times had not been blotted out of our English Bibles [by incorrect translations] attention would probably have been directed to the subject at an earlier date, and our English Church would not have remained so long maimed in one of her hands. ^^ ^

And now that we have these passages in a truer guise, what shall we do in regard to that agency for the em- ployment of which they give us such clear and sufficient authority ? Surely there never was a time when the cause of Christ more urgently needed every available agency for doing the work which the Master has given it to do in the world. Surely, too, there are no gifts which the Church more urgently needs to utilize than those winning, persuasive, and sympathetic gifts with which the Creator has supremely endowed woman. There appeared the other day a letter written by the elo- quent, if somewhat erratic preacher who speaks from the platform of what is known as Plymouth Church, in which this fact is made the ground of an argument for admitting woman to the pulpit. Its substance was that no one can at once inculcate and illustrate that spirit of love which breathes through the New Testament as can a woman. And while, as it certainly must seem to a candid criticism, that same New Testament is clearly

1 J. B. Lightfoot, D. D., " A Revision of the New Testament/' p. 114.

Woman's Place and Work in the Church. 221

enough against any usurpation of the office of teaching in the congregation by woman, it is as clearly a fact that hers is a delicacy and tenderness of approach, and an intuitive wisdom of utterance that oftenest fit her most of all to deal with those whose ignorance, or vice, or prejudice make them hardest to reach and win.

Of course, as will be quickly urged in many quarters, it does not require that a woman should take upon her a ministerial office, nor join a community, nor array herself in a peculiar and distinctive habit, in order to work for her Master. And we ought to be ready, not merely to admit this, but we need to recognize the fur- ther fact that, not only are there many devout and earnest women who can do the Master's work standing alone, and acting outside of any organization, but also that there are many women who can work in this way best of all. They can be a law unto themselves, and to associate them with others would only be to hamper and embarrass them. 1 recall one such noble woman at this moment, a lady of utmost refinement and of hon- orable lineage, whose labors in jails and almshouses in our great metropolis have made a name long distin- guished in the annals of our country more illustrious than ever upon the loftier bede-roll of Christian philan- thropy. All honor to such workers, and to the work which they have so faithfully done !

But when we have fully recognized the value of individual and disassociated services the fact still remains that we want, for a large class of persons in the Church, the manifold advantages of a definite

222 Waymarks.

organization and a specific commission. How many earnest and warm-hearted women are there in our land who have abundant leisure, who are without domestic ties, and who are fitted by training and inclination for a definite post of service in the Master's Kingdom ! As it is, perhaps they do try to do something, but they are pulled many ways by many conflicting engagements, and they have no definite place. If a Christian pastor needs their help, he cannot easily find them, and if they, as will- ing disciples of the Divine Friend of Martha and Mary, wish to minister to Him in the persons of His sick and poor, they very often are not allowed to do it. A young girl wishes merely to teach a class in Sunday-school, or a generous and sympathetic woman wishes to go to the bedside of some sick sufferer. But very often neither of them can do as they would without a sneer at their perhaps inconvenient enthusiasm, or without something worse than a sneer from the lips of a selfish man, who, though neither husband nor son, may happen to find them absent on such an errand when in the interests of his personal comfort they are " wanted." Surely for any Christian woman whose heart is warm with a desire to do something for her Master, and who is bound by no positive domestic obligations, to be free from such annoyance and embarrassment in her work would be an immense boon.

Why should we not give her that boon ? It is pos- sible for woman to have a definite place whether as an appointed deaconess or as a recognized sister with- out incurring either the dangers of monasticism or the

Woman's Place and Work in the Church. 223

perils of enforced vows, and the Church of our affec- tions is wise in having recognized the importance of a primitive and Scriptural agency, and in having resolved to restore it to its original simplicity and use- fulness, by purging it from mediaeval errors. The narrow limits of these pages forbid any attempt to portray a sisterhood or a deaconesses' institution, as one would fain see them organized and at work among ourselves. They have undoubtedly — as what earthly agency has not ? — their dangers ; but may we not venture to believe that those dangers can largely, if not wholly, be avoided ? And if they can, and if God has a place, an office, a definite post and calling in His Church for woman, may it not be well for those who share the sex of the Virgin Mother, of the Magdalene, and of Salome to put to themselves the question, " May not I be called to such a work as this ? Have not I that freedom from domestic ties, that love for the Master, and that aptitude for usefulness in His Church, which, when His cause languishes in the world for want of helpers, and when His truth stands still for lack of eager feet to bear it forth to men, will lead me gladly to exclaim, while looking up to Him for strength to do His will, ' Lord ! here am I ! send me ' ? '^

CHURCH SCHOOLS IN AMERICA.

That remarkable man who impressed himself in so many ways upon our American Church life, Dr. William A. Muhl- enberg, became earliest known to many as the founder of a Church school at College Point, L. I., — the first of its kind, at any rate of any marked influence, in this country.

From that school went forth into the Church and into secular pursuits some of the most eminent and useful men of the first half of this century. Bishops and other clergy, lawyers, doctors, and men of affairs were there trained and moulded by an influence which left enduringly upon them the mark of a strong, noble, and unique personality.

In the year 1855 the Legislature of New Hampshire passed an act to incorporate St. Paul's School. If not directly, yet by no very remote sequence of influences, St. Paul's School may be said to have had its origin in those influences set in operation by the earlier school at College Point. A layman of rare devotion and large foresight, ^ whose services to the Church of his adoption in Massachusetts can never be forgotten, found himself moved — partly by the diflicult}^ of finding just such a school as he desired for his own children, and no less by his sense of what was demanded for the best nurture of New England boys — to set apart certain land and buildings near Concord, N. H., for the purpose of founding a school to be administered in accordance with the principles of the Episcopal Church. This first foundation w^as followed in subsequent years by other generous benefactions from the same hand; and a school which began with three pupils has

1 Dr. George Cheyne Shattuck.

Church Schools in America, 225

grown to number four hundred, with applications, for many- years continuously, far beyond its repeatedly enlarged capac- ity. Its history as a school has been the history, as thus in- dicated, of exceptional wisdom, courage, and generosity on the part of its founder, and, it may be added, of singular and steadfast devotion on the part of those who, whether as trus- tees or instructors, have had to do with its remarkable growth and prosperity. But there is no one of these who will not own that that growth and prosperity have been most of all due to the remarkable man,i who from the day when, in April, 1855, he entered upon his duties as its rector, has been the fans et origo of its best and most gracious life. Without previous experience of a kind such as would seem to have been demanded by such an emergency, he showed him- self from the outset to be possessed of that ''divine gift of order,'' that natural aptitude for rulership, that rare and singular power of relating himself directly and intimately with the most dissimilar and perplexing phases of boyish character, and of winning an influence over all who came in contact with him, of which, save in such a case as that of Dr. Thomas Arnold, there have been in the whole history of modern school life few, if any, instances.

One may not speak of the living in terms which would not the less give pain because to the universal judgment they are so true ; but no one who knows the story of the growth of that Church in New England of which the first rector of St. Paul's School will always be regarded as so bright an an ornament will hesitate to own that that school, in the persons of its hundreds of graduates scattered not only all over New England, but all over the land, has been among the most potent influences in promoting that growth.

The sermon here given was preached on June 5, 1888, on the occasion of the consecration of the noble chapel for the school, erected mainly by the gifts of its graduates.

i Eev. Henry A. Coit, D.D., LL.D. 15

XIII.

SERMON.

And it came to pass . . . ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was, and Sa7nuel was laid down to sleep ^ that the Lord called Samuel, and he answered, Here am I. — 1 Samuel iii. 2-4.

" The temple of the Lord " here spoken of was not so much a temple as a tabernacle ; but though only a tent in Shiloh, it was the sanctuary of Israel, and the seat of its ruler or judge. From hence, under the guidance of Eli, had gone forth the voice of worship and the tones of law. It was the centre of the rule of the judges ; and Hebrew history, lost to view after the death of Samson, reappears with Eli, who " sat within the tabernacle gate and judged Israel " for wellnigh forty years.

But the days of his rule were about to end ; a turning- point in the nation's life had come at length ; and that inevitable law by which

" The old order changeth ever, Giving place to new,"

was to find in the history of the chosen people a sudden and tragic fulfilment. The hand of Eli had grown weak ; his grasp of the sceptre was at once feeble and ineffectual ; and even within the sacred precincts of the sanctuary, and in the persons of his own sons, crime and

Church Schools in America. 227

lawlessness ran riot unrebuked. "Hophni and Pliinehas, the sons of Eli, are, for students of ecclesiastical history, characters," which have been fitly described as " ' of great and instructive wickedness.' They are the true exemplars of the grasping and worldly clergy of all ages. It was the sacrificial feasts that gave occasion for their rapacity. It was the dances and assemblies of women in the vineyards and before the sacred tent that gave oc- casion for their debaucheries. . . . But the coarseness of their vices does not make the moral less pointed for all times. The three-pronged [instead of the single- pronged] fork which fishes up the seething flesh is the earliest type of grasping at pluralities and church-pre- ferments by base means ; the profligacy at the open door of the temple is the type of many a scandal brought on the Christian Church by the selfishness or sensuality of its ministers." ^ No wonder that the wrath of God could not long endure them, and that Providential judgments, swift and sharp, brought an administration at once so weak and so corrupt to an end.

But from our modern standpoint it is scarcely less a wonder that it was not superseded by a rule at once of alien origin and of hostile spirit. When the student of history reads of ecclesiastical corruption, or of power, whether secular or spiritual, as abused in ecclesiastical hands, it is the fashion to find in the incident an argu- ment for disowning all ecclesiastical authority, and for distrusting all ecclesiastical power. The government of Eli and of Eli's time, men say, so far as it was a govern-

J History of the Jewish Churcli, Stanley, part 1, p. 418.

228 Waymarks.

ment, was a " government of the Church ; and Eli, so far as he was the product of any institution, was the product of the Church. Well, if you Churchmen want him as an illustration of the fruits of your system, you are welcome to him. He was not perhaps a wicked old man, but he was a very weak one ; and he is a fair type of that system which trains a man in rites and cere- monies, in creeds and formularies, but leaves him with a blunted moral sense, a contracted intellect, and a sel- fish heart. Plainly enough, whatever else his history teaches us, it teaches us that whenever a nation wishes to rear men and not tools, leaders and not formalists, it must rear them elsewhere than within the precincts of the Church. Plainly enough, wherever else we are to look for prophets and reformers in a corrupt and law- less age, we are not to look for them in the chambers of the sanctuary."

And yet God does not seem to have thought so. In that crisis of Israel's history — when the power of the judge broke down and self-will ran riot in the land, when corruption nestled at the altar and stalked abroad in priestly office and apparel — a child's voice is heard out of the darkness, out of the despair, out of the shame, savino;, " Lord, here am I.'' We turn to look for its source, and not out of the wilderness, the hermit's cave, or the far-country, but right there in the temple it is heard ; and the child Samuel, dedicated in the temple, reared in the temple, dwelling in the temple, is the speaker. Nay, the child Samuel it is, the youth Samuel, the man Samuel, who, reared and nurtured thus, comes

Church Schools in America. 229

forth from out his chamber in the sanctuary, where the voice of God has found and spoken to him, and lifts the Israel of his time out of its sin and shame into the peace and order of a reverent, loyal, law-abiding people. If ever there was a reformer, Samuel was a reformer ; if ever there was a fearless ruler, a righteous law-giver, a stainless man, Samuel was that man. In all Hebrew literature, ay, or in any other literature, find if you can anything finer in its way than that calm challenge with which, at the last, he lays down the sceptre of his authority, — " Behold, here I am, old and gray-headed ; and I have walked before you from my childhood unto tliis day. Witness against me before the Lord, and be- fore His anointed : whom have I defrauded ? whom have I oppressed ? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith ? " ^ And such a ruler, such a judge, such a prophet, was the product only, solely, absolutely, of the temple. In the temple he had learned to hearken and to wait ; in the temple. he had been taught to trust and to obey ; and when at length in the temple the voice of God finds him and speaks to him, it is a priest of the temple who recognizes its august tones, and interprets them to his childish soul.

The lesson is, I venture to think, not inappropriate to this place and this occasion. Both the place and the occasion are unique. It is the occasion of a dedi- cation or consecration, and the consecration of the chapel of an institution of learning. Now, in neither

1 1 Samuel xii. 2, 3.

230 Way marks.

of these two things, taken by themselves, is there any- thing at all remarkable. There are schools and col- leges all over the land, and there are, I presmne, chapels connected with most of them ; but in the case of no one of them all, I venture to affirm, is there an instance in which the chapel is so plainly and obviously the one conspicuous figure, the costliest fabric, the dom- inant centre of the whole. There are, I rejoice to know, not a few centres of Christian nurture where Christian teaching is the rule, and where Christian worship is not unfitly housed ; but it has been reserved for this school, and for the grateful generosity of those who were once its pupils, to rear a sanctuary here which among build- ings of its kind is — at any rate, in our own land — foremost, if not pre-eminent.

It is this fact, I say, which makes this occasion unique. The munificence of individual or associated generosity to our American institutions of learning is in no wise unusual, nor is its expression very diverse. We have wealth rearing very splendid dormitories, and very stately dining-halls, and very complete and amply equipped laboratories. Just now, I believe that wealth is chiefly devoting itself, in most of our schools and colleges, in fit submission to the ruling voice of the hour, to the erection of gymnasia and swimming-baths ; and I am told that the provisions in this latter regard of some of our great universities are likely, before long, to rival those of Roman magnificence in days when Dio- cletian reared those splendid structures whose ruins still survive. In this view, it must be owned, I think, that

Church Schools in America, 231

the visible structures which distinguish our institutions of learning have a profound significance. They re- veal the nature of that faith which has reared them. If a man believes that character is to be formed by merely physical and intellectual culture ; that the train- ing of the hand, or the eye, or the brain is to make an honest man, a loyal citizen, a lover of humanity, — he will be apt to provide buildings meet for such training, and no more. If he does not believe that in the nurture of youth the most august fact is God, and that the most solemn word is duty, he will not greatly care whether a boy is taught to recognize the one or to own the other. And this is, in truth, what we largely see. There could be no more impressive contrast between the earlier days of our republic in this regard than the present. No American can find himself within the boundaries of this commonwealth, I fancy, without recalling the figure of that greatest of orators, if not of statesmen, whose nativity within its borders lends to New Hampshire a chief distinction. Daniel Webster had, doubtless, not only great gifts, but great faults. And yet no one can read the story of his life without seeing how profoundly it is stamped, from its beginning to its end, with the im- press of a strong, definite, and devout Christian nurture. Said Mr. Bell, of his native State, to Webster on the morning when the latter made his great reply to Hayne, "It is a critical moment; and it is high time that the people of this country should know what the Ameri- can Constitution is." Said Webster in reply, "Then, by the blessing of Heaven, they shall learn, tliis day,

232 Waymarks.

before the sun goes down, what I understand it to be." ^ " By the blessing of Heaven." The words were not lightly spoken. They were the language of a man whose childhood had taught him dependence on God, and whose manhood never forgot it. Do not mistake my meaning. I am no stickler for cant phrases or for empty formalisms. But I think you will agree with me that in our modern statesmanship there is a barrenness of reverence for the Unseen, a visible impatience often of all recognition of those mightiest forces that govern the universe, that bodes no good for our future. Is it hard to discern its source ? I make every allowance for the growth of a triumphant materialism, for the incur- sion of alien faiths and manners, for the debilitating effects of wealth and luxury. But behind these there is another cause, more potent, as I am persuaded, than all the rest. It is a nurture which, in the schoolroom and in the college, largely leaves God out of the account, which trains body and brain alone, and which, as it has come to be doubtful whether there is anything more or higher to be trained, has no warning for the conscience, no discipline for the affections, and, above all, no word of inspiration for the soul.

And so I think we may well bless God for this day, for this school, and most of all for this chapel. In his admirable volume on the '' Rise and Constitution of Universities," a work which I would commend to the thoughtful attention of every scholar. Professor Laurie, of Edinburgh, discusses the influence of Christianity on

1 Lodge's Daniel Webster, pp. 178, 179.

Church Schools in Ainerica. 233

education, and the rise of Christian schools. Contrast- ing them with those which had preceded them, he observes : —

'^Had Christianity assumed a purely negative attitude to the Romano-Hellenic life and culture, and done no more, it would have to be classed among the destructive powers of barbarism. But it had its positive side; it had in it a power to build up as well as to throw down. It introduced more than one new idea into the life of our race. It broad- ened and deepened the sentiment of the common brotherhood of man, by giving to human sj^mpathy and love a divine sanction. But, most important of all, it fortified the sense of personality. The individual was now not only a free, thinking spirit, which had its personal life and personal rights; this spirit, the true person of each individual, was now seen to be rooted in God, to be of infinite importance even in His eyes. Thus, by one stroke as it were, the per- sonality of each man was deepened, naj^, consecrated, while at the same time his bond of sympathy with all other human beings was strengthened. Two opposite results were thus attained, and these two were conciliated. For the deepening of man's spiritual, personal life meant the life with God, and it was in and through this life that his personality be- came a matter of infinite worth. But this rooting of the finite subject in the eternal and universal Reason, while giving infinite worth to the soul of each man, at the same time made impossible that insolence of individualism and self-assertipn which had characterized the subjective move- ment among the Greeks. Man became, as a personality, much greater than the most exalted Stoic could have con- ceived; but by the very same act he was taught humility, dependence, humanity, love."^

1 Laurie, Rise and Coustitution of Universities, pp. 22, 23.

234 Waymarks.

" Humility, dependence, humanity, love." My breth- ren, these are the things that have been pre-eminently taught here. The record of this school is not devoid of honors won by its sons on many fields of endeavor and in many halls of learning. The standard of its scholar- ship, as illustrated in the standing of its pupils, is such as any mother might point to with just pride. But its pre-eminent distinction has been that it has taught its children faith, and reverence, and the eternal sanctity of duty. And these things it has taught, not alone in the class-room, by text-book, through the impressive lessons of history, but most of all in St. Paul's chapel. The daily prayers, the weekly sacraments, the well remem- bered sermons, the Sunday afternoon Bible lessons, — these have been powers that have taught Christ's pres- ence in His Church and Christ's message to His children in a language never to be forgotten. Once and again and again — I know it from testimonies which might well be brought here to help to hallow by their inspiring memories this holy and beautiful house — has some young life, struggling in the meshes of strong temptation, torn by doubt, or smitten by a sense of its sin, heard from yonder altar or yonder pulpit words of hope and pardon, a message of life-giving love and courage. Once and again and again, have young feet, turning thither tardily and reluctantly, found themselves, like Jacob at Peniel, halted on their earthly way, and called to climb the gleaming ladder ascending to the skies. Ah ! my young brothers, alumni of this school, am I not telling the story of some of you as I speak these words ? As

Church Schools in America. 235

you come back here to-day, to join with us in giving this sanctuary, your gift, to God, do not your hearts turn to the dear old chapel — the hallowed place which those who have come after you have found " too strait " — with tender and inextinguishable devotion ? The convictions that are deepest in your lives to-day, the faith that when the world scoffs yet lives and glows within you, the rev- erence for goodness, the love of nobleness, — tell me, are not these things linked in your memories with lessons that you learned here, lessons* which you will never forget ?

Believe me, I am not unmindful, in saying this, that the personal element in all the religious life of this school has been a pre-eminent element, and that to that, under God, the influence of its chapel and its chapel services, its whole system of churchly teaching, have been largely due. John Henry Newman, in his essay on " Private Judgment," calls attention, with character- istic acuteness, to the limitations of such a judgment. He says : —

'*It is much easier to form a correct and rapid judgment of persons than of books or of doctrines. Every one. even a child, has an impression about new faces ; few persons have any real view about new propositions. There is something in the sight of persons . . . which speaks to us for approval or disapprobation with a distinctness to which pen and ink are unequal. . . . Reason is slow and abstract, cold and speculative; but man is a being of feeling and action; he is not resolvable into a dictum de omni et nulla, or a series of hypotheticals, or a critical diatribe, or an algebraical equa- tion. And this obvious fact does, as far as it goes, make it probable that if we are providentially obliged to exercise our

236 Waymarks.

private judgment, the point towards which we have to direct it is the teacher rather than the doctrine." ^

In the case of a boy, Newman might safely have written for " probable " the word " inevitable." It is_ tlie teacher, rather than the thing taught, which is the foremost potentiality in influencing any boy ; and I may not be denied even by the restraints of this place the expression of our feeling of grateful homage and affec- tion for the character and services of one to whom, under God, the work and influence of this school are pre-eminently due. His honored associates in this work, his boys, now men by hundreds, bearing, many of them, the burden and heat of the day in many a place of honor and usefulness in Church and State, will never be able to separate, in their thought and memory, St. Paul's school and St. Paul's chapel from the rare and com- manding personality of him who is so absolutely identi- fied with both of them.

But yet the fact remains — is it not the very office of this service and of this building to remind us of it ? — that, in the realm of the highest things, the personality that moves and influences others is the personality that itself has been wrought upon by a Force from without and above. Mr. Matthew Arnold was right, only in a sense infinitely higher, I fear, than he himself recognized, when he said the other day, that what our American society waits for is to be born avcoOev, from above. It is the teacher and the teaching that know the spell of that quickening that shall move society and the world !

1 Essays Critical aud Historical, vol. ii. p. 353. London, 1871.

Church Schools in America. 237

But where, save here, my brothers, can they learn it ? The problems of the teacher in our generation are certainly not easier than the old. On the contrary, I think it must be owned that there is much in the intellectual atmosphere of our time to make them harder. Never was there an age more impatient of what it calls the lumber of useless learning. Says the hard, dry, material spirit of the hour : " I want my boy taught how to use his hands and brain in such tasks as will win the most prizes and earn the most money. Is this education of yours a convertible article, which may be turned readily into dollars and cents ? For if not, I want none of it I Greek, Latin, Scripture studies, the history of the past — what have these to do with the ores of Mexico and the exports of Singapore ? " And this spirit, which makes itself felt in many ways, cares little for conduct and less for character. It offers a direct premium to any teacher who will content himself with veneering his pupil with a thin coating of accom- plishments, or drilling his brain in the use of mechanical formulce. Surely, I do not need to tell those who hear me this morning that this is not the way in which men are made, — men who are to rule themselves, their own passions, their own powers, and so to rule the world. To influence a man, to influence a boy, you must not merely know him or deal with him from without, but from within. Says Edward Thring: ^

"A grand cathedral is a glorious specimen of thought in stone ; but to many it is but stone, with no message of the 1 The Theory and Practice of Teaching, pp. 37-40.

238 Waymarks.

higher life, of which, nevertheless, it is a most true and liv- ing expression. . . . When a traveller in the distance, com- ing to see it, crosses the last hill, ten miles off, the massive walls and towers . . . mark it as a building intended for worship. Many are satisfied at this point. . . . Some go nearer . . . but the landscape, not the cathedral, is still the main consideration. ... In the precincts all the out- side can be seen. . . . But the great purj^ose does not reveal itself till the reader of mind addresses himself to the inner truth, and lovingly . . . searches out the history, learns the plan, strives to enter into the secret shrine of the feelings which wrought out the . . . sanctuary, and to translate out of the stone the speech which in very truth is in it. [But] then, as he gazes, spirit answers spirit. . . . The dumb walls speak, the beam unlocks its secret ... to a spirit that can watch and wait and learn. . . .

*'Such is the power of getting near, the power of the right point of view, when distance is got rid of and mind touches mind. . . . [And] whenever life is in question, and the higher manifestations of life, this power of get- ting closer and closer, of being admitted inside, as it were, and penetrating to the innermost sanctuary and most secret work of the organism, whatever it may be, building, paint- ing, music, book, man, ... is the only means by which mind can be reached and true success attained. This is simply the teacher's starting-point.''

Yes, but again I ask, Where but here can such a power be attained ? Spiritual touch, spiritual insight — these are none other than the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and these are the gifts with which Augustine, and Arnold, and Muhlenberg, nay, with which He who is the Master of every true teacher, living or dead, and who " knew what was in man," wrought

Church Schools in America. 239

within that divinest sanctuary, which was made to be the Temple of the Holy Ghost, and which is the human heart. And so to-day we come here to dedicate this holy house as the centre and source of all those gracious and regenerating influences which have made this school a power in the land, and which have made its administration most of all memorable, as illustrating a Christian nurture, itself in touch with Christ, and rich in the fruits of the Spirit. The boys, the men, of the future^ believe me, fathers and brethren — our hope for them, nay, our hope for the Church, our hope for our land, must find its reason here ! Other Samuels, yet to rule in Israel, must come within these walls, and hear God call, and answer, " Here am I ! " Or else, what- ever triumphs may be won, the end will be but failure, and all gain but loss.

And so I congratulate you, my right reverend father, and you, gentlemen of the trustees of this school, and you, my reverend brother, who have been from its foundation its rector, upon the hopes long cherished which find fulfilment here to-day. This is the fitting crown upon a life-work memorable for results which glowing and grate- ful hearts all over this land will never cease to cherish. I may not speak of them as I would, for I know well the pain that even this brief allusion may cause to one to whom all personal praise is at once pain and punish- ment, but I shall not be denied the privilege of mingling my joy with yours who have come up here to-day, upon this fair and finished work. The venerable donor of the material foundation of this school comes back here

240 Waymarks.

to-day, " his eye not dim nor liis natural force abated," to own that when he made the first gift — wise, large- hearted, and far-seeing — from which this school has grown, " he builded better than he knew," and loving hearts in both hemispheres, St. Paul's boys, w^ho under many skies, in ranch and pulpit, at desk or on quarter- deck, are bearing the honor of Alma Mater as a white guerdon on their hearts, are lifting their prayers with ours as they pray, " For my brethren and companions' sake I will wish thee prosperity : peace be within thy walls and plenteousness within thy palaces ! " May God be pleased to hear that prayer, and grant to it abundant answer. Aiid when our work is done, and tired hands and feet are crossed in rest, may children and children's children still come here to learn to serve God in His Holy Church, and to give thanks for all the love that here has led and fed and taught them !

AMERICAN CHURCHES IN EUROPE.

It is a common accusation against republics that they fail to inspire the spirit of loyalty; and defenders of monarchical institutions are fond of insisting that there can be no patriot- ism without devotion to a person.

The history of elder republics would be a sufficient answer to that charge, if it found no refutation in republics that are more modern. But if there were no other evidence of a strong national feeling in Americans, a very interesting proof of it might be found in the inauguration in the leading capitals of Europe of religious services in which the ministra- tions are conducted by clergj^men who are citizens of the United States, according to the only liturgy in the English language habitually in use in that republic, and in which a conspicuous feature is always the prayers for rulers of the republic, and for its Senate and Representatives in Congress assembled.

When these services were originally and somewhat ten- tatively initiated it was objected that they were not only un- necessary but confusing. In every one of the cities in which they were begun, there were already services in the -English language, conducted by clergy of the Church of England, whose liturgy and usages were substantially identical with those of American Churchmen. It was urged, not without force, that in countries where a corrupted form of Christianity prevailed it was much to be desired that those who disowned its authority should i)resent, as far as possible, a united front; and it was further felt that it was an ungracious re- turn for the nursing care which the Church of England had

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242 Wat/marks.

vouchsafed to its American daughter in that daughter's earlier and less prosperous childhood, that the child should show itself unwilling to worship at its mother's knee.

But there were other influences which proved too strong to be restrained by considerations such as these ; and a foremost one among them was undoubtedly that ardent national feel- ing which, as American travellers illustrate it in so many and such unexpected ways, is to foreigners a matter of con- stant and profound surprise.

It is this feeling which largely explains the existence in Eome, Paris, Dresden, and Nice of costly and beautiful church edifices erected solely by the gifts of Americans, and which also explains the maintenance of services under Ameri- can auspices in Florence, Berlin, Geneva, and other European centres. Two of the churches thus erected would be memo- rable structures anywhere; and the sermons which follow were preached the one in connection with the consecration of St. Paul's American Church in Eome, on March 29, 1876, and the other on the occasion of the consecration of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Paris, on Thanksgiving Day, November, 1886. The former of these edifices owes its erec- tion largely to the well-directed energy, rare artistic taste, and unwearied perseverance of the Kev. Dr. Robert J. Nevin, who, having served his country with distinction during her Civil War, entered the ministry, and became rector of St. Paul's Church, Eome, in 1869.

The Church of the Holy Trinity, Paris, a structure of equal taste and dignity, erected at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars, and maintaining throughout the year a service of great beauty and dignit}^, is no less indebted to the Eev. Dr. John B. Morgan, who became its rector in a. d. 1872.

XIV.

THE WITNESS OF SAINT PAUL IN ROME.

And the night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul ; for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Home. — Acts xxiii. 11.

These are somewhat discouraging words with which to raise a man's despondent spirits. As you will remem- ber, they follow that fearless and impassioned argument which the Apostle had made in behalf of his message and his Master, and made, as it seemed for the moment, in vain. Standing there in Jerusalem on the castle stairs, he had told his own story, and with it had de- clared the nature of his Lord's commission ; and no sooner had he proclaimed that that commission called him to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles than men who till that moment had listened to him with absorbed at- tention, spurned him from their presence, declaring that it was not fit that he should live.

We know the rest, — how, when he is summoned from this arraignment before the mob to appear at the bar of the Sanhedrim, he opens his lips before what ought to have been that cooler and more impartial tribunal to

244 Way marks.

have them closed with an insult and a blow ; we know how, by one chance word of his, his examination before the council is converted into a fight so fierce between its two opposing parties that '' the chief captain, fearing lest the Apostle should be torn in pieces of them," snatches him away from Pharisees and Sadducees alike, and locks him in a dungeon in the castle. Have we ever thought of his reflections there ? Ah, how hard he had tried to bring his countrymen to understand him ! With what consummate w^isdom, with what ex- haustless patience, with what rare and singular blending of winning candor and delicate reserve had he spoken his message ! Well, as he thought it all over, — as his thin and restless fingers absently pressed the lips still bruised and bleeding, it may be, with the blow which no brutal foreigner, but an Israelitish hand had dealt him, — how do you think he estimated the situation ? Did this look much like success ? Were these the victories which the Gospel was to achieve ? Was he never to open his mouth for that Master whom he loved with such ardent and passionate devotion without rousing the fires of human resentment and kindling anew the dying embers of a sectarian animosity ? It is easy to say that the Apostle had counted the cost beforehand, and under- stood that his preaching would provoke official opposition and personal insult. I presume he had ; but I imagine that he had some human sensibilities to be wounded and cast down ; and I venture to think that we do not under- stand him any better, but rather worse, by lifting him in our ordinary conceptions of him to a pedestal where

The Witness of Saint Paul in Rome. 246

no disheartening experiences could touch or depress him ; and so I think that just at this point he may easily have been profoundly disheartened. What now was there in the message that came to him when that night the Lord stood by him to cheer and reassure him ? " Be of good cheer, Paul ; for as thou hast testified of Me in Jerusalem so must thou bear witness also in Rome."

The words present the two imperial cities in sugges- tive contrast. It is the sixtieth year of the Christian era. Israel is a province of Rome, and Jerusalem is a conquered capital. Here and there the message of the Cross has won a handful of disciples, but on the whole Judaism is as haughty, as scornful, as unrelenting in its animosity to the truth of Christ as when it nailed the Saviour to the cross. Nay, the loss of their civil power seems only to have made the Israelitish priesthood more resolute and more tenacious in the maintenance of their national faith. If they drew their sacerdotal cordon round a more contracted circle of sovereignty, they maintained those religious peculiarities which that cordon inclosed with a pertinacity all the more inflexible. There is nothing grander in apostolic history than those two defences of the Apostle's which immediately precede the text. And yet how impotent they seemed to have been ! The man has spoken with his whole heart in his message, and with his whole soul, eager, nay, on fire with his lofty purpose, looking out of his eyes. And the end of it is the wild clamor of a mob; and, a little later, the infuriated dissensions of rival sects. It is at such a moment that he is bidden to be of good cheer —

246 Waymarks.

of good cheer, as lie lies there in a felon's cell, bound and smitten because, as he had testified of Christ at Jerusalem, so must he bear witness of Him at Rome. Verily, as I began by saying, these are somewhat strange words with which to raise a man's despondent spirits.

For, if we know what Jerusalem was in the year of our Lord 60, we know equally well what Rome was. It was midway in the reign of Nero. Stained as were both emperor and court with crime, there was as yet no decadence of Rome's imperial power. The riches that she had snatched from the coffers of conquered nations still glittered in her palaces, and went to enrich her senators and captains. There had been great cruelty in her conquests, but there was still splendid organization in her armies, and not yet wholly decayed or impotent were those great ideas of law, as regulating private license and dominating individual caprice, which had done so much to lift her into her place as mistress of the world. It is true that her people were more tolerant of religious diversities than the Jew, but it was the toleration of contempt, or, at least, the liberality of indifferentism. In the Pantheon were the deities of every land and the shrines of every faith, and if he could care to, the Apostle knew that he would be permitted to rear there an altar even to the despised Nazarene. But none knew better than this trained Hebrew scholar — pupil sometime at the feet of Gamaliel — that the teacher who should hint that the deities of the Pantheon were all alike to yield to the incomparable sovereignty of the Man Christ

The Witness of Saint Paul in Rome. 2-xl

Jesus, would be hooted for his presumption, if he were not laughed at for his infatuation.

And yet this very task it is that is presented to him to cheer him amid the discouragements of that other task with which here we find him confronted.

Whatever may seem to have been the strangeness of such a message, we know well that it did not fail of its effect. The greater, harder task that opened before the Apostle, instead of daunting, seems only to have inspired him. He may have been disheartened as he lay down to sleep Avithin the castle-walls, but though he woke next morning to learn of a conspiracy whose successful ac- complishment would have brought to him a speedy rest from his labors, yet with characteristic energy he de- feats the plot and makes ready for his journey to Rome. And why ? Ah ! why, but because, as he reminds him- self, even as in that midnight vision his Master Himself had reminded him, he is not doing his own work, but God's work ; not sent to bear witness of Paul, but to teach and to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. What mattered it what became of himself, or of his Words or labors or whole ministrv ? He was not in- augurating a new school of Pauline philosophy, or gath- ering a new sect of Pauline disciples. He might preach to unwilling ears in Rome even as he had in Jerusalem ; and his Master's message, instead of winning assent, might continue to provoke resentment. But his calling was simply to bear witness, and He whose message he proclaimed would take care of His own truth and win for it acceptance in His own time and way. Did He bid

248 Waymarks.

him bear that message to still unfriendlier shores and to testify of the Cross to still more alienated peoples ? That call was an inspiration, no matter how hopeless the outlook. If God had other work for him to do, his it was to do it with a trustful and undaunted heart. The words recalled him from himself and his discour- agements to his Master and His message. They re- minded him whose messenger he was, and with whose truths he was intrusted.

And that consciousness, alike profound and indwelling, was at once the spell of his power and the secret of his success. Need I remind you how in a few short years the whole face of things was changed, alike in that capital which he was now leaving, and in that other and mightier capital to which he was sent ? Need I remind you how in a little while there came to be saints even in "■Caesar's household" — tliat Caesar whose vices were even then so rank as to scandalize the mobs whom he diverted ? Need I tarry to show you how, next to the mighty power of the ministry of the Master Himself, there is no single influence so wide-reaching, so potential, so marvellously transforming, as the influence of Paul the Apostle in all the history of primitive Cliristianity ? As a few years later they led the aged Israelite without the walls along that Ostian highway whose earth, who, here this morning, has not trod with a tenderer reverence because of the martyr's memory ? his Roman executioners thought they were putting an end to a troublesome enthusiast and to a contemptible and insignificant sect. And yet, already had the Apostle's witness to his Lord

The Witness of Saint Paul in Rome. 249

struck deep such roots as shook, ere long, the very foun- dations of the empire itself. In less than three centuries Rome was ruled by a Christian sovereign, and the ban- ners of the empire, whether they waved in Jerusalem or in Rome, were blazoned with the image of the cross. In the spirit in which he, this great Apostle to the Gentiles, had labored, other men caught up the standard which fell from his dying hand and bore it forward to still wider and larger conquests. Read the story of the men, ay, and of the women, who fell in yonder amphitheatre, and see how this one's solitary idea of their high calling as WITNESSES for Christ conquered their fears and steadied their courage to the bitter end ! And this, this it was that men could not misunderstand nor ignore. Who was this Galilean Divinity who could inspire such discipleship and draw to His despised standard such saintly heroism ? And so it came to pass that, step by step, indifference gave way to curiosity, and curiosity to interest, and interest to personal faith and absolute devotion. Men lost their personality in Christ, and by the indwelling power of that divine life which made the Apostle himself forever to say, " Not I, but Christ which dwelleth in me," they bore such witness to their Lord as won the world, wherever they went, to bow at their Master's feet.

Happy would it be if we who sit here this morning had, as we turn over the pages of Christian history, nothing else to remember ! But Jerusalem and Rome still stand to invite the feet of the pilgrim, and to challenge the inquisitiveness of the student of history.

250 Way marks.

And what can we say of the witness which they bear to-day to Him to whose name the great Apostle once so fearlessly bore testimony within their walls ? How have they cherished and preserved that truth which Paul once preached to them, and which in other days found at length such wide and eager welcome ? Alas ! the contrast with which they greet us to-day is as pain- ful as it is instructive. It is but a few weeks since it was my fortune to find myself for the first time in Jerusalem, and to thread with reverent curiosity its ancient streets. There are others, I doubt not, here, who have made the same pilgrimage, and looked upon the same scenes. If so, let me ask you if there is any sadder spectacle than that ancient city, once the home of the Master and His disciples, hallowed as the scene of His mighty works and of His mightier death, given up to-day to the religion of the Moslem and the dominion of the Turk ? Yes, there is a sadder sight there even than this ; and it is the sight of those contending Christian sects whom a sneering Mohammedanism holds back ofttimes, with force of arms, from tearing each other in pieces, and whose shameless rivalries and dissensions profane alike the birthplace and the sepulchre of their common Lord. Where, we ask in shamefacedness and despair, as we wend our way among those scenes which supremely the Master has hallowed by His presence, are the evidences of that earlier devotion which counted all as lost for Christ, and had no other aspiration than to bear its daily witness to His honor? Alas, we know now how, long ago, that

The Witness of Saint Paul in Rome. 251

simpler and single devotion died out of the church of Jerusalem even as it did in so many others of the churches of the East. We know now how selfish ambitions and a passion for personal aggrandizement usurped, in the hearts of prelates and priests and people, that other and heaven-born passion for the glory of Christ and his gospel which burned in the heart of Paul. We know now how, when in the seventh century Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, surrendered the holy city to the Moslem Caliph, he found only an old man seated on the ground eating dried dates and drinking only water, — a man having but one single ambition, and that to win converts to the faith of Mohammed ; and we know, too, how then too late he realized that Mohammedanism had conquered Chris- tianity by snatching from it its own weapons of supreme devotion to a leader, and of self-forgetful "sacrifices for his sake. From that day to this, as we all know, amid whatever varying fortunes, the aspect of Jerusalem has not greatly changed. Christ is still a stranger to the vast majority of its people, and His name at best a jest or a byword upon their lips.^

And if it is thus to-day in Jerusalem, how is it to-day in Rome ? God forbid that I should use this place or these moments to call hard names or to bring any rail- ing accusation against those of whatever faith who profess and call themselves Christians. But where shall we look in this Rome of to-day for that earlier and loftier devotion which, among the converts of Paul

1 See Irving's " Mahomet aud his Successors," chap, xviii.

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the Apostle, burned and glowed at the name of Christ ? Where shall we look for that single and supreme love for Him which would allow no other, above all no mere creature alone, to usurp that honor which belongs to Him ? Where shall we look for a priesthood and a people with no thought of mere ecclesiastical aggran- dizement, and no impulse but of love for the souls of men ? Where shall we look for the daily manifestation of that one supreme truth, which, as it was central to the preaching of the Apostle, must needs be central to every living church, — the truth that the aim of a Christian life is not any selfish achievement, but simply to bear its clear and steadfast witness to that Lord who hath bought it with His blood ?

If we fear lest we might look in vain for such a manifestation elsewhere in this ancient capital, let us see to it that we do not look in vain for it here. We who have reared this holy house to God's honor, and consecrated it under the name of His latest called but noblest Apostle, let us not forget that its presence in these streets is an impertinence, and its costliest adorn- ments an empty mockery, unless here there is mani- fested a single and supreme desire to bear a ceaseless testimony to the name and work of Christ. For this, and for this only, if I understand their aims, have Americans reared this temple and given it to their Lord. Not to gratify any merely national pride, not to achieve any merely sectarian triumph, not to secure a safe retreat from within which to hurl either taunt or defiance at Christians of other whatsoever name, but

The Witness of Saint Paul in Rome. 253

simply here to witness for their Lord, have they who have toiled and they who have given up builded these hallowed walls. And one who is but a stranger here may at least venture to offer the prayer that no other less worthy aspiration may ever find a place within them !

This is St. Paul's Church. May the spirit of Paul be evident in every act performed, and heard in every word that shall be spoken here ; may no acrimoniousness of partisan clamor ever find utterance here ; may no narrowness of vision nor selfishness of aim shut out from the siglit of priest or of people here the one .soli- tary figure of a crucified and risen Christ ; and may the services which shall be said in this place, and every sermon which shall be preached here, witness to the infinite love and compassion of that Christ in a language which cannot be mistaken, — a language of yearning tenderness, and yet of unsparing truthfulness, — a language of courageous directness, and yet of ceaseless wisdom !

Surely it is a happy augury that this church is to bear the name of the " Apostle to the Gentiles ; " for who among the noble army of evangelists and martyrs who laid the first foundations of Christ's Church has illus- trated an energy so untiring, a purpose so undaunted, and, above all, a wisdom so profound ? I think of him standing upon Mars Hill amid the rival divinities of classic Greece, and there, instead of scoffing at the idola- try which greeted him, recognizing with Christ-like ten- derness and with a singular and high-bred courtesy the

254 Way marks.

groping aspirations which even there were feeling after God, if haplj they might find Him. Something of such a spirit, something of such dehcate discrimination, such large-hearted sympathy, one may surely venture to pray for in behalf of him who shall stand in this place and minister at yonder altar. For, after all, the responsi- bilities in this age, and supremely in this ancient city, of one who is called here to dispense the word and sacra- ments of the Master are neither slight nor small. It is an age of restlessness and inquiry. It is a land where, just in proportion as faith has been challenged to yield its most blind assent, there are decaying belief and in- creasing doubt.

Would to God, therefore, that from these walls there might go forth — and that, too, not only in our Anglo- Saxon speech, but in the ancient tongue of this ancient people — a new message of love and of life to souls that are now groping in the dark ! Would to God that we Americans, who owe to Rome, with her treasures of art and her wealth of Christian antiquities, so vast and as yet so utterly unrequited a debt, might pay it back to this land and this people by giving to them the treasure of the saving and transforming gospel of a living and compassionate Christ ! You have seen, my brother, the visible and substantial rewards of your labors in the events of the past week. May they be but the earnest and beginning of yet nobler and more enduring rewards which are yet to come ! Because of the witness which this church shall bear to Christ and His truth, may mul- titudes now groping in ignorance or clouded by supersti-

The Witness of Saint Paul in Rome. 255

tion come to know the transforming power of a pure and Scriptural faith, and the comfort of simple and childlike trust in a living and personal Christ ! In this free king- dom, where at last the principle of religious liberty has won such generous recognition, may God make this a free church, — its doors wide open to all sorts and con- ditions of men, its every ministration holding forth none other than that truth which makes men free indeed I

XV.

SERMON.

And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me and keep me in this way that I go, . . . so that I come again to my father'' s house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God ; and this stone which I have set up for' a pillar shall be God^s house. — Genesis xxviii. 20-22.

The common and familiar things of life are forever sur- prising us by their nearness to the things that are seem- ingly uncommon and remote. Looking at men from the outside, their aims and activities appear to us tame and secular and transient. Here is a workman toiling for his wage ; yonder is a woman nursing her babe ; over against us is a household busy with its thousand petty interests, — and all alike seem centred in the present. But now and then some chance breath of adverse for- tune, some startling incident, some sudden joy or grief, lifts the veil, and we see how imperfectly we have judged. The workman has seen a vision ; the nursing mother has heard a voice ; the busy houseliold has been touched by some common sorrow or some common inspiration. Into these lives there has broken, now in one way and now in another, the consciousness of another life, higher than

The American Church in Paris. 257

the senses, more ennobling and more enduring than the present, — the life, in one word, of God and the soul.

Something like this had happened to that young man of whom we have been reading this morning. In one aspect of it, what a homely and commonplace picture it is ! Here is a youth growing up among pagan surround- ings, who is bidden, after that elder fashion of parental authority which in such matters we Americans have long since learned to disesteem and disregard, to go and find a wife among his mother's kinsfolk. " And Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him. Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan." This youth of godly nurture was not to marry a heathen. '' Arise ; go to Padam Aram, . . . and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban, thy mother's brother." That was the errand on which the young man set out. It does not require much imagina- tion to picture the thoughts with which he journeyed, — the youthful enthusiasm, the delight of new-found free- dom, the eager interest of a traveller amid unfamiliar scenes, and also the shrewd curiosity of an acute and forecasting mind ; for the traveller is Jacob, remember. All these, I think, we can readily conceive to have gone along with him. And then there comes the solitary en- campment for the night, with the stone for a pillow, and then the vision, — the suddenly opened heavens, the " ladder set up on the earth," " the angels of God ascend- ing and descending on it," and the Lord standing above it. Ah, what a new world broke then, it may have been for the first time, upon the consciousness of that young soul !

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258 Waymarks,

Trained in devout routine, nurtured from infancy in the simple religion of his fathers, there came that night, as there comes in some such pause and stillness to every young soul to-day, the vision of the Lord. His journey to Padan Aram, the home and the flocks that he had left behind him, the pleasures and possessions that lay be- fore him, — a few moments ago, and as he fell asleep these had seemed the sum of life ; and now that life had come to have another meaning and another end, for " behold, the Lord stood above it."

It is such a vision which explains our presence here to-day. Surely the occasion which assembles us is as suggestive as it is unique. Strangers most of us in this strange city, we have gathered here to give to God this holy and beautiful house to be His own forever. Look around, 1 pray you, and see with what cost and massiveness it has been builded. These stately outlines, these enduring columns, this unstinted expenditure, these ample proportions, do not suggest the transient or the temporary. No, they are the fitting expression of an enduring provision for enduring wants, — wants that no restlessness can smother, nor any frivolity ultimately ignore or forget.

We Americans are supposed to be a somewhat flip- pant people, more or less intoxicated by a prosperity which is largely accidental, and which has made us fond of pleasure, display, and change. These are the tastes, we are told, which make us swarm wherever life is the most gay and amusement the most abundant ; and under such conditions, we are told also, we are very apt

The American Church in Paris. 259

many of us to forget our earlier nurture, and especially to let go those more sacred traditions which once hound us to duty and to God.

I am not here, my fellow-countrymen, to dispute that charge nor to bandy words with those who have made it. Alas ! must it not be owned that, in part, at any rate, it is true, and that there are those whose religion has seemed to be geographical, — of force and authority on one continent, and somehow suspended as to its duties and obligations in another ? For one, I have no desire to ignore a fact which we may all wisely recognize, and which we must needs profoundly deplore.

But in doing so, there remains that other fact, — thank God for those tokens of it which greet us else- where, as well as here ! — of which this building and these services are the witnesses. Yes, the wayfarer may forget his earlier nurture and his Father's house, but there comes a moment when, amid the peril and loneli- ness of a foreign land, that happens to more than one such which happened to Jacob on his way to Padan Aram ; and his eyes are opened, — opened to his own need, opened to the over-arching care that broods above liim, opened to the nearness of the life that is to that other which is to be. In other words, we may outrun our earlier traditions and our accustomed restraints, but we cannot outrun those deepest hungers which, to-day as of old, utter themselves in the prayer of the fugitive David : " From the ends of the earth I cry unto thee to help me : lead me to the Rock that is higher than I."

It is to satisfy those hungers that these services long

260 Waymarhs.

ago were instituted, and that this house has now been reared. It is a witness at once to our individual needs and to our belief, as a nation, in God and His revelation of grace and salvation through Jesus Christ. I know that the existence of tiiat belief has been doubted if not denied, and that our American republic has been widely represented as a nation which, having no estab- lished religion, has hardly any at all. I may not tarry here to show how false is any such impression alike to the history of our past and the witness of our present. Those who have read the one do not need to be reminded how the foundations of our republic were laid by God- fearing men, nor do Churchmen need to be told that Washington and some of his most illustrious associates were children of the same household of faith which gathers us to-day. And as little do intelligent students of the religious history of our own land need to have demonstrated to them the fact that the most aggressive form of modern Christianity to-day, that whose missionary activities, whether at home or abroad are the most gener- ous in their expenditures and the most untiring in their efforts, is that Anglo-Saxon Christianity which finds its home in the United States of America. Indeed, of what is this sanctuary the token, roared though I know it is, in good part, by the gifts of those who are resident here, — nay, what is the faithful and patient ministry of him who has voluntarily expatriated himself that he may labor here, but tokens of how that American Church whose children we are cares for her children, so far as she is able, wherever they may go, and follows them, as

The American Church in Paris. 261

the angel of God followed Jacob, into a foreign land with that incomparable message of hope and consolation without which life becomes an intolerable burden, and the grave the gateway of despair.

Such is to be the mission of this holy house and of him who ministers in it. But while this fact is that which of necessity must be most prominent in our thoughts to-day, we may not, on the other hand, forget — nay we must needs rejoice gratefully to remember — those many links which connect this occasion and this sanctuary with the land in which it is reared, and with those venerable traditions of Galilean Christianity among which it finds itself. This is a chapel, with a worship in the English tongue, and according to a ritual which to many a Frenchman is severely plain. Nay, more, it is also true that as children of the Anglican Reforma- tion, we are not able to find our spiritual home in sanc- tuaries which acknowledge that unwarranted claim of Papal supremacy which once and again the Galilean Church has so courageously disowned and resented.^ But on the other hand, can we who are Churchmen ever forget that the Liturgy which England gave to us was substantially the Liturgy which, long before, France had given to England. A comparison of the earliest litur- gical forms, which have come down from ancient times, with our own Eucharistic office, furnishes strong reasons for believing that tJiat primitive use which toward the beginning of the second century was introduced into

1 The Gallican Church, Lloyd, pp. 40, 63, 64, 78, 83, 84.

262 Waymarks.

Gaul by missionaries from Asia Minor was the parent, in all essential features, first of the Anglican Liturgy, and through that of our own.^ When toward the close of the sixth century Augustine landed in England for the purpose of evangelizing the pagan Saxons, he found that a church already existed there with an episcopate and a ritual of its own, derived from Gallican sources. He would fain have displaced it, as we know, with that Roman Liturgy which he had brought with him. But with a wisdom beyond his time, and in striking contrast with the subsequent policy of the Roman Church, the great Gregory to whom he appealed replied, in words which may well be the rule of those who are engaged in the weighty business of liturgical revision and en- richment in our own day : —

^'Thou, my brother, art acquainted with the customs of the Roman Church, in which thou wast brought up. But it is my pleasure that if thou hast found anything which would better please God ... in the Gallican or in any other church, thou shouldst carefully select that. . . . For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Select therefore from each church those things that are pious, religious, and rightful; and when thou hast collected them into one whole, instil this into the minds of the Angles for their use."

It is not easy to imagine a more exact description of the origin of our own Liturgy, — using that word both in its more precise and more general sense, than such language. But while, therefore, we gratefully remember the many and various sources to which our American

^ Vide "The Prayer Book : its History," etc, Dauiel, pp. 11, 12.

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prayer book has been indebted, it belongs to us here, and to-day, especially to call to mind that primary source to which it owes so much ; I mean the earliest formularies of Galilean worship.

A living church, however, is one which is marked not only by an orthodox worship, but by a Scriptural and evangelical teaching. And how can we who are American Churchmen ever forget how much we owe to the witness for God and His truth, of that long line of saints and heroes and martyrs, which, beginning with that great prelate and doctor, Iren^us, Bishop of Lyons, runs on through all the eventful history of France, down to this hour ? In our American metropolis, in a sanctuary dear to many of us here, there is a win- dow which commemorates Saint Martin of Tours, that soldier first, and pupil of Athanasius later, who as Bishop of Tours in the fourth century, by liis resolute refusal to join with the Spanish bishops in the persecution of the heretical Priscillianists, taught to his fellow-ecclesiastics and the whole Christian world a rare lesson of religious toleration ; and who thus, in an age which, alas, could not understand it, became a witness to that great principle of Religious Liberty, which, centuries after, found its sure refuge and its abiding resting-place on our American shores. My brethren, as we rear our altar on this French soil to-day can we forget prophets and apostles such as these ? nay more, can we forget those others who were, if not all of them tactually, yet most surely spiritually their successors, — Fdn^lon and Pascal and Lacordaire on the one hand, and those Huguenot

264 Way marks.

heroes and martyrs, on the other, who from age to age have spoken and suffered for Christ ? Surely, in a sense the deepest and most real to us who are here, that is no alien or foreign soil which has bred such witnesses as these for our Master and theirs ! Gladly and gratefully do we claim our spiritual kinship with them all, and thank God, as we shall do presently in yonder Eucharist, for the good examples of all these, His servants, and our brethren in Jesus Christ!

And yet again : on this day, dedicated as it is by the chief magistrate of our country to the sacred duty and privilege of national thanksgiving, — a day most happily chosen, as I think you will agree with me, for the consecration of this American church, — must we not also gladly recall another tie which binds us to France, and which makes our relations to this people, in one as- pect of them, more sacred and tender than to any other ?

On an American Thanksgiving-day, at home, as you will remember, it has long been our custom, in con- nection with our Church services, to review our national history, and to enumerate the various occasions for gratitude or admiration which such a review suggests. Was there ever more appropriate occasion for such a retrospect than to-day ? — first, in view of all that in the happy completion of this Christian sanctuary we who are here have especially to be thankful for, and then in view of the manifold blessings and the marvellous prosperity which have been vouchsafed to our native land. Can any American recognize the profound significance of all that is coming to pass in his own

The American Church in Paris. 265

country without an equal sense of awe and wonder in view of its august suggestions ? We are accounted a boastful people, easily misled by the superficial blunder of mistaking territorial and numerical bigness for national greatness ; and the imputation, in view of much that is said and written is not altogether without warrant. But it is not what we may say or think of ourselves that compels us to recognize the tremendous possibilities of our national future, so much as what has been deliber- ately predicted by others. In a recent work on the " Possible Future and the Present Crisis" of America^ I find the words of two men of whose calm and unimpas- sioned judgment of facts, whatever we may think of them in other regards, there can be no smallest question. Neither of them is an American, nor, so far as I am aware, have they any smallest sympathy with American institutions or ideas, but each of them represents a mind of the highest rank and an authority which in their several departments is supreme. Says one of these, the late Mr. Darwin, " There is apparently much truth in the belief that the wonderful progress of the United States, as well as the character of the people, are the results of natural selection ; for the more energetic, restless, and courageous men from all parts of Europe have emigrated, during the last ten or twelve generations, to that great country, and have there succeeded best. Looking at the distant future, I do not think that the Rev. Mr. Zincher^ takes an exaggerated view when he

1 Our Country, by Rev. J Strong. New York : Baker and Taylor.

2 An English divine and writer.

266 Waymarhs,

says: 'All other series of events — as that which resulted in the culture of mind in Greece, and that which resulted in the Empire of Rome — only appear to have purpose and value when viewed in connection with, or rather as subsidiary to, the great stream of Anglo-Saxon emigration to the West.' " Wrote Mr. Herbert Spencer, speaking of the future of our country : —

'<One great result is, I think, tolerably clear. From biological truths it is to be inferred that the eventual mixture of the allied varieties of the Aryan races forming the population will produce a more powerful type of man than has hitherto existed, and a type of man more plastic, more adaptable, more capable of undergoing the modifications needful for complete social life. I think, whatever difficulties they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations they may have to pass through, the Americans may reasonably look forward to a time when they will have produced a civi- lization grander than any the world has known."

And if it be objected that these are vague and gen- eral statements, there are others which may easily be verified, not vague nor general nor difficult to under- stand. Here is one of them : at the present ratio of increase, another century will give to our country 700,- 000,000 of people. Here is another : between 1870 and 1880 the manufactures of France increased in value 1230,000,000 ; those of Germany, 1430,000,000 ; those of Great Britain, 1580,000,000 ; and those of the United States, $1,030,000,000. Or, to turn from past growth to future possibilities, again : if you would get a con- ception of the territorial extent of our country, take the State of Texas alone and lay it on the face of Europe,

The American Church in Paris, 267

and this American " giant, resting on the mountains of Norway on the north, with one palm covering London, and the other reaching out to Warsaw, would stretch himself across the kingdom of Denmark, across the em- pires of Germany and Austria, across northern Italy, and lave his feet in the Mediterranean." ^ And to add one more group of statistics, perhaps more impressive than any other to a certain class of minds, consider the actual wealth of the United States. Great Britain is by far the richest nation of the Old World ; but our wealth exceeds hers by 1276,000,000. From 1870 to 1880 we produced 1732,000,000 of the precious metals alone from our own soil ; and to-day the $43,612,000,000 which is the estimated wealth of the United States is " more than enough to buy the Russian and Turkish em- pires, the kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, Denmark and Italy, together with Australia, South Africa, and South America, — lands, mines, cities, palaces, factories, ships, flocks, herds, jewels, moneys, thrones, sceptres, diadems, and all the entire possessions of 177,000,000 of people." 2 And this is true of a people with a repub- lican form of government, already demonstrated to be at once the most stable and the most elastic, and speak- ing a language of which long ago Jacob Grimm, the German philologist, wrote, " It seems chosen, like its people, to rule in future times in a still greater degree in all the corners of the earth," until, as he elsewhere predicts, the language of Shakspeare shall become the language of mankind.

1 Our Country, by Rev. J. Strong, p. 16. 2 ibid., pp. 112, 113.

268 Way marks.

This is the marvellous present and the marvellous fu- ture of our country, as others, not we, have described them. But can we forget, I ask again, the events in which this greatness took its rise ? Wrote Count d'Aranda, after signing the Treaty of Paris in 1773, to his sovereign, the King of Spain : " This federal republic is born a pygmy ; ... a day will come when it will be a giant." But would the pygmy ever have come to its birth at all if it had not been for the outstretched hand of France, and the timely help of Lafayette and those who were his brave associates ? Can we who are Americans ever cease to remember those whose brave and heroic sup- port when, so far as all other sympathy or countenance were concerned, we stood alone made it possible that our republic should survive its baptism of blood and live to take its place among the nations of the earth ? Surely, as we consecrate this house to-day and lift to heaven our grateful praises for the blessings which are ours here and our fellow-countrymen's at home, we may not forget that they were Frenchmen who at the first made possible all that has since then come to pass.

And so, as we dedicate this house to God and His glory and honor, I would lift this prayer for the people among whom it is reared : May God bless the French republic and all who dwell within her borders. May the two great peoples — theirs and ours — go forward hand in hand, not merely in material prosperity, but in that righteousness which alone exalteth a nation. May yonder doors stand ever open to welcome all who may long for the message and the help of Him who came to incarnate

The American Church in Paris. 269

that righteousness, to tell the world of the true brother- hood of man, and to reveal in His own person the only service in which there is perfect freedom and perfect fraternity. There are aching and empty hearts in this great and glittering capital. May this be the refuge in which, whatever tongue they speak, not a few of them may find at once pardon and hope and peace. And so from these portals may there never cease to stream forth to bless and illumine mankind the clear and steadfast hght of the gospel of Jesus Christ. French munificence has lately reared its stately gift, with flashing torch up- lifted, at the portal of the metropolis of our Western World ; and to-day we place here a gift to France, not less costly and not less helpful surely, to fling o'er all this tangled skein of modern continental life a light like none that " ever was on land or sea," — the light of Him who said, " I am the light of the world ; he that follow- eth me shall not walk in darkness." God keep it bright ! God make it to shine clear and strong and steadfast !

My dear brother,^ this is a happy and blessed day for you. May I not in the presence of this your flock offer to you, and through you to them, the congratulations that are glowing in many hearts to-day on both sides of the Atlantic ? I account myself happy that it has fallen to my lot to be the bearer of those congratulations, and to tell you how glad and happy are we of that Diocese of New York from which I come, in view of the success which has crowned your efforts. In that, your mother diocese, and in the parish in which it was once my ^ The preacher here addressed the rector.

270 Waymarks.

privilege to serve, you first received your commission as a minister of Jesus Christ. With that diocese you are still, as a presbyter, canonically connected, even as from it — as I know you gratefully remember — you have re- ceived again and again munificent assistance in the task of which to-day we commemorate the completion. What a noble completion it is ! They who have come here this morning are witnesses of the consummation of a work which has cost you and your people more anxious hours than any but you yourselves can know. May I not tell you for myself and this whole congregation how much we honor you for the rare courage with which you and those who have stood by you have toiled and striven and waited ? In the completion of this noble church a work has been accomplished whose influence, 1 believe, we who are gathered here can only imperfectly conceive. But be it greater or less than we anticipate, nothing can dim the record of that steadfast faith and that unwearied patience with which you and yours have labored. May God make this " psalm incorporate in stone " a daily consolation and inspiration to you and them in all the work that lies before you ! May He help you to witness for Him in this pulpit and to minister before Him at yonder altar ; and so, out and up from psalm and sacra- ment and sermons, may you and your flock, with Jacob at Peniel, climb into closer fellowship with Him to whose honor this holy house is reared, until yours too and theirs shall be the pilgrim's vision and the pilgrim's cry, — " This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."

INTRODUCTORY TO THE POWERS AND THE POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE.

The history of the Ejjiscopal Church in the United States would be very imperfectly told, if it did not record the re- markable services of its missionary Episcopate. The exi- gencies of sparsely settled regions in the West and Southwest, where the Church was largely unknown, and where without a supporting constituency it was impossible to organize dioceses, made it necessary to provide for an oversight and adminstra- tion which should also unite with it much of the work of the pioneer and the missionary. To this end, in the year 1835, the Church chose its first missionary Bishop, the gallant and lion-hearted Kemper, and sent him to be Bishop of Missouri and Indiana. His jurisdiction in fact included almost the whole Northwest, and for nearly twenty years, and until elected Bishop of Wisconsin, he gave himself to his work with contagious and undiscouraged enthusiasm.

Bishop Kemper was the first in a succession of missionary Bishops who have been among the best gifts of the American Church. Among them have been Scott of Oregon, Randall of Colorado, and their like, in earlier days, and Lay and Robert Elliott and their like, in later, all now gone to their reward, while among the living are men to whose wisdom, energy, and self-sacrifice the Church will find itself increasingly indebted as the years go on.

Among these it is no disparagement to others to say that the name of the first missionary Bishop of Nebraska, Dr. Robert Harper Clarkson, will always stand pre-eminent. Of border ancestry (he was born in 182G, in Gettysburg, Pa.,

272 Way f narks.

near the Maryland line) Dr. Clarkson united in himself the vigor of the North and the sunny charm of the South. Of gentle birth and lineage, a college-bred man, with a sincere love of letters, he was always and everywhere a man of the people, and he was able to unite in himself the most unbend- ing loyalty to the traditions of the Church whose son he Was with the kindliest and largest sympathies toward all sorts and conditions of men. In its early history in the West the Church had no easy task. It found itself in communities which were usually not so much hostile to it as good- naturedly contemptuous or indifferent. It was almost utterly unknown, and its historic claim, to those bred of Puritan ancestry, or with equal disesteem and distaste for any other than a highly emotional type of religious teaching and worship, presented, practically, almost no points of con- tact. It was the calling — no easy one — of the missionary Bishop and his clergy to create these, — to establish the entente cordiale, and then hj means of it to make men love the Church and her services because they had learned to love and trust the men who brought them to them.

In this work Bishop Clarkson was a prince-Bishop, certainly not because of the state in which he lived or travelled, — the Apostle who was a tent-maker was hardly more familiar with hardships than this his true successor, — but because his nobility of speech and service won upon all to whom he came. The present Diocese of Nebraska, with its Cathedral, Churches, and schools, is his worthy monument j and when, all too soon, the time came for one who had worn himself out in the service to rest from his labors, he left a large and strongly rooted work behind him.

To succeed him in the charge of that work the Diocese of Nebraska called, in the j^ear 1885, a man who was like-minded; and it was the happy privilege of one who had known him in his earliest ministry, and who had learned then to recognize his earnest and devout character and his fervid missionary

Powers and Power of the Episcopate. 273

spirit, to preach on the occasion of his consecration on Saint Matthias' Da}^, Feb. 24, 1885, in St. John's Church, Detroit, Mich., the sermon which here follows. It is note- worthy that since then the Diocese of Nebraska has become two jurisdictions, over the larger and newer of which a missionary Bishop has been placed, — the successor of Bishop Clarkson, the Right Rev. Dr. George Worthington, still continuing Bishop of Nebraska.

18

XVI.

THE POWERS AND THE POWER OF THE EPISCOPATE.

In entering upon the task which has been assigned to me this morning, I may not refrain from recognizing the obvious inappropriateness, from one point of view at any rate, of my attempting to discharge it. Whatever may be fitting on other occasions, it would seem as if there could be little difference of opinion as to what is fitting here. It belongs to age and experience in the Episcopal Office, and not to comparative youth and inexperience, to inculcate those lessons which are appropriate to this hour and to those august solemnities to which we are in a little while to proceed. It belongs to a large and varied Episcopal service to tell the people what are the duties and responsibilities of the Episcopal Office, and to tell this, our brother elected, how best he may discharge them. And in length of service and in largeness of experience your preacher is equally poor. Himself a novice, called little more than a twelve-month since to take up those large tasks which to-day are to be laid upon another, he might well have come here, not to speak, but to listen, content to remember that, as always in the college of the Episcopate, so here pre-

Powers and Power of the Episcopate. 275

eminently it is the office of " them that are elders " among us to teach and to admonish.

But if I had not been constrained by the force of that triple command which has been laid upon me, by our venerable and beloved Presiding Bishop, by the Bishop of this diocese, and by our brother this day to be con- secrated, I might venture to remind myself of a usage of our Mother Church in connection with occasions such as this, not without advantages which might make it worthy of imitation among us. The preacher at the consecration of a Bishop in the Church of England is not a bishop, but a presbyter ; and the custom has at least this merit, that it affords opportunity for setting forth the office and work of a Bishop from a standpoint without, rather than within. Doubtless they best know the duties and obligations of a Bishop's Office who have long borne them, and the most intelligent standing- ground in judging of any calling, and its responsibilities is not without, but within. Yet, as in other things, so here it must needs be of advantage, sometimes at any rate, to look at the office and vocation of a Bishop as those look at it who stand apart from it, not as unfriendly critics, but as friendly and filial observers.

It is in this spirit and with this purpose, then, that I venture to ask your attention. Pray, with me, that another Wisdom than my own may guide and restrain and enlighten me !

In the tenth chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel, at the first verse, and in the first chapter of Saint Paul's Second Epistle to Timotliy, at the sixth and seventh verses, there occur respectively those words : —

276 Waymarks,

^' And when He had called unto Him His twelve Apostles, He gave them power."

''Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given to us the spirit of fear 5 but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

There are two views of such an occasion as that which assembles us to-day, equally familiar, if not equally accepted. The one is that an office-bearer in the Church of God who has been tried and tested in an inferior post of duty is to be advanced to a higher, and that, in connection with such promotion or advancement he is to be clothed with new dignities and entrusted with new powers. In this view the analogies of secular life and civil or municipal office-bearing occur at once to our minds. Here is a servant of the State, who, by the suffrages of his fellow-citizens, or the appointment of the executive, has been chosen to some responsible office. As he comes to its threshold there are certain ceremonies of initiation, or some formal oaths and declarations, by which he is to become legally qualified for his new place and admitted to its duties. All through our civil and military systems of government, and wisely, there runs some law or usage looking to this end and providing for its accomplishment. Yesterday our fellow-citizen was only our fellow-citizen, and no more. To-day he has been chosen, it may be, for some high and honorable office. To-morrow, perhaps, he will take the oath of his office and enter upon the discharge of its duties. And in doing so there will come to him

Powers and Power of the Episcopate* 277

the right, not merely to draw his salary and to assume an official title, but to exercise certain powers which are inherent in the nature of his office, or have been con- ferred upon it by enactment of law. He may appoint certain subordinates, he may veto certain proposed enactments, he may pardon certain criminals, and in the exercise of all these powers he may be largely, if not solely, responsible to himself, to his own conscience, and only indirectly to his coadjutors in the business of government, or to the people.

Now, it is undoubtedly true that there is a very close analogy in many respects between powers thus con- ferred and those with which our brother is to be en- trusted this day. The Church is in the world as an organization ; as a Divine organization, it is true, and with obligations not so much secular and legal as they are moral and spiritual, — but still, as an organization. Not as a disembodied spirit, but as a visible kingdom or society is it bidden to go forward to its work. And in this organized and visible society there must of ne- cessity be those who administer its laws and confer its authority and execute its discipline. There must be office-bearers, as well as an office to be borne. There must be those who commission, as well as those who are commissioned. There must be overseers, as well as work and workers to be overseen. And in all these various functions and relations there must be a right distribution of responsibility, and a law of due submis- sion and subordination to duly constituted and rightful authority.

278 Waymarks^

And hence there arises, the moment we come to speak of the Episcopate, the question of its powers. We cannot admit the existence of such an office as that of a Bishop in the Church of God without admitting also that along with the office there must go a certain definite authority and certain specific powers. If we believe (as most surely we do believe, or else we have no business to be here) that the office is not one of human invention, but, howsoever gradually, as some may believe, taking on its more definite and specific form, of Divine origin and institution, then we must needs be- lieve that, as in the beginning the Divine Founder of the Church gave to His Apostles certain inalienable powers, so He has willed that something answering to these powers is to remain with those who shall come after them. They were to set in order the things that remained unorganized. They were to ordain elders in every city. They were to set apart those others who were to serve tables. They were to confirm the souls of the baptized by the laying on of hands. They were to decide questions of worship and of discipline, not alone, indeed, nor without mutual counsel. They were to serve, but they were also to rule. They were to preach, but they were also to commission others to preach. In a word, over all that infant energy and activity of the new faith, they were to be Iitigko'ttoi — overseers — leading and governing, ordaining and con- firming, correcting and restraining those whom Christ and His Church had entrusted to their care. Such, in brief, were the powers to be exercised, all of them, let

Powers and Power of the Episcopate. 279

us never forget, under the guidance and inspiration of the seven-fold gifts of the Holy Ghost, with Avhich the Master clothed His first Apostles ; and such are the powers of those who to-day, however unworthy, are in a very real sense their successors.

And if we ask, Where now are we to look, in this our own age and Church for a more specific definition of these powers ? the answer is, to custom, to canon law, and supremely to the Holy Scriptures. Some things are matters of usage, others are defined by precise enact- ment of canon law, and behind all these is the voice of the Holy Ghost as it speaks to us from the pages of the New Testament. When in the book of the Acts of the Apostles we read how, to the Church at Antioch, " the Holy Ghost said, separate me Paul and Barnabas for the work whereunto I have called them," we get a clear and explicit point of departure, in the light of which we may read all that follows. As, step by step, the little handful of believers grows and multiplies and disperses itself abroad, as that expectant company in the upper room is enlarged till it becomes a fully organ- ized and aggressive Christian society, we see how, step by step, the new powers were ordained to match the new responsibilities, and how the freedom and infor- mality of an earlier and cruder condition of things gave place to one in which, as with the deacon and presbyter, each had his separate work and was clothed with his several powers ; so with that other, who, father and brother to all the rest, was set over them in the Lord with the heavy burden, but no less with the definite powers, of the Episcopate.

280 Waymarks.

And yet, when we have said all this, and I think you will own that I have striven to say it with entire candor and explicitness, is it not true that there remains some- thing more to be said ? We turn back to that first com- mission of which we read in the words just quoted to you from Saint Matthew's Gospel. And what a signifi- cant picture is that which it summons before us ! The men who were commissioned there were bidden to do the mightiest works which the world had ever seen : " Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils, raise the dead." This was their Lord's command. Well, as we know, they obeyed it. Up and down that slumbrous, sin-burdened world of theirs they went and preached, and wrought, and healed. And all the while it was not their powers — canonical, ecclesiastical, Episcopal — that made them strong, but their power. " And when He called unto Him His twelve Disciples He gave them power." I do not forget that the word in the original means more precisely " authority ; " but there could have been no real and constraining authority if there had not been behind it a human personality thrilled through and through with a divine and irresistible power. And so when we turn from the commission of Christ to the twelve to that other commission of the aged Apostle to the Gentiles to his son in the faith, Timothy, we see that in substance and spirit the two are one : " Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, wliich is in thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given to us the spirit of fear ; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

Powers and Power of the Upiscopate. 281

Men and brethren! The powers of the Episcopate are one thing ; the power of the Episcopate is quite an- other. Need I say that I do not forget that in every Episcopal office and function, the presumption is that that which is done is done under the guidance, and in submission j;o, the teaching and moving of God the Holy Ghost ? But alas ! it does not need much read- ing of history to remind us that men may be admitted into the highest offices of the Church of God, concern- ing whom it is not too much to say that nothing in their lives or teaching gave any smallest evidence that they had so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost ; and while we may well rejoice that sucli dark pages in the Churcli's life belong mainly to its past, we may not forget that in every age of the Church and in every of- fice of the ministry, there has been a tendency to con- fuse its powers and its power, — to mistake the assertion or the exercise of the one for the mighty and transcend- ent spell of the other; in one word, to mistake that which is in the voice of authority for that which is the far mightier constraint of example, of wisdom, of love.

It is a mistake which we cannot too strongly or too strenuously deprecate. A Bishop may not verily forget that which is due to his office (though he can very well afford not to be over-sensitive as to that which is due to himself), and he may as little dis-esteem or neglect those duly-regulated powers which the Church has put in his keeping, not to rust, but to use. But he may wisely remember that the frequent assertion of prerogative is the surest road to its resistance, — that even the solemn

282 Waymarks.

dignity of the Episcopate may easily be in danger of the " vain conceit of officialism," and that the genius of an ecclesiastical martinet is the last spell with which, in an age when, whether rightly or no, men cannot be hindered from reading and thinking for themselves, a bishop may attempt to conjure.

On the other hand, there is a power of the Episcopate, real and mighty and lasting, and it is the power —

(a) First of all, of personal character. The phrase may sound indefinite, but I think you see with me what it stands for. In every other relation of life there are men who are influential for good, not because they have been lifted to a great place, but because they fill a great place, as they would have filled a smaller one, with a substantive, stainless, and righteous manhood. They are known to speak the truth, and to live it, as well as to speak it. They are known for their constancy to duty, and to do it at every hazard. Whatsoever things are pure and honest and lovely and of good report, they not only think on these things, but daily and habitually illustrate them. They fill their place in the world, not in a spirit of self-seeking, but in large-hearted love and sacrifice for the welfare of other men. They are not swerved from the right by the clamor of any partisanship, or the sneer of any critic. Day by day they lift their lives into the clear light of those eternal moral sanctions that stream from the throne of God, and strive to live them in that light. Infirmities of temper, errors of judgment, imperfections of intellectual attainment they may have. ; but all that they are and do is ennobled by

Powers and Power of the Episcopate. 283

a lofty purpose and adorned by a stainless integrity. And these men, wherever you find them in any earthly community, are pre-eminently its men of power. The multitude may not follow them, but it secretly trusts and respects them. Their fellows may not applaud them, but they do profoundly believe in them. And when any crisis comes — when truth falleth in the streets and equity cannot enter — these are the men to w^hom the world turns to restore its lost ideals of truth and goodness and righteousness, and to lead it back to the light.

And what is true of men in every other relation of life is true of that sacred office with which we are con- cerned to-day. Yerily, in him who is to be a Bishop in the Church of God we want a sound and adequate and (it cannot be inappropriate to these days to remember) a many-sided learning, a strong and clear faith, a stead- fast and burning zeal ; but first of all and before all, as the soil in which these and all other kindred graces are to flourish, we want a strong and substantive personal character.

{h) But again : the power of the Episcopate resides, I submit also, in a judicious admixture of the paternal and fraternal spirit. In a letter of Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, written to the presbyter whom Christendom knows as Jerome, there occur these words : " And indeed, 1 beg that you would, from time to time, correct me when you see plainly that I need it. For although, according to the titles of honors which the usage of the Church has now established, the Episcopate is

284 Waymarks.

greater than the Presbytery, yet in many respects Augustine is inferior to Jerome, though correction from any manner of inferior ought not to be avoided or dis- dained." Ah ! with what a spellof power must he have taught and ruled who could so empty himself of merely official superiority to one who was still liis brother. If clergymen have, ordinarily, any one sentiment of which they would, I confidently believe, most eagerly be rid, it is that difference of ecclesiastical rank puts an end to fraternal intercourse. That fatherly relation between the bishop and his presbyters, which is one of the most beautiful and gracious things in the organic life of the Church, would be a far mightier power if it could always be brightened and warmed by another relation not so much fatherly as brotherly. There is a frank and generous confidence, there is a cordial and willing de- pendence, there is a wise distrust of one's own judgment, there is a deference to another's opinion, which are signs, not of weakness, but of strength. And in and through all the often sad and painful business of admin- istering reproof or discipline, or conveying admonition or dissent, it is possible to weave a golden thread of loving brotherhood which shall at once transform and illumine the whole. " Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father, and the younger men as brethren." Inspired words, indeed, which may we never consent to forget !

{c) Once more : the power of the Episcopate will be found to consist, I think, not a little in its open-minded- ness. It is a misfortune of that training which one acquires in parochial duties, that it rarely involves a

Powers and Power of the Episcopate. 285

collision with minds that view what may be called " burning questions " from other standpoints than our own. The man who is called to the Episcopate is usu- ally one who is summoned from the care of a large and well-organized city parish. But such parishes are usually made up of those who are drawn to a particular ministry by their sympathy with its views and modes of thought. And a minister thus environed by a congenial and like- minded people, encounters little that educates him to recognize the existence, even, of other opinions than his own. He hears of them, reads of them, it is true ; but oftener than otherwise it is apt to be through the medium of books and periodicals written or edited by those in sympathy with his own views. From such a training he emerges to deal, it may be, with men, many of whom are his peers in learning, years, and intelligence, and whose rights within the Church are no less than his own. To recognize those rights and to be just to them is no easy task. To remember that the Church is a church and not a sect, a whole and not a fragment. Catholic before all, and therefore not Anglican, or Evan- gelical, or Protestant, merely, — this is something that belongs pre-eminently to one who would exercise the true power of the Episcopate in days like these. I would not be misunderstood here, and I will not be. For that loose-jointed optimism which accounts one man's credo as good as another's, which disregards or dis-esteems the sacred obligation of the Church's historic formularies, which forgets that before the life that is to be lived there is not only a faith, but the Faith to be kept, I have tlie

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scantiest respect. But we may not forget that, as in Apos- tolic days there was the Pauline and the Petrine presen- tation of the truths of the gospel, and in later days the theology of a Clement of Alexandria on the one hand, and of an Augustine on the other, so ever since then there have been those great schools of thought and opinion in the Church, neither of which I believe may wisely exist without the other, and to welcome whose activities a wise Bishop may well desire that he may have that breadth of vision and that openness and candor of mind which shall freely acknowledge their right to be, and if so, their right to think and to speak.

{d) There is one other element of power in the Episcopate, which, though I name it last, may well be accounted the first and chief of all. It is consecration, — the unreserved devotion of one's whole powers, soul, body, and spirit, to the work of his high office. It is for this that our brother is here to-day, and that fresh gift of himself to God which we ask of him in these solemn services, it is his to make day by day through all the months and years of service that are before him. It is for this that we ask for him the seven-fold gifts of God the Holy Ghost, that, quickened by that mightiest Power, he may keep nothing back from the service of Christ and His Church. Happily a bishop in our branch of the Church is largely emancipated from those claims, partly of the State and partly of what is called " society," which press upon him in other lands. But none the less is he in danger of that secular spirit which spends itself in matters of secondary importance and is

Powers and Power of the Episcopate. 287

engrossed in details of mere worldly business. It is true that even a bishop may not unduly neglect these ; but to hold himself to his high office as a chief shepherd of the flock, is he pre-eminently called. And this calling he can liope to fulfil only as he brings his gifts, his office, his powers, day by day to the feet of his Master, and by the surrender of self-will, by that hearkening of the spiritual ear which listens for the voice of God, by a spirit of unselfish devotion which shames the careless and the idle in his flock, by love unfeigned, and by a meekness and patience that are not merely long-suffering, but inexhaustible, shows himself to be possessed by that new manhood, that regenerated heart and will, which shall enable him to say, " Not I, but Christ who dwelleth in me ! "

Such are some of the elements of power in the Epis- copate. There are others, but I may not stay to enu- merate them, nor do you need that they should here be recapitulated. They cannot altogether take the place of outward authority, of canonical provisions, empower- ments, and the like, but, breathing through them all, the Spirit behind the form, the purpose above the commission, they are, I think we must own, the spell and secret of mightiest influence and most enduring work.

It is such power that I pray may be yours, my brother, as you take up the tasks and burdens that are to-day to be laid upon you. If I do not congratulate you on as- suming them, it is not because I do not thank God that you have been called to the office of bishop, nor because

288 Waymarks.

I do not rejoice that the Church is to have in that office the benefit of your ripe experience and your earnest and devout Christian character. But I know your work here, and how dear it must needs be to you ; and I know, even better than yourself can yet know, what it will cost you to go out from this people to the homeless and lonely and ever anxious life and work of a bishop. As I stand and look back upon your ministry I cannot but remember that it has been richly and singularly favored. From the days when you and I were striplings together, working side by side in that eastern city where you in your diaconate and I in the earlier years of my priesthood learned to prize one another's friendship, all the way on to this hour, yours has been the privilege of ministering to those who were united and devoted in their attach- ment to yourself, and in their love and loyalty to the Church. Coming here as the successor of the gifted and saintly Armitage, you had indeed no easy task ; but this large and united congregation, its varied and beneficent activities, the rare and unwearied band of Christian laymen whom you have drawn around you or held to you, the respect in which you are held in this community and in this diocese by all your brethren, the love and honor of your bishop (who gives you up to-day I know well how reluctantly), — all these testify to the faithfulness of your service and to its abundant fruitful- ness. And can I congratulate you that you are called upon to leave such a flock and such a work ? Can I hide from myself or from you that you are going forth to labors which will grow larger every day, and to cares

Powers and Power of the Episcopate. 289

and anxieties that will multiply and not diminish as the years go by ? Ah, could we summon him whom you are to succeed, and whose resplendent path of service you are to follow, to speak to you of your work, do we not know the tone of pathos which would come back into that matchless voice of his as he recounted to you how '' in journeyings often, in perils in the wilderness, in weari- ness and painfulness, besides that which came upon him daily, the care of all the churches," he had laid those broad and deep foundations on which henceforth you are to build ? No, my brother ; it is a word of sympathy rather than of congratulation that springs to my lips to-day, though I am not unmindful of the noble field and opportunity which open before you. But I do thank God that he has called you to this office, and that, in the face of its large anxieties, you have so much to cheer and support you. The unanimity with which your brethren in Nebraska have called you to be their bishop, and the earnestness with which they have repeated that call have, verily, left you no choice ; and I am persuaded that when you go to them they will show you by their welcome and their co-operation how eager and steadfast is their purpose to strengthen and sustain you in your work.

And do not forget that behind them will be the flock from whom you are parted to-day. The work of the Church in Nebraska will have a new meaning hence- forth, and a very precious one to them. Their hearts go with you, and so, thank God, will their prayers and their alms. It is thus that out of our sorrows and part-

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ings comes the enlargement of our love and our sym- pathy. As you go to Nebraska remember, then, that your going will help to enlarge the heart of this people and to widen the horizon of their highest interests, — inspiring thought, which makes their loss their gain as well, and which transfigures your new burdens and re- sponsibilities into a sacred privilege !

My dear brother, may God make you sufficient for these burdens, and when you are weary and heavy laden with the greatness of the way, may He Himself remind you that " God hath not given to us the spirit of fear, but of POWER, and of love, and of a sound mind."

THE MISSION OF THE EPISCOPATE.

AVhex Dr. Samuel Seabury, first bishop of Connecticut, after his consecration at Aberdeen, Nov. 14, 1784, by the Scottish bishops, returned to the United States, his coming was re- garded by many of the most devout people in New England with unmixed apprehension and dismay. Prelacy and a mon- archy had come to be with them almost identical terms. There were traditions still fresh among them of earlier days in the history of Puritanism when prelacy stood for cruelty, intolerance, and the most rigid proscription. They honestly feared it ; they wanted none of it ; and they made haste many of them to proclaim that, whatever else religious liberty might mean, it did not mean the admission or toleration among them of a form of church government which they hon- estly believed threatened the foundations of their civil and religious order alike.

Such apprehensions, it is true, were not shared — at any rate, to the same extent — by other colonies south of them. It will always be to the honor, for instance, of the colon}?- of Penn, on the banks of the Delaware, that another and larger spirit prevailed there; and it was a happy augury of the pacific influences whicli the Ej^iscopal Church was in coming days to exercise upon religious strife and dissension tliat the first bishop of Pennsylvania was the gentle William White, whose long episcopate and saintly and benignant presence as he went to and fro in the streets of Philadel- phia were influences of enduring power throughout the whole commonwealth.

More than forty years after that gracious episcopate was ended one of his successors in the office of a bishop knelt for

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consecration in that old St. Peter's in which White had so long ministered, and of which the kneeling presbyter, soon to be ordained a bishop, had himself been rector for nearly a score of years. The contrast between the two earliest consecrations to an American episcopate and this later one was most imj^ressive. Seabury's and White's had occurred each in a foreign land, and in the presence of a mere handful of more or less interested but largely alien spectators. The church to which they were to go had not a half-dozen organized dioceses, and but a handful of clergy. In many places, nay, in most places it was utterly un- known, or known only to be despised. It was widely re- garded as an uncongenial exotic, and its future was frankly predicted to be one of speedy and mortifying failure.

A century afterwards there was consecrated in Philadel- phia the Rev. Thomas F. Davies, D.D., LL.D., sometime rector of St. Peter's Church, to be bishop of the Diocese of Michigan. Trained in the Diocese of Connecticut, and iden- tified with its literary and theological history by many ties, he had been chosen to be the worthy successor of that rare man Dr. Samuel S. Harris, whose brief but brilliant episcopate in Michigan will long live in the grateful memory of Ameri- can Churchmen ; and in that episcopal succession in which he then took his place, he was — significant fact — the one hun- dred and fifty-second bishop. Since White knelt at the altar of St. Peter's the small and obscure communion had grown to number some seventy living bishops, nearly as many dioceses and missionary jurisdictions, some four thou- sand clergy, with probably some three million people more or less directly dependent upon their ministrations. On such an occasion it seemed appropriate that something should be said defining the nature and claims of the historic episcopate, and indicating its mission to the American people. To this end the sermon which follows was preached on Saint Luke's Dav, Oct. 18, 1889, in St. Peter's Church, Philadelphia.

XVII.

THE CALLING OF THE EPISCOPATE.

As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work where- unto I have called them.

And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. — Acts xiii. 2, 3.

These words, which are included in the Anglican Office for the Consecration of a Bishop, are omitted from our own. This fact alone, if there were no other evidence of a difference of opinion as to what that was which Saint Luke here describes, would sufficiently indi- cate that the Church has not always been, as to its nature, of one and the same mind. The Ordinal of the Church of England would seem to imply that it was an Ordination, or Consecration. The judgment of scholars, who were Churchmen as well as scholars, has some- times seemed to lean to that view of the transaction which makes of it simply a designation to a particular, and pre-eminently difficult and important, missionary work.

It is not necessary for our present purpose to settle this controversy, nor is it greatly material. We are

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here for a definite business, and for that business we find in Holy Scripture, elsewhere, if not here, abundant warrant. We are here not only because we believe that Christ has planted a Divine Society in the world, but that He Himself has ordained the mode of its perpetuation. We are here because we believe that to all men "diligently reading Holy Scripture and an- cient authors it is," or, if it is not, it ought to be, "evident, that" that Divine Society which we call the Church of God in the world is not a ghost or a spectre, but a visible and recognizable reality; that it has cer- tain marks or " notes, " and that among these marks or " notes, " no matter what its corruptions, or apostasies, or heresies, in this or that or the other age, is not only its Apostolic doctrine but its Apostolic fellowship. We are here because we believe that Apostolic fellow- ship to have meant no such invertebrate and acephalous thing as merely a community of sympathy and identity of ideas, but an organized brotherhood, with a rite of initiation, and a rite of association, and an appointed agency for the maintenance of its organic life and the due transmission of its authority.

Our brother here has been elected to a large and diffi- cult task, and has been called by the voice of the Church in the Diocese to which he is presently to go, to take upon him the duties and burdens of the Episco- pate. Under such circumstances we can easily con- ceive that it would be appropriate that those from whom he is parting, and those among whom he is presently to be numbered, should give him their good

The Calling of the Episcopate, 295

wishes and God-speed. I am persuaded that no one of those to whom I speak this morning, that no one of those who are soon to be his brethren in the office of the Episcopate, that no one, here or elsewhere, who knows and honors him for his winning and beautiful ministry, would dream of withholding either.

But is this all that the Church has to give him, or all that the requirements of this occasion demand ? Most surely you will not say so. Most surely you will agree with me that we have come here this morning because we are persuaded that no man "taketh this honor unto himself but he that is called of God as was Aaron," and that that Divine call is to find its evidence not alone in the election of a convention, or in any inward conviction, but equally and always by the transmission of an authority, having Scriptural and Apostolic warrant, and conferred by Apostolic commis- sion. Amid systems as various and, alas, as mutually contradictory as the dissensions from which they have arisen, we who are here are constrained to see in the story of the infant life of the Church of God the unmis- takable evidence that authority to exercise the ministry, of whatever rank or degree, comes not from below but from above, and that, as from the first, it was handed down from Christ and then from His Apostles, and not up from the people, or across from equals, so it has been, or ought to have been, ever since.

In one word, we are here because we believe in the Historic Episcopate, not merely as an historic fact but as an historic necessity, — the historic sequence of a

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Divine purpose and plan, various in its transient and temporary accidents, if you choose, but moving steadily, and that not by the shaping of circumstances, but by the guiding of the Holy Ghost, toward that form and char- acter which, having once taken on, it has now retained, whatever temporary obscuration of its primitive charac- ter or degradation of its high purpose may have befallen it, for wellnigh twenty centuries.

And therefore we are here to disown the theory that the organic form of Christianity, as the Catholic Church holds it and has perpetuated it, is merely the develop- ment and outcome of civil and secular institutions, amid which it originally found itself, any more than the Atonement on Calvary was the outcome of the Platonic or Aristotelian philosophies. Points of re- semblance, points of contact, points of identity, even, we may own, here and there, it may be, in the one as in the others ; but we are here to-day, if I at all under- stand the purpose of our coming, to affirm that yonder volume does not more truly declare to us the means of our salvation than it declares and defines that one pre- eminent agency, the Church of the living God, with its inspired message and its divinely instituted sacraments, and divinely appointed threefold ministry, as the visi- ble agency and instrument by which that salvation is to be made known to men.

And here, at any rate, whatever may be proper else- where, we are not called upon to go beyond this. How truly a human body may be so designated which is more or less maimed or mutilated is a question which the-

The Calling of the Episcopate. 297

ology may not find it easier to answer in one domain than science in another. But in an age when there is so much invertebrate belief, and when the tone of mutual complacency is so great that one man's deliro (I dream) is as good as another man's credo (I believe), it is as well in connection with such an occasion as this to understand the ground upon which we stand, and the point from which we set out. The cause of the reunion of Christendom will be greatly forwarded by the kindly temper which strives to understand, and scorns to mis- represent others ; but it will not be helped by the mis- taken amiability which seeks to misinterpret or consents to misrepresent ourselves.

I have said this much, and have endeavored to say it with utmost plainness, because, unless I am mistaken, the exigency of the hour demands it. But I have done so mainly because it opens the way to that larger view of our text and of this occasion to which, if possible, we should ascend.

{a) For, first of all, and plainly enough, it belongs to us to remember on such an occasion as this that there is a past, and that we cannot divorce ourselves from it. Interesting and impressive as even the coldest criticism would be apt to own the service in which we are now engaged, neither its impressiveness nor its intrinsic appropriateness is the reason for our observance of those solemn features which compose it. We did not origi- nate, extemporize, or invent them. Their claim upon us, first of all, resides in this: that they are a part of that venerable and scriptural inheritance of which God

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has put us in trust. In an age which, with its smart sciolism, considers itself competent to invent a method for every emergency, and extemporize a function for every most august solemnity, it is enough for us that we are here engaged in doing what "our fathers did aforetime." That law of historic continuity which Christ in His earlier ministry so consistently and in- variably emphasized, from the day when at His home in Nazareth He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath dayi to those closing hours when, on the eve of His crucifixion, He made ready to keep the Passover with His disciples, 2 is still the Church's truest wisdom, as it is daily coming more and more plainly to be seen to be an essential element of her inmost strength. The evolution of the Church, like the evolution of the highest forms of physical and intellectual life, must forever be along those lines which keep her present in close and vascular connection with her past. No more tragic lesson has been taught to Christendom than that which salutes us, in this land and age, in the manifold and mutually destructive divisions of that Christendom, as to the folly and madness of the defiance of that law. We are set, in a generation of ignorant and audacious departures from primitive faith and practice, to say, and to say it over and over again, "the old is better." We are set to affirm that, howsoever it may have been caricatured, overstated, or misunderstood, there is a doctrine of Apostolic succession in teaching, in minis- try, in fellowship, and that we are to guard it and per-

1 St. Luke iv. 16. 2 gt. Mark xiv. 14.

The Calling of the Episcopate. 299

petiiate it. Pre-eminent as are the truths of Christ's personal relation to the personal soul, we may not for- get that He has chosen to reveal and proclaim them through an agency which binds those souls to one an- other and to Him in the great as well as " good estate of the Catholic Church." And this it is our bounden duty to remember and to affirm, not less but more, be- cause it is to many an unwelcome and unnecessary affirmation, and one that, only late and slowly, men are coming to own and accept.

[h) But when we have done this duty, we are not to leave the other duty undone. And what is the other duty, if it be not to remember that as there is a past, and that we must not get out of touch with that, so there is a present, and that we must be careful to get into touch with that ? The fact of all others most in- spiring in our land and day is this, that never before was the Church whose children we are so earnestly at work to understand the situation in the midst of which she finds herself, and so strenuous by any and every lawful means to adjust herself to its demands. An alien, as men perversely miscalled her, in the begin- ning, from the spirit of our republican institutions and the genius of the American people, she has not failed to show that she is loyal to the one, and that she under- stands the other. Not always nor everywhere wise in the manner or the methods of her original approach to those whom she has sought to win, she has consented to unlearn not a little of her earlier stiffness, and largely to disown a temper of aristocratic reserve and exclu-

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siveness. As in England, so in America, she is no longer the church of a class or a caste, but pre- eminently, at any rate in some of her chiefest centres, the church of the people.

Not, however, let me say, in a spirit of amiable indifferentism. It is a conspicuous infirmity of the religious activities of our time, that in their desire to commend themselves to those whom they seek to in- fluence, they have not always remembered that the last method of effectively doing so is one of excessive complaisance and weak and worldly concession. The architecture of ecclesiastical buildings and places of religious worship in our day, the tone, not unfre- quently, of our pulpits, the characteristics of worship, the speech and manners of the clergy, have all revealed a danger lest, in the aim to be human and fraternal, the Church and religion may very easily become secular and careless and worldly. In the statement of doctrine it is well, undoubtedly, that the parish priest should aim to translate the speech and the idioms of other days into our own ; but there is sometimes heard in the pulpit a timid concession to popular clamor, or popular fancy, which, in its spirit, is of the very essence of instability and incertitude, and in its influence at once deteriorat- ing and debilitating. " Stand fast " (o-rT^A^ere), says the Apostle, "in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, "^ and it is worth while to consider whether the liberty with which a Christian minister is endowed is not the liberty of constancy, rather than, in faith and

1 Galatians v. 1.

The Calling of the Episcopate. 301

ritual and manners, the liberty of mere vagrancy. In her efforts to adapt herself to all sorts and conditions of men, the Church may indeed well remember her Master's command to condescend to men of low estate. But she is to descend, to condescend^ not that she may stay on some lower level of truth and reverence and order, but that, reaching down to lost and guilty men, she may lift them up to every higher ideal of goodness and nobleness and beauty. I hardly know how to say what I want to say without seeming in some degree to dis- parage efforts and enterprises with which, in their aim, I have the heartiest sympathy; and earnest men, for whose earnest purpose I have the heartiest respect ; but as there are methods and agencies which are used in our day by Christian people which throng streets and public halls with some jesting rabble following a brass band, and men and women tawdrily or grotesquely clad, to be the sport of lookers-on, so the Church is in danger, I sometimes fear, of a zeal to attract, rather than to edify, and to present herself as pretty and picturesque, rather than august, grave, and inspiring. Doubtless there are "many men and many minds," and the Catholic Church must be as universal in her methods and agencies as she claims to be in her mission and character. But methods, after all, are only secondary to that loving and self-forgetting spirit which using, as surely we may well remember in this venerable sanctuary, not yet spoiled by the iconoclastic spirit of a modernism which would leave nothing venerable unchanged, — which using, I say, only older and well-tried methods, has,

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nevertheless, wrought in all ages of the Church's his- tory the mightiest miracles of love and healing.

Ours is indeed a new era, and we may not put the new wine into old bottles, — we may not, in other words, always insist upon forcing this or that particu- lar movement into superannuated and outworn forms of activity or expression. But, in one sense, and that the deepest, the problems of our generation are not new but old, — as old as sin and selfishness, as old as human waywardness and depravity and guilt. And, whether it be the frictions and mutual enmities of those in different walks of life, or the misery and shame that are the consequence of a disregard of the laws of God, what we want is not so much a new departure in methods as a new baptism of the old, and yet ever renewing spirit. And so, the power which is to keep the Church, its episcopate, its clergy, its people, in touch with the present is the power of that divine sympathy and self- abnegation which shone, above all other graces, in the person and work of Jesus Christ. "And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away." Ah! it was not for nothing, we may be sure, that just that precise form of commis- sion and empowering was ordained for the observance of the infant Church of God, and those who should bear rule in it, for all ages. Those pierced hands, " which were nailed for our advantage to the bitter cross," and which, as Jean Paul wrote, "have turned the gates of centuries on their hinges, — what unceasing translation of the heart of God was wrought by their never-resting

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touch, of healing and of life-giving power, all the way from the blessing of little children, the opening of blind eyes, cleansing of leprous bodies, the raising of the dead, — till they were outstretched in benediction above adoring disciples as He whose they were was parted from His flock, " and a cloud received Him out of their sight ! " Most happy, verily, is that appoint- ment of this day, the feast of Saint Luke the beloved physician, for a service which binds that laying on of hands to which soon we shall proceed with the healing and healthful work of Christ's first Apostles. We may preach, and teach, and admonish, and exhort as we please, — but until somehow we are turning words into work, and entreaty into helpful and outreaching service, we shall preach in vain. That declamatory and reac- tionary instinct in human nature which, in the presence of moral and social evils, spends itself in vehemence of denunciations and revolutionary proclamations of war- fare upon all existing social order, is simply a bald impertinence until it is supplemented by some effort to lighten the burdens and readjust the inequalities which, ofttimes, the noisiest reformers "will not so much as touch with one of their fingers." The in- tellectual discontent, the impatience of creeds and symbols, the disposition to challenge the stern and righteous teachings of God's Holy Word, the agrarian- ism of the proletariat, and the savage animosity of an- archical teachers and their disciples, — these come, as often as otherwise, from a frigid and distant temper in those who stand over against them, a temper which is

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too indolent and too selfish to make the Catholic faith a living reality to men by the swift and loving eager- ness with which it is not only taught but lived.

And all this touches the office and ministry which we are to-day to commit to this our brother-elect, in a very close and living way. The office of ruling and guidance and oversight to which he is now to be set apart, can never be separated from that other of ordain- ing and confirming, in which he is to be the channel, under God's blessing, of those divine and enabling gifts which are for the strengthening of souls, and so, for the healing of the nations. In other words, his work of oversight, of episcopizing, can never be separated from that other work which keeps him ever, in a most real and literal way, in touch with, close to, and not aloof from, the flock which he is to feed and guide. At this point there recur to me some words which are surely, on this day and in connection Avith this service, of pre- eminent pathos and appropriateness. In the volume entitled "The Dignity of Man," published after his death by his daughter, the late Bishop of Michigan, in this precise connection, speaks at length on this point : —

'^It is perfectly obvious that when Jesus, in Saint John's Gospel, described Himself as the Shepherd who entereth in by the door, He was not discussing the question of the credentials of authority, or of the formal commission of shepherdhood ; but was pointing out the only way in which shepherdhood of any kind can discharge its function, and realize its power. He was propounding a lesson which

The Calling of the Episcopate. 305

it behooves all meu to ponder well who hope to influence their fellow-men for good. Eank, office, order, culture, property, — be the authority, the privilege, the right of these what they may, the eternal law of God, as exemplified in the life of His Son, and taught in His Holy Word, and illustrated in human history, is this : that none of these, no matter how commissioned or sent, can exercise any real shepherdhood over men except as they are in sympathy with them. This is true in Church and State ; of the employers of labor; of the heads of households; of civil rulers and political leaders ; of bishops, priests and deacons, — the power to lead men lies in sympathizing with them and walk- ing in the same way with them. * He that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.' Saying this, the great Master spoke not merely as a moralist and sage, but also as a statesman. He propounded a new principle in social and political economy which princes and diplomatists have hardly yet grown up to the grandeur of, though the vicissitudes of falling thrones and changing dynasties have been confirming it for thousands of years. For man has always been prone to think that eminence of gifts or station would give him power; that pomp, or wealth, or place, would enable him to exercise dominion. But Jesus utterly reversed all this when He said, ' Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant : even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and .to give His life a ransom for many.' Saying this He did not repudiate distinction of order, but rather pointed out the eternal purpose for which it is ordained. He did not renounce authority, but rather pointed out the only way to vindicate and exercise it. For He said in another place : 'Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. ' But because I am your Lord and Master, I am come among you as one that serveth. So here He taught the

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same great lesson. The man of influence is the man of sympathy 5 the man of power is the man of service. The shej)herd enters in by the sheep's door; he leads them in and ouf and finds pasture for them. He knows them, and calls them by name. They know his voice, and w ill come when he calls them. He that walks with the sheep is the shepherd of the sheep."

You at any rate, my dear brother, will not misunder- stand or blame if I recall these words to-day. There are some of us here this morning who, like those Hebrews at the rebuilding of the Temple, cannot quite part the joy of this happy and auspicious hour from tearful memories of one whose place you are fitly to fill, and whose noble episcopate, all too soon ended as it seems to us, you are to-day to take up. You, who knew and honored him, will not misconstrue us if, seeking for a word most apt and fitting for this hour, we borrow his. And verily you need not. That single and blameless ministry, so unobtrusive, so untiring, so wise and tender and helpful, which for so many years you have exercised in this parish, is the best witness that, in taking up the larger and more difficult tasks which are before you, you do not now need to begin to learn to keep yourself in touch with the past, and also with the present. The cure and charge in which so long and faithfully you have labored, is one endeared to Churchmen, and not alone in this diocese but all over the land. The cure of White and Kemper, De Lancey and Odenheimer, — it is associated in the mind of him w^ho is your preacher with one whose name he bears.

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and who, coming here now nearly seventy years ago to receive at the hands of William White both baptism and ordination, returned after many days to minister in this diocese as its Bishop for nearly twenty years. It is thus that the consecrated memories of the past and the hallowed affections of the present assemble here to speak to you, Salve^ vale, — Hail, and farewell ! It is thus that the Church of other and feebler days joins in sending you forth to what was then untrodden ground, and now has grown to be one of her foremost and noblest dioceses. Believe me, that in going there you will have the welcome of warm and loyal hearts and the support of strong and generous hands. And believe me too, that in Avelcoming you to this office to- day, we who do so are glad and thankful that the Provi- dence of God, wiser than our poor judgments, has seemed to disappoint us for a time, only to give us to- day, in the successor of that great Bishop of Michigan who went so lately to his rest, one who, in the judg- ment of the whole Church, is pre-eminently worthy to succeed him. The various training which as teacher, pastor, and priest you have had, will find no unworthy field in the diocese to which you go, and that earlier identity with studies pre-eminently identified with God's ancient people is one among many guarantees that you will both keep yourself in touch with a venera- ble and historic past as well as with a living and ex- acting present.

I know what ties you sever to-day, and 1 should sadly abuse my opportunity if I said one word, even though

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it might be of well-meant sympathy, to open that wound, and so make the parting harder and the wrench more bitter. You are called to-day to make an offering of yourself to God; and this your flock is called to give its best for Him, in giving you.

May God who has called you, as we are most cer- tainly persuaded, strengthen you, and comfort them; and may the Master whom you hear to-day, bidding you go forth to take this yoke of higher ministry upon you, walk beside you all the way, making that yoke an easy yoke, and this, your heaviest burden, light!

FREE CHURCHES.

N"o review of ecclesiastical life in the United States would be complete which did not recognize the considerable change which has taken place during the last twenty years in the matter of free churches. It cannot, indeed, be said that that change has greatly affected the convictions of a large and in- telligent constituency, whose attitude toward free churches has in some cases changed only from one of languid indiffer- ence to one of distinct and sincere hostility. With these the free-church movement is associated with certain elements of unreality, if not of phariseeism, — which latter, it must frankly be owned, is sometimes apparently, if not really, present in the extravagant language of its advocates. It is one thing to say, as it would seem might justly be said, that the principle of a free and open house of worship, where all men, of whatever rank and condition, are equally welcome, is the right principle in worship, and quite another to say that those who tolerate or have a part in any other system are guilty of a deliberate denial of the first principles of Christianity. There is unquestionably room for an honest difference of opinion in regard to a movement which is en- compassed with many serious practical difficulties, and which — to some, at any rate — seems to lose almost as much in one direction as it gains in another.

It may be said, for instance, as an objection to the free- church system, that it exhausts, if not the energies, at least the interest, of a congregation in the maintenance of public worship, and that when provision for this has been made, most free-church congregations do little or nothing for the

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work of the church beyond their own walls. It may be said, again, that the system assists the evasion of just responsi- bility" for the maintenance of public worship, by leaving it so entirely to voluntary offerings as to bind upon no one a pre- cise and definite obligation. It may be said, yet again, that it devolves upon the clergy a vulgar and anxious concern in regard to the pecuniary interests of a parish, which is at once disheartening and secularizing. Still further, it may be said that the actual working of a system which denies fixed and reserved places in the church edifice to all alike is injurious to the solidarity of the family, which is scattered and disintegrated, as so many isolated individuals, on all occa- sions of public worship. And, finally, it is sometimes urged that in practice the system is often no better than the pew system, since it not unfrequently concedes arbitrarilj^ to favored persons what it affects to deny to all, and this upon no accepted basis of ^' first come, first served" or ^'best pay, best seat," either of which principles has at least the merit of some kind of equity.

But when all these objections have been urged, there re- mains a profound conviction of which it is sufficient to saj^, by way of preface to the two discourses which follow, that its fruits demonstrate it to be a steadily growing conviction. At the beginning of the second half of the present century free churches were, in the communion for which the writer is permitted to speak, so rare as to be almost phenomenal. Within the last quarter of a century they have become so numerous that in some dioceses there are no others, while in others they are the rule rather than the exception. As was to be expected, they most widely prevail where social dis- tinctions and those created by wealth are least marked; while, on the other hand, in great cities they make way against both these hostile influences but slowly; and yet in these, and conspicuously in one or two instances in the Diocese of New York, they have achieved a success which is most of all

Free Churches, 311

precious because it betokens the breaking down of prejudices which are most likely to be fatal to the progress of the Church and her divine message among those whose sor- rows and burdens make most pathetic claim for her divine consolations.

The first of the sermons following was preached at the con- secration of Grace Chapel, New York, on Sept. 25, 1876, and the second in the Church of the Holy Apostles, Philadelphia, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Free-Church Asso- ciation, May 17, 1877.

XVIII.

A CONSECRATION SERMON.

The rich and poor meet together ; the Lord is the maker of them all. — Proverbs xxii. 2.

Over the chancel arch of the building which formerly stood a little to the northward of the spot upon which we are assembled this morning, and which was de- stroyed by fire on the eve of Christmas Day, 1872, ran the legend which I have chosen as my text. The words were a proclamation of the motive by which those who had reared that building were inspired, and a declara- tion of those principles of worship by which they aimed to be governed.

The first Grace Chapel was reared in the year 1849, and it is at once interesting and instructive to trace the history of its inception. When the present struc- ture, known as Grace Church, in Broadway, was con- secrated just thirty years ago, its rector, the Rev. Dr. Thomas House Taylor, D.D., in the sermon preached at its consecration, spoke as follows : " I would seize upon this occasion of joyous congratulation to lead you on from one good and glorious work to another, perhaps more really good, perhaps more truly glorious still.

A Consecration Sermon. 313

You have indeed provided for yourselves, and for the deathless spirits of your little ones, this place of prayer in all its soothing and subduing associations of solem- nity and beauty ; and now I have come to persuade you to go on and provide for the spiritual and eternal wants of the poor, whom God has commanded to be always with you.

" My (ibject is to ask that you will give me the means of building and preparing for the most efficient and most immediate operation, Grace Church Chapel, a church in which the Word and sacraments shall be administered, and in which the sittings shall always be free to all who will use them for their souls' good."

The answer to this appeal was not a great while in taking visible form, and becoming a most successful reality.

A free chapel was reared upon the corner of Madison Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, and was intrusted first to the care of the Rev. Edwin Harwood, and after- ward to that of the Rev. Henry E. Montgomery, whose laborious and successful ministry in this community is still a fragrant memory in the homes of many Church- men among us. In the year 1856 the congregation worshipping in that chapel organized itself into an in- dependent parish, thenceforward known as the Church of the Incarnation, which now, in turn, maintains its own free chapel (once ministered to by him who to-day assumes the charge of this), and soon after, Grace Church proceeded to the erection of another and much more spacious chapel hard by this present site.

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The second Grace Chapel, with as large a number of sittings as the parent church, was speedily completed, and opened under the most successful ministry of the Rev. Robert George Dixon. That ministry verified the language of the text, as nearly as it has ever been veri- fied in the history of the Church in this city. The con- gregation which Mr. Dixon gathered about him was one drawn exclusively from no one class or coiidition of life, but included both rich and poor, the man of sub- stance and the day laborer, the woman of leisure and the woman who won her maintenance at the point of her needle.

Thus far Grace Chapel certainly realized its original design, and turned into honest reality the words of that legend which adorned it. But it was not a great many years before it was found that the building, though cost and pains had not been spared in rearing it, was but ill-adapted for the uses of free church or indeed, any church work, and was wholly wanting in those manifold conveniences, which the growth of church life among us have made indispensable to the manifold forms of parochial activity. In the construction of the building everything had been sacrificed to a large au- ditorium. There was no provision for parochial and other societies, and even the accommodations of the Sunday-school, which were provided in the recesses of a damp and dark basement, were such as to discourage those most interested in its prosperity. The young men and women of the parent church who offered their services as teachers found that their catechetical func-

A Consecration Sermon. 315

tions had to be exercised amid surroundings that recalled the catacombs, and in an atmosphere which seemed likely, to sensitive constitutions, to threaten the re-enacting of the primitive martyrdoms. In a word, beyond the not altogether convenient arrange- ments of the main assemblage-room itself, much about the building was calculated rather to hinder than to foster growth and prosperity.

When, therefore, the edifice was destroyed by fire, the first resolve of those upon whom fell the burden of its reconstruction was the resolve that the new Grace Chapel should be a structure fully abreast of the de- mands of church life and church work in this age and in this city.

The result of that resolution salutes us in these our surroundings this morning. As we have placed the font at the threshold of this chapel, in token that bap- tism is the door and gateway into the fellowship of the Church of God, so have we placed Grace Hall, the building through which we have passed on our way hither, at the threshold of Grace Chapel, in token that the Church's godly training and nurture is the thresh- old of those sacraments and ordinances which she offers for the strengthening and refreshing of more adult life. We have felt that this work of teaching and training was not to be thrust underground or done in a corner. We have felt that, amid all the competi- tions of that secular education which is going on about us, it demanded the best appliances and the most gen- erous provision of every suitable, tasteful, and approved

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help. We have felt that those, too, who were willing to labor, to plan, and to contrive for the bettering of poor children, for the relief of the sick, for the succor of the neglected and destitute, — to do, in a word, the work which has been done for the past eight years by the various societies connected with this parish, — were entitled to every convenience and accommodation which their blessed work demanded. And feeling this, we have aimed, in the building which immediately adjoins this, to provide such appliances and conveniences, ac- cording to the best models, and in ample and generous measure.

And so, too, in this chapel itself. It has been felt by those who have reared it that a free church ought to be no less costly or spacious, or richly adorned, than if it were designed for the use of those who, through an ownership of the sittings, are supposed to acquire a certain right of property in the house of God. It would have been easy, when the former edifice was destroyed by fire, to have parted with its site at a very considera- ble advance upon the original cost, and to have erected in a less expensive neighborhood a much cheaper struc- ture. But it was felt that this would be an economy too dearly purchased; and instead, therefore, of any diminution of outlay there has been a considerable in- crease. Additional land has been acquired, the service of skilled architects and superior mechanics has been secured, and the whole work, which has involved an expenditure of nearly |100,000, has been done with the very best materials, and with a constant reference to

A Consecration Sermon. 317

honesty, thoroughness, and beauty of result. Whatever else may be said of this building, it may safely be said that we offer to God this morning nothing that is cheap or mean or inferior. This edifice, placed as it is at one of the most central and commanding points in this great city, may safely challenge comparison with any others which have lately been reared in the diocese.

Yes, this much we may say, and saying it must needs regret that we can say no more. If there has been, to any ear, a sound of boastfulness in what has thus far been uttered, I venture to predict that before I have done you will own that I have approached these services and this duty in a very different spirit. It is a duty from which I would gladly have been excused, and from which I had hoped to have been relieved. But having been bidden to it by a voice which I may not disregard, I have no option but to speak of our enterprise of this mornins:, and of its relations to the work of the Church in this community, and among our American people, in terms at once honest, explicit, and unreserved.

Let me say, then, at the outset, that the erection of free chapels, in connection with parish churches which are not free, is a part of our modern and American sys- tem of expedients. I shall not undertake this morning to trace the rise and growth of what is called the pew system beyond our own shores, or to explain its origin amid other surroundings. It is enough to say that in England, where it has been known for many genera- tions, and where some of its worst abuses have ripened

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to maturity, it has always existed w«ith qualifications largely unknown among ourselves, and that to-day, in the Church of England, it is as verily a decaying and vanishing usage as is the use of the whipping-post, or the imprisonment of men for debt. Unfortunately, however, this cannot be said of it in the United States, where the tendency, if it is marked enough to be de- tected in any particular direction, is in the direction of the wider prevalence of the pewed system. I know that this is not the case in our own Church where (as I believe is true in Minnesota) there are whole dioceses where there is scarcely a church or chapel which is not free. But in communions outside the Church, as amoug the Methodists, the pew system has certainly gained ground in cities, while, at the other ecclesiasti- cal extreme, the churches of the Roman obedience have, many of them, pews which are let and sub-let to two or three series of tenants.

And among ourselves, while there has been progress, that progress has not been rapid, and the growth of a sounder sentiment in the Church at large has, on the whole, been painfully slow. As it should be in all great reforms, the clergy have been in the advance, and too much honor cannot be given to men who have committed themselves to the free-church movement with a noble disregard of every personal consideration of comfort or security. But the clergy have not been largely followed by the laity ; nor is it, perhaps, greatly surprising. The success of the free-church movement in England has been achieved, it should be remem-

A Consecration Sermon. 319

bered, under different conditions and amid very differ- ent surroundings from our own. English societ}^ is a society substantially of fixed classes and of sharply defined social lines. Men hold their place in it mainly by virtue of hereditary considerations quite outside of any purchased precedence in the house of God. In- deed, so firmly fixed are those lines, and so potent in separating classes, that when men come to the house of God they are anxious — the loftiest often even more than the lowliest — to forget and obliterate those lines by every means in their power. A friend of mine, visiting a crowded church in the East End of Lon- don, which is the Five Points neighborhood of that great city, reached over the shoulder of one near him in the throng which gathered in its porch, and in ac- cordance with a vicious custom not yet wholly extinct in England, dropped a shilling in the hand of some one whom he had observed with his back to him busily seating strangers. The supposed verger turned at once and faced him, and he recognized in him one of the first noblemen in England. In other words, a man of high rank came to the services mainly that he might forget his rank, and busy himself as the servant of the lowliest stranger that sought entrance there.

But with us, the condition of things is very different. In America there are no fixed classes, but there is, in every generation, a large class who are struggling for social precedence, and who are willing to buy it at any cost. And for this class the pew system seems to have been especially contrived. To buy a place in a con-

320 Waymarhs.

spicuous church, and have that place, itself, as conspicuous as may be, this is a title to a certain recognition which, however hazy and indefinite it may be when you undertake to analyze it, is not indefinite in its actual results. And so it comes to pass that many churches are composed almost exclusively of persons of one class, or, at any rate, of those of ample means, if not of great wealth. I may not pause here to ask how such churches manage to read and to hear some passages in the Epistle General of Saint James, and I know it may be answered that, even in such churches, there is abundant hospitality to strangers, and that that hospitality is exercised generously and unmurmuringly from one year's end to another. I presume there are many churches in New York in which there are no free sittings, and yet in which, as in that to which it is my own privilege to minister, the strangers who are wel- comed to its pews on any given Sunday may be counted by hundreds. But I am speaking of the general work- ing of a system, and as to the results of that system, it seems to me no candid mind can really be in doubt. I was conversing, not long ago, with a singularly intelli- gent layman, resident in a neighboring city, whose statements, volunteered without a single leading ques- tion, or indeed an observation of any sort on my own part, were certainly worthy of note. Himself a Church- man, though nurtured a Unitarian, he had enjoyed ex- ceptional opportunities for observing the history and progress of congregations of the most various and di- verse creeds and traditions. As the result of such ob-

A Consecration Sermon. 321

servation he stated as his belief that at the present ratio of decrease, the most stately and costly church edifices in the city of his own residence would be within the next twenty-five years virtually empty of worshippers. Crowded together as they had been during the past ten years in a district where land was most costly, and where were to be found only the residences of the wealthy, the region had come to be described with a significant sar- casm as the "Holy Land." But no pilgrimages were made to it from other and less favored regions. The churches were filled, or rather barely half-filled, with representatives from the classes living immediately about them. The charges for sittings, and, more than all, the general atmosphere of these churches excluded absolutely all persons who labored with their own hands for their living, and scarcely less those of limited means who form that vast middle class which, as it is the most numerous among us, so is it the most powerful in all great religious and social movements. It was the conviction of this witness that, unless the present pew system was abandoned, many of these churches would, themselves, have to be abandoned ; and he instanced the case of one costly and splendid edi- fice, lately erected, which has already been closed, partly, it is true, because it has proved to be almost impossible to conduct public services within it so as to make those services intelligible; but also because there was really no congregation to occupy or to sustain it. In other words, it was his conviction that what is known as the pew system was rapidly contributing, in

21

^22 Wai/marks.

that community at any rate, to the steady decline, if not to the absolute abandonment of all habit of attend- ance upon public worship by large masses of people.

I am aware that in New England (and it is of a New England city that I have been speaking) there are other causes which may be alleged as having been more or less operative in producing such results. But it is not possible wholly to account for these results by attribut- ing them to the growth of unbelief, or to an increasing indifference to religious sanctions. There has been as much, if not more, of both these in England, during the last twenty-five years, as there has been among ourselves. Indeed the teachings which have been sup- posed to produce such results have emanated from English cities and English universities, rather than from our own. But, during that time, it is idle to deny that, especially in the Church of England itself, there has been a marked, in many cases a vast, increase in the number of public services, and in the numbers of those who are in attendance upon them. And it is equally idle to deny that that increase has been syn- chronous with the growth of free churches, and with the partial or complete removal of the restrictions upon the use of the sittings at certain specified ser- vices in others that are not free.

These facts, I take it, speak for themselves. If they have any meaning at all, they mean that our present system of pewed churches is a mistake, and that, if it had any seeming warrant in the exigencies of other days, it must sooner or later give way before the

A Consecration Sermon. 323

graver, — may I not truly say ? — the sterner exigencies of our own. I know that there are many pewed churches among us that are still thronged and pros- perous. If, for instance, I were content not to look beyond the walls of the edifice in which I myself min- ister, I might easily dismiss all anxiety for the welfare of the Church at large. But a few churches occupying a central position, and with means and ample accom- modations, are no criterion of the vast majority that are otherwise circumstanced.

And the misfortune with these, as indeed with all pewed churches, is that they work to the disadvantage of the Church at large in two ways. In the first place, as I have indicated, they tend to exclusion, and to the perpetuation, in the last place on earth in which it ought to be known, of a spirit of caste, and in the sec- ond place, they act injuriously upon the growth and prosperity of all free churches around them. It is fundamental to the well-being of any congregation that it should include within its worshippers all sorts and conditions of men. But this will never largely come to pass, — it is well to face the situation frankly, — this will never largely come to pass while it is possi- ble for certain classes to pass by the doors of a free church for another in which they can purchase certain privileges — a certain pre-eminence — by a certain money expenditure. So long as this continues, free churches as a whole will languish, struggling for ex- istence, or else depending for their maintenance upon those who are without.

324 Wayraarks.

And so, while I believe that we have done here the best that could be done under the present circum- stances, I cannot flatter myself that such temporary expedients are in the line of the Church's highest ideal. We have done well in that we have not reared this edifice in an obscure neighborhood, of mean pro- portions, or of cheap materials. But the Church of our affections will do better, nay, best, when it resolves that instead of pewed churches supplementing them- selves with free chapels all churches shall be free, and when, in God's house at any rate, the sound of buying and selling, of hiring and leasing, shall be forever silenced.

I know well that, in the way of such a reform, the obstacles are many and serious. There is the preju- dice of life-long habit and training, there are the rights of property, there are the very practical questions of maintenance and support.

To overcome these difficulties and to solve such prob- lems will be the work not of a day nor of a year. No great revolution — and surely this involves a great revolution — was ever successfully accomplished save through the gradual education of the popular mind; and the advocates of free churches have sometimes alienated as much sympathy and support by their acri- monious impatience as they have won by their single and self-sacrificing devotion.

But meantime the movement is destined to grow and spread, and ours it is, especially, who are not formally identified with it, to help and not to hinder it. It has

A Consecration Sermon. 325

been my own habit to preach a sermon annually in the parish church of which I am rector, in behalf of this free chapel, and I have been accustomed, on such occa- sions, to present some of the arguments for the univer- sal adoption of the principle of free churches. Of course, the adoption of that principle, when the time shall be ripe for it, will involve something of friction, and something more of collision with wonted tradi- tions; but, by the abandonment of pews (themselves one of the most questionable features of both pewed and free churches alike, as they exist among us), by the adoption of chairs in their stead, by the multiplication of services at such hours as shall meet the convenience of different classes of persons, and, above all, by the strenuous inculcation of the Apostolic doctrine in this matter, a sounder sentiment and practice will come to prevail, while individual rights will be preserved, and individual wants will be adequately provided for.

Toward this end, it is my earnest prayer that the building which we give to-day to God may be a whole- some and helpful contribution. Under the charge of him who has been called to be its minister, and who has elsewhere made of a free church so thoroughly prosperous and successful an enterprise, I venture to believe that we may look for results worthy of his past record, and of the opportunity which is here presented to him. For one, I shall rejoice to learn from his ex- ample how much better and more fruitful than any other is that system which makes a church free and open to all sorts and conditions of men, and which

326 Waymarhs,

recognizes no rights of property within its walls save His whose, by Divine right, is most of all the holy house which is hallowed to His worship and honor, even as it is called by His holy name!

May He accept, then, the gift which we lay at His feet to-day ; and may He inspire us all, ministers and people alike, with a deeper and heartier desire to see and recognize our duty to His cause and kingdom in the world, and seeing and owning it, gladly to surrender every prejudice, every prepossession, every selfish in- terest that may stand in the way of the doing of it !

XIX.

THE FREE CHURCH A WITNESS TO THE BROTHERHOOD OF HUMANITY.

For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have 2)ut on Christ. There is neither Jeiv nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ. — Galatians iii. 27, 28.

A NEWSPAPER in this city, referring, the other day, to this Annual ]\Ieeting of the Free-Church Association, kindly heralded your preacher to the confidence and respect of those who were to listen to him, by informing the public that he ministered to the most exclusive con- gregation, who themselves worshipped in the most ex- pensive pews, to be found in any church in all the land.

If a cono^reo-ation which cheerfullv welcomes strano'ers by hundreds to a share in its sittings on every Lord's day through all the year, a congregation in which single sittings may be had for eight dollars a year and a pew for twenty-five dollars, and in which the average cost of each Sunday service to each sitting in the church, is ten cents per service, — is open to so sweeping a charge as I have referred to, then, certainlv, the indictment with

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which he who speaks to you to-night has been welcomed to this place is true, — then, and not otherwise.

I have referred to it, however, not because such a statement is of sufficient importance to merit a serious disclaimer, but becattse, after all, though so ingeniously erroneous in fact, it is so eminently suggestive of the conviction which lies behind it. That is to say, it may be easy to prove in any particular instance that churches or congregations charged with being exclusive are not exclusive, — that certain traditions of exclusiveness that linger about them have long ago been banished by a decenter and more Christian practice, — it may be easy to prove that in this or that church the clergy have laid down certain rules as to the hospitality to be ex- ercised to strangers of whatever rank and in whatever garb, and that they resolutely maintain the observance of such rules. But all this, a little reflection must show one, does not really touch the root of the matter. That involves the question, On what terms is a worshipper to be admitted to God's house ? Is he to be admitted there upon sufferance as the tolerated guest of some other fellow-being, who owns in that holy place an ex- clusive right to the occupancy of so many square feet and so many pounds of hair pillows, or as a fellow-citi- zen of the household of God, in that Divine Republic in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, Brahmin nor Pariah, bond nor free, superior sex nor inferior sex (or, as the Apostle puts it, male nor female), but where men are all one in Christ ?

In other words, such a statement as I have referred

The Free Church A Witness. 329

to is significant, whatever may have been the motive that in any particular instance has happened to inspire it, because it is the indication of a popular conviction ; and that conviction is, the inconsistency of all pewed churches, however hospitable their welcome or inexpen- sive their accommodations, with the Church's doctrines and her Master's teachings.

For no man can read those teachings without straight- way seeing that they are at war, distinctly and unequivo- cally with the spirit of caste, of exclusiveness, of mutual suspicion or contempt. Coming in, as it did, upon a condi- tion of imperial despotism on the one hand, and of cring- ing servitude on the other, the religion of the New Testa- ment sets to work straightway to teach the world the blessed evangel of the brotherhood of humanity in the liberating and ennobling bond of a common Saviour and Redeemer. It preaches no communism ; it denounces no existing government ; it undertakes to overthrow or undermine no political fabric. " Honor all men ; love the brotherhood ; fear God ; honor the king." This is the four-fold legend with which it flings its blood-dyed banner to the wind. " Servants, obey your masters. Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Custom to whom custom ; honor to whom honor ; fear to whom fear. Art thou called, being a servant ? Care not for it. . . . For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is Christ's free man." In other words, Christianity assailed no existing social in- stitutions from without; but it wrought from within, sanctifying and ennobling individual character. It rec-

330 Waymarks.

ognized, what you and I must recognize, that so long- as human society exists there will exist certain inevi- table distinctions, which will as inevitably perpetuate themselves, in spite of every theory and every endeavor, whether of Fourier or of Brook Farm, to do away w^ith them. Wealth, mental ability, force of will, the brain to conceive and the hand to execute, " the genius of ad- ministration," as some one has called it, — these will rule the world, and possess themselves of its best things by virtue of the authority of that earlier revelation which God has written not in a book but in the brain, as long as the world stands.

I. But precisely at this point appears the function or office of the Church of God in the w^orld. What is the tendency of the growth of wealth, of learning, of power, in any particular class ? It is inevitably to produce that thing which we call the spirit of caste, — that sentiment which in the heart of an oriental becomes at length a chronic temper of scorn and disgust. In Malabar to-day, a Nayadi^ or lower caste native, defiles a Brahmin if he comes within seventy-four paces of him. A Pariah is so called because formerly he was obliged to wear a bell so that a Brahmin could be warned of his approach and thus avoid him. We smile, perhaps, at these follies of other races, but what are they, after all, but carica- tures of what exists among ourselves ? What is so imminent a danger as that, when wealth and refine- ment and luxury increase among a people, ignorance and vice and degradation shall increase with them ? And what has been the result of this growth in opposite

The Free Church A Witness. 831

directions but a development of the spirit of haughty and heartless indifference on the one hand, and of impa- tience, envy, and resentment on the other ? " There is a tendency at work among us," wrote an English man of business not long ago, " to make the wall of moral separation between the rich and the poor broader, higher, and more impassable, until now many of the poor have so little personal acquaintance or intercourse with the rich that to many of them the well-dressed neigh- bors whom they meet in their daily walks hardly seem to •be their own fellow-beings, with one single passion, trait, motive, or feeling in common with themselves." Does any one to whom I speak and who has seen much of life in our great cities doubt whether or no such a spirit of social alienation is at work among us ? And is any one of us in ignorance as to what sooner or later it will pro- duce ? If so let him read the history of the French Rev- olution, whether of 1789, or 1848, and he will realize what bitter and bloody fruit the growth of social aliena- tion may bring forth.

And for what does the Church of God exist in the world, if not to resist and rebuke this hateful spirit of caste ? What is the meaning of her Master's teaching, if it is not that, whatever inevitable distinctions exist else- where, inside the household of the common Father, and in the dear fellowship of the Divine Elder Brother, they are to be obliterated and forgotten. How of old, in that flippant Galatian community to which the Apostle wrote the letter from which I take my text, the grave Israelite, eaten up with his pride of race, despised the

332 Waymarhs.

laughter-loving Greeks. How the Roman freedman scorned and insulted the slave over whom at last he had lifted himself. How everywhere in that old world man- hood spurned and degraded and enslaved womanhood. Hearken now how, into the midst of all this seething strife of caste, comes the great-hearted Apostle to the Gentiles crying, " There is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female ; for ye are all one in Christ." It is a message which the Church must to-day not only preach but live. When a few years ago in France the Commune of Paris murdered its venerable arch- bishop, of what was that blind and bloody deed the expression ? Certainly not of personal animosity toward a pure and blameless prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, who, according to universal testimony, had lived an unspotted and exemplary life. No ! but of resentment toward that thing which called itself re- ligion, of which, in their eyes, that feeble old man was the representative, — a thing which baptized itself with the name of Jesus, and claimed to have come to teach the world the Master's new command of love, but which, as they knew it, had strengthened the reign of caste, had neglected the poor and the outcast, and had cringed and bowed down to wealth and vulgar power. And so these men had reasoned, and reasoned rightly, " If this be religion we want no more of it ! Away with it, and with its lordly and arrogant represen- tatives ! " Now, then, I have no slightest apprehension that if we in America perpetuate and foster the pew- system, any bishop, priest, or deacon will ever enjoy the

The Free Church A Witness. 333

doubtful honors of martyrdom therefor ; but this I do venture to predict, that if, in this or any other matter, we continue to lend ourselves to the spirit of caste, we shall, as a church, sooner or later find ourselves with- out a flock to feed or souls to guide. Little by little the spirit of alienation will do its deadening work, and one day w^e shall wake up to find that in our excessive anxiety for the heathen in Walnut Street and on Murray Hill we have lost all hold upon the living heart of that great human mass which makes up the people.

But at this point it may very justly be asked. How does all this bear upon the present condition of things in our ordinary parish churches ? Is it a criminal in- dictment of the pew-system as it exists, anywhere and everywhere alike, and of those who maintain or acqui- esce in it ? Most distinctly, no. A criminal indictment implies a criminal intention, and in producing that result which we find in the Church to-day there has been no criminal intention whatever. The first pews in England, as Archibald Hale shows in his quaint book, " A series of Precedents illustrative of the Discipline of the Church of England," were undoubtedly simple sittings, introduced for the aged and infirm ; and Hale mentions that " so late as 1617 it was considered an offence for a young lady to be seated with her mother." But while in England the modern pew was the result of the steady encroach- ments of wealth and class-feeling, their introduction into our own land was certainly free from any motive of ex- clusion. From the beginning churches were pewed in these colonies, and a pew-tax was assessed as the sim-

334 Waymarks,

plest and most obvious method of providing a revenue. It is true that the pews and the taxes both implied a double proscription of the poor. They must sit in the gallery, and they must pay a rental for their pews or be liable to be turned out of them. But class-distinctions seemed natural enough to a people who, though they had renounced their allegiance to a king, were yet trained to revere rank and to give way to a titled aristocracy. Our ancestors called themselves Republicans in 1776, but it was a long time after that before the influences of nurture under a king and his courtiers ceased to assert them- selves. Meantime, however, the pew-system, inherited as it was from our mother Church beyond the seas, became with us the exponent of an entirely different feeling. In England, a nobleman's pew stood for the precedence of rank, — a precedence often won by heroic deeds and a long line of distinguished ancestry. With us it has come to stand simply for wealth, — however acquired and however used. The best pew is for the man who will pay the best price for it ; and so, to the common mind, the Church seems to be saying that, not eminent services, not saintly living, not age nor worth shall have foremost place and utmost honor, but simply he who, by whatever means, has acquired the most money. This is the point to which the Church has come, not of delib- erate purpose, but by a process of unconscious drifting. It is not that the Church has created the pew-system to perpetuate castes and to exclude the poor, it is that others have taken advantage of a system already in ex< istence to use it for selfish and worldly ends. But

The Free Church A Witness. 335

while these facts exonerate the Church from any worldly or unchristian or exclusive design, and therefore from any criminal intent, it does not excuse it from responsi- bility for that which though not a crime is an evil, — an evil which has grown up within the Church's very walls, and whose proportions and influences are now such that it must be resolutely and courageously dealt with.

II. And this opens the way for the further question, How are we to deal with this evil V To that question, I would answer, in the first place, Not, certainly, by hurling denunciations. Much has been written and said about the clergy who minister and the people who worship in pewed churches, to provoke contempt from the one and resentment from the other. When a clergyman is called to the cure of souls in a pewed church which he neither built nor planned and for whose internal financial regu- lations he has had no slightest responsibility, it will not help to enlist him in efforts toward the introduction of a better system than the pewed system — it will not en- courage him to efforts for reform - — to insinuate that he is maintaining an evil (which often he is quite powerless to remedy) merely in his own selfish interests. No man honors those faithful and self-denying men who have identified themselves with the free-church movement more than I do ; but they have not strengthened their cause nor commended it to others by the readiness with which some of them have been willing to liint that their brethren in pewed churches were more concerned about a comfortable maintenance than for the honor of God and for the salvation of souls. Do those who speak

336 Wayrnarks.

bitter words about pewed churches and about the pew system understand that, in cities at any rate, pews are often valuable pieces of property, and that the bald pro- position absolutely to surrender them would be greeted in most cases, at first, simply with good-natured ridicule ? Do they know that such property has often been inherited from generation to generation, and that a proposal to surrender it to common use sounds, to many persons, like a proposition to convert the family burial-place into a part of the public highway. I believe it is true that the venerable corporation of Trinity Church, New York, has for years been endeavoring to acquire, either by gift or purchase, a title to its pews so as to make the sittings in that noble edifice as free in name as they are in fact. But it has been found that such a proposition is met, even by those who have long ceased to worship in those pews, very much as one would greet a scheme for paving the streets with the family tombstones. Now, then, pray do not let us waste our breath by denouncing such a feeling as irrational, as puerile, as a mere prejudice. Of course it is a mere prejudice. But you cannot drive the plough-share of revolution through cherished and inherited prejudices without turning up something else ihan a kindly soil in which to sow the seeds of reform. Wrongs must sometimes be righted by revolution, but evils will be corrected just so fast as, and no faster than, you can enlighten and educate any prejudiced mass of people to a clearer vision of the truth.

111. And this leads me to speak, finally, of those obsta- cles which such education and enlightenment must set

The Free Church A Witness. 337

itself to remove. One of these I have already indicated as that right of property which so many persons have been led to entertain and even sacredly to cherish in connec- tion with the possession of a pew. Another is —

(a) That reluctance to submit one's self to personal discomfort which is undoubtedly a powerful factor in the sum total of the ordinary hostility to the pew system. Now it is the fashion to denounce this feeling as utterly unworthy of any one who professes and calls himself a Christian ; and I have heard a clergyman, when it had been mildly intimated that cleanly habits and personal neatness were not unworthy of being considered in a congregation where every one had equal rights, unctu- ously rebuke such a suggestion with the remark that " God did not look to see whether people were clean or dirty when they came into His house, and that we ought to be glad to get them there upon any terms." To be sure, the assumption as to what God cares for, especially in view of what an inspired Apostle has to say in this connection about having our bodies washed with pure water, is a somewhat bold one ; but the real value of such a remark becomes chiefly apparent the moment you con- sider the standpoint from which it is made. The bishop sits in his throne (I believe we call them thrones now-a- days), and the priest sits in his stall, or chair, and the deacon sits in his chair. As an officiating clergyman 1 never sat in a pew in my life, save in a church in New England, where there was a preacher's pew in which the preacher sat, and in which no one else might ever, under any possible circumstances, sit with him. In a word, no

22

338 Waymarks.

one ever crowds the bishop or the presbyter or the deacon. Their rights of sitting are reserved. Their class-privileges are sacredly guarded, and the encroach- ments of some portlier neighbor upon their twenty-two inches of pew-room never makes it necessary for them to cry, with a new sense of the Prophet's meaning, " Oh, my leanness ! my leanness ! " And therefore one cannot help feeling that there is a little bit of pharisaism in that facility with which the clergy urge upon the laity the unseemliness of objecting because one cannot sit in a particular seat, or have just so much room in which to stand or kneel. No one ought to know better than a clergyman that one cannot worship to edification so long as some physical discomfort is painfully reminding him of his body. " I set my face toward the East," says the author of Eothen somewhere (1 do not undertake to quote his exact words), " and I travelled on, and on, and on, until I might come to a race of people that did not sit in petvs.^^ Suggestive pilgrimage ! which, if not as religious in its professed object as some others, was yet, I verily believe, the outcome of a genuine need and of a devout instinct. It was Daniel Webster who said that he regarded the survival of Christianity after having been preached for so many generations in tub-pulpits as a most signal evidence of its Divine origin. Even so it must often have occurred to many another to question whether the survival of tlie instinct of worship amid the evils and the injustices of pews is not a similar evidence of the Divine origin of that instinct. If free and open churches are ever Avidelv to obtain anions; us, I believe it will be because we have constructed and furnished

The Free Church A Witness. 839

them with chairs instead of pews, and have educated those who gather in them to that brotherly considera- tion for others which will strive to free occasions of close personal proximity from every needless condition of personal annoyance.

(6) But besides the questions of so-called rights of property and personal discomfort there is in the popular mind this further opposition to the abandonment of pews, that it involves ordinarily the separation of families. Here again let me say that if we are ever to have any widespread success in the free-church movement, this prejudice — if prejudice it is — must be fairly and gen- erously dealt with. No change in our customs of wor- ship which seems rudely to ignore the instincts or affec- tions of the family will ever make successful progress, nor does it deserve to. Old as is the Church, the family is older, and if the one is a Divine institution no less is the other so. We shall do best, I venture to think, if we strive to adjust ourselves to the wishes and accom- modate the preferences, of parents and children in this matter; and the friends of free churches in England have shown their w^isdom by endeavoring to do so. In the Church Congress at Stoke two years ago one of the speakers at the meeting, in the interests of free and open churches, argued for an annual assignment of sit- tings by lot ; and another showed with much ingenuity how, in a crowded parish church, such as was instanced at St. Martin's, Scarborough, it was simply necessary to anticipate a little the hour of attending upon Divine service in order to secure for any family a certain num- ber of contiguous sittings. For instance, according to

340 Waymarhs.

the calculation of this speaker, in the church referred to, a family of sixteen might sit together if they went to church fifteen minutes before church-time ; that eight might sit together if they went ten minutes before, and so on. It is by such homely but practical solutions of such a difficulty as this, that objections are best met and prejudices allayed.

(c) I do not forget, 1 need hardly say, that there are still others of a graver nature and of a more unyielding character. There are the questions of support, and of revenue for church purposes, outside of the parish as well as in it, which I think it must candidly be admitted have been most imperfectly solved. If free churches have been successful in maintaining themselves (and they have not always done that), they have as yet done little more. And, what is most discouraging of all, the move- ment has as yet made but the slightest impression upon the great mass of our prosperous, well-to-do Church people. These do not believe in it and do not want it. We may as well face the fact. The clergy who minister to them are doubtful about the principle, and distrustful about its practical working. And yet the co-operation of these two classes is indispensable to ultimate success.

How shall we secure such co-operation ? I answer, first by invoking it, and then by deserving it ! We must seek for and ask for the sympathy of all good men, whether they worship in pewed churches or in free churches, and we must deserve their sympathy by the loving fidelity with which we preach and live the Apos- tle's doctrine of the common brotherhood of all men,

The Free Church A Witness. 341

everywhere, in their common Lord. There is a mediaeval legend of a priest who, knocking at a peasant's door, finds his sovereign seated at meat at the peasant's table. So great is his surprise that he cannot but express his apprehension as to the effect of such excessive conde- scension. " But," answers the King, " do we not meet as brothers about the table of a common Lord, yonder in the place where you are wont to minister? And if I own that brotherhood so freely there, shall I not some- times own it elsewhere also ? " It Avas an answer which, homely as it seemed, contained the sum and sub- stance of the whole matter. If they for whom Christ died are brethren, then let those who say so show the world that they believe it. No mere toleration of the poor or the unrefined or the uneducated will do this. No mere spasm of occasional condescension, whether in church or out of it, will do it either. Nothing will do it save a new and mightier baptism of that Divine Spirit of love and self-forgetfulness for which even now the Church is waiting ! And therefore, first of all, men and brethren, let us long and look and pray for that ! Let us cry straight up to heaven, ay, let the whole Church lift up her voice to Him who is her living Lord and Head, for such a Pentecostal breath of life and fire as shall shrivel and burn up every pitiful prejudice, every lingering residuum of exclusion, every last and smallest vestige of self-will and self-love. For then, believe me, the pew-doors will fly open, because, first of all, God has made the hearts and the hands that now hold them shut to fly wide open also !

AGENCIES OF REVIVAL.

In the year 1882 American Churchmen were refreshed and stimulated by a visit from Canon Knox-Little, who conducted a Retreat for the Clergy at St. Philip's in the Highlands; and soon afterwards one or more parochial ^^ missions " were, for the first time, held in parishes in the United States. To most Churchmen on this side of the Atlantic, the parochial mission was unknown, and its characteristics, so far as they were currently reported, led it to be regarded with suspicion. These characteristics were considered as not greatly differing from those which had been popularly associated with revivals and revivalism as these have long obtained in many religious bodies in America, and were such as had made themselves widely obnoxious to severe criticism. The effort to introduce informal services, meetings for inquiry, services for men, and other novel features, as it had encountered decided opposition in England, did not escape it here. Indeed, the opposition was in many instances the more strenuous because, in the United States, the evils have been more familiar.

But it was still believed that even in the Church, with her ample equipment, the parochial mission had a place; and the missions conducted by Canon Knox-Little, and later, by the Rev. Mr. Aitkin, general missioner of the Church of England Parochial Missions Society, who visited the United States during the following year, made it evident that that for which their work stood had a use and fitness for its place within the Church's lines. A mission in the city of

Agencies of Revival. 343

New York during Advent of the year 1885, in which a large number of parishes shared, issued, on the whole so en- couragingly that it was determined to found an American Parochial Missions Society, having the same general objects as its English parent. This was done during the same year, and the sermon which follows was preached on the occasion of its fifth anniversary, December 16th, 1890, at St. Bartholomew's Church, New York. The society has one general missioner and nearly forty missioners and assistant missioners, all but the first of whom are parochial clergy. These are called upon to leave their parishes from time to time and go to the point where a mission is desired, and conduct a series of special services, of which they have, in each case, exclusive charge and direction, — the original arrangement, of course, having been entered into with the cordial consent and co-operation of the rector.

In some instances these services are little more than frequent sermons, preceded by the appointed daih^ morning and evening prayer. In no case are these omitted. In some cases, more informal meetings, conferences, personal counsels, short addresses, mission hymns and prayers, other than those contained in the Prayer-Book or Hymnal, have been used. But there has never been any effort merely to j^ro- duce emotional excitement; and preaching and devotion, while seeking to awaken and arouse, have always aimed to instruct.

The movement is still too young to afford ground for a final judgment in regard to it. But two things have impressed those who have watched it most closely; the first of which is its unexpected welcome in all cases where people have observed and noted its operations continuously. Prejudice has been strong in many reverent minds, which have honestlj^ dreaded its effect in vulgarizing sacred things. But such persons have, as a rule, gladly owned its efficacy in awakening and deepening reverent instincts and serious im-

344 Waymarhs.

pressions. This has been especiaHy true in connection with a higher estimate and more frequent use of the Holy Communion.

Another effect has been evident, not so much in the con- gregations who were the objects of the missions as in the clergy who have conducted them. These have, in many instances, developed gifts and aptitudes as preachers which there is no probability that the routine of an ordinary ministry would have called forth ; and the Church, at least in some of its greater centres, is richer to-day because of this work, not alone for what it has done, but scarcely less for what it has discovered.

XX.

AGENCIES OF REVIVAL.

In those days came John the Baptist crying, Repent ye ! . . . And the people asked him, saying, What shall ice do, then? — Matt. iii. 1, 2 ; Luke iii. 10-14.

This is the anniversary, and we are gathered this evening in the interests of the Parochial Missions Society. It will clear the air a little if I explain its title, and define its aims. It is not " parochial " in the sense of being connected with any parish. It is not a missionary organization in the sense of supporting a body of missionaries; and it is not a society in the sense of having any other than the most informal and elementary organization.

But it represents those in the Anglican communion and in our own, who recognize the necessity of at least occasionally supplementing the ordinary agencies and ministries of the Church with others, which, going only and always with the consent and on the invitation of those who are charged with its care into any parish when they may be so bidden, bring to it a fresh voice, direct appeal, frequent services, personal contact, in- formal meetings for prayer and for inquiry, and such

346 Way marks.

other quickening methods as experience and observa- tion have tested and vindicated. In other words, obnoxious as the term may be to some, I know none better to describe the work of which we have come here to-night to hear, than to call it a Revival Agency.

As such, one can easily understand the surprise, if not disapproval, which it will awaken in many minds, especially in this land, in our own day, and in our own branch of the Church Catholic.

For in this land revival agencies in the domain of religion are no new thing. It would be impossible intelligently to write the religous history of the United States without taking into account that feature of it for which revivalism stands. Not in one sect or com- munion alone, but in almost all, its methods have ob- tained and its results have been strenuously sought. Among some bodies of Christians its work is that which is chiefly valued and most largely counted upon for all growth or enlargement, and it is not too much to say that, for considerably more than a century, and in some of our most numerous religious bodies, all other agencies, so far as their aggressive work is con- cerned, are considered as of but secondary and insig- nificant value.

An agency which has been thus employed and esteemed for more than a hundred years has made a record for itself, and may now, at any rate, be dispas- sionately and impartially judged. And one need have no hesitation in saying, however estimable are the aims and spirit of those who have employed it, that the

Agencies of Revival. 347

result of such judgment on the part of a vast and con- stantly increasing body of devout and thoughtful people, both within and without those communions in which it has been employed, is that, on the whole, and as it has hitherto existed among us, what is known as the revi- val system is, both in many of its characteristics and its results, largely vicious and evil. It has exalted emotionalism at the expense of deliberation in choice and conscientious purpose in action. It has appealed to the feelings rather than to the judgment, and has swayed the passions more than the reason. It has aimed at producing a spasm rather than a conviction, and it has, too often, accepted mere physical excitement in the place of reformation of character. Oftener than otherwise it has been heated and noisy, rather than serious and chastened, and its effects have been very frequently doubted or distrusted, unless they illus- trated themselves in extravagance of speech, and vehe- mence of that " bodily exercise " which the Apostle yet declares "profiteth nothing." These have been among its conspicuous notes or traits. Its results have been no less marked.

The inevitable reaction which follows any unusual excitement of the emotions, has been followed in its turn, in what is to be found in the vast majority of cases, by a profound apathy, not only of the religious sentiment, but of the personal conscience; and to-day whole regions of country are commonly alleged to bear witness in their complete indifference to both the moral and the spiritual, or devotional, elements of religion, to the desolating effects of the revival system.

348 Waymarks.

At such a moment it may well be asked, What does this Church want with an agency so unwholesome, with methods so thoroughly discredited ? Certainly if this is all of it, it may well want to have nothing whatever to do with it. But at this point the question is cer- tainly not an improper one, " Is this all of it ? " What is the revival system, not as it has sometimes been travestied and perverted, but as Christian history describes and defines it ?

For our purpose, one illustration, by way of answer to that question, is as good as a hundred ; and so I take that one which is presented in the verses which I have read as the text. There can be no doubt as to the estimate put by Christ himself upon the ministry of John the Bap- tist, and there can be as little concerning the general character of that ministry. It departed in every partic- ular from the ordinary and orderly ministries of the time. Judged by our standards, or by those then prevail- ing, it was distinctly sensational. It aimed to arouse, to alarm, to denounce, to scourge. And its effects were in accordance with its aims. If we should describe them in the phraseology of our own time, we should say that there was, in that part of Syria where John the Baptist preached, a great religious awakening, and it would be to misrepresent the whole situation, as the New Testament has preserved the story of it, if we did not go on to say that the greatest religious movement which the world has seen turned, as its first hinge, upon this same religious awakening.

There have been repetitions of it all the way along.

Agencies of Revival. 849

Whether it is Peter the Hermit, or Francis of Assisi, or Savonarola, or John Huss, or John Wesley, the thing is too familiar to be ignored or wholly dises- teemed; and no effort to distinguish between great national or ecclesiastical movements, occurring at long intervals, and an agency to be employed in connection with the ordinary on-going of parish life, though such a distinction is one which we are bound to recognize, can dismiss from our rightful consideration such agen- cies as we are here to-night to plead for. In one sense, the case of a parish and the case of a church or a nation are widely different ; but in another they are identical. The same slumbrous torpor, the same deadness to spir- itual truths, the same triumph of the spirit of worldli- ness over the spirit of Christ, exist in one as in the other. It is, after all, only a question of extent or degree ; and the exigencies of parochial life in particu- lar communities often make that necessary, in some single congregation, which, under other circumstances, may widely if not universally be necessary.

But what is it that is necessary ? or, in other \rords, what is it that such an association as this aims to do ? As it is profoundly sensible of the evil features and often more evil accessories of the modern system of revivalism, it ought hardly to be necessary to say that it does not propose to borrow or to revive these. As it is equally sensible of what I may call the distinc- tive traditions of this Church, — traditions, let me say, which, however ridiculed or travestied, have been, as I believe, a large element of her strength and

350 Wat/marks.

glory, and which no intelligent man will disesteem; traditions which bind her to reverence, to ritual order, to the resolute restraint of the vagaries of individualism in worship, to the systematic teaching of the young, and to the whole scheme of Christian nurture as the true ideal of the Church's life and growth, — as, I say, this society is equally sensible of the Church's tradi- tion in regard to all these things, it is not here, I need hardly say, to flout or undervalue them. But it is here to recognize the fact that that very order and system which are typically and pre-eminently represented in what we call the sequence of the Christian, as distin- guished from the secular year, itself presents to us conspicuous features which stand, substantially, for just what we stand for. In other words. Advent and Lent, whatever else they mean, mean pre-eminently that the ordinary crust of an ordinary life must be broken up, once and again, by that which forces itself in upon it with calls that are sharp, personal, and searching, — by hymns and litanies, by Scriptures and sermons, Avhich deal with sin and spiritual insensibil- ity, and an alienated and a sense-loving life. Ash- Wednesday! We have lost the sackcloth and the cinders out of our life, — though I should think that sometimes some of those silly souls of both sexes that are eaten up with the vanity of personal upholstery and tailor-made frippery would ache, for very contrast, to fly to them, — we have lost, I say, the sackcloth and the cinders out of our life, but certainly we have not come to disesteem what Ash-Wednesday

Agencies of Revival. 351

and all the thirty-nine days that follow it stand for. There is no honest and earnest soul — honest with it- self and earnest toward God — that does not cry out, sometimes at any rate, for something from without to come in upon the dull, dead, monotony of its indul- gences and its softnesses, and with stern hand to shake it free from the unutterable pettiness and self-seeking of which its life is so full. Go into some great hall where a throng of hungry-eyed people are waiting for some new voice to stir and thrill them ; and when you have discounted the vagrant curiosity and the unoccu- pied speculation, and the ecclesiastical rounderdom that contributes so largely to all such assemblages, there still remains a vast multitude of people who are hun- gry for the word of command, and whom no eccentricity of costume or absurdity of pretension will quite repel, if only they can find, what, alas, they so rarely find, behind all this very human mannerism or self-consciousness, some few moments, even, of that "rapt vision of God," when an earnest soul is caught up, with an Apostle of old, and speaks as with tones not of earth to that in us which is deepest and most central I This want, I say, the Church, even in her ordinary and usual order, distinctly recognizes, and thus the only question which practically remains in this connection is the question whether that order adequately and sufficiently supplies it.

As to that, I think there need be no serious question. If the Church of which you and I are ministers — for in a very real sense we are all ministers — has a mission only to one class, undoubtedly this society is

352 Waymarks.

an impertinence, and our presence here an anachron- ism. And. it is idle to deny that there are a great many serious and devout people who are secretly per- suaded, though they may be reluctant openly to admit it, that this is so. It is said that a young clergyman who went to his bishop for permission to use a service not in the prayer-book, in a mission hall, was met with an injunction to confine himself strictly to the order of Morning and Evening Prayer as set forth by the Gen- eral Convention. " But, sir ! " said the stripling, " I can never reach the people in that way ! " " So much the worse for the people ! " answered the bishop, and I have not the smallest doubt that he profoundly be- lieved it. In other words, I have no doubt that a really godly and honest man was persuaded that if there were human beings who could not be reached with "dearly beloved brethren " and the " Venite " and the " Bene- dietuSj^^ they could only be dismissed to that Larger Hope in which most certainly he himself did not believe !

But the conditions of the mission hall are becoming more and more — God be thanked for it! — the condi- tions of many of our congregations, and of that con- stantly increasing fringe of interested people who are, so far as positive Churchmanship is concerned, still in the " court of the Gentiles. " These are looking to the Church not alone for a reverent worship, but first for a message of life and grace. Tired men and discour- aged men, and guilty men, people who, weary and heavy-laden, now as of old, are waiting till some clear

Agencies of Revival. 353

and persuasive voice shall bid them "come," — all these you could indeed have found here this morning and everywhere else that an altar is reared and men are called to pray. And if you say that such quickening and decisive words as I have referred to are what they ought to hear from those who are set over them in holy things, and what, in the happy experience of many to whom I speak this evening, they do hear, — I gladly and thankfully own it. But 1 affirm no less that, estimating the gifts of the ministry as it exists in our day as highly as we please, there still remains a place in even the best-ordered and best-instructed parochial system for a fresh voice, for that gift which not all great preachers have, of direct and personal address, and most of all, — for on this, I confess, I set chief value, — for those personal contacts which are, after all, the most potent force in any ministry, even as they are the rarest and most difficult to achieve.

And just here I ask your attention to a passage in the Annual Report of this society, of especial perti- nency and significance. "Everywhere," it says, "we hear the same story: 'We did not reach many outside, but our own people have been greatly blessed.' Men and women who have been content with a quiet, lan- guid discharge of their own religious duties, who apparently never dreamed that the words, ' Save thyself and them that hear thee,' apply to any but an ordained minister of Christ, have been awakened to a sense of their own responsibility to God, and have consecrated themselves to His service." Yes, there is the fact

23

354 Waymarhs.

in this business of paramount and pre-eminent impor- tance ! We are living in a time when it is the dream of reformers of whatever class and kind, social, political or moral, to heal the evils of the time by dealing with men and women en masse. They are to be housed and fed in crowds, and taught to vote by committees, and made godly by the excitement and huzzas of a religious mass-meeting, or a Gospel "drill." There never w^as a more dangerous or pestilent fallacy since the world began ; for it substitutes the coercive power of official mechanism for the personal influence of personal en- deavor, and the vicarious activities of a hired multi- tude for the solitary consecration of our individual gifts. And the worst of such substitution is that it falls in so entirely with our own indolent preposses- sions. We go to a religious meeting and hear an impassioned appeal, and note its effect upon others, and feel ourselves something of the pleasurable experi- ence of quickened pulses and excited emotions, and we go away and say, " AVhat a delightful meeting ! Surely such stirring appeals must do a great deal of good." On the contrary, there is no smallest certainty in such a case of any good whatever. It all depends upon what that is that comes after ; and what that is depends in- deed upon the individual resolution of those who are so moved, but it depends no less largely upon the subse- quent influences brought to bear upon one so awakened from without. It is personal interest, and unwearied solicitude, and individual pleading, and teaching, and warning, that, under God, make of awakened people

Agencies of Revival. 355

steadfast Christian disciples; and nothing else will make them so; and it is that, I maintain, that this society pre-eminentl}^ stands for. It does not under- value the uses of religious excitement, but it rates them at their true worth. It does not disesteem the stirring message of some modern John the Baptist, but it follows that message with something more, and more personal, precisely as he followed his. Is there any- thing in the New Testament more eternally significant as indicating the true methods of the true missioner than the verses succeeding that which I have read to you ? First, " Repent ye I " " Repent ye I " " Repent ye ! '' And then tears and clamor and passion ? No, no! Then reformation of conduct, the righting of wrongs, the telling of the truth, the ennobling of the life. "Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages." We are some of us very much afraid of a system of spiritual direction; and if it is to degenerate into the confes- sional as it exists in the Roman communion to-day (concerning which, if any of us is enamoured of it, I advise him to read Mr. Capes' remarkable book, "To Rome and Back ") ^ we may well be afraid of it. But there is a place in the spiritual life of the Church for the guidance, personal, individual, particular, by their instructed and experienced brethren, of the young, the inexperienced, the doubting, the new convert, the "stranger in our gates," which, more than all other

1 To Rome and Back. Rev. John Capes, M. A. London : Smith, Elder, & Co. 1873.

356 . Waymarks.

wants, is the want of the Church in our day. Not to think that you can lose yourself in the mass, but that if you have experience, maturity, knowledge, sympa- thy, the power of influence, you must take these things and use them for the cause of Christ in helping some other soul, — and that it is at the peril of your own soul and the peril of the souls of your weaker brethren that you refuse to do so, — this is what our society stands for, and what it aims to awaken men and women to do.

I bless God that in our brancn oi the Church Catho- lic we are so widely doing it. With characteristic nobility of reserve, and with generous magnanimity of approbation, where approbation could possibly be given, did the Archbishop of Canterbury, the other day, at once recognize all that deserved recognition in efforts, under other auspices than those of the Church, to reach the neglected and the outcast. But he might easily have gone farther than he did. He might have pointed out that in agencies similar to this, without blare of trumpet or flaunting of banners, the Church of Eng- land — and, following her inspiring example, our own — has not only preached in fields, in streets, and in omnibus -yards, but, first of all, has preached to itself, and stirred a glow of enthusiasm to which missions and missioners, Toynbee Hall and Oxford House, the work on London Docks and in slums, and alleys, and g?,rrets here in our own land, bedr witness, — has not only aroused men, but has taught and uplifted them ; and, best of all, has thrilled into passionate life and eager self-sacrifice in behalf of their brethren brave

Agencies of Revival. 357

and earnest souls, both there and here, of whose glori- ous labors, and their glorious results, we shall fully know only at the last Great Day.

Ye see, then, brethren, your calling, — yes, yours and mine. The Church is here in the world to dis- dain no instrument for good, however humble, or how- ever misused. Here, in this work, is one of them. May God give us courage to use it with wisdom and power to His glory 1

MISSION AND COMMISSION.

The first bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts, like him in connection with whose consecration the following sermon was preached, was a native of Massachusetts, and a graduate, in A. D. 1744, of Harvard College. Edward Bass was born in Dorchester; ordained deacon in the chapel of Fulham Palace, London, by the Eight Rev. Dr. Sherlock, the bishop of that diocese, and priest a week after his ordination to the diaconate, in the same place and by the same prelate. He was consecrated bishop in Christ Church, Philadelphia, May 7, 1797, and one of his consecrators was Dr. Thomas John Claggett, the first bishop consecrated in the United States, — the others being Bishops White of Pennsylvania and Provoost of New York. Seven years later Bishop Bass was succeeded by Dr. Samuel Parker, also a New Englander by birth and a graduate of Harvard College, who was conse- crated in New York on September 14, 1804. Dr. Parker died three months after his consecration, without having performed one episcopal act.

His successor was Dr. Alexander Viets Griswold, a saint and missionary, to whom, owing to the weakness of the Church in New England which denied a bishop to a single commonwealth, was committed what was called ''the Eastern Diocese," — a jurisdiction including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Khode Island. Dr. Griswold, a native of Connecticut, was, like his prede- cessor, consecrated in Trinity Church, New York, on May 29, 1811, Massachusetts having thus been without episcopal

Mission and Commission. 359

oversight — for which then, indeed, it had very small de- sire — for seven years.

Bishop Griswold's episcopate continued until February 15, 1843, during which time he became presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America. He fell dead in Boston at the door of his assistant and successor. Dr. Manton Eastburn, who had been consecrated only a few weeks before, — De- cember 29, 1842, in Trinity Church, Boston. Bishop East- burn was a native of Leeds, England — and he never forgot it. His venerated predecessor had been an American of the Americans in his simplicity, primitiveness of habits, man- ners, and tastes, and in his traditional identity with Xew England. Of singular meekness, and no less singular wis- dom. Bishop Griswold left behind him the fragrant memory of a wise and gentle ministry, in which the episcopal never wholly displaced the pastoral and parochial work, and from which there has come down to later da3^s the image of one with exceptional aptitudes for commending the Church to a gener- ation that disliked or distrusted her.

His successor. Dr. Eastburn, had been eminent, in the Churcli of the Ascension in New York, as a preacher, and was a man of exceptional culture for his day, and of a rare taste in ancient as well as modern literature. By tempera- ment and inheritance he was eminently a conservative, and he neither greatly desired the influx of those connected with other communions into the Church, nor encouraged it. But while tenacious of his opinions and adverse to change, he was the friend of all good men and good works, and devout, courageous, and courteous under all circumstances.

Bishop Eastburn died September 12, 1872, and was suc- ceeded by the Bight Rev. Henry Benjamin Paddock, D.D., of Brooklyn, N. Y., who was consecrated in that city at Grace Cliurch, September 17, 1873. He died March 9, 1891, after an episcopate distinguished bj^ unwearied devo-

360 Waymarks.

tion to his work and his flock, and endeared to all who knew him by the gentle dignity, transparent purity, and devout consistency of his life and character.

The sermon which follows was preached at the consecra- tion of his successor. Dr. Phillips Brooks, at Trinity Church, Boston, of which he had been rector for more than twenty years, on Wednesda3^, October 14, 1891.

XXI.

MISSION AND COMMISSION.

As they ministered to the Lor'd, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Sei^arate me Barnabas and Saul for the luork where- unto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed. — Acts xiii. 2-4.

Stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. — 2 Timothy i. 6.

In words such as these we have a picture out of that earliest life of the Church, of which the books from which I take it tell the story. How fresh and vivid it is ! What high enthusiasm, what uncalculating ardor, what unhesitating self-sacrifice ! One does not need to be in sympathy with their beliefs or at one with their aims, even, as a good deal of modern literature has taught us, to be moved by their fervor or kindled at least into admiration by the story of those earliest min- istries. The coldest heart must own that, whether it were myth or fable that stirred them, for a while at any rate a new spell had touched the world, and a new voice had spoken to waiting and eager souls. We look at the mighty forces against which the first Christian disciples

362 Waymarhs.

hurled themselves, we look at the spiritual torpor, the blank hopelessness, the unutterable moral degradation to which they made their appeal, and we wonder at their audacity — or their faith ! No hostility daunted them ; no indifference discouraged them ; no tremendous bulk of evil deterred them. The work they aimed to do, men told them, was impossible work. They simply re- fused to believe it. The obstacles which confronted them, other men told them were insurmountable obsta- cles. They simply refused to see it. They were on fire with a consuming purpose, and they did not stop, whether to measure their task or to discuss its difficul- ties. This, we say, is the fruit of a great enthusiasm. It always works this way, and it would be without re- sults if it did not.

Yes, but the moment that we look a little closer at the story of this enthusiasm, we see that along with it there was something more. It has been common to disparage the gifts of the first founders of Christianity, and to seek to make the more of its distinctive char- acteristics by making as little as possible of the men who illustrated them. According to our standards, doubtless, they were not very learned nor very influen- tial persons. They have been called — the College of the Twelve Apostles — a handful of peasants ; and, in one sense some of them were. They have been described as insignificant among the great of their own day ; and measured in one way they were. But when we come closer to some at least among them we cannot so easily disesteem them. One anion ii:; them was chosen to be

Mission and Commission. 363

the leader among his fellows. Can anybody who reads the story of his life find it easy to believe that he had not in him the natural genius of leadership ? If there are in certain types of organized Christian society what we may call Petrine qualities, can it be doubted that they find their first and most characteristic illustration in him who was Simon Peter ? Or again, if there has been in all ages of the Church what we may call the philosophic instinct, is it difficult to trace its source to those letters of that pupil of Gamaliel who came in time to reveal the resplendent intellectual qualities of Paul the apostle to the Gentiles ? The interrogative impulse of Thomas the twin, the affectionate brotherliness of Andrew the missionary, — were not each of these in their way distinctive personal traits, some of them of a very rare and beautiful quality, which go no little way to explain what more than one of them did to forward the knowledge and hasten the triumph of the cause to which he had committed himself ? Surely he alone can say so who has not studied the quality of their work, of whatever kind it was, nor measured the character of its results. There was high enthusiasm, there was con- suming ardor, but along with these in every most note- worthy instance of apostolic achievement there was some distinct natural endowment which would have given its possessor anywhere commanding influence among men.

And so it has always been. God has indeed often chosen by the " foolishness of preaching," as it has seemed to some poor souls irresponsive to its mighty

364 Waymarks.

power, to save them that believe ; but it has not been by foolish preaching. The voices that have stirred the world, the messages that have thrilled and enkindled cold and discouraged hearts have not been the voices or the messages of fools. Whatever strange passion in- flamed them, whatever tense and eager purpose would not give them pause, if in them there was lifting and awakening power, if their words not merely kindled the emotions but convinced the reason and persuaded the judgment, it was because behind the passion there was a thinking, reasoning man., speaking out of the large and rich manhood in himself to the manhood of other men. And so, to come back to the picture with which we started, does anybody suppose, when at Antioch the Church in that busy city fasted and celebrated its solemn Eucharist, and prepared to choose those who were to go forth on its high errands, that " Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch," and the rest of them were there at hap-hazard ? Out from these half-dozen men, more or less, were to be chosen two to be consecrated on that memorable day to a great and memorable work. Do you suppose that those who a little later laid their hands on them con- cerned themselves in no wise, beforehand, to find out what kind of men they had been, what sort of gifts were theirs, what order of work they had accomplished, just in precisely the same way that before appointing any man in this community to any responsible task, his fellows are wont to inquire what sort of gifts he has ?

Mission and Commission, 365

In one place we read, in this story of first eK/cXrjaLa building, of men as commended to the confidence of their fellows because they had " hazarded their lives." Very well, then, those who chose them wanted courage. In another place we read of a Pagan ruler, stupid and sunk in his sins, as saying to a Christian apostle, " Almost thou persuadest ?7ie." Very well, then, again, they wanted logic. Do you suppose that they did not seek for eloquence (if they could find it), for sympathy, for the quick power of understanding another's perplexities, for that infinite hopefulness of human nature which, I sometimes think, is quite its finest quality ? We may be sure they did. And no less sure may we be that when Barnabas and Saul were singled out from among their associates for the rare dignity of suffering and loneliness and privation in their high office, they were chosen because, anywhere, and among any set of men, and in whatever service, they would sooner or later, but inevitably, have come to the front.

Yes, but how were they singled out ? We advance a step farther in that story which I have recalled to you, and Ave read that " As they fasted and ministered before the Lord, there came a voice which said, ' Separate . . . Barnabas and Saul for the work.' " Whose voice was it ? Were those men called thus to their high office by the high acclaim of a public assembly ? For myself I have little doubt, that before the Voice that spoke those few words was heard, there had been heard another and more multitudinous one. That city of Antioch in which Simeon, and Lucius, and the rest of them were gathered

366 Waymarks.

contained the first church organized among the Gen- tiles, and it became in time the centre of those mission- ary activities by which the Roman world was evangelized. The prophets and teachers who began the work were supplemented, later, by Barnabas and Saul ; and step by step in the simple story we may trace the unfolding of the organic life of the Church. There was an assembly first, and then there came to be the ecclesia, — avva')(^ Orjvai iv ttj eKKXrjaid, — and it was this community of the brethren, it may easily have been, that with more or less formality first indicated its preferences, and pointed its finger of designation towards the men who were fittest and worthiest for the higher service of the Church.

But this was not Mission. That comes into view when we read that the Voice which said, " Separate Barnabas and Saul," was the Voice of the Holy Ghost. It is not only " separate ; " it is " separate Me." It is not only for the work ye are to separate them, but "for the work whereunto I have called them." And thus we come into the presence of that unique dis- tinction which forever differentiates the enthusiasm of the disciples of Jesus Christ from all other enthu- siasms. It was the enthusiasm of a new creation by the power of a Divine breath. One day, a little before, the Master of twelve men is about to vanish out of their sight. One who had come back to draw about Him anew a little band of personal followers, meets them on the first day of the week, and saying to them, "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you," " He breathed on them and said, ' Receive ye the Holy

Mission and Commission. 367

Ghost.' " ^ A little later this same Being, ascending up from these same followers, bids them " depart not from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Fa- ther." 2 Well, they wait, and the promise is fulfilled. " There came a sound from heaven," we read, " and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." ^ Henceforth there was a new Force in the world, and they were never without it. It is the seven-fold power of God the Holv Ghost. Call it an influence, water it down to be a cult, disparage it as so much mysticism, verily you will have to tear yonder story to pieces, and hunt out with microscope and dissecting knife the very struc- tural fibre of those first parchments on which the Gospel story was written, before you can get that element out of it! Bereft of the mission and work of the Holy Ghost, calling, arresting, convicting, convincing, enlight- ening, transforming, empowering, — the whole fabric of primitive history becomes somehow invertebrate, and crumbles into a shapeless mass of incident and talk. Nothing is more tremendous in its significance than the way in which all that new life of the first century takes its rise in the active, audible, commanding Presence in the Church of the Holy Ghost, and from all excursions, activities, or ministries, forever returns to it. The visit of Peter and John to Samaria, the descent of the Spirit at Cassarea, the coming of Saint Paul to Ephesus, are all parts of a whole, of which the calling of Barnabas and Saul is but another part. There was a new and com- manding Voice ; it spoke with unhesitating authority.

1 St. John XX. 21, 22. ^ ^cts i. 4. ^ Acts ii. 2, 4.

368 Waymarks.

There was a new and regenerating breath. It came with irresistible power. And when it came the world was transfigured, and man himself transformed. Out into that ^v^ild waste of sin and shame the men to whom it came went forth, and notliing was able to withstand them. Whatever they had been in themselves, this new Force and Fire somehow multiplied and enlarged them. Not alone on the day of Pentecostal baptism, but all the way down and on, they spake with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And this they, and those who have succeeded them, have been doing ever since. If they have forgotten that heaven-given Source of their strength, that strength has dwindled and shrunk. If they have remembered it, no lapse of centuries nor changes of custom have been sufficient to stale its fresh- ness nor to resist its transforming spell. This iraXiyye- veaia — yes, that was it — still stii'S and quickens the Church, and is the supreme secret of its power. In one word, that which gave to these men, and to those who have come after them in that Divine society of which they were the ministers, the authority whether to teach or to rule, was not their native gifts, — however great they may have been, nor however largely they may have been considered in their clioice, — but the calling and the sending of the Holy Ghost.

But a still further question remains to be answered. What was not alone the evidence or token of that mis- sion, but its authentication ? Was this the whole story of that mission, — that certain men being assembled to- gether, a voice said, " Separate me Barnabas and Saul,"

Mission a7id Commissio7i. 369

and that then those who were named separated them- selves and went away, and henceforth did their work as men fully and sufficiently authorized and empowered thus for its discharge ? On the contrary, there is some- thing more in the history, which we may not arbitrarily leave out, and which is just as essential to its integrity as anything that has gone before. We may wish that it were not there. We may believe it to have been the source of endless and most hurtful superstitions. We may dismiss it as a relic of that out-worn ceremonialism from which the world of that day was not yet wholly free. But still it is there ; and, as honest men, we must deal frankly and honestly with it. For this is the story in its completeness : " The Holy Ghost said, ' Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.' And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their haiids on the77i, they sent them away. So they, bei^ig sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed.'* Certainly, there is no obscurity here. Juggle with the words as one may, he cannot separate the inward call and the outward ordinance, the spiritual mission and the tactual commission, the divine empowerment and the human authentication of it.

Let no one 'misunderstand me. Am I affirming^ that the gifts and powers of the Holy Ghost are invariably and exclusively tied to the agencies ordained for their transmission ? I am affirming nothing of the sort. Who are we that we sliould limit the power of that Divine Spirit which first brooded upon chaos and evoked from it order and beauty and life ? There are some of us

24

370 Waymarhs.

here who must always gratefully remember saintly an- cestors who disesteemed, if they did not despise, all visi- ble ordinances, and dismissed them utterly out of the horizon whether of their observance or of their belief. Happy he who, with the help of church and sacrament and duly transmitted ministry in all their fullest com- pleteness, can emulate their sainthood, and tread at ever so great a distance in their holy footsteps ! But all the same, " God is not the author of confusion in the churches of the saints ; " and as, from the beginning, it has been a law of that order that He shall work, whether in His kingdom of Nature or His kingdom of Grace, along the lines of His own divine appointment, so it will be to the end. Departures, revolts, long-con- tinued disregard and indifference there may be, with perhaps large if not quite complete justification, and along with these there may be also the most strenuous service, the widest learning, the most ardent faith, the most beautiful self-sacrifice. And all these shall be the fruit of that " self-same Spirit " which worketh the one thing, though not necessarily or invariably by the one way. But still the fact remains that there is a way which is of God's appointment ; there is a ministry which He first commissioned, and which they whom He first commissioned passed on and down to others. Its authority does not come up from the people ; it de- scends from the Holy Ghost. And, as in the beginning its outward and visible sign was the laying on of apos- tolic hands upon men called, whether to this or that or the other service, — pastoral, priestly, or prophetic,

Mission and Commission. 371

yet still to an apostolic ministry, — so it has been ever since. We may exaggerate or travesty it as we please. We may exult over its corruptions and ridicule its pre- tensions, and deride its efficacy. None of these things can dismiss out of human history or human conscious- ness this fact that, unless we are to dismiss the whole story of which it is a part, the apostolic ministry is an ordering of divine appointment, apart from which you cannot find any clear trace of a primitive ministry or a primitive Church. We turn from this scene at Antioch to those memorable ministries that came after it. One of them stands forth conspicuous above all the aposto- lates of its age, — unique in its energy, unapproachable in its heroism, incomparable alike in the power of its preaching and in the inexhaustible richness of its writ- ings. What a fine scorn there is in those writings for that retrospective piety which lingered regretfully among the beggarly elements of the elder order and ritual, — what impatience of the letter, what bold assertion of Christian liberty, what intense ardor of spiritual enthu- siasm ! Yes, but what scrupulous respect for authority, what careful observance of apostolic tradition, what rev- erent use of appointed means. There came a day in the ministry of this grand Apostle when he is to set apart a youthful disciple and son in the faith to be an over- seer of the church in Ephcsus. How does he do it ? Does he tell him of the work that he is to do, and then simply dismiss him to do it ? Does he say, " Go, my son, and tell men in Asia Minor the story of your Lord's love, and write me occasionally how you are getting

372 Waymarks.

on " ? Not such is the meaning of that clear and un- equivocal language wliich he uses, " Stir up the gift of God which is in thee," — and which is in thee not by inherited cleverness, or acquired learning, or popular endorsement, — but " by [8ta, the Greek is] the laying on of my hands ; " or, as the same fact is elsewhere stated, " Neglect not the gift that was given thee . . . with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery." And thus once and again does this Apostle of a spiritual religion guard against that disesteem of the outward in- stitutions of the Church, without which history, and that not so very ancient either in this our western world, demonstrates that religion runs thin and runs out.

It is this fact which explains our presence here to-day. There is, indeed, a theory of Christianity which resolves it chiefly into forms and ceremonies, which makes the means the end ; ihQ instrument the result ; the sign the thing signified. In all ages of the world it has illustrated an enormous power, — first of obscuring essential truth, and then of debilitating human faith and conduct. I do not wonder that men are afraid of it. I do not wonder that, in the history of the Church, men have run out of her cold ceremonialism, wher- ever, as so widely, it has been dominant, into whatever warmth and ardor, into whatever purity and simplicity, offered them a refuge from its stiff and frigid and often corrupt formality. Most heavy is their responsibility because of whose soulless idolatry of the letter and the ceremony, this has come to pass. But still the fact re- mains : Christ did not leave his truth and fellowship in

Mission and Commission. 378

the world unorganized and disembodied. His own com- ing was a veritable incarnation, — no shadowy ghost- ministry, inaudible, invisible, and intangible. And His continued incarnation in His Church is but the transfor- mation of His embodiment in one, into His ever-living and ever-active embodiment in the whole. I am told that you and I must believe in an invisible Church. Very well ; let us do so so far as we can. But as yet the only Church of which I know, in the way in which I can know anything, is a visible Church, with a visible order, and visible sacraments, and a visible fellowship, and which thus witnesses to me the continued life and power of its invisible Lord and Head, once Himself em- bodied in our flesh among us. One day I shall doubtless know something else and more, of which this visible Church is a part ; but as yet the sphere of my activities must be found within the fellowship of that historic body of which thus far this morning I have been speak- ing. As one of New England's prophets — himself, I think, farthest removed from the Church's conception of historic Christianity — has said : —

" There are reasoners whose generalizations have carried them so far as to leave all names of Church or Christianity behind in contempt. But when the generalizing process can seduce a writer to the extent of declaring that there is no moral difference worth considering between one man and an- other, and leads a second writer to smooth over, as a trifling roughness in the grain of the wood, the distinction between evil and good, a question may perhaps arise, alike in a re- ligious or a philosophic mind, whether there is not some point for generalization to stop. If excessive particularizing makes

374 Way marks.

the bigot with his narrow mind, or the superstitious man with his false reverence, too much generalizing empties the heart clean of its warmth and friendshij) and worship. It abolishes all terms. It dissolves individual existence. It leaves the soul a mere subject, with no relations recognized to human creatures or to God himself.

^^One thinker may say, ' I care for no ecclesiastical asso- ciations whatsoever, and find my only Church in the world. ' But the world proves, as Jesus and his Apostles describe it, too wide, imperfect, and still evil either to embrace his holy efforts, or to give his spirit a home. He must, in con- tradiction of his theorj^, abide in and act from a grander, though in visible dimensions a smaller circle, before he can act to bless and save the world itself.

''Another thinker proclaims his allegiance to God in his pure infinity alone, leaving the Christ of the Gospel aside. But let his doctrine of space and science and omnipresence of one solitary Power through earth and stars, recommend itself as it may to the speculative mind, it spreads [but] a thin atmosphere around us, in which we feel discouraged and cold, like explorers of the Arctic region of thought, and we cry out for a nearer and somehow more human divinity. This is the unspeakable boon Jesus confers on the human race, that he familiarizes and domesticates God, shows him in a mortal frame, and by his incarnation of the great Spirit makes us partakers of the Divine nature more than we could become by the discovery of ten thousand new systems, or by peering forever into the measureless expanse of the milky way. ' ' ^

So speaks another far removed from ourselves. Yes, but if this was the meaning and power of that Incarna- tion of the Son of God whereby He became the son of

^ Bartol, Church and Congregation, pp. 20-22.

Mission and Commission. 375

Mary, what shall we say of that other and wider incar- nation which He finds in the life of His Church ? Is that to be the shadowy, filmy, ghostly thing that He who founded it was Himself most surely not ? No, no ; the Church is still here a visible Body, with visible Ordi- nances, its life descending (wherever else life may be) along appointed lines by ordered modes which He Him- self, who is its Head, ordained or else inspired. The pendulum swings to and fro, now this way for centuries, and then the other way ; but underneath its widest diver- gencies as it moves to left or right there is this central fact of the Incarnate Ministry of the Son of God, and all that it means to-day in the life and work of His Church. There may be some of us who are bred so fine, or who have climbed so high, that all the outward is for us of small account. Our homage is for great ideas, we say, working along lofty lines of thought, and appealing to the intellectual rather than the affectional or emotional nature. Yes, and the time may come when in such an ideal of fellowship with Jesus Christ both reason and faith shall find their most perfect satisfaction. But it has not come yet. The world, in the conditions of its life and thought, whatever may have been the progress of the race, remains under the same limitations as those amid which Jesus wrought when first He came to men. It is still a world of sight and sound, of taste and touch, as well as of intuition and reason and imagination. The warrior still cherishes his bit of ribbon symbolic of heroic suffering ; why may not the Christian cherish some simple emblem of the passion of His Lord ? The

376 Way marks.

soldier still wears his crimson sash or scarf. Why may I not wear a black or a white one ? The old man still recalls, with inextinguishable tenderness and gratitude the father's hand once laid in benediction on his boyish head. And shall we not prize the hands that once, when we knelt at yonder chancel rail, or at some other, were laid upon ours ? Ah, believe me, He who" knew what was in man did not touch, and touch, and touch again for nothing ! Take His human hand, outstretched to bless, to heal, to open, to awaken, to break and to distribute, but always touching, — no vileness too vile for its cleansing contact, no slumber too deep for its awak- ening call, no impotence too utter for its transforming power, — take all that that Hand has wrought and has translated to men, the miracles of God, the tenderness of God, the never wearying succor and salvation of God, out of the Gospel story, and you have bereft that story almost beyond repair.

But just here, it may be said, " All this is very pretty, very clever, very adroit indeed, but how unutterably small and petty ! How pitiful is this resting in the form, as if it mattered with what form or with what commission you or I wrought, so long as we cling to the essence and the spirit of the Master's teaching. Pray let us dismiss these dreary and unprofitable discussions about the visible in Christianity, and get down to the life and soul of it ! " Men and brethren, there never was a more solemn impertinence under the sun ! Believe me, I am as much concerned as anybody to get down to the life and soul of Christianity ; but as I never knew, nor

Mission and Commission. 377

you, of any other life and soul without a body in all the history of this world of ours, neither may we look for any other in the life of God's Church. But whether we do or not, what I resent most of all is that in- tolerable presumption and perverseness which in dis- cussing the question of the Body of Christ in the world persists in putting asunder what not I or any body of conceited ecclesiastics, but Jesus Christ himself hath joined together. It is not more certain that He has revealed a grace than that He has ordained means of grace. The two are not enemies. They are rather parts of one whole, and the whole is of His ordering. And therefore our office, however clever we may be, or however sublimated our ideas, is to own that one- ness and humbly to cherish and honor it. We need to reverence the Sacrament as well as Him who appointed it. We need to cherish the Order as well as to pay our homage to Him who in the beginning called forth and commissioned those who were its founders. And most of all, I think, we need to try and see how now, at any rate, when some of the most aggressive intellectual forces of our time are busy in the endeavor to dismiss out of the realm of religion positive facts and a divine revelation, it is our business to hold fast to that divine society and that primitive ministry which were appointed to conserve and proclaim them both. " By no unmean- ing chance," says the venerable teacher from whom I have already quoted, " is the Church so often on our tongues. Not in vain does the reformer with his sharp- est criticism pay to her his respect. No rotten and

378 Waymarks.

crumbling ark do her children stay up and bear on with their hands. What but the Church is rooted and grow- ing forever in the all- wasting floods of time ? No other institution of government or society, from the farthest right to the extreme left of human speculation, so widely and clearly touches the thought of the age." ^

And so to-day we come, in this persuasion, to set apart one whose ministry within the walls of this his- toric Church has spoken so widely and so helpfully to the thought of our age. We are not here, as in a drawing-room, to give him our congratulations. We are here in God's sanctuary to give him our commission. Henceforth he is to be a bishop in the Church of God, to whom no one of all God's children is to be alien or remote. " Reverend Father in God^^ we shall say presently to him who is to be the consecrator of this our brother, as best describing his relations both to this occasion and to the Church whose servant he is. Could there be a designation more affecting or more inspiring ? How many aching hearts there are to-day, adrift on the sea of out-worn human systems, weary of doubt, stained by sin, discouraged, lonely, or forgotten of their fellow- men, who are waiting for one in whose great soul a divine Fatherhood of love and compassion lives anew to recall and arouse and ennoble them ! We speak of the limitations of the Episcopate in these modern days, and it has its limitations. I am not sure that on the whole they are not wise ones. We in America have shorn the

1 Church and Congregation, by Rev. Dr. C. A. Bartol, Introduction, p. 7.

Mission and Commission. 379

office of much of its state, and ceremony, and secular authority, and in doing so I am persuaded that we have done well. The true power of the Episcopate must for- ever be in the exercise of those spiritual gifts and graces of which it is the rightful, as it was meant to be the lowly, inheritor. But for the exercise of these there are, verily, no limitations. No human interest, no social problem, no personal sorrow or want can be alien to the true bishop. Whether he will or not, his office lifts him out of narrower interests, personal jealousies, small and individual conceptions. Whether other men see with his eyes or not, he must forever try to see with their eyes. Whether his clergy and his people under- stand and love him, he must be always trying to under- stand and love them. And if he does, what opportunity opens before him ! It is easy enough in one way to narrow and limit the Episcopate, to exaggerate its pre- rogatives and minimize its obligations, to stiffen its ministry into a hard and dry routine, and its personality into the speech and the manners of a martinet. It is easy for a bishop to concern himself exclusively with the mint and anise and cummin of rite and rubric and canon, and when he does not do this, there will be those who will be swift to tell him not to go above his ap- pointed round nor to waste his strength in other than the task-work of his office. But if he refuses to be fettered by any such narrow construction of his conse- cration vows as that, then as he hearkens to those affectino words with which presently this our brother will be addressed, " Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd.

380 Way marks.

not a wolf ; feed them, devour them not. Hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broken, bring again the outcast, seek the lost," how wide and how effectual is the door which they hold open ! The world waits, my brothers, for men who carry their Lord's heart in their breasts, and who will lay their hands on the heads of His erring ones with His own infinite tenderness. And he will best do that work who comes to it with widest vision and with largest love.

And so our act to-day becomes at once consistent and prophetic. I can well understand the grief and dismay with which not alone this congregation but this com- munity, nor only these but with them other multitudes in both hemispheres and of various fellowships, must contemplate the act which takes out of this pulpit one whose teaching and whose life have been to uncounted hearts so true a message of hope and courage. I can no less easily understand the doubt and apprehension with which those who have most largely profited by them will see exceptional powers turned from their wonted and fruitful channels to other and untried tasks. But never- theless I am persuaded that in parting from this our brother, whom you, his people, now give to his larger work, you are losing him only to find him anew. God has yet other and greater work for him to do, believe me, or He would not have called him to it. This fair and ancient city, this great State with its teeming towns and villages, when has there been a time in the progress of our national history when they have not left their impress, clear and strong and enduring,

Mission and Commission. 381

upon all our noblest policies ! To leave New England out of the history of this republic, or Massachusetts out of the history of New England, would be to leaA'e much of its best and most potential life out of the history of both. And w^e may w^ell rejoice, therefore, and you especially of this venerable parish, that it is your rare privilege to give so choice a gift to that larger constit- uency to which now your minister goes. You know better than I can tell you how close you will always be to him ; and you will not refuse, I am persuaded, to yield him to that wider parish which is not bounded even by the boundaries of this ancient and historic Commonwealth !

And you, my brother, soon to be a brother in a dearer and holier bond, what can I trust myself to say to you ? I wonder if you can recall as vividly as I the day when first we met, — the old seminary at Alexandria, the simple but manly life there, our talks, with fit compan- ionship though few, the room in the wilderness, the Chapel and Prayer Hall, Sparrow and May and the dear old " Rab," and all the rest I How it comes back again out of the mist, and how the long tale of years that stretch between seem but the shadow of a dream ! Your privilege and mine it w^as to begin our ministries under the Episcopate of one whose gifts and character I re- joice to believe you prized and loved as I did. I have been told (I do not know how true it is) that you have said that one thing which reconciled you to attempting the work of a bishop was that you would like to try and be such a bishop as he was. Am 1 blinded by filial

382 Waymarks,

affection when I say that I believe you have set before you no unworthy model ? and may I tell this people, though I know well how your rare humility will resent it, how profoundly I am persuaded that, succeeding, as you do, one who has given you a noble example of entire devotion to duty, every best attribute of the Episcopate will find in you its worthy illustration ? Whatever have been the limitations of your sympathy heretofore, I know that you will henceforth seek to widen its range and enlarge its unfailing activities, and taking with you that singular and invariable magnanimity which, under the sorest provocation, has made it impossible to nourish a resentment or to remember an injustice, you will, I know too, show to the people of your charge that yours is a charity born not of indifference but of love, — for Christ, for your clergy, and for your flock. He who has endowed you with many exceptional gifts has given you one, I think, which is best among them all. It is not learning, nor eloquence, nor generosity, nor insight, nor the tidal rush of impassioned feeling which will most effectually turn the dark places in men's hearts to light, but that enkindling and transforming temper wliich for- ever sees in humanity, not that which is bad and hateful, but that which is lovable and redeemable, — that nobler longing of the soul which is the indestructible image of its Maker. It is this — this enduring belief in the re- deemable qualities of the vilest manhood — which is the most potent spell in the ministry of Christ, and which as it seems to me you have never for an instant lost out of yours !

Mission and Commission. 383

Go with it, then, my brother, to the large tasks and larger flock that now await you. We who know and love you, through and through, thank God for this gift to the Episcop'ate ; and not least do we thank Him for all the graces of uncomplaining patience, and self-re- specting humility, and utter absence of all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil-speaking which have shone in you in such rare and unfailing constancy. If there are those who to-day misread you, we are persuaded that they will not do so long. And for yourself, believe me, these, your clergy and your people as they are henceforth to be, who, of whatever school or opinion, greet you, one and all to-day, as you take on this your high office, with such undivided love and loyalty, — these will prove to you how warm is the place in all their hearts to which they wait to welcome you ! May God in giving you their love give you no less their prayers, and so the grace and courage that you will always need ! How heavy the load, how great the task, and above all, for that I think is the bitterest element in a bishop's life, how inexpressibly lonely the way ! And yet, said one whose office, as an Apostle describes it, is that of " the Bishop and Shepherd of our souls," — and yet " I am not alone because the Father is with me." May He go with you always even to the glorious end !

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