LI E> i^ARY
OF THE
U N 1 VERS ITY
or ILLl NOIS
^i^^: A^-'^ ^<-^
THE VOCATION
AND
DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
THE VOCATION
AND
DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the
Biocese of IRocbeeter
AT HIS PRIMARY VISITATION
OCTOBER 24, 25, 26, 1899
BY
EDWARD STUART TALBOT, D.D.
ONE HUNDREDTH BISHOP
ILontion
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK ; THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1899
AXX rights reterved
RicDARD Clav and Sons, Limited,
LONDON AND BUNGAV.
CONTENTS
PART I
rSTHODUCTION
THE EETCRNS —
GENERAL CHARACTER
a. OBSERVANCE OF SPECIAL SEASONS
ASCENSION DAY
EMBER AND ROGATION DAYS
DAILY SERVICES
FAoe
1-3
3-6
6-9
6
7
9-11
;3. THE GREAT SPIRITUAL NEED AND THE CHURCH'S FORCES 11-17
13
13
13
15
15
16
DEACONESSES ■
GREY LADIES
LAY READERS, ETC
CHURCH ARMY
WILEERFORCE MISSIONERS
7. SUPPORT OF FOREIGN MISSIONS
TEMPER OF THE CHURCH 17-21
GENERAL LOYALTY 17
PARTIES 17
AUTHORITY 19
THE ORDER OF HOLY COMMUNION 21-27
MANUALS 28
COMMUNION OF THE SICK 28
SPONSORS 29
EDUCATION 30-36
CHURCH SCHOOLS 30-32
BOARD SCHOOLS 32-36
s. Gabriel's college 34
INDEX
CliERICAL INCOMES
TITHE
PEW RENTS
PAGE
36-37
36
37
PART II.
god's purpose in CHRIST THROUGH THE CHURCH 38-42
A.
I. THE PURPOSE FULFILLED IN WORSHIP 43-50
II. THE PURPOSE FULFILLED IN CORPORATE LIFE 50-54
THIS FULFILMENT OBSCURED AND ENDANGERED: ECCLESIASTICISM ... 54-58
1. TRUE AND FALSE CHURCHMANSHIP 58-59
2. OVER-KNOWLEDGE OR DOGMATISM . ... 59-68
3. INSUFFICIENT REGARD OF THE LAITY 68-79
4. RELATIONS TO OTHER CHRISTIAN BODIES 79-82
B.
THE CHURCH AND HUMAN LIFE —
WHAT IS DONE 82-87
WHAT IS LEFT UNDONE 87-91
HINTS FOR PROGRESS 91-102
1. MORAL WITNESS ... 91
2. SYMPATHY, WITH PRACTICAL THOUGHTS AND ASPIRATIONS... 92-98
3. SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 98-102
Summary
.. 102-108
Appendices
.. 109-115
jftn^
UfUC
0 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem : they shall prosper
that love thee.
Gracious Father, we humbly beseech Thee for Thy
Holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth ; in all truth
with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purge it ; where it
is in error, direct it ; where it is superstitious, rectify it ;
where anj^hing is amiss, reform it; where it is right,
strengthen and confirm it ; where it is in want, furnish
it ; where it is divided and rent asunder, make up the
breaches of it ; 0 Thou Holy One of Israel. Amen.
Deliver Israel, 0 God, out of all his troubles.
PART I.
Right Rev. Brother, Rev. Brethren, and Brethren of
THE Laity,
Four years ago from S. Luke's Day last past I was called to be the
hundredth occupant of this most ancient See, and consecrated to be
Chief Pastor of the so great people of this Diocese by the Holy Spirit,
through the hands of my o"\^ti Father in God, Edward, Archbishop of
Canterbury. I might have hoped to serve under him as Suffragan, and
Chaplain of his Province, for years to come. It pleased God to rule
otherwise : and a year had not passed before he was taken from our
head by a death which, joined to such a life, shone with singular moral
power and beauty. We sorrowed for a great loss : but often since
then, in days of trouble which would have vexed his spirit, we have
thought Anth gladness of his peace and rest. We see now, even
better than then, how well he had done his work for his time : but I
am not sure that we realise yet how much help to face her troubles
the Church had quietly gathered during the Archiepiscopate of Arch-
bishop Benson, from the impulse of his enthusiastic loyalty, and
from the results of his courage and skill. Different men match
different times, and for the rougher days which followed, we have
counted it a great blessing to have at our head the unfaltering
courage, strong decision, and simple justice of his successor, with
influence heightened, and natural force not abated, by the long
years of his record. It is only one of many like losses for which
thinking Churchmen have to grieve to-day, that he should not be
free to put the fire and force of his heart into the congenial tastes
of rousing the Church to her duty of Evangelisation abroad, and of
B
2 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
conflict with the colossal evil of intemperance at home, and should
have to give his time and strength, as he has done "odthout stint, to
the meaner and more thankless work of composing controversy. But
in the poorer, as in the nobler work, it is beyond price to have
one to lead us whose constant aim is the unworldly service of the
Master.
Four years of Episcopate before a Primary Visitation are, I
suppose, according to custom, one too many.^ But there may be
compensation for this in some added opportunity of gaining know-
ledge of this vast Diocese. I wish with all my heart that I had
used it better. I am painfully sensible that there are some of you
with whom I have even now hardly ever, if ever, come into contact,
and more with whom I have never exchanged the words of brotherly
intercourse, and, it may be, pastoral counsel, which give reality to
the relations between Bishop and Clergy. But you, I know, by
many a kind expression, make the excuses for this which, in part,
deserve to be made : and I gratefully record my thankfulness for
this among many other kindnesses of yours, which have warmed my
heart and blessed my life in these four years, that you cast upon me
no needless burden of correspondence and business. Do not carry
this consideration too far ; and when in any matter of your parochial
responsibility, or your personal life, you feel that you would desire
help of your Bishop, do not scruple to ask it. Of your Bishop, or I
should rather say, of your Bishops. " For I am mindful, and so are
you, how it is that my load has been lightened : you are mindful,
and so am I, with gratitude and affection, that half of what a
Bishop's advice, sympathy, or experience can do for a Diocese, has
been received by you in full measure and with unstinted trouble
from the Bishop Suffragan. We do not remember this less gr^itefully
because much of it has been done from a heart and home saddened
by a great bereavement.
But the Diocese, in fact, demands more than what the fullest
energies of two Bishops can give. It is episcopally undermanned.
We sometimes do too much, while the Diocese gets too little, partly
because of what our hurried doings oblige us to neglect.
It is this which has led to the project long considered not only
^ Canon LX.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 3
among ourselves but in Convocation ^ for the division of the Diocese.
We have at last brought the matter out of a condition of confused
debate into practical and generally (though not universally)
accepted shape. I have spoken of this before, and need not dwell on
it now. Personally, I feel that the need of a separation of Rochester
and Chatham from the See of South London is the most pressing
thing. The greatest difficulty is that the increasing coherence of the
County of London and the disinclination on the side of the Diocese of
Canterbury for any large territorial concession (or shall I say, resti-
tution of what quite recently was ours ?) makes it difficult to equip
Rochester with an adequate territory. She might at least, I think,
take the Medway do"wn to the sea, including Queenboro' and Sheer-
ness, and so include all the naval and riparian work. To this matter
we shall, this autumn, put our hands. I have, during the recess,
formed as strong a General Committee as I could command.
I do not propose to occupy you Avith any general description of
the Diocese, its needs and its equipment. Part or all of this was
done by the first founder, as he deserves to be called, of the Diocese
in its present shape. Bishop Thorold, with a brilliancy which Avill
hardly be repeated, certainly not by me. Nor would I care to put
myself into comparison with what I remember thinking when I
read it, with little thought of what was coming to myself. Bishop
Davidson's masterly review of Diocesan work and organisation.
My attempt ■\\^11 be to offer you (1) some remarks, together with
directions of counsel or authority, based upon the results of the
Visitation; (2) some reflections upon the larger problems of the
Church's life.
Let me first tender to you my thanks for the material which you
have placed before me in your replies. I can conscientiously say
that I have reviewed the whole of your statistics, and read every
word of your answers to my Supplementary Questions, making notes
upon them which may, I hope, enable me to make subsequent use of
your remarks or suggestions.
I followed Bishop Davidson's precedent, and, as I hope, your
^ See the Report of a Committee of the Lovkv House of the Convocation of
Canterbury, 1889, No. 237, in which this Diocese stands as the first case requiring
division.
B 2
4 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
convenience, by making your annual Church Year Book Return serve
as the main reply to Visitation enquiries. Let me say a word in
passing as to the value of that Return. I am well aware that it
costs you yearly considerable trouble, for I have myself, at Leeds,
had it to make. But that trouble will, I am certain, be greatly lessened
by the use of the Parochial Register, which is a counterpart in
shape to the Return. The effect will be that if this is duly filled
up when one Return is made, the next year's Return will stand to its
predecessor only as a new edition. But whatever the trouble may be,
I am sure it is well worth 'while, and I rejoice to see that the good
sense and judgment of the Clergy has pronounced decisively in its
favour, by an almost unanimous compliance with the request to fill
it up, which could never have been enforced against a strong
resistance. I know the difficulties that some feel about " numbering
the people," and against "spiritual statistics." But I venture
earnestly to say that these are objections not to the Return, but to
a way of misusing it. In this Diocese certainly, numbering the
people is likely to minister to something very unlike pride ; and such
a Return is, at the very least, as much a confessional of our failures
as a roll of our successes. I venture to think that in two ways, at
least, it may be of real service to our Church life. It is good to be
brought to book ; to have to take ourselves to task ; to see in black
and white what we really are doing, and what it all comes to. It
must be good also for individual Clergy to have to try their work by
a paper which represents what is (with all allowance, no doubt, to be
made for local circumstances of poverty, paucity of numbers, and the
like) the standard of a vigorous, well-equipped, thoroughly worked
parish.
I should be ungrateful if I did not add a word of thanks to
Canon Burnside, whose labour, much of it out of sight, has been
enormous, and must have been often thankless. His skill, patience,
and courtesy are largely responsible for the result. On his part, he
has expressed to me appreciation of the degree of accuracy and
completeness already attained, and of the yearly advance in these
respects.
I regret that I did not issue these Returns and my accompanying
questions earlier in the year. This has caused some of you incon-
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 5
venience, which you might have been spared, and for which I ask
forgiveness, and in a certain number of cases it has led to hasty and
imperfect replies. While I take my own share of blame, may I
express a little regret that a few of the Clergy have treated the
Return as a tiresome technicality, to be got over as quickly and
laconically as possible ? They have not considered that, at least
from the point of view of the Bishop, anxious to do his duty and to
take interest in their work, it is an opportunity of some little im-
portance. It may be well just to say this in view of a future
Visitation, whether or not you and I are here to take part in it.
I pass to the substance of the Returns. Their dry figures are
eloquent of many meanings, and there is in them not a little pathos.
They seem to me to speak most of labour, steady, unromantic,
persevering labour, with little reward as the world counts it, either
in money or fame, often with little tangible success as we ourselves
count success. We of this Diocese may not be a brilliant Church,
nor our work specially enterprising or inventive ; but I claim this
for us, that we ' keep at ' it. We are, in truth, a working Church.
But, brethren, even for this do not let us boast ourselves too much,
living as we do in the midst of a people upon whom the strain of
work, often underpaid and underfed work, is heavy, day and night.
There are very few left of those records, once familiar, of two
Services on Sunday, a monthly Communion, and the Church never
open at any other time, unless for a wedding or funeral or on
Christmas Day and Good Friday, National or Sunday Schools as
the only form of organised work, and no giving except an occasional
collection for the Wardens' expenses and the local poor. Such
records will be, I hope, very shortly extinct. Even a poorly worked
Church of to-day is usually a good deal above this level. But we
can go much further and say that the average Church is a working
Church, and that the records of a very large number suggest work
which may easily, and does constantly, mean overwork for men, and
women too, overmatched by the scale of their task.
It goes with this that there is a quickened feeling for the
Church's principles, and an increased perception of the value of her
order. The Sacrament of the Lord's Table has been recovered from
much of its neglect in former days ; it is normal now to make the
6 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
celebration of it, according to the Church's practice from the first,
an unvarying part of Lord's Day observance ; and very frequently (as
is much best) this is done at one regular hour, whatever other op-
portunities are added. The quiet steady habit of Communion v^^ith
the Lord on His Day is perhaps the best and most representative
part of such a standard of methodical religious life as we may prac-
tically try to hold up to the well meaning and sincere among our
young people.
Lent is almost universally observed, if only in some very slight
way in many cases, and in Church and School the seasons and chief
festivals of the Church's year set their steadying and directing im-
press on our teaching. That this may be formal is most true ; most
true also that it would have more generally marked effects if we and
those who work with us were ourselves more inwardly responsive to
the contributions which the Church's days of fast, festival, and com-
memoration make to our devout thought and self-discipline. But
what is done is something, and in many individuals much.
I have been glad to notice in this connection that the Churches
in which the great Festival of our Lord's Ascension is not observed,
or is left without a celebration of Holy Communion, are a very
small minority.^ In those few cases the Clergy would, I dare-
say, plead that they could not get any one to join in the observ-
ance. I should venture to reply that if so this is a mark of something
lacking in the teaching — that a special effort, such as even a five
a.m. celebration, which I have known both in town and country,
might overcome the most stubborn external difficulties; that such
special efforts, when a few can be led to make them, bring the
reward which attends effort, teach more than many sermons, and
mitigate the softness which, as colonial and missionary examples often
remind us, is too characteristic of a long established Church life with
an easy abundance of religious opportunities. On the merits of
the matter there can plainly be no question that the Church, through
her Prayer Book, with its Proper Preface for the Octave, Proper
1 I have noted seventeen eases. May I suggest the expediency in many places,
both town and country, of attempting a very early Communion on that day, before
the working hours of a day which the world does not keep ? The present scanty
observance of it is rather a humbling proof how much secular recognition, or the
opposite, governs our religious waj's.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 7
Psalms and name given to a Season, marks Ascension as one of her
highest days. It is equally plain that its omission mutilates most
seriously the anniversary exhibition of her historic Creed, and misses
an opportunity of emphasising teaching about our Lord's present
and abiding Lordship and Priesthood, which are specially needed
to link His earthly work mth the dispensation of the Spirit, and
to fill the Church's life not only with an inspiration from the past,
but with the power of an endless life and a present Lord.
May I ask that this omission be supplied, where it still exists ?
I have asked you, in one of my questions, about the observance
of Ember and Rogation Days. I hope that none of you have seen
in the question the enquiry of an official, pressing with futile
or meritorious pedantry, every detail of order. You are more
likely to have thought that it was the question of a theorist,
drawing pictures to which there is nothing corresponding in the life
of to-day. I beg you to believe that this is not so. I think I may
claim to be too sensitive to the life round me not to realise how
remote and unmeaning names like these may sound in many a South
London or country parish, when it is as much as you can do and more
to get people to Church at all. But this does not alter my earnest
■wish to get you to observe these days more efficiently. It cannot
be right that I should get as an answer to the question, " What
means do you take to secure the observance of Ember and Rogation
Days ? " the reply " None whatever." But is the answer, " Give notice
of them, in Church," much more satisfactory ? The notice was surely
never meant only for private guidance. What is not worth a
place in the Church's united worship will hardly be respected
by individuals. Nor is this unpractical. For there is a very real
sense in which it is true that we may get more the more we ask.
We often dilute till the colour and flavour are hardly perceptible.
We are ^vrong in adjusting our system to the least attached Church-
goer. A Church life is not one of the things which is, or should
be, of the strength of its weakest link. There should, indeed, be sim-
plicities of service and teaching which will prevent our turning away
any one whom we might have won. But a life in which there is a
certain substantiality and colour and variety is quite as likely to
attract as one where these things are not. I think this could be
8 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
shown from very various religious examples. Men and women who
desire — and there are such in every parish — to serve the Lord are
helped and not hindered by being shown that there is more to grow
into in the Church's life than they saw at first. They can be led on
in many a case to delight in its meanings. This is strictly relevant
to the case in point. Special seasons of pleading with God in more
intense, and, at the same time, in more particular and detailed
earnestness for the things of our need : here is a thing to which the
awakened religious instinct will respond. We invent them for our-
selves; we have our Day of Intercession, or our Prayer Meeting.
Why should they only be sought in these quite legitimate ways
of our own, and not also found within the Church's order ?
The result is that that order stands for what is formal, and anything
warm or flexible must be sought outside it. It is not thus that we
can create, by God's help, that worthy conception of the Church of
which I hope to speak later on. Why should not our communicants
be trained to see that the Church in God's name calls for and expects
their service ? Only so shall we get more adequate working help, by
a recognition of the law of Service as binding on all Christians.
Only so can we get the Almsgiving which would bless and be blessed.
Only so can we awaken and confirm faith in the power of corporate
Prayer. A special service of humble and penitent prayer at the four
Embertides, not only for the Bishops and those whom they ordain,
but for the Church's needs and their remedies, for different branches
of her work, for her greater unity, enlightenment, and charity, for
pardon of her many sins, negligences, and ignorances, for blessing on
the coming season of the year. This, surely, would not be difficult
to arrange. It might be made a very concrete and real thing. It
might be in part without form or book, guided by the clergyman.
Why should not the weekly Prayer Meeting or Guild Meeting be sus-
pended, and moved to the Wednesday or the Friday in Ember week,
and then held in Church with a special character of this sort given to
it ? Why should not the good habit become more general, which I
find already fairly frequent, of holding a short special service of
prayer on each of the three Rogation Days, one for Temporal Bless-
ings, one for Foreign Missions, one for the Home Work of the
Church — perhaps with a few spiritual words on Prayer to tune the
(
THE VOCATION AXD DANGERS OF THE CHURCH »
little group of prapng folk ? Ascension Day would not be worse
observed if we had thus joined the great Intercessor ; and more
things than you realise would be brought home to many hearts.^
Do not, I pray you, think this unimportant. Can we, as things
are, say to ourselves at those times that a mighty and prevailing
voice of prayer to which we can associate ourselves is going up to
the Throne from the whole Church ? Can you reckon all the gain
that it would be to us to be able to say it, and the quickening
of the life that it would mean ? These are the measures of our own
self-incurred loss.
I cannot leave what I have said on this matter without asking
you, and specially the younger Incumbents, to consider very de-
liberately and prayerfully the bearing of what has just now been very
imperfectly said on the much larger question of Daily Prayer in
Church according to the directions of the Prayer Book. You will
see at least that it is not as a formality that I should press it.
Formality is rather the danger against which we who use it should
continually watch. But why is prayer more formal on week-days
than on Sunday, or prayer on each week-day more formal than on
one, or prayer in public more formal than in the parlour or at the
bedside ?
I speak ^^ith entire respect of many who do not use it. I know
that many of them are far better and more spiritual men than my-
self; I know that they are men of earnest faith and greatly given to
prayer. But yet I venture to say, as my responsibility obliges me,
that I am sure that they are wTong.
I believe that the conscience of the Church would be clearer
and brighter from a general compliance with rules which I will
reprint with this Charge.^ They are after all very clear and distinct
and as plain as any directions in the Book ; they are reinforced by
other features in it such as the Lectionary and the Psalter ; and they
represent the very ancient practice and the very profound instinct of
the Church, to give public and visibly united expression to her daily
corporate supplication before the Throne.
I believe that the Clergy would gain themselves by the daily re-
minder of their Ordination vow to plead for their flocks, by familiarity
^ Appendix I., infra. - Appendix II., infra.
10 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
with the whole Bible as it passes before them in steady course, by the
gentle pressure of an ordered rule in a life which is too often one of
just so much order, or disorder, as the individual gives it ; and even
by the little yoke of self-denial which it entails. It saddens me often
to send an earnest young^Deacon or Priest away from his Ordination
to his solitary lodgings, and feel that in the devotional side of his
daily life (except what he may gain — it is a large exception —
from the example or occasional words of his Vicar) there will be no
steady control or stimulus beyond what his own resolution and
earnestness may supply. I think I have seen enough to warrant
me in asking older men to see that they are not in this pulling back
or even " offending " younger ones when they would wish to do the
reverse. At least, I think I see a readiness in the young to respond
to the Church's directions which goes much beyond any party limit.
I believe, too, that the people would gain not only by the blessings
granted to such prayer, and by the demand addressed, and the
opportunity given, to the more devout among them, but by the
quiet witness of faith and worship. These are not the days in
which the worshipping side of life can afford to lack the help of
organised form.
I subjoin as evidence that I am not speaking unpractically the
words of the most distinguished and not the least devoted of those
younger College Missioners whom Cambridge has sent among us,
himself returning now to Cambridge to feed and foster there, we
trust, the response of new generations of Cambridge men to South
London needs.^
^ Rev. C. F. Andrews, Pembroke College Missioner, writes in his Thirteenth
Anniial Report of the Mission, page 5 :— " The hour of our daily Evening Service
■was changed from 5"30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The change has proved most salutary. Since
then we have never failed to have a good congregation each evening, the men
■especially being most faithful. Nothing could give more help to our worn and tired
men and women at the end of a weary day than this closing act of worship and inter-
cession. It performs an important missionary work also, as many who feel them-
selves too shabby and disreputable to be seen in Church on Sunday come in one by
one to worship in the week. The fixed hour is of great importance. Our people
always know that the prayers are being oflFered for them morning by morning and
evening by evening. Mothers have told me that even when it is impossible to leave
their children and come, they have been comforted again and again when they hear
the bell ring and know that they are remembered. I am now visiting daily a dying
■woman whose last words each time I see her, are "Please remember me in Church
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 11
I give no direction, I do not even make any request, unless it be
for careful consideration of what has been said, in a matter in which
movement to be healthy must be of willing hearts. So only can we
have not the thing only but the spirit of the thing, and without the
spirit the thing will be of little value. But you know what I think,
and wish and pray.
To those who already do this I would earnestly say, beware of
being mechanical, of ' getting the Office said,' of allowing it to be a
substitute for the indispensables of Bible study and meditation and
private prayer. Let your outward manner in saying it be the manner
of those who pray indeed, and to whom familiarity with what they use
brings only delicacy of touch, and power to draw out its beauty and
wealth.
Certainly the Churches of this Diocese should be foremost among
those which "sigh and cry." Ours, if any, should be a pleading
Church. For there is another side to our statistics. I do not wish
to dwell upon it in detail. To do so might minister to our own
depression ; and depression is a bad counsellor, a prophet who helps
to fulfil his own prophecies. But it would be wrong to disguise the
tremendous facts of alienation and practical secularism. Over large
districts, and these not of the town alone, our communicants are only
a small fraction or percentage of the population. They go as low in
a case or two as one in a thousand. But in many more the fraction
is piteously small. I do not think, nor do you, that this is a measure
of the amount of religion, not only because of the work of other
religious bodies, for this, like our own and more so, is often weakest
where need is greatest ; but because there is an amount of elemental
religion which gives no sign other than by its translation into the
when the time for Service comes." Yesterday, in S. Thomas' Hospital, one of our
Communicants said to me, ' As I lie here, I count the hours till Ser%nce time comes,
and when Big Ben strikes a quarter-to-ten or a quarter-to-eight I think, ' now the
bell's beginning,' and when the hour strikes I think, 'now they're all in Church and
they'll be thinking of me and I'll be thinking of them.' Little by little there is
growing up amongst us a definitely church-going people ; and this means order,
reverence, obedience, quietness, besides other still deeper gifts which go to transform
noisy, wild and intemperate lives. I have often thought that to go into the home of
this or that one in our District who was before to be found every evening at the
* ' public-house, and now is every night in Church instead, would give a vivid
picture of what S. Paul meant by a ' new creature. '
12 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
mass of uncomplaining drudgery, and the patience and mutual
kindness by which that drudgery is relieved. But what it does
mean is, positively, an immense mass of unchecked animalism
and heathenism, and, negatively, an immense loss of blessing from
God upon human life, and of returns of love and service to Him.
I do not forget — it is the greatest weight on one's heart — how much
of this is the fault of the Church herself or of her ministers in the
past and present, or how much of it seems to be the result, we are
tempted to say the inevitable result, of the hideous grinding pressure
of degrading and scandalous conditions of housing and life.
I only put before you the fact as one which is to most of you
well known. I draw but these two inferences as to the Church's
method. The first is, that she must work hard and continually
at her "remnant," at the little nucleus of convinced and living
Christianity, and must get them increasingly to work and pray and
strive with her for the rest : we must aim at hot centres of life.
We must resist as our worst danger what is conveyed in the words
which tell that where iniquity abounds love waxes cold.^ The second,
to which I shall return before I end, is that she must put her
best thought and her best sympathy, without impatience and
irritation, with much humility and self-questioning, into the work
of disentangling, and if it may be, removing bit by bit the causes
of this want of correspondence between man and God's Word to man
as that word is spoken through her to the Londoner or dockyard
man or country man of to-day — the want of bite of the tool upon the
material for which we believe it was meant. We have got a broken
contact to renew, and there is no harder work. Perhaps we should add
to these two remarks the obvious third, that she is right in going on
with her ministries of kindness, whether or no men hear the word
which goes with the works, but never forgetting that in the end the
word outweighs all the works, and lends them all their worth.
It will, I think, be very plain that for all this work the unsup-
ported solitary Clergyman is (as no one knows better than himself)
an entirely inadequate instrument. He needs the support and
co-operation of those who can touch men and women's lives from
various sides, and come to them more on an equality, and without
1 S. Matt. xxiv. 12.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 13
the official character which must always attach to him. Thank God
we have been gaining in these ways. It is constant and great joy
to think of our two great Diocesan groups of trained ladies (which
we owe, under God, respectively to Bishop Thorold and to the Bishoj)
of Southwark), our 21 Deaconesses who have received by laying on
of hands a commissioned Ministry for the work in which they have
been trained in our beautiful Deaconesses' House under its first
Head ; and our 28 Grey Ladies, giving themselves with less definite
committal and less complete training, but at least for the time with
not less devotion, to works of mercy. A little group of ladies from
a centre at Blackheath, under Mr. Barnes Lawrence's guidance,
and with support from the Church Pastoral Aid Society, attempts
similar work. In about a dozen parishes, at least, to my know-
ledge, we have help from Sisterhoods of women given to God
for work among His Poor. At Tooting Mr. Baker main-
tains, with a devotion and loyalty which I cannot characterise
without seeming to flatter, the nucleus of a Brotherhood of men
living in the world but devoting their leisure to charity. Would
that it might increase ! If I do not dwell in detail upon the
work of our Lay Readers, Scripture Readers, and Mission Women,
it is only because time fails. It has been a pleasure to gather
the Lay Readers together at Bishop's House, to give increas-
ing care to the arrangements of their admission, and after full
counsel with themselves, both on principles and details, to sanction
and arrange for them a badge to be worn in Divine Service, a
reminder to them of their responsibility and to the people of their
Commission. I am glad to say that, by arrangement between the
Bishop of Southwark and myself, I shall be able to secure a
further degree of episcopal superintendence and detailed interest in
this part of our work with little or no loss of my own personal contact.
But besides these, I have in mind many forms of service by
which individuals or groups, within the Diocese or beyond it,
make the work of many of our parishes fuller and more really
Christian. Among these, carrying, I cannot but hope, germs of
great development in the future, is the increase amongst us of
Settlements. To this, however, I refer elsewhere. I note in
seven parishes the formation of small Chapters of the Brotherhood
14 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
of S. Andrew, with others in preparation, a beginning I would fain
hope of more active extension of the Church by the organization of
individual lay effort, under whatever forms.
To the Lay Workers' Association on which Bishop Thorold laid such
stress, I cannot refer without some confusion of face, and can only
plead that Ulysses' bow is not for every man's handling. It hurts me
to the quick to feel that by not reviving it (the word is more appro-
priate than maintaining) I may have pained some who had given to it
labour and thought, or may have conveyed to any that I am indiffer-
ent or disrespectful to lay work. If I know myself, that work has a
very large place in my heart and respect. If even now I thought
that I could really add to all the other claims upon me the very large
amount of direct personal work which would, I think, be required
to make the Association really effective, I would attempt its revival
to-morrow. But in any case I hope that the want of this particular
organization which had never (I gather) really reached high or
general efficiency, will not prevent a real degree of contact between
us Bishops and the laity, men and women, who form the militia of
our army.
May I say, in this connection, a word to the laymen ? They fall
too much behind the women in the matter of service to their Church,
I do not mean that their circumstances allow of their doing as much :
but they need not do so much less. The special instance before my
mind is that of Sunday Schools. How are our lads to grow up with
a sense that religion is a robust and manly thing if they associate it
with nothing but women's influence and women's teaching ? The fact
that some women have gifts for work with boys and men which
few if any men can rival, does not touch the point. I am speaking of
general effect and not of particular cases. In one return I found a
Sunday School with forty women teachers, and no men. The case is
extreme, but-it is not uncommon for the men to be some three or four
and the women some twenty or thirty. I am quite certain that there
is a splendid sphere of service for a young man who will as a teacher
get into touch with a circle of boys, and win them by personal
influence and care which will soon extend beyond the bare limits of
the Sunday School hour. The benefits mil return by God's blessing
in mental, moral, and spiritual stimulus on the teacher.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 15
I asked you to tell me what you thought of the work of the
Church Army. I shall hope to convey to its authorities some note
of the results. But I may roughly summarise them as follows. They
show amply enough to give welcome encouragement to the heads of
the Army, to the excellent men whom it employs, and to those who
are disposed to invite their help. But they certainly do not justify
any relaxation of effort. In particular, there is pretty frequent
indication that the work would be better if there had been fuller and
deeper training. I expect that the authorities of the Army would
fully realise this, and would allege no objection but the formidable
one of expense. But no money is better spent than what is spent on
preparation ; and I hope that the good work which is done may
lead to larger and more liberal support, which will enable them to do
more in this particular direction, deepening rather than extending
their work. We owe a great debt to those who have bestowed upon
the Diocese two Church Araiy Vans. Their charity has been well
bestowed and well used, and if it is not invidious to select, I should
like specially to record the many testimonies which I have received
to the work of Captain Ager.
I have lately had a fresh reason for speaking gratefully of the
Church Army, since it has, quite spontaneously, been moved by
South London needs to put at our disposal one of its ablest and most
experienced Evangelists. This has been most generously done. Capt.
Lamer is to reside in South London, at the sole cost of the Army ;
he is to work under Diocesan direction, which I have arranged to
exercise through our Senior Wilberforce Missioner, Rev. G. J. Bayley^
and he will conduct special evangelistic eflforts in parishes in the
heart of the town for which the Vans are unsuitable.
The mention of the Wilberforce Missioner gives me the oppor-
tunity of expressing my satisfaction that by the kindness of the
Trustees the troubled and broken history of that Memorial of the
great Bishop has entered on what may, I hope, be a long chapter of
steady and effective usefulness by its association with our Collegiate
House at St. Saviour's. To form the chief resource of that House
for its work of clerical reinforcement in places and times where this
is required, and for special ministries of instruction or exhortation,
seems to be the most practical and congenial application possible
16 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
of the funds, and I am very glad to feel that the Mission
which was in abeyance when I became Bishop, is thus again at
work.
" A living Church is a Missionary Church." It has been to me
a matter of delightful surprise to find how much is done from this
Diocese for the great and primary work of " preaching the Gospel in
the regions beyond." ^ When I think of the poverty of so many of
our parishes as I review them one by one, I do think that the sum of
X22,000 for Foreign Missions returned to me is one for which we
may well be thankful, with a thankfulness which prompts to increase
Tooth of effort and hope. I cannot doubt that that offering stands
for a real blessing to us, such as is promised to those that give.
I have no doubt that for several reasons the true figure is somewhat
more ; and besides there are the contributions which go direct from
the givers to the central offices, or to the Mission Field. Nor is the
sum only raised by a few wealthy parishes, but poor ones have in
many cases given well out of their deep poverty. It is a matter in
which we are happily at one, but it is rather fair than invidious
to recognise the leading part taken by the supporters of the Church
Missionary Society ; and I should like to name with special honour
in this regard the parishes of Christ Church, Gipsy Hill ; Emmanuel,
Streatham ; Holy Trinity, Richmond ; St. Michael's and St. John's,
Blackheath.
In a matter in which so much is done by the parishes of the
Diocese, it is much to be desired that we should also act as a
Diocese, and feel from so doing an invigoration of our collective life.
I desire gratefully to acknowledge the willing, modest, and unselfish
work of our Diocesan Board of Missions, which I have sought to
assist by Pastoral Letters in its efforts to stimulate the observance
of the Day of Intercession and Thanksgiving. No small part of
our thanks to the Board should be given to its Vice-Chairman and
Secretary, Mr. Bickersteth, whose work has the stamp of a dedication
not less pure, because it carries with it the fragrance of filial and
fraternal affection. Since your last Visitation the Board has given us
its list of former workers in the Diocese who are now in the Mission
Field. Will you allow me to make mention, with sorrow and happiness
1 2 Cor. X. 16.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 17
at once, that in two or three days from this time the name of a former
Assistant Curate of Mr. Bickersteth, my own dear Chaplain, Thomas
Edmund Teignmouth-Shore, will be added to this list as a member
of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta ? Many, I hope and think, in the
Diocese which he has served so well will give him a place in their
prayers ?
I have expressed before, and I repeat, the hope that our Diocesan
Missionary Studentship Associations, of which Canon Jelf, Mr.
Woodhouse and Mr. Shore have been secretaries, may be more
widely recognised, and take gradually a much more important place
among us than they now have.
No one, I think, could read the Returns without being struck by
the witness which they bear of loyalty to the Church of England,
and contentment with her order of worship and instruction. This
is unquestionably the most striking feature of the picture which
they present. There are, of course, lines of party cleavage not
difficult to trace, though I am glad to note a considerable
number of Churches of different sorts whose conduct crosses these
lines, and tends to take from them harsh distinctness.^ No doubt,
too, there are many things of almost indefinable flavour in speech
and deportment and ritual, and others of private use, which do not
appear on the surface of statistical reports, and which collectively
make differences more patent. But, allowing for this, we get the
picture of a great Church permitting a large liberty to the differ-
ent historical currents of feeling and opinion within her, and to
reasonable developments of these under the powerful influences and
solvents of modem life, and obtaining in return an overwhelming
preponderance of substantial allegiance. There is an immense
central mass of contented and unquestionable loyalty.
As we advance towards the edges there is a tendency to accentuate
the expression of particular interpretations of Church doctrine and order.
To some extent these are to be welcomed. They show vitality, and
they satisfy different temperaments of thought and feeling. Perhaps
^ To take a single instance I may mention the large range of use of such a book
as the Manual for Holy Communion of that truly apostolic worker and Bishop of our
own day, William Walsham How.
C
18 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OE THE CHURCH
as one to whom moderation has always been both practically and
speculatively congenial, I may say the more freely, that a Church which
satisfied none but those of moderate temperament would be a narrow
Church, and that moderation, like other forms of opinion, may easily
have its ignoble as well as its noble side. In an imperfect world
warm convictions and devoted attachments are often, and for many,
practically inseparable from onesidedness of thought and expression.
None the less the roads of onesidedness are travelled with ever
increasing danger ; and it well beseems those to whom their Church
allows liberty to be the more dutifully vigilant both of error and of
offence to others. In towns the number of Churches allows more
differentiation than in a country parish, where one Church must
serve all. But this emphatically does not justify forgetfulness for
the sake of the " congregation," of regard for what is best either
for the parish, or for the whole Church and its rules and spirit.
Finally, there is no doubt a fringe but a very small fringe of what
distinctly approaches, or dabbles in, disloyalty. Such are those who
act in this or that respect as though the English Church had not
made protests which she did and does make, or broken off what
she did break off, or wisely guarded against the recurrence of ex-
perienced dangers ; or those in another direction to whom the dividing
line between the Church and the Protestant denominations outside
her is a vanishing line, and many features of her order rather
accidents to be (at best) acquiesced in, or teachings to be diluted by
explanation, than directions to be filially carried out ; or, once more,
there are those (I have found this in two or three places, but only
in these) for whom we cannot but feel deep sympathy, who, under
pressure of what they deem reasons of criticism or other scientific
evidence, begin to tamper, whether they know it or no, with those
fundamental truths of faith which underlie the phases of its expression
and interpretation.
How the fringes of which I have spoken are to be dealt with, is,
I think, to any candid and charitable man a very delicate and
difficult question. I am quite sure that I do a reverent thing if I
say that our Lord's teaching about the difficulty of plucking up
tares has a most distinct bearing on this matter. The man who
rushes in is, to say the least, not always wise. This must be
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 19
frankly said, however unpalatable the saying of it may be to some.
But assuredly it is not the whole of the matter. The Society has
a right against the individual one or many. The enforcement of
that right is primarily the work of Christian opinion, and the power
of the collective mind and spirit of the whole body over individuals
is the test of the healthiness of a Church. The more true unity
there is the greater will that power be, and the more genuine in
quality, because with more of love on both sides. Conversely the
more division there is, the more that power is paralysed. A man
does not Avdllingly defer to the opinion of another party. So it comes
about that the action of opinion takes harsher and more coercive forms
The power of force is brought in to do the work for which there is
too little mutual love. We see the example of this in the various
parties of the Reformation time, snatching in turn at the sword or
the statute to compel others to their own way of thinking.
The greatest danger, in my judgment, to the Church to-day, is
the temper, wherever found, of those who practically prefer a party
to the Church. As I think of men and movements I am disposed
to say that there is hardly any better test of what is wholesome and
trustworthy and what is not, than this, whether the main purpose
and the bottom desire is to strengthen and serve the Church of
England, or, upon the other hand, to push some particular party
policy or organisation within her. This is open obviously to the
genuine partisan's debating answer, that he hopes to strengthen the
Church by making his views prevail within her. But I venture to
leave what I have said. The test will often distinguish between
two who are doing outwardly almost the same things.^
But what is enfeebled is not lost. The power of the whole mind
of the Holy Catholic Church, in spite of walls of separation, is still,
as it would not be hard to prove, a real power,^ and much more is and
^ It may be of interest to note in this connection a trait of New Testament teach-
ing which the Revised Version has restored to clearness. "Faction," which only
occurred once as an erratic translation of epts (1 Cor. iii. 3), now stands in seven
places as the distinctive equivalent of iptdeta (Rom. ii. 8 ; 2 Cor. xii. 20 ; Gal. v. 20 ;
Phil. i. 17, ii. 3 ; James, iii. 14, 16), and ipiOda appears (Lightfoot on Gal. v. 20 ;
Sanday and Headlam on Rom. ii. 8) to represent almost exactly party spirit within
the Church.
^ Cp. "The authority of the Christian Church, the witness of Christendom,
c 2
20 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
ou^ht to be the living mind of the English Church, in which we
have corporate unity, a power amongst us. The duty lies upon
us all to respect and enhance that power. Remember that all of us con-
tribute to make it, and all of us are in turn influenced and appealed
to by it. We are bound then to the double duty of making it really
Christian in its tone, temper, and spiritual quality, and of giving to
it, so far as we conscientiously may, a real and ungrudged respect.^
If there are things to be controlled by the opinion which we help
to form, we must do to them as we would be done by, trying to
understand them and not merely reiterating party charges and mis-
descriptions. We must, on the other hand, keep it quite steadily
before us in all our ways, not needlessly to offend and wound the
conscience and heart of the whole body, even though it include
brethren whose fellowship with us is largely impaired by differences.
Judge we ourselves, brethren, on all sides, and say whether this
is the way in which collective Church opinion has been exercised, or
been responded to, in the last half century. If we judge that it is not,
do not let us throw charges of responsibility for this at one another
but humbly and sorrowfully own that each has to bear an ample share.
God grant that the very greatness of our difficulties and the
sharpness of our sorrows in these days may be blessed by God to
force the Church and all its members into learning — through pain
— something of these truths, and may teach us the unhappiness of
those among whom the great force of collective brotherly opinion is
out of gear.
however impaired by divisions and sins, is yet the master fact of our history and of
our society, the master fact of all our lives." — R. W. Church, *' Pascal, &c.," p. 242.
^ Nor in a country like England, where the relation of the Church to the
community has been what it has (I do not merely mean by Establishment, so-called),
should I deny all right of moral influence to general public opinion. The Church of
England is much more bound than Timothy was in a purely pagan world to have a
good report of " them that are without" (1 Tim. iii. 7, cp. Col. iv. 5). But it must
be borne in mind that this force of public opinion acts very unevenly. It is much more
easy to enlist it against those who do too much, than against those who do too little.
I remember reading that the populace of Milan in Hildebrand's time were on the side
of austerity and against the marriage of the Clergy ; and in Alexandria in the fourth
century the monks wielded the forces of the street. But this is, assuredly, not the
normal state of things, nor that of our own time. The man of " low " or " liberal "
Church views will always have the advantage as such with public opinion, except
where they appear, as they did in the Evangelical movement, or in the life of
Maurice, in the form of exacting and unworldly innovation in practice or opinion.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 21
But behind opinion, there is further the definite province of
Authority and Law. There will always be the honestly mistaken,
who cannot be persuaded, and there may always be the obstinately
wilful, who will not. Yet here again you will agree with me that
the workings of authority must still show the Christian mark. We
shall not take political authority at its crudest, the authority of the
police court and the policeman, as the pattern or standard of what
even coercive authority in a Christian Society must be. Its patterns
must be much rather those of the most equitable and constitutional
kinds of authority and administration. It must be much more
considerate and paternal ; it must show much more plainly, and at
every stage, that in the spirit of Love it is, however sternly, doing
Love's work.
I do not feel disposed to enlarge now upon the questions which
beset the exercise of authority, and the enforcement of the Church's
Law in these days. But here again, please God, trouble may be an
effective teacher, and we may learn to realise that the present
difficulties in directing and enforcing are not due to mere wil-
fulness and perversity in our fellows, whether stiff-necked rebellion
in those below, or cynical and indolent apathy in those above. I
have no obligation to hold a brief for the action of the Episcopate in
days when I was not a Bishop, and for the almost complete ex-
periment of toleration which it allowed. But my memory is perfectly
distinct as to the general approval of this by opinion at large, and
(as I tried once before to point out to you), it was a natural, and
possibly, inevitable, result of a preceding period of ill-directed coercion.
With regard to ourselves, I have already told you (at the Diocesan
Conference) that I have exercised authority by direction in certain
particulars, and have been for the most part well and dutifully met.
Since then, I have thought it my duty to request that the liturgical
use of incense should be discontinued in certain Churches. You will
all join with me, I hope, in thanking our brethren, ten in number,
who have complied with my request for this act of dutifulness. From
some in particular, who had used incense for a long series of years,
it required a very real sacrifice.
I return now to the Visitation Enquiries. I asked you to return
me your practice with regard to the Order of Administration of the
4
22 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
Lord's Supper or Holy Communion. Controversy has, alas, especially
centred round the Sacrament of Christian unity, and the people's
minds are rightly specially sensitive about it. It is impossible, and
indeed undesirable, to seek uniformity of use in all respects with
regard to it. But what a Bishop can and ought to do is to require
that the Service shall be fully used without alterations, additions,
or omissions. As I have already replied to one of yourselves in a
letter which, at his request, was made public, this seems to me to be
one of the safeguards of our unity.
There is, indeed, one omission which your replies show me to be
almost universal — that of the longer Exhortation addressed to them
that mind to come to the Holy Communion at the service at which
it is read. I do not think, indeed, that this should be altogether
omitted ; it seems well that it should be read from time to time like
the other Exhortations of notice which precede it, so that the deep
searching, and devout teachings which they contain may be familiar.
A general rule may be of service to you here, and I would ask that
it may be the use of this Diocese to read three times a year from
altar or pulpit (1) one or other of the Exhortations to Communion,
and also the (2) whole invitation to Communicants in both its parts.
The first part might further be occasionally used with special
convenience at a Communicants' Class or Union. But on ordinary
occasions we may, I think, rightly follow a practically universal
instinct which can be shown to be reasonable. Better education both
of clergy and people and other means of instruction by books or
classes, is much more available than in the 16th century, and this
may therefore rightly be considered a change which in spirit is not so
to be called. The Exhortations were inserted at a special time in
view of its special conditions — and those conditions having altered
they may drop out again with the qualification which I have named,
and they will leave the completeness of the service untouched,
I have further thought it right, as I mentioned at the Diocesan
Conference, to allow on certain occasions the use of a special Collect
(with the Collect of the Week) and a special Epistle and Gospel.
This seemed (1) only to apply a little further the method of the
Order of Holy Communion itself, in which those parts are variable
according to seasons, &c. : (2) it followed many precedents such as
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 23
that of the Order for the Communion of the Sick and the Ordinal in
the Prayer-book, of the Services for Consecrating a Church, &c.,
which have been in traditional use ; and the forms of Harvest and
Missionary Services sanctioned by Convocation. The Collect being
either from the Prayer-book or specially sanctioned by myself, and
the Epistle and Gospel being, of course. Scriptures, the limits of
deviation are narrow and secure. The point is a doubtful one, but
it seemed best to turn the balance on the side of elasticity.
But beyond this I cannot go. I must ask that the whole Order
be said when the Sacrament is celebrated and administered. I
observe from your replies that this will affect practices of various
kinds at a considerable number of churches. These practices, I am
glad to say, are almost entirely without other significance than a
desire for convenience or abbreviation. I had occasion previously to
deal with the habit of omitting some parts of the Service, as the Creed
and the Gloria in Excelsis, at certain celebrations to which it was
desired to give a special colour. I directed that this should be given
up. I held that Avhile the Church of England has nowhere forbidden
individuals or congregations to make special remembrance of their
dead in the pleadings of the Holy Eucharist, she has not sanctioned
any specialization of the service to that purpose or intention alone,
having indeed everywhere (except in the matter of Collect, Epistle,
and Gospel and Proper Prefaces) preferred to keep one unvarying
order round which the varying association of fast and festival, joy
and sorrow, wedding or funeral, would cluster and play. I thank-
fully record that my direction was complied with.
There is, I hope, no need to reiterate the direction that nothing
should be interpolated in the Prayer Book Service. This does not, of
course, interfere with the reasonable and reverent use of brief private
devotions by the Priest at certain points in the Service. Only these
should be genuinely, what I have called them, private devotions, and
should ^not in any way be so done as to suggest that they are
inaudible insertions in the public Service ; and they should be brief.
The Service should be said with clear and audible voice through-
out. Nothing is more clearly the intention of the Prayer Book, and
it is perfectly consistent with such natural modifications in tone and
voice as instinct and reverence suggest in saying parts of the Service
24 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
as different as, e.g., the Sanctus and the Prayer of Humble Access,
or the Confession, and the Prayer of Consecration.
I have ah-eady urged, and I must repeat, that I deem it imposs-
ible to justify in loyalty to the Prayer Book any celebration of Holy
Communion, which is not substantially a Communion with Communi-
cants. Any one who uses the service otherwise must feel that he is
going ' against the grain ' of it throughout. The rubric which refers
to a minimum number in very small places implies with an implica-
tion which is as direct as a statement that in larger places there should
be more. To take compliance with it then, as a sufficient observance
of the Prayer Book's directions is therefore the farthest stretch of
general relaxation, to say the least, that can be justified or made.
It is not enough to say that opportunity is given for Communicants,
if, as a matter of fact, the opportunity is constantly unused. I
recognise and claim a large measure of liberty for what is sometimes
called non-communicating attendance. But I must pronounce the
habitual use of public services without communicants to be dis-
obedient to the Prayer Book and (in the strict sense) a ' scandal ' to
the unity of the Church : and I ask any Clergy whom this may con-
cern to give the matter their serious and practical attention.
In all such matters I ask, and look, for the reasonable and genuine
execution of Prayer Book principles and directions.
The Commandments and the Collect for the Queen have been often
omitted at early celebration in churches which have frequent cele-
brations, and in a few at mid-day, and in many in the evening when
the Holy Communion is preceded by another service. There are strong
arguments of convenience for these abbreviations, arguments which are
appreciated at even more than their full value in a restless and hurry-
ing time. But there are hardly any cases in which I can admit their
validity. These are not times in which we can omit any part of the
preparation and hedging of the Sacrament. I was astonished the
other day in turning the pages of a Guide for Communicants which
was printed in the middle of last century, having run through many
editions in the previous fifty years, to see how strenuous and exacting
were the requirements as to preparation. May I be forgiven a homely
suggestion, of which I have proved both ways the truth ? The time
taken by the Commandments could in many cases easily be saved by
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 25
a really punctual beginning, if the clergy enter the church one or two
minutes before the service begins, and begin with the clock-strike.
A much larger omission of the same kind is that of the whole first
half of the Liturgy down to the Prayer for the Church Militant, or
even to the Shorter Exhortation. This is of course a much more
serious liberty to take \\'ith the service, and I am quite sure that I
ought to request, as I now do, that it may cease. It deprives the
service of some of its cardinal features, both fixed and variable, the
only direct prayer for the Holy Spirit : the profession of faith, as part
of the Sacrament : the special Scriptures of the day : the oblations and
intercessions of the Offertory and Church Militant, Here, again, the
argument of convenience or necessity will be assigned as the reason,
and is the reason, for the practice ; and such arguments are always
variously appraised. But I have no doubt that for you, as for me, that
argument does not justify so serious a departure from the directions
of the Prayer Book. It has been urged in several of your returns that
the first part of the service •«ill be said later, or has been said earlier,
in the day. But further reflection would, I am sure, show the in-
sufficiency of the argument, for any but a bare legal or technical
justification. The object is not that the Ser\i[ce should be somehow
said during the day, but that the communicants on any occasion
should have the Service provided for them. This would be true even
if the same people had the whole Service in disconnected parts at dif-
ferent hours ; even then the unsuitableness of having the latter half of
the Liturgy first, and the former half which is so plainly preparatory,
later, is very plain. But even this is not the case, as is shown by your
own returns. These considerations are emphasised by what you your-
selves tell me. A very frequent remark in the returns is that the con-
gregations at different hours are practically distinct congregations : the
early Communion and the later one, the morning congregation, and
the evening congregation. There is then not the least security that
the same people will be present to join in the separated portions.
This applies to early Communions. They make the regular
practice of many : and quite certainly these ought to have the whole
service. It applies also to evening Communions, where it is plain
that there is some difficulty of time in attaching the whole Order of
Holy Communion to Evening Prayer. Upon this subject I speak ^s'ith
26 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
a little embarrassment. You know that I regret and disapprove the
practice in question as alien to the custom of the Church and a
painful wound to its unity. I would prefer, therefore, not to regu-
late it : and you will, I am sure, so far give me your generous trust as
to acquit me entirely of any desire to hamper what I cannot hinder,
and would hardly desire to hinder by mere force or constraint. N"ot
with any such motive, but only for the reasons which I have given,
I must ask those who so use the service to use it whole. I will give
one further reason which I believe will commend itself to those who
are affected by this request.^ You are moved to the evening admini-
stration of the Sacrament, I know, chiefly by the stress on your charity
and consideration of those who could not, you think, approach the Lord's
Table, unless evening opportunities were given. I doubt whether ex-
perience as a whole, or the comparative statistics of parishes which use
and do not use the practice, support this conclusion. But experience
on the surface may seem, at least, to do so. It follows upon your
own showing that many of your evening communicants are never,
or hardly ever, present at any other administration. Further yet, I
observe that constantly in your Churches the evening Communion
tends to become the one which is most largely attended. The fact is,
to my mind, of unfavourable significance, but it goes to emphasise the
same point, for it means that a large number of your communicants will
come to the Sacrament only at that hour. Of these the immensely
larger proportion will be working people, and people in whom we
cannot presuppose very much teaching. How essential, then, it is that
you should not deprive them of the schooling, so beautiful and so
deeply instructive, which is given by the Order of Holy Communion
as an organic whole : that you should not rob them of any essential
features or parts of it ; least of all perhaps of that Decalogue, which,
according to the practice once general, and still frequent, of posting
them on the chancel walls, presents to them in the simplest and most
authoritative form the great precepts, which the Catechism explains,
of religious and moral duty.
^ Many (like myself) will find no slight evidence that I am right in making this
request in the strong opinion of the present Bishop of Exeter as to the impor-
tance of using the whole order of Holy Communion on such occasions. He expressed it
in a passage to which he has kindly directed my attention in his Charge of 1895, p.
23.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 27
You know me well enough to know that interference of this
kind in whatever direction is not to me palatable. May I try to
assist you in compliance with it by one or two suggestions ? The
service of Evening Prayer when you follow it by the Lord's Supper may
easily be made considerably shorter than on other Sundays. Anthems
and Services are now so frequent that the use of chants and a hymn
instead would be a means of abbreviation in many cases. The Sermon
of that evening might be limited to a quarter of an hour. If I cannot
actually authorize, I certainly shall not challenge, the practice of pass-
ing straight on such occasions from the Third Collect to the Prayer of
St. Chrysostom and the Grace, or even direct to the Sermon. These
abbreviations, fairly tried, will, I think you will find, minimise the
inconvenience. I should not be surprised to find that in some cases
they cancel it.
You will, I trust, feel that I have striven to put this before you
fairly and considerately. I now ask your compliance mth my request
and direction. I am certain that in giving it, as I believe you will
do, you will make a distinct contribution, at the cost of a slight
sacrifice, first to the edification of your people and their training in
our beloved Prayer Book, and secondly to the peace and harmony of
the whole Church.
I should esteem it a very true kindness, and it will greatly save
my labour, if you will send me (and this applies to all to whom I
have made these several requests) a line to tell me (if it be so), that
you have been able to do what I ask.
If there are cases in which there is real necessity for some
exception, it should be submitted to me. But you will see that I
must keep the standard of such necessity high, and I could not,
without unfairness, admit it (so far as I can see) in any case, in
regard to my last request.
This provision for exception applies to the problem of the actual
administration when numbers are very large, or time inadequate.
In such a case pray consult me, as to how you may permissibly
deviate, under stress of necessity, from the Prayer Book rule of separate
delivery to each Communicant with the full words of Administration.
These cases can be adjusted with absolute loyalty to the Prayer
28 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
Book, even in the few cases where necessity involves some
departure from its letter.
What has to be said about Manuals for Confirmation and Holy
Communion will be best said privately when it is needed. But you
will be glad of the assurance that the number of cases is very small
in which I have even to consider whether what is used goes beyond
the large liberty of thought and expression which our Church allows,
and which could not be touched without disastrous results. In some
cases, I have been told, sometimes with emphasis, that no books are
used, or given, except the Bible, or the Bible and the Prayer Book.
This may be, in some cases, quite right : it is certainly quite legiti-
mate. But further, the evils which are evidently dreaded are real.
' Little books,' as was pointed out by the large-hearted Roman Catholic
writer,^ Rosmini, who saw the danger or evil as one of the wounds of
his own communion, may well be a pregnant source of harm to the
virility and wholesomeness of religion : and we shall do ill indeed if
we let any think that books of devotion of whatever sort can com-
pensate for the constant and persevering nourishment of the soul
directly upon the Word of God in Scripture. These things, I think,
we should generally agree to deprecate : it is not so certain that
they do not happen oftener than we know among the imperfectly
taught. There is a great love everywhere for short cuts and easy
helps and work done to our hand which ought to be done by it ;
and the devotional sphere is not exempt from the tendency. But
yet books are among the tools of a time of general education. Our
oral teaching often goes into people, I suspect, far less than we
imagine; and with large numbers there is less opportunity for
individual care. A wholesome and well -chosen form of devotion and
simple teaching may prove most useful scaffolding, or may help
apprenticeship in a difficult art, the art of Worship, public and
private.
The matter of communicating the sick is one on which it is
plainly undesirable that I should say anything at the present time.
It is not at all a simple matter, and we may all need to use a special
1 "The Five Wounds of the Church," edited by H. P. Liddon, D.D., p. 66.
IRiringtona 1883).
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OP THE CHURCH 29
degree of self-restraint and mutual consideration in our thoughts
and words about it. I have been glad to see how real a part it is of
the ministerial work of the large majority of our parishes to carry to
our sick this gift and privilege of grace. But how much larger the
demand might be if the number of our Communicants were less
painfully disproportionate to our population, and among these there
was a more reverent and appreciative understanding of the Sacra-
ment's place in Christian life, one hardly ventures to reflect.
The question about sponsors has revealed how very general some
breach of the Rubric is. I do not say this in complaint or with
surprise. No one who has been a Parish Priest can be ignorant that
its enforcement would bring down the baptisms in many places to a
small fraction of their present number, for the only alternative — and
it is one which none of us would contemplate for a moment — is a
wholesale admission to sponsorship of unworthy or unqualified persons.
I observe that there is a consent among you that the duty of bringing
the child to Christ in baptism is the paramount consideration ; you are
practically of one mind in holding that to let children go unbaptized
for want of sponsors, in cases of real necessity, is to neglect the first
duty. You are, I believe, right. Curiously enough, the rare instances
which I have met of a different opinion have come from men of very
decided, but contrasted, views, emphasising on one side the need of
hedging the sacredness of the Gift in Baptism; on the other, the duty
of protest against mechanical ideas of it. But their conclusion is not
yours, nor mine, nor, I may add, that of the Episcopate. The instinct
of the Church is clear upon the point. It does not therefore follow
that the considerations which we overrule are unimportant, or that
there is no room for care and exertion in the matter. Readers of
the late Bishop Moberly's Bampton Lectures on the Administration
of the Holy Spirit, will remember the stress which he lays upon the
corporate duty of the Church to cherish the gift which she confers,
to train the child whom she admits, to see that it is brought to
recognise the pledges made in its name. It would seem to be a
legitimate inference that the sponsors are in a manner special
trustees of a general duty ; and if so, defect in sponsors is partly made
up by all that is done corporately by schools, by Church workers,
by children's services, to train the baptized. In some parishes it is
30 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
possible to give special expression to this general responsibility by a
Sponsors' Guild, or more simply, to get communicant workers and
others to undertake some sponsorship as a charitable work.^ There
are difficulties about such arrangements, and in many places they would
be impracticable, but when they fit in they may be useful, not least
to the sponsors. Beyond this, my counsel on the matter would be
largely summed up in the advice not to acquiesce in the matter going
anyhow, because it will not go perfectly or even well; not to
forget to keep the rule as a standard, however many and constant the
exceptions. Begin here, as in other matters, from the top. Train
your best and most attached people to fulfil the rule conscientiously
and for example's sake. Explain frequently, where it is the least use
to do so, that the exception is an exception, and unwillingly made.
Press in particular for both parents' presence. One of you records that
he never acquiesces in accepting the mother alone, without protest and
a message to the father. Refuse entirely if a child brings the baby
to baptize it. In my own parish at Leeds — I find the same in an
instance or two in this Diocese — we gave a printed leaflet with a few
simple words on sponsorship to each sponsor or parent. If you think
that this would be futile in nine cases out of ten, or nineteen out of
twenty, let this be no reason against doing it. If expense hinders,
see whether one person will give the few shillings for that definite
piece of work for the Lord and His little ones. If supply from a
centre were a help or an economy, I would, if I knew that it would be
welcome, arrange for this.
Another important group of questions in your Returns related to
Education. As to our own Schools, it has been cheering to me quite
beyond my expectations to find how very small the percentage
is of Schools in which the Clergy themselves do not take part in
the religious teaching. Nor should I at all assume that in every
one of the few cases where this is not done, the omission is due to
neglect. There are very few general rules which have no exceptions.
But I would throw an extremely heavy onus 2^'^^obandi on any
clergyman's conscience before he decides that his case is one of the
exceptions. It is not that I wish — God forbid ! — to take that teaching
^ Canon Allen Edwards tells me of one who so acts at need for him, in whose case
■" the office is a real one."
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 31
out of the hands of the teachers, robbing them thereby of what is, I
doubt not, a prized piece of their work, and a piece which leavens
the whole, and depriving ourselves of the immense advantage of their
trained skill in eliciting and conveying knowledge. But there should be
room for the pastor too ; for his o^^^l prayerful work, in making truth
live for his children, and in helping the influence of what they learn
to pass over into temper, character and conduct.
I am less certain, by a good deal, whether all is being done that
should be done for our Pupil Teachers. There is no doubt improve-
ment. The results are reported to me as " vastly better than they
were five years ago." The establishment of our useful centres is no
doubt largely responsible for this. But they do not always cover all
the work ; and even where they do, their work will do incidental
mischief if it wholly breaks the link of instruction between the Pupil
Teachers and their OAvn clergyman — instruction of which the chiefest
gain, when the opportunity is rightly used, may be to leave a per-
manent impression of a tone and attitude of mind suitable to the
handling of sacred things, such as may bear fruit for many years in
the work of the rising generation of teachers.
Before I leave the subject of our schools, I desire to express my
profound satisfaction that we have held our ground. Not a single
school has been surrendered. One (Burham) has been recovered.
But this is not all. We have advanced. Nine new schools have
been opened in the last four years, with accommodation for 2,855
children. Along with this, there has been a steady enlargement of
old buildings, which yielded in 1898 alone an increase of 672 places.
I offer my thanks to the Clergy especially, and also to many
devoted helpers among the laity, for the toil and sacrifice by which
the work of these schools is carried on. Particularly are our thanks
due to those good and loyal servants of the Church, our Church
School teachers, not only for their laborious daily service, but because
many of them, for conscience and principle's sake, have forfeited a
measure of pecuniary advantage rather than leave the Church side of
the Educational system. An important event to be chronicled with
satisfaction has been the inauguration, in useful and harmonious
working, of our Diocesan Voluntary Schools Association under the
Act of 1897. This is a further step in the direction of that unity
32 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
which is strength. I should feel that we were stronger yet for the
future if it were possible to amalgamate the Diocesan Board and
this Association into one strong federal organisation for the defence
and prosecution of our educational interests.
I pass to the Schools which are not ours, the Board Schools. I
asked you what your relations with them were, and what your esti-
mate was of the value of their religious teaching ; and I awaited
your replies with much interest, I now attempt to summarise their
drift. I have indeed observed that this is a matter on which it is
very difficult for a Bishop to speak without harm. If he speaks in
criticism, the Church is charged with narrow-mindedness. If he
speaks in praise, his words are taken up as those of an unwilling
witness to the all-sufficiency of Board Schools. I shall try however
to say what I have to say with as little regard as may be to these
comments.
Let me first record the tone of your own replies. They are with
the rarest exceptions respectful, often very friendly, to the Board
Schools. Nothing could be further from the truth than any idea of
a general attitude of dislike and hostility to Board Schools on the
part of the Clergy. I have reckoned nearly one hundred parishes
in which the Clergyman of the Parish (or occasionally one of his
assistants) is a Member of the School Board, or (in London) of the
local Committee of Managers ; in twenty-four of these he occupies the
chair. It is plain that the Clergy have generally thrown them-
selves into the work of maki»g the Board Schools as good as
possible. They have not held aloof any more than they have
attacked.
Secondly, these papers tell me of a splendid body of educational
service, moral and religious, which is done by the teachers in the
Board Schools. If it is any satisfaction to them that I should
publicly say that they continually win the respect and gratitude of
their clerical neighbours by their conscientious and earnest efforts to
give teaching which will strengthen the foundations and influences
of morality and religion in their children's hearts, let me have the
pleasure, and it is a very cordial one, of making this record, and
showing them this honour. In a large majority of cases this
is the work of teachers who are themselves loyal Churchmen
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 33
or Churchwomen. But this is not the whole of our debt. I
have found many instances where the teachers of our Board
Schools bring their trained powers over to the work of the
Church ; they give alms of their leisure (I must fear sometimes at
the expense of health and strength) by adding the work of the
Sunday School to all the teaching of the week ; or they are in other
ways valued helpers in the Parochial work. How much this must
tell indirectly for good upon their own children in the Board Schools
it is hardly necessary to point out. I have not once come across
the case which, if report be true, is not uncommon abroad, where
the staff of the School is an influence in the parish hostile to the
forces of religion.
There is a further reason why I have thus spoken of the teachers
before speaking of the teaching. The reason is that its value
depends so very much upon them, and varies accordingly. The
teaching is, says one of you, " what the teacher makes it, nothing
worth or most valuable." This would, of course, be true in a degree,
and a large degree, in any system. But it is very specially true in
the case of such a system as that of the London School Board. We
have there, thank God, what may be called with true though limited
meaning, a Christian system ; a system, that is, in which the re-
ligious instruction is in the Christian Scriptures, and the hymns and
prayers are Christian. It only needs that these Christian im-
plements and forms should be used by teachers of Christian faith in
order to make them give a religious 'education which, if it is not
complete for us Churchmen, and though it lacks the clearness and
distinctness of impression on a young mind which the simple outlines
of Creed and Catechism can give, is yet a thing for which we
cannot be too thankful.
The sad thing is that there is no kind of security that the
teachers should have this kind of congeniality with their subject : the
encouraging thing is that in so very large a number of cases they
have it. We think with anxiety of the future. Will the proportion
always remain as it is now ? " The religious instruction of the pupil
teachers is the present difficulty," says one of you, thoughtfully, " and
the want of it the future danger, in Board Schools." The Training
Colleges supply as many absolutely, but not relatively, as they did. In
■T
34 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
them, perhaps, more than in anything else is the key of the position.
I should say this, not only to Churchmen, but to all who value dis-
tinctly Christian Education. Undenominationalism is not repro-
ductive. Rate it at its very best as a working compromise, it will
only work in a Christian sense in the hands of teachers of real
Christian faith and conviction, and it may be fearlessly said that
these will only be got from the denominations, and, as things are, in
very great preponderance from the Church. It is, therefore, a rare
degree of wisdom and courage combined which, in the enterprise of
St. Gabriel's College at Camberwell, has given a defiance of faith and
hope to the obstacles of financial difficulty, and actually begun to
provide places for 80 more teachers, whom under our own auspices
we may, by God's help, teach our faith so that they in turn shall be
able and desire to teach it. It was no drawback to this but an
added privilege that, to meet the wishes of the Department, and at
the suggestion of our own Archbishop, the scheme includes a Non-
Resident department for 80 more which is absolutely open to all.
I earnestly crave for so generous and large-hearted a scheme the most
liberal and ready support. It is at present in temporary premises
but the permanent buildings, of which Lady Cranborne laid the first
stone in July, are beginning to rise. But it cannot be fully equipped
for much less than £50,000 : and this will give some idea of the
magnitude of the enterprise, and the measure of need.
From the teachers I turn to the teaching. The account of it
might be largely inferred from what has been already said. It varies
and it shows different sides. I attempted some classification of
favourable and unfavourable estimates, and I noted 100 favourable
and 37 unfavourable. But though the preponderance fairly repre-
sents opinion among you, the classification is extremely rough. The
qualification recurs quite constantly, " good as far it goes," and the
favourable descriptions are often therefore intended as relatively
favourable, relatively that is to the conditions of compromise and
limitation under which the teaching is given. I should like to put
to the front a remark by the vicar of a parish of pronounced dogmatic
tone, who says that the teaching " is of great value, and helps
Christian conviction in the mass of the people." If any one thinks
that this is delusive, I would quote another highly competent clerical
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 35
witness, whom I lately heard describe the gist of the Christian teach-
ing given by the Board Schools in his parish in the words of the Church
Catechism comment on the Articles of our Belief. It is not easy to
estimate the gain which comes from the fact that to thousands of
children the Bible is taught by teachers themselves Christian, as an
inspired Book, and the Gospels as the record of the Son of God and
' Our Lord.' Other grades of good influence are perhaps represented by
comments such as, " Lacks definiteness, but makes for godliness," or
" Scripture histories with moral attached are kno-svTi wonderfully well."
Reverence of tone is specially mentioned by some. Others, speaking
relatively, find the teaching of the Board Schools and Church Schools
in their instances on a par in value. Or once again, if any one
asks whether the subjects are taught with care and efifectiveness in
a workmanlike way — leaving questions as to the effects to come
later — he may certainly receive a cordially affirmative answer as
regards a large number, it may be the greater part, of the schools. Such
^vt)rk must be at least, in the words of one return, " good scaffold-
ing," but, indeed, the figure says quite too little ; " excellent founda-
tion," which occurs in another report, is much better.
But it must not be denied that there is another side to the picture.
Beside that same general qualification " good as far as it goes," which
means a good deal, there are criticisms which strike beyond the
limit thus implied. I am told for instance by several trusty witnesses,
and it is certainly a widespread impression and observation, that it is
constantly obvious in Sunday School or Confirmation Class which of
the children have had Church School teaching and which only that of
Board Schools ; in some cases because the latter lack knowledge of
Scripture, in others because they know the facts, and possibly the ethical
applications, but no more ; in another case it is said that they have not
even been taught applications. " Lamentably ignorant " is the com-
ment of one vicar whose own schools give some of the very best religious
education in the Diocese. There are several comments to like effect.
In precisely two cases these strong negative remarks are exchanged
for a more positive charge of heterodox or partially negative teaching.
A matter of grave anxiety in some places, which I feel sure the
teachers share, is the lack of effect on the moral tone and bearing of
the children outside. This is spoken of sometimes very strongly.
D 2
36 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
Anyone who has seen the admirable discipline of the children in
school, must be surprised as well as greatly disappointed to find what
their manners and ways often are outside. A thoughtful judge
among yourselves treats this as part of the great modern mistake, or
at least misfortune, of dealing with children in large masses. It
means no doubt also what we have always known, that the school
cannot replace the home ; and for many of these children home is not
home in any sense, material or other. But it would certainly appear
that the lack of a certain tone which a Church School gains from
its allegiance to a definite faith and to a definite religious order
and authority adds something to the difficulty of those who try to
mould and refine character in children of the Board Schools.
I shall not attempt to summarise this account, which I have
tried in the main to keep close to the facts of the returns, but shall
leave it to speak for itself I hope that it may bear upon its face the
desire to be truthful and fair.
There are more points than one in reference to the finance of the
Church which give ground for great anxiety. The fall of Tithe to
two-thirds of what its value was some years ago has meant a loss to
the Church and to many of her ministers which has been little
understood and still less repaired by the laity. This loss, together
with the heavy burdens which lie on tithe from the legal accident of
its being treated as land, produced a condition of things so hard as
to be in places intolerable. The Tithe Rating Act of 1899 has ap-
plied temporary relief. We were disposed to complain of the delay in
dealing with the matter. But the difficulties of any remedy were
so real that I rather take the fact of its passing when it did in
the face of them as a sign how urgent the grievance was, and how
sincerely the authors of the Bill desired to respond to the claims of
need and of justice in. the matter. The matter still awaits a per-
manent solution.
But there is another cause of decreased or vanishing stipends,
which has received much less notice, and in this Diocese, at least, has
had widespread effects. I refer to Pew Rents. To support a Church
hy Pew Rents means in many districts to follow the line of least
resistance. It pleases a number of the people whose voices are most
heard and heeded, it organises and consolidates support of the Church
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 37
and attendance at some of its services, and it yields at first hand-
some and easy returns.
But when employed in suburbs which down-grade socially as the
town presses outward, the system has meant a bequest of starvation
benefices to the future. The people who can rent pews move away,
and are not succeeded, and the stipend falls to little or nothing. The
well-paid incumbent who had no poor is succeeded by the incumbent
^vith a pittance who has no rich. This is the experience of our past.
Unhappily, we are preparing the same sorrows in fresh places for our
successors. I do implore the clergy and laity of our suburban
places where there is still some, if not great, wealth, to look this
matter in the face : to make some provision against an inevitable
future, albeit they and theirs will not see it, but only poorer and
needier men. I would ask in some places for a small first charge on
the Pew-rents for Endowment, in others for a special Endowment Fund
to which Incumbent and people might subscribe : this is the fairer
arrangement. Quite a small sum set aside annually at compound
interest would make an invaluable nest-egg or nucleus : and if the
Endowment Fund be kept before the people in the Parish accounts it
would probably attract other gifts and legacies. Two agencies in the
Diocese, the Diocesan Society and the Queen Victoria Sustentation
Fund, are willing to make grants for this purpose to meet local con-
tributions of a certain size : and the combined result will be again
doubled by Queen Anne's Bounty or the Ecclesiastical Commission.
I earnestly ask for the small measure of forethought, sacrifice, and
method required for this disinterested, and therefore all the nobler,
service.
In connection with this urgent problem of our spiritual labourers'
hire, I desire again very earnestly to press upon the Diocese general
and earnest support of the Diocesan Branch of the Queen Victoria
Sustentation Fund. The respectful privacy of its work prevents you
from knowing, but I know, and the keen and zealous body of laymen
who work with the Bishops and Archdeacons in the matter know, with
what timely and welcome help the grants from its present small
resources have eased galling pressures and breaking strains. The
money is admirably spent, and I implore its increase.
PART II.
It cannot be wrong that, assembled in God's sight to consider
our ways, the ways of our corporate and personal life, we should go
back for a moment to the very beginning, and thence look forward to
the end ; and, in the light of those ultimate things, realise the
essential character of our Christian responsibility.
We find ourselves in the midst of a great system of things of in-
conceivable magnitude, intricacy, and wonder, which we call Creation.
It is intensely mysterious to us as to its How, and Why, and Whence
and Whither. We are baffled in every attempt to take it in. But,
at any rate, we know it for a system, a fabric, not a mere heap or mass.
That is a truth which has become immensely more familiar and
luminous to us of these latter days by the scientific revelation of the
order, consistency, and intelligibleness of nature, and in particular by
the light which physics and spectrum analysis have thrown upon the
kinship between the most different parts of nature. It is a system :
but it is, further, a system in movement ; there is in it, or in the part
of it with which we are most concerned, a progress. See what geology,
and much more the sciences of life, have shown us here. But we may
fairly say that they have only reaffirmed with new evidence, and over
new areas, the working of a principle with which in its own way
and by its own structure Scripture had made us familiar.
What is this progress ? It may be only one chapter of it that we
of this earth can read, but that chapter would seem to have a typical
meaning. Upon material bases of extraordinary massiveness and
extent, themselves progressively built up by secular processes of
vast duration, there has been shaped, as it were, a platform for the
exhibition and exercise of that which we call Life. Life may not be
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 39
a product of matter, but its first beginnings are divided by an almost
vanishing line from the more intricate inanimate processes. Anyhow,
life gives to matter enormous new possibilities ; it carries matter up
into new regions. I need not weary you by tracing life's course, long,
intricate, and beautiful as it has been. For this is plain that,
within our knowledge at least, life culminates in man. The in-
animate and the animate world may alike recognise themselves in
man. To say that he is the flower or spokesman or high priest of
the life in them, is only to say, with more or less rhetoric, what is con-
tained in the fact that the movement which has gone through them has
issued in human life. All the best of them is carried out into it, but
more is added. With a repetition of the same puzzle as before in the
case of life and matter, we cannot tell whether consciousness is a pro-
duct of life, and only know that, again, its first beginnings are separated
by an almost vanishing line from the play of unconscious instincts.
But consciousness takes rank of its own, and as it grows it alters
everything. In the great regions which we know as intellectual,
moral, and emotional, it develops things wholly new upon the earth's
face : earthly and perishable, yet not of the earth ; dependent on the
brain, yet quite plainly not of the brain ^; able to live a separate and
almost spiritual existence, as, in their degree, do the winged words
which descend from one generation to another, or the music which
starts into life again off the dumb page and through fresh executants.
While we wonder at these neAv things, and ask their meaning
and destiny, there is discerned in them this characteristic quality,
that they chafe against their limits : they are insatiable, and
capable of far more than they are allowed to do : knowledge, con-
science, love, are never satisfied, and defy the sufficiency of any
finite satisfaction.
It is at this point, when merely by the thrust of the movement
which we have followed, we are driven out towards an Infinite, that
we seem to catch a glimpse of what may be the meaning of the whole.
May it not be, must it not be, the return of being to the Source from
whence it came, not as the waters which flow from the rivers into
^ It is important to bear in mind that this distinction of mind and matter, and
our superior certitude of the former, are now very generally admitted results of
philosophy. — V., e. g., A. W. Ward, Gifford Lectures, ii., c. 18.
40 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
the sea return in cloud to the hills, but as the highest known
things return to their objects, knowledge to truth, admiration to
beauty, love to love ? Love to love ! Does the secret lie there ?
The word comes to us in seeming answer, "God is love." It is
found to interpret the deepest and most universal experience of
what is most real and of truest worth in man's own life. It explains,
and is explained by, that experience. But, further, as we reflect
what it is that love must desire, viz., its own return, we begin to see
how all the interminable delays, and the prodigious waste and
sacrifice, and the unimaginable labours of creation may be worth
while, and have their meaning, if they issue in a true love from the
creature to the Creator. "All Thy works praise Thee, O God."
Without consciousness and ^vithout love the words are only meta-
phorical. But they embody a truth which we too much neglect : a
truth which lends spiritual character to nature, and throws upon man
an almost unbearable splendour of responsibility, viz., that through
him the whole creation speaks its praise, returns its love, to Him from
Whom it came and Whose it is.
There is a certain simplicity, as well as grandeur, in this view of
the world, and of life as known to us. But we may know Who has
made it simple. It rests on two principal foundations : first, the
clear knowledge of God as living and true, prior to Creation, and
its Lord, and still more of His innermost nature as Love ; and,
secondly, the clear knowledge of man as God's child, made by God,
dear to God, and welcome to Him. This double knowledge is due to
Jesus Christ, and to that revealing of which He is centre and climax.
It is, indeed, more than a gift of knowledge : it is a long step
towards the accomplishment of what it shows to be man's task. To
know our dignity and responsibility is to be lifted up towards its
discharge.
But, of course, this is only part of what we owe to our Lord. He
is not only a Teacher, but a Life-giver. He accomplishes as well as
explains. In following the course of creation upward to Man we
had come to a barrier. Not that man himself has not been the
subject of a long forward movement up from his primitive states to
the advanced stage of his cultivation ; nor that there is any reason
against looking for further progress. But it may be fairly said that
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 4!
there is not in all this progress any real sign of man's being able
' above himself to lift himself/ and to rid himself of those things of
weakness and evil, which, twined in with his inmost life, fatally unfit
him for any real discharge of his task, as bringer of Creation's true
response to Creation's God.^
For this it would seem that created life must somehow be enabled
to make a new start, though still upon its continuous journey. That
new start is what our faith, following the faith of those whose eyes
were opened when and after they companied with Him as He went
in and out among them, recognises in the Lord Jesus. It is a new
work, not upon Manhood, but in and through it. It is Sonship both
revealed and perfected in human experience. It is a perfect Offering,
because of which God can overlook, blot out, forgive, the whole
stained and grievous record of man's fault and failure. It is a fulfil-
ment, and a beginning. It is as it passes into us a new life, which
requires and creates a recognition of the unfitness of the old for
God's purpose ; a recognition so complete that it can be fitly de-
scribed as a death to the old, to ourselves, that we may live unto
Him. At last then Love Eternal has an answer of created love,
God has a Son, and Creation a Priest unto God, and men in Him
may rise to the discharge of their innate Sonship and Priesthood.
Here then is that in the light of which all the meaning of our
life and work is to be read. It is a redemption and recovery, regard-
ing man upon the side of his fall and its consequences. It is a
fulfilment and climax, if we regard the inherent and intended
dignity and destiny of his nature.
But it has this other characteristic, that it is distinctively God's
own work. So it was recognised, so it was taught by Apostles, as
such it had its power ; " God sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin." This again, though it was new, was also a
fulfilment of the past. It brought out into clearness what was all
along discerned by the truest and most faithful men, that in God all
human life, physical, moral and spiritual, lives and moves and has its
^ Man has an instinct of this high calling, but along with that instinct a sense
that he has somehow lapsed or fallen from any possibility of its true discharge. His
fall is as real to him as his rise, though he cannot give an equally historical account
of it.
42 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
Ijeing, as, indeed, in their degree have the whole animate and
inanimate worlds. It brought this out, I say, into clearness, even
while giving to it a wholly new meaning by the Personal presence of
the Divine Son in human flesh. The Gift of the Holy Spirit, who had
moved at first over the formless earth, who spake by the prophets,
who was dimly discerned by Homer when he turned blind eyes
to the goddess for inspiration of his Iliad, and had imparted to
Bezaleel and every wise-hearted man their various powers, but who
was now given as a new Gift in personal in- dwelling as " the Spirit
•of Jesus," given to Himself without measure, and then promised,
sent, and shared by Him like the precious ointment upon the head
which went down to the skirts — this Gift is the uniting link
between the personal Sonship of the Only Son, and the new
created sonship of those who are sons in Him, as it is also the Link
between the natural life of men before Christ, with its lower inspira-
tions and graces, and the supernatural life (as we speak) to which
they are called in Him.
Thus in Him and from Him does the very life and power of God
work to effectuate in men what was in Him as First-fruits, Captain,
Source.
I have ventured upon this summary in my own words of the work of
<j[od in Nature and Man Avith the trust that each one who tries humbly
and reverently to state his own apprehension of that great Mystery
may bring something to its interpretation and expression which is not
exactly what another's would be. But, also, I have done it, because I
want the influence of all this to be upon us in looking at the
practical problems of our appointed task in the service of the Lord.
That with which we are entrusted is a share in that great action,
at once redemptive and creative, by which man is brought in Christ
to that true character for which he was destined, and in which God's
whole creative energy finds, in part, at least, the result of the travail
of His soul and is satisfied.
This it is which points to the height, and depth, and breadth of the
Church's commission, that is, of the task committed to Christ's people
collectively, and to each in his real though infinitesimal degree.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 43
A.
I. My purpose in this Charge is to dwell upon the position,
responsibilities, and dangers of the Church in the light of this com-
mission. I shall, however, have your united approval if I put first
an inference of a spiritual nature affecting the whole character of
Christian work and Christian worship. In view of what we have
had before us, the central and determining element of both, if it be
not rather their very tissue or life's breath, is that which is expressed
by the word oblation or offering.
Think first of work. The Christian heart is, we have seen, the
renewed heart of creaturely and filial love towards God ; the Christian
life then is the expression of that love in all the parts of human
energy and action, using all as opportunities of offering. How
simple and obvious is the thought, and yet, we shall all agree, how
little apprehended ! With what refi-eshing and invigorating force
would it run through all the sorts and parts of life !
Life is not a matter, as with the Jew, of obeying and complying, but
of ofifering ; not an opportunity, as with the Greek, of developing our-
selves or achieving, except as we thereby have a better offering to make.
Speak to the young, those, for instance, whom you would bring to
Confirmation, in these terms : ' Life is given to you ; offer it from the
first to God ; come before Him and pledge that offering. He loves
you, and He desires it from you. Pure, temperate, and wholesome
bodies; thoughtful, well-trained, honest minds; reverent, earnest,
faithful spirits — this is the offering He desires. Bring it to Him. To
make that offering you will have to join it to Christ's and mark it
with His cross in self-denial, self-control, unselfishness, self-sacrifice.
But it is the life of strength, and force, and peace. It is the life which
ennobles a man or woman, youth or maiden, giving them self-respect
without conceit, and putting a value on all they do.'
Think of the effect on the rich, if they really feel, and their
children grow up trained to feel, that riches are an opportunity
of offering. What a real light falls on drudgery, and what real
comfort comes to pain and sorrow and poverty, if it can really be
brought home to the heart that by faith, and by dedication renewed
every morning, all work can be offered to God, and done for Him ;
44 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
and that no oflferings are more precious than those which are made
by the patience and gentleness of those who suffer. In that which
we call specially Church work the thought of offering whatever is
done is the purge of the patronising spirit and of egotism.
I commend to you this great Christian truism, that life is offering,
as truth of most fertile and stimulating force. But if it be true of
life and work, it must be as true of worship, and the inner unity of
work and worship thus becomes luminously clear. For worship must
be the expression of the heart, and contain the quintessence of the life.
A life of offering must find voice in a worship of offering ; and the
true worship is that which continually tunes and renews in the heart
that which we have seen to be the true spirit of the life. But let us
turn at this point to one of the pivot points of New Testament
writing, and gain there fresh assurance of the twofold application of
the principle of oblation.
It is no slight thing that the conclusion of the most massive of
inspired arguments, that of S. Paul in Romans i. — xi., takes shape in
the words : " Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable
unto God, your reasonable service or worship " {ttjv XojiKrjv Xarpeiav
vfioov)} How central that word ' present ' is to the Christian life
may be seen by observing that it is used to describe the Presentation
of Christ as a Child in the Temple,^ the presentation by God or by
Christ of His Church to Himself,^ the presentation by God's Minister
of his people to Christ,*^ the presentation by the Christian of his own
parts and faculties unto God and the right.^ In all these cases (say our
latest scholarly commentators) even without the conjunction of
Xarpeva, "the idea of offering, which is one part of sacrifice, is
present." ^
If then, through this idea of oblation, the whole of Christian truth,
and of Christian service as its practical expression, breaks into
worship, it is natural and necessary that in worship, strictly so-called,
oblation should appear as the dominant note, and determining
characteristic.
It does not conflict with this that worship has its well-known
1 Rom. xii. 1. "- Luke ii. 23. ^ Eph. v. 27 ; cp. Col. i. 22, 2 Cor. iv. 14.
* 2 Cor. xi. 3. ^ Rom. loc. ciL, and vi. 13.
* Sanday and Headlam, ad Rom. xii. 1.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 45
kinds and parts — confession, supplication or petition, profession of
faith, thanksgiving and praise. For these are, one and all, connected
with, and contributive to, the one central meaning. Our Service
may be introduced by Confession, because only the clean or cleansed
can offer themselves to the Most Holy : " I will come into Thine
House upon the multitude of Thy mercies." It will include its
Symbol of creed or belief, to remind and proclaim that we do not
approach by our own deserts, but by the virtue of that great Media-
tion and dealing of God therein set forth. There will be petition ;
for does not the life that offers itself depend at every moment upon
supplies physical, moral, spiritual given from above, and given to those
who ask ? " All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given
Thee ; " and the petition will be intercessory both because this need of
ours is the need of all who offer with us, and because it is part of our
offering to plead for those that are far off, or deceived, or impenitent
that by God's grace they too may join in the melody of Oblation. But
Oblation in Christ will be the centre and core of all. It is remark-
able that two of the earliest writers outside the Canon of Scripture
speak of Christian worship by one and the same term as ' offering,' ^
while Irenaeus says that the whole Church 'offers.' Very fitly did the
most solemn part of the service of the Breaking of the Bread acquire the
title of the Anaphora.
But let us take an illustration nearer home. It always seems
to me that we have a priceless expression of all this in the prayer of
Oblation, which (preceded by, and developing, the Lord's Prayer)
follows the Administration in the Holy Communion. Whether that
Oblation is best placed where it now is, or where it was in the book
of 1549, and is in other Liturgies, Scottish and American, is a deeply
interesting but altogether secondary matter ; and I would even say
it is good for some of us to be hindered from attaching too great im-
portance to these details of arrangement. Certainly, as we have it,
its position at the close of the whole action of commemoration and
communion is solemn and emphatic enough.
Freshly bound to the Son of God by new Communion, and
having in Him offered anew the Prayer of sons to Our Father, we
1 Clem. Rom. ad Cor. i. 40, and 44. Justin Martyr Dial. p. 260, c. 41, p. 344,
<;. 117. Iren: IV. 17, 5, 18.
46 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
bring before Him, and present, and plead, that one and only true
answer of man to God which consists in the merits and death of
Jesus Christ. He alone could offer it ; but we can offer nothing at
all unless timidly, and as His members, and because we are pardoned,
we join on to this His Offering, and in our 'sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving,' in our commemorative words and action, we bring it
before the Father.
You know the words in which one of the truest and most balanced
of our theologians has paraphrased this : words of which Mr. Glad-
stone said to me (in substance) that they were the only words of a
hymn which for their exact and direct utterance of what suits the
moment, he could employ congenially in private^devotion at that most
sacred time :
" And now, 0 Father, mindful of the Love
That bought us once for all on Calvary's tree.
And having with us Him that pleads above.
We here present, we here spread forth to Thee,
That only Offering perfect in our eyes.
The one, true, pure, immortal Sacrifice."
I state this in a manner as free as possible from controversial
association. I leave aside quite deliberately the question as to the
exact grammatical and doctrinal meaning of " this our sacrifice of
praise and thanksgiving," whether praise and thanksgiving be the
substance of the Sacrifice, or, as I am disposed to believe, the Sacrifice
is the whole commemorative, oblationary, and worshipful action, of
which the temper and tone is declared by the genitives " of praise
and thanksgiving." I leave aside also the question more provocative,
but, I venture to think, less necessary, whether in what we offer
we are specially to fix our thoughts upon those consecrated Elements
through which are " given and taken " in an ineffable way, the Body
and Blood of the Lord. I would only urge, as I shall urge again, that
these are the matters upon which we may indeed rightly hold opinions ;
but whatever they be, we shall do ill unless we hold them subject to
a deep sense of our inability to sound, and even more to express, the
full meaning of things Divine. Only these two things would I say.
Let us uever lose the attitude of offering anywhere, and least of all,
at the highest point in a Service which is redolent of offering
throughout. But let us be jealous of anything which even seems
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 47
to throw the stress upon what we ourselves do, and so to draw us
down from the thought of being dra^vn up into union "in the
heavenly places " with the One Offering which He Offers continually.
That surely is the true culmination of Worship " in Christ."
But leaving these questions, and confining ourselves to what
has been already said, let us see what follows in the Prayer.
" Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our
souls, and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice
unto Thee." To the Oblation and pleading of Christ's response
to God is joined the oblation of ourselves. The one follows the
other. Only in and under Him can we offer. His offering,
through our participation in it, tunes our lives to its own
note. It would be well, I am sure, if we gave this thought
a very central place in our Prayer Book teaching, especially to
our young communicants before, and repeatedly after, their first
Communion. It will not quarrel mth, it will not in any degree
obliterate or obscure, their sense of what they receive, of the
grace given ; but it will be mightily ennobling to them, because,-
lifting them up from themselves towards God, it will make the
link between thefr worship and their life, and will bring both under
the full inspiration of that responsive Love which, perfect in
Christ alone, passes over into His people in its redeeming and
creative power.
To explain this, and also to show how every part of the Holy
Communion strikes, as I have partly indicated, a note in this same
melody, is, I am sure, one of the best ways in which we can train
devotion, making it at once more fervent and more wholesome.
Certainly, if we believe in the work of the Holy Spirit in the
Church, it would be difficult to say where we are likely to find more
of its effects than in the tone and general shaping of that Liturgy,
which in various forms has been one of the earliest and universal
possessions of the Church ; and which in our Prayer Book form has
had, no doubt, a very large part in producing the devoted affection of
Englishmen for the Book of Common Prayer.
I have ventured to lay stress on this truth of Oblation in Worship
because I believe it to be both true and eirenic. I feel quite sure
that it is this, which by its intrinsic spiritual beauty and practicality,
48 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
has laid large hold of the religious instincts of our own time. It will
be a great gain if up to this point we travel together. We might, I
think, do so if we could determine to look at the matter with fresh
•eyes, and shut out the baffling lights of Roman and Protestant
interpretation and controversy.
May I here say a word of a more or less personal nature, with
which I shall, of course, expect some of you to disagree ? I refer to the
practice used by myself, adopted (though before my time) in our
Cathedral, and now in our Collegiate Church, of taking the Eastward
position at the Holy Communion. The reason why that position
commends itself to us, and is as dear, perhaps, as any of the forms, in
themselves indifferent, can possibly be, is that .expresses to us the act
of offering, offering worship, offering before the Father in solemn
memorial the finished work of the Son, offering unto Him ourselves, our
souls, our bodies ; offering in which the Minister and the holy people,^ or
laity, are all engaged and all active, albeit in parts of it (only parts) he
is their mouthpiece, and has to do what it is part of his special ministry
from God to do, but always in their name, waiting for their ' Amen
to his giving of thanks.' ^ Therefore they face together, he and they,
and symbolically (according to one of the most ancient and beautiful
symbols of the Church) they face God ward towards the East and the
light ; only acting out by so doing what is expressed happily by all
-of us in the orientation of our Churches. You will feel that to those
who have such thoughts the charge of ' turning one's back upon the
people ' sounds like a mere sneer, entirely unfair because entirely mis-
understanding, and that the explanation of " Eastwards " as " Altar-
wards " is to us cramping and unreal. Of course I am aware
that there are graver objections to the position than this, objections
which oppose it as connected with the peculiar cast given in the
Middle Age to the sacrificial character of the Sacrament, and with
the highly-defined and localised doctrine of Christ's presence in that
Sacrament which went with this. No doubt among those who
use the position some would assist its opponents by imposing on it
meanings of this kind. But I believe that I speak not only for
myself, but for the bulk of those who use it, in saying that its broad
meanmg is to insist that the Service is throughout oblationary in the
^ Aoo's (laos). 2 I Qor. xiv. 16.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 49
sense of Scripture and the primitive Church, the great and manifold
Oblation of the whole Church uniting itself by faith and in purpose with
the Oblation of the Lord, and that it seems to us the natural external
expression of the worship which Clement and Justin describe, and
to which the language of Scripture points. I cannot but believe
that if this were more plainly said and better understood there would
be at the least less condemnation and less suspicion. In particular,
we should hardly have a great Society of Churchmen treating the
Eastward position as if it was an unclean thing or a badge of heresy
and (doubtless not without practical wisdom in a narrow sense)
penalising its use by forfeiture of money help.
I have touched on this controversial matter because I believe
peace is not served without touching contentious subjects pacifically.
But I return from this detail to the general position. The ob-
lationaiy character of Christian worship is no theological refinement.
It is of the very essence of the matter. It is in tune with our whole
view of the creative and redemptive scheme : it is the key to the
most genuine union between worship and work : it requires of the
worshipper humility and whole-hearted sacrifice, in order to reward
him by uplifting him in Christ to the God whom he adores. If we
find it in the Eucharist at the centre and climax of our worship, we
shall assuredly find it also in the rest. The daily prayer of the
individual will be not merely his selfish plea for preservation and
blessing, but the offering of his heart and life, character and service
through his Saviour to God. The daily household prayers (about
which you received with such delightful cordiality words that God
moved me to write) will be the consecration to God of the life of the
family or household. The daily prayer of the Church will be the
oblation of its corporate life to Him. Intercessory prayer, public or
private, will not be, what I fear it sometimes is, a laboriously added
appendage to worship ; it will be increasingly felt to be of worship's
essence, which always craves for its own completeness in the full
response of all mankind to God, and can only receive it in proportion
as God's purpose of good is fulfilled in men's lives and hearts, and
earth grows liker to a temple of the Lord.^
^ I would enter here a word of caution as to a tendency to let that noble ~l.
instrument and summary of intercession, the Litany of the Prayer-book, fall into
E
50 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
Try, brethren, even more than you already do, to bring home
to our people these things ; not merely the practice of them, but the
spirit and meaning of them ; nor yet only this, but their relation to
the spirit and meaning of all Christian truth and Christian life.
There is in them a breath of loyalty and chivalry which may kindle
the enthusiasm and quicken the pulses of our Christian life by the
power of a Divine meaning as entirely simple as it is uplifting in
tendency and comprehensive in application.
II. This first application to Worship of our principle that the
response of human love to God is the essence of our Lord's aim
and work, has thus brought us inevitably to the edge of the second
application with which, in this Charge, I desire mainly to occupy
you. The worship of the Church must be united and intercessory,
because the life of restored Manhood is essentially corporate and
organic. I do not think your time should be spent on much proof
that this is so ; that^ Christian life is the life of a Society ; that
this Society is at once the instrument and the inchoate result of
Redemption.
In our own time this conviction has steadily revived and deepened.
In spite of great counter forces of prejudice, both reasonable and un-
reasonable, to which I shall shortly allude, it has constantly gained
ground. Not one force, but many, have contributed to this. Dis-
interested observers, to whom much that belonged to the Oxford Move-
ment was questionable or odious, have acknowledged that its merit was
to revive the sense of corporate Christian life ; into which the more sub-
jective spirituality of the previous revivals, Methodist and Evangelical,
might be gathered up. Side by side with that movement Frederick
Denison Maurice, in his " Kingdom of Christ" was giving, in his
own way, an impulse in the same direction, of which the effects
are still felt. Thus when a generation had passed by, and the
reign of Manchesterism and individualism was over in politics
and economics, it was found that in God's providence this revival
had equipped the Church with the dress in which alone the
disuse, or, to speak more accurately but not very differently, into use at times when
few are present. There is no more organic feature of the Prayer-book system of
devotion. Neglect of it will mean loss of intelligence, and breadth, and heart. To
use it, and teach about it and upon it, is the true course, and will have much
more than formal result.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 51
instincts of a new time, keen for development of the power and
responsibility of the community, could recognise her congeniality
to itself. In theory and in practice we are familiar with the
conception of the Church as an active and living reality. It
must be thirty-three years ago since Newman, reviewing Ecce
Homo, which came to so many with a breath of fresh life from the
unchanging Source, remarked as noteworthy that in so independent
a reconstruction of Christ's plan and work a conspicuous place was
given to the Society which He designed to found. A typically central
teacher of our own. Bishop Lightfoot, taught (and acted out his teach-
ing) that " the Church is an external society, an external brotherhood,
an external kingdom, constituted by a Divine Order. It has its laws,
it has its officers." ^ Practical forces tended the same way. The
growing vitality in the Church's life, the restoration of her Convoca-
tions, the growth of daughter or sister Churches entirely devoid of
poHtical connections, and arising quite simply and naturally on
ancient lines by the influence of the Spirit in them ; the gathering
up of all these through their Bishops in the Lambeth Conferences,
these and many other things were alike signs, results, and stimulants
of a great revival of the Church idea. You and I, my brethren,
are conscious of the influence upon us of the common Church life
in which we together worship and take counsel as one of our
chiefest blessings, one of our truest sources of strength and en-
couragement. It makes us, I hope, more manly and larger hearted,
it keeps us in the fresh air, it tempers our peculiarities, it takes
off our corners, it helps us to understand one another, it asks
sacrifices of us for each other's conscience sake. We look across the
fence and we see other bodies of Christian people, at home and
abroad, between whom and ourselves differences have widened just
because the fatal act of separation has killed the centripetal force.
And it is with a shudder that we think of the possibility of this
happening, as it might happen amongst ourselves, to blight the fair
promise — perhaps in our eyes the fairest thing upon the earth to-day
— which belongs to the growing life of the great Anglican Com-
munion. Look at it which way you will, and think of what you wish
on your party side, so to speak, to accomplish or to prevent. You are
^ Ordination Addresses, p. 35.
S 2
52 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
Evangelicals, and you earnestly desire to prevent the simplicity of
Christ from being adulterated, to keep the sons and daughters of
England from the attraction of the great magnet at Rome ; you are
keenly alive to the evils which come with much attention to form in
religion, and are jealous of the least tendency to encroach upon the
moral independence of the believer ; you wish to see a pure and
Scriptural Churchmanship effective. Or you take, with perhaps
even more daring monopoly, the name of Catholic : you think it
vital for the strength, and wholesomeness, and depth of religion
that the Sacraments and the Ministry should receive increased
recognition: you believe that the worship of the Church took
form in the originals of the great Liturgies under the same guidance
of the Spirit which taught the Church the shaping of her Creed :
you cannot bear that all the power and beauty of the great Church
traditions should be the monopoly of Rome, or that the great Anglo-
Saxondom of the future should live upon nothing fuller than the
Protestantism of reaction. Well, be it so. I say to each of you,
with (if any) only a superficial paradox or inconsistency, that you
will, each of you, get most of what you desire by taking the same
road of loyalty to your own Church. Of course there will be a balance
to be struck. You will have, each of you, to put up with a good
deal : you will not get things as much to your mind as if you went
off by yourselves ; that is the poor privilege of separation. But you
will give widest reach to what you earnestly hold, you will give
strongest check to what you greatly fear. For opinions spread most
which are found not merely in the cut and dried phrases of partisans,
and movements are checked best not by what slaps them in the face,
but by what pulls quietly at their heart strings.
But this is not all : there is better than this. You are perhaps,
as I have assumed, party men ; it may be matter of verbal debate
whether or no we ought to be such ; but you are at any rate more
than party men. You know, in your hearts, I believe, that Christian
truth is not exhausted by your conception of it : you are conscious
as you read your Bibles of some texts which do not fit easily into
your way of thinking ; you see witness, as you look out with kindly
and open eyes upon life, of power in religious ways, which you cannot
altogether approve, to produce reverence, thoroughness, conversion of
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 53
heart and consecration of life ; you are surprised from time to time
to find how Scriptural and Evangelical is your Catholic neighbour's
teaching, how reverently and lovingly your Evangelical friend is
treating his Prayer Book. All which means that out of the inter-
change and interplay there is formed a life greater and better
than any of its parts ; modifying by its power the faults of those
parts, and availing itself of the genuine and various vitality that
is in them. You will discover, too, that contradictions of principle
(so-called in the thin logic of partisans, since " theology has become a
controversial art ") are, at least often and in large measure, various
ways in which various temperaments give effect to the same deep and
sacred desire.^ You all desire to reach upward, to feel and make, real
the pledged presence of God amongst you ; but some of you for this end
will try to close your hearts to sight and sound, to silence all material
distraction, you will crave for bareness of things external in order to
make room for that which is spiritual ; others of you will say, things
material are our helps to God, all come from Him and shall to Him
be offered, let us gather gold and frankincense, let every limb and
action of our body have a part in our reverence, if so be the
solemnity of the great Presence may lay hold upon us. Should
not each have his opportunity, yet each learn something of the
other ? which happens better than in any other way in a com-
prehensive but actively united Church. Has it not happened ?
Recall, in the past, the shocking slovenliness and indecency of Puritan
Table Sacraments, or the intricate and unspiritual mechanism of
the Mediaeval system, as Erasmus and others knew it and the
Preface of the Prayer Book describes it. Have we not gained
something ? Or, in the present, while we hate to take the tone
of complacency because we know our tremendous defects and faults,
can we compare either a Nonconformist Lord's Supper or the
Roman Mass, with its ceremonial and language so remote from the
people that they are obliged practically in all the detail of their
worship to follow a second line of their own : and not feel that in
our own Eucharist, solemn but plain, reverent but intelligible,
^ Cp. J. R. Illingworth, " The Mystical and Sacramental Temperaments," The
Expositor, August, 1889. Series V., No. Ivi.
54 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
there is the type of a service more adequate, more really Christian
than either.
My own conviction is that we should work with a double object,
partly towards a certain uniformity, a type to which many of various
sorts could conform without serious distress, and also, so far as variety
is necessary, should remember each other while we satisfy ourselves.
Is it not one of the happiest features of our case that in the last
fifty years there has been so much approximation to this condition ?
and one of the gravest, that this great gain should have been im-
perilled by some who in the name of more despise much ?
Of this I am perfectly certain, that this is the way in which we
should do most to bring the English race, so rich in variety, and yet
so homogeneous in quality, so genially impatient of rigidity, yet so
reservedly suspicious of demonstrativeness and peculiarity, to a
happy allegiance to the Church of Christ.
I could not touch the thought of the Church of Christ, and of
its primary and natural representative within these realms, without
being led further than I meant. It moves me too much. Its
possibilities are so marvellous, the thought of danger to it — not I
mean to its outward and established position, but to itself — is so
terrible. But because I love it, I am jealous for it, sensitive to
its faults and apprehensive of its dangers.
Why, let us ask, is the conception of the Church as a spiritual
society so often disliked and misunderstood ? A Church that does
its duty, it may be answered, can never be popular if it deliver its
moral message, and its message of eternal truth ; it will offend men's
dislike for any submission of their passions or their self-will. Can
we with complacency put down all the dislike of the Church, in idea
and fact, to this cause ? Is she indeed so altogether and austerely
uncompromising in her pressure on the consciences and minds of men ?
Or is there some fault on her side which at least gives opportunity
and excuse to dislike of her ? Language often gives valuable hints,
and the syllable " ism " is a danger signal. Ecclesiasticism is a word
which we of the Ecclesia should carefully consider. The book of
history, we may be sure, has not been written for nothing. Some of
it is inspired, and by the help of this we learn to read the rest. Is it
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 55
possible to turn the leaves of that book before Christ or after Him, and
not see what great perils attend a thing so high entrusted to hands like
ours ? I would push this even further. If the Bible is, as we realise
increasingly, the Book of the Church, of the chosen people, the
people of the covenant, the holy nation, the royal priesthood, the
kingdom set up, the holy city ; if we see the emergence and growth
of this through long stages of Divine training and through the
discipline of manifold vicissitudes, in the training by Christ of the
little flock, in the work of the Spirit building upon the foundation
and rock of Christ ; then surely we cannot be blind to the parallel
fact that the Bible is full of warnings against Ecclesiasticism. Coarser
dangers of« idolatr}^ gi'ossness or cruelty give place to this, or
screen themselves behind it. The prophets whose faith centres
in the high calling of Israel have, while they build that faith
with one hand, to use the sword in the other continually against
its caricature in a vulgar, complacent, immoral reliance upon a
charter of God's favour, supposed irrevocable and unconditional.
They attack spiritual professionalism in the priests and in
their own order. They denounce false reliance upon an order
of worship sometimes elaborate and punctilious, sometimes, as in
Malachi's time, slack and perfunctory. Church and State in one in
Jeremiah's time must actually come down, if the spiritual reality at
its heart is to be liberated. We pass to the Gospels ; and again,
but for familiarity, we should be astounded to find that in a real
sense, h cUriadisnu c'est Vennemi. In the awful drama of the Gospels,
the villain of the piece, at least upon the visible stage, is still Ecclesi-
asticism cankered and fossilised, "with its sweetness gone sour, stiff
with prejudice, pride and self-complacency. The results of four
hundred years, which should have been the richly fruitful autumn of
Israel's age, are (of course with exceptions) gathered up into this
terrible phenomenon, the temper of Pharisaism. Entire though
thinly veiled self-confidence, entire contempt for those beneath or
without, elaborate subtleties of technical knowledge and practice
amidst which the simple splendours of justice, mercy and truth
were obscured or choked, and the great promises of God were
parodied — these were some of the features of that system, or temper,
or character, which has been surely set where it is for a most significant
56 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
warning to after times. As the typical danger of organised religion,
and of a state of Divine grace or favour, it could not fail to rise again
in Christian forms. When the sons of Zebedee and their Mother
came to Jesus for high places in the kingdom, or asked Him for
summary treatment of its enemies, the old leaven was beginning to
work. The first controversies of the early Church which bear the
name of Judaism witness to the attempt of the old spirit to capture
the new life. The parties at Corinth, the self-righteous wisdom of
those who could despise an Apostle, and among whom there was
party feeling, jealousy, and strife, the need of St. Paul's discourse
on charity addressed to men of spiritual gifts, the example of self-
satisfied Laodicea, are sufficiently significant warnings of what the
future would bring forth and have to face. Then follows Ecclesiastical
History. No need, I had almost said, to dwell upon that. Yet in
fact how great need! We glory in its record of enduring and
transmitted faith, of conquests over physical and moral evil won
without war by the weapons of peace, of knowledge stimulated and
directed, of enemies transformed into champions and servants, of
accumulating witness from devoted lives and holy deaths. But do
we sufficiently realise the other side of the case, the side so vividly
seen by enemies or critical observers, and the part, which is played
in it by Ecclesiasticism ? The evils of the human gloss raised to
the level of the divine truth ; of the sword of force untimely and
unduly used ; of the corporate Church interests idolised and followed
at the expense of morality ; of privilege turned into pride ; of religion
methodised into a formal transaction of act or phrase between God
and man — these are only parts of what I gather up within the
single word. They have been blended or disjoined in many various
ways. They have gone with moral laxity, and with moral rigorism.
They have not been confined to any one system of belief Geneva
under Calvin, New England in the interval between its foundation
and the modern period, Scotch Calvinism and Sabbatarianism, had
^ each their strong leaven of Ecclesiasticism. But in the great fabric
of the mediaeval Church, especially in later days, Ecclesiasticism had
taken colossal form, and obtained all embracing range and vogue.
A Church of great wealth and secular power, with a very sharp*
distinction between priests and people, and an excessive stress on
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 57
the powers of the former, with a luxuriant development of the
mechanical and ceremonial sides of religious life, possessed
of almost a monopoly of men's allegiance, and with the world's
thought and intellect harnessed to the work of interpreting
and illustrating her teaching, was a Church which offered to
the evil of Ecclesiasticisra a terribly congenial soil. Read a
little of Erasmus ; read (to go a little further back) M. Sabatier's
account of the Church at the time of the Franciscan movement — and
you will get glimpses of what we all acknowledge, but few of us realise.
If we read history, as we have been much and rightly enjoined to do
of late, in order to grasp the Church's continuity and to get larger
thoughts of her life, the lesson of this period is one that cannot be
overlooked, and of which it is difficult to exaggerate the gravity. To
go forward in Church revival without having the warnings of that time
before our minds seems to me to be criminal blindness, hardly less blind
than it is so entirely to forget the great maxims, " Corruptio optimi
pessima," and "Abusus non tollit usum," as to undervalue Church,
Sacraments, Priesthood, because they have been each and all the
subjects and centres of so great abuses. We cannot forget that in
spite of Pharisaism, and the warnings which He drew from it, in spite
of inevitable dangers on which the sequel is the commentary, the
Lord did appoint in His Church a Ministry, did assign to a man
and to men the power of the Keys, did commit a power of
binding and loosing to His Church. But whatever we do, the
mark of that time is left indelibly on the moral sense of men. The
Ecclesiasticism of that time gave a profound shock to conscience,
and awoke a deep antipathy. Churchmen of a later time have
need of patience in dealing with suspicions and prejudices which
have their roots so deep in history, and can quote so much in their
justification.
I desire earnestly to put before you as the specific definition of our
task in the Church in our day, that we have to build up the life
and fabric and ideal of the Church, to contend for it as the Divine
instrument of man's redemption, while yet we watch vigilantly
and diligently against those tendencies of Ecclesiasticism of which
history shows the power, and finds the source in deep-seated tendencies
of human nature. We have to prove to men, made jealous and sus-
58 THE VOCATION AND DANGEES OF THE CHURCH
picious by the past, that there can be authority without harm to free-
dom, sacraments and priesthood not for the hindrance but for the
help of individual strength and freedom, and a life of the body, in
which the lives of all the members are not suppressed or dwarfed, but
gain by co-ordination in dignity and power.
I call this our distinctive task, to be manfully, hopefully, patiently
faced. The strong belief that it is so is to me a ground of hope
that God will bring this Church through her troubles and save her
from dangers of disruption, for the sake of this high mission which
He has given to her.
But because I believe this, I shall ask leave to dwell carefully
and at some little length upon some of the dangers of Ecclesiasticism,
venturing, as I do so, to hope that you will attach more weight to
any truth in what I am led to say, because you know that I do not
undervalue the Church.
/. As to Churchmanship, or the spirit of loyal zeal for the Church.
The spirit of the family, the patriotism of the nation, the esprit de
corps of the society or brotherhood, are in Churchmanship claimed
for a higher, larger, and more ennobling loyalty. The loss to this
from the divisions of the Church, from the consciousness of her
enormous faults, from those suspicions to which I have referred, is a
loss of most baneful and depressing effect. We must try with God's
help to develop and increase it in ourselves by sympathy, prayer,
self-sacrifice and service, by the effort not to " look every man,
on his own things but every man also on the things of others," ^ by
putting away parochialism, and by zeal for the Church's missionary
work. Without it our own spiritual life is egotistical and out of
gear. But how easily it degenerates, and how close to hand are its
caricatures ! If family feeling easily becomes family pride, and
patriotism takes selfish and sordid forms, so assuredly it is in the
household and nation of God. We need constantly to look through
our Churchmanship to its reasons : to rekindle it at its source, in
the belief in the Purpose and Love of God at work through the
Church. For the institution in which the life of the Spirit, ac-
cording to God's method, finds primary embodiment, and which
therefore ought to be at every point, and at every moment
^1 PhU, ii, 4,
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 59
thoroughly, delicately, sensitively spiritual according to the mind
of Christ, becomes too readily the " concern," which we have to push
and may be to patronise, — whose "interests" in a degenerating
sense we defend.
The Church system at the Universities, under which, as I re-
member, you had clerical fellows who were credited with never
having so much as conducted the service of Morning or Evening
Prayer; and, as an eminent Lay Churchman once told me in his
time (about 1830), there was one Communicant among the com-
moners of one of the largest Colleges — is an instance in the past.
The Church school in the parish for which we fight to-day, in
places (I am most glad to find how extremely rare they are in the
Diocese) where the pastor hardly enters the School, and where the
religious teaching is not a living and loving thing such as to lay
hold of Christ's little ones, and to lay foundations for lifelong
loyalty of the child to the Church, is an instance in the present.
While we face, without a moment's blenching, the common jeer
about "cramming little minds with dogma," are we sufficiently
mindful, first for ourselves and then for the children, that there is
a constant danger in creed or sacrament or any other visible thing,
of the means becoming the end, of substituting the thing which
it is possible comfortably to " attain," for that harder thing which
requires of us continually to " aspire " ? ^
II. Another danger is of a subtler kind, but I cannot lay too much
stress on its reality and its extent. It is the danger in a Church
of knowing and pronouncing too much. The Church has a certain
authority to teach. It is indeed one primary function of her life.
The union among her members, vital as it is, is one in which mental
conviction has its part, a leading part : the Church's life — the living
Church — is both witness and guardian of those convictions and truths,
that knowledge, in virtue of which she is One. Then comes, legiti-
mately and naturally, reference to those places and persons who may be
thought to express most authentically the Church's mind. We have
a remarkable instance of this in Irenseus's reference to the several
great Apostolic Sees,^ or again the subsequent expedient of bringing
^ Browning, Paracelsiis : the titles of the Parts.
^ Iren. con. Her. lib. iv, c. 3, 4.
60 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
together representative assemblies of Church rulers. We see all
this working through the Age of the Councils and of the Creed, and
we have reason to be deeply grateful for its result. But even while
we watch it, a change steals over it ; it begins by being the necessary
and even unwilling effort of the Church to testify to what she has
ever held ; it becomes the claim of the Church to define and explain
and systematise. It is at first, to quote the words of a strongly
dogmatic writer, a necessary evil, it becomes a boasted right. It is
not difficult to see what tendencies and weaknesses of human nature
come in to favour a great growth in the dogmatising direction ; the
impatience of what is obscure and uncertain ; the desire to simplify ;
the pride of system and completeness ; and then the governing
instinct which finds clear cut formula and explicit definition the best
instruments for governing the half-taught. So there grows up the
idea that the Church, and her theologians and divines on her behalf,
have practically a complete knowledge of things divine, and can give
an answer of explanation on all questions. How natural this growth
is may perhaps be illustrated from the case of another profession.
It is the legal assumption that there is already an answer in law to
every case which may arise. Lawyers are of course well aware that
in reality this is not so, and that in order to make it work it is con-
stantly necessary to make law under the guise of declaring it. This
may work well in practical matters, but the objections to it in dealing
with the delicate and sacred things which are not ours to make or
limit are obvious enough. It is almost impossible to realise the extent
to which this defining and dogmatising tendency has affected the
whole field of religion, especially in the West. The " Summa " of St.
Thomas is a vast monument of it, and is of course only the typical
example of the action of scholastic Philosophy. But the Reforma-
tion did not put an end to a thing so deeply engrained. It is
represented on Protestant ground by the great Corpus of Lutheran
Theology, and the Institutes of Calvin (one of the most widely
powerful books of the world). The manifold Confessions, Articles,
and Catechisms of the Reformation period are other examples.
Now, it is of great importance to observe the effects of this on
the common conscience and mind of men. There grows up under it
a strong, though perhaps undefined and often silent, feeling of dis-
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 61
like or aloofness. The nature of the subject of religion accounts for
this. It deals with the things of God, and these are instinctively felt
to be deeper than our plummet and beyond our measuring line. It
deals also with the things of man ; and in these is another depth
answering in its infinitesimal way to the depths of God, and in a
degree also resenting the attempts of exact classification and descrip-
tion. It is felt to be a thing of common property, appealing to the
simple and the childlike, and there is resentment (not always, but
often reasonable) against what seems to transform it into some-
thing elaborate, and to make its requirements in faith or conduct
such as can only be complied with by those who have a certain
technical knowledge, and not by " this people who knoweth not the
law." ^
This is a matter, if I am not mistaken, of great practical im-
portance to us. You encounter every day, with distress and
perplexity, the signs of alienation from definite religious belief in
many of the educated and professional classes, and what you always
describe to me as indifference among the masses of the people.
Such widespread conditions of opinion have deep roots and complex
explanations. Nothing is more unscientific than to refer them to
any single cause. But I should say without any hesitation that one
leading cause was to be found in the reaction against the over-claim
of knowledge and definition made by religion in the days when it
not only dominated in its own proper sphere, but drew the other
provinces of knowledge under its rule. These reactions are move-
ments of immense depth, their effects are slow and persistent. It is
immensely significant that so much of the pathos and interest of
modem fiction turns upon the good that springs up in unlikely
and unpromising places, upon the paradoxes of good in untrained
characters, in contrast to what is drilled, and correct, and as it
should be.-
It seems to me, then, that here is another case where we ought
to learn the lessons of History. We ought to be on our guard
1 St. John vii, 49.
^ In the Pope's speech in The Ring and the Booh, Browning does explicitly and
philosophically what is constantly done in slighter, and more indirectly suggestive
ways.
62 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
against repeating mistakes, whose bad results have been written large
on the face of the past ; and we ought not to behave as if those
mistakes and their long-lasting influences had not existed, and did
not exist now.
We have our task as defenders of Doctrine. It is very probable,
nay certain, that under the influence of this same reaction we our-
selves are slack about it. There is too little solid, constructive,
thoughtful theology ; too little careful study of the real materials of
religious knowledge which God gives us in many ways ; too little
sense of the severe demands made upon us by Divine truth ; too
much readiness to take as sufficient what commends itself to our
own phase of thought or feeling. But while we bear this in mind,
and have, I hope, given some efffect to the thought, e.g., by requiring
more definite theological instruction from our candidates for Holy
Orders, we shall do very ill if we forget the difficulty and delicacy
of maintaining the contention for religious doctrine in an anti-
dogmatic and to no small extent reasonably anti-dogmatic age. We
must make it plain to people that the Truth we have to teach is to
ourselves vital, not technical ; that where we give it technicality, we
do so only to give such necessary distinctness as teaching and
conviction alike require, and with a full sense of its danger. We
must realise, and so convey, a true sense of our own great ignorance ;
we must own, or rather we must insist, that there is Christian
Agnosticism as truly as Christian knowledge; and that if the
remembrance of this by Christians had always been present many
mistakes of presumption would have been avoided, and half the
power of an anti-Christian Agnosticism destroyed in advance.
Surely we may so speak all the more confidently, because this
reserved and modest temper is what we have reverenced in some of
the best teachers of our time, in writers like the Bishop of Durham,
and Dean Church, and Canon Gore. But this is very far from being
the tone of much that we see and hear. Reaction begets its own
opposite, and creates in some the appetite for the very thing which
it has rejected. The backwaters of an anti-dogmatic time are apt,
unfortunately, to show the dogmatic quality in a specially per-
emptory form. I feel very sure that this is one of our dangers in
the present day. We over-define : we hark back upon the positive
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 63
affirmations and equally positive denials of mediaeval and Reforma-
tion times, when our real wisdom as well safety would be to recognise
that to a large extent these controversies were blind alleys, and that
the combatants in them were often (as has been said by a Russian
theologian, in a criticism of Western Church history) committing
precisely the same mistake of over-definition, with only the difference
of the ^lus or minus sign according as they definitely asserted or
definitely denied what true reverence should have left alone. The
matter of our present controversies is so beset with contention, and
men's tenderest and deepest feelings, as well as their keenest and
most wakeful prejudices, are so much engaged in them, that one
hardly dares to speak for fear of worsening things by fresh offence.
But it is impossible to withhold the witness of my own belief
that much of the strain has been caused by the neglect, more or
less complete, of some of these teachings and warnings of history.
To take what is indeed the chief instance — that of the Holy
Sacrament of Unity through the Lord's Presence, become by our
controversies the very battlefield of contention. Very many, I
think, would agree, or might be brought to agree (even while
largely differing in the assignment of blame), that after the protest
against what had been done with the Sacrament and taught about
it in the pre-Reformation Church, the treatment of it in the
times that followed became most unworthy both in act and thought.
Rare and slovenly administration ; an estimate of its position fairly /
expressed by small tjrpe in many Prayer Books as though it were an 1
occasional Service ; an entire absence of effort to associate dignity or
beauty with it ; a doctrinal emphasis on the attitude and advantages
of the communicant to the comparative exclusion either of the high
corporate character of the Sacrament as the Church's great act and
offering of Faith, Fellowship, and Worship, or of the mystery
of Divine presence, at work in it, or of its profound theological
importance as the chief instrument of the Spirit for the extension
and application of the Incarnation. These things were signs of
a time which called clamorously for a great restoration ; and such
restoration, as the name implies, would bring back some of what
had been too rudely cast away. But was it needful to fling
again into the old mistakes, leading on to the same excesses, and
i
64 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
SO by the same weary, inevitable round, to the old violences of
protest ? Surely there must be something better for the present
time to do in regard to the Eucharist than to reopen, and continually
reiterate, with increasing asperity and decreasing reality, the battle
cries of sixteenth century controversy. But is not that the inevitable
result of going back to the old methods of defining and analysing, of
affirming human explanations with the same confidence as Divine
truth, of pushing into prominence these aspects of the Sacrament,
upon which it is most easy for the less spiritual parts of our religious
nature to fasten ? History seems to me to have raised the placard
of " Dangerous " over the controversies as to the exact nature of the
Presence of our Lord, and of His Body and Blood in the Sacra-
ment.
We are shocked as we read on the scroll in one of the memorials
in St. Saviour's of those who suffered for conscience sake in Reform-
ation days, the words: "Your Sacrament of the Mass is no Sacrament
at all, neither is Christ in any wise present in it."
But would such words have ever been spoken by a devout
Christian but for the Sacramental materialisms and misuses which
had gone before ?
Our duty and wisdom now is to give the Sacrament (as, thank
God, it has almost everywhere been given among us in more or less
degree) more constant and reverent use ; to attach to it some outward
dignity, to maintain the reality and certainty of the Divine Gift, as
something independent of the receiver's emotions, realised but not
created by that faith and preparedness through which alone it can be
profitably received ; to dwell upon the certainty of the living and
present operation of the Saviour by the Holy Spirit in this most sacred
and heavenly Thing, and of our access therein to the Father through
Him, — and there to stop. This would leave considerable latitude
for reasonable and even wholesome varieties of use and feeling,
some more demonstrative and ornate, some simpler and more re-
served. But it will not emphasise, as some of our ceremonial and
non-ceremonial seems to do, the least certain and most controversial
parts of our belief I am right, I think, in saying that this is not
confined to one side, that side to which I have chiefly pointed. The
administration of the Sacrament which leaves a trail of crumbs along
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 65
the rail or the floor of the Chancel, or the habit of leaving Cup and
Paten uncleansed, so that parts of the consecrated elements remain,
seem to differ as much, and with as obvious a controversial emphasis,
from the simple reverence due to that which has been consecrated
to convey to faithful receivers the Body and Blood of Christ, as
do on the other side ceremonial observances studiously directed
towards the consecrated Elements; and certainly they offend the
feelings and instincts of brethren quite equally.
Would there not be real loyalty to our Church in following the
example of those who revised Article XXVIIL, when they struck out
the words, " a faithful man ought not to believe the real and bodily
presence (as they term it) of Christ's Body and Blood" — words
which had given the controversial " No " to the controversial " Aye "
of the Mediaevalists — and substituted the simple positive assertion.
The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten only after an heavenly
and spiritual manner ?
Would it not be possible to follow the Prayer Book in spirit and
letter by the careful use of ordinary but fine bread, leavened or un-
leavened, in such condition as not to crumble, and such as that each
communicant's portion shall be broken or divided from the one
bread ? to see that the vessels are simply but thoroughly cleansed in
the Church, or at the Credence Table if desired, or by the Officiant
himself immediately on his return to the Vestry, with quietness and
reverence ? Such an order, like the simple Prayer Book rule of
covering what remaineth with a fair linen cloth, would express with
reverence the truth that we know, without thrusting forward those
things which after all we only surmise.
Let our ceremonial, be it less or more, be that of men who know
that they have amongst them a most Holy Thing — nay. One standing
among them whom they know not — but who have learnt by ex-
perience (what humility and reverence might suffice to teach) that
nothing is gained, and much lost, by the human pryings of how, and
when, and where into the detail of the Mystery. So shall we be at
once kinder to one another, and more as those who veil their face
before the awful Presence of God.
It may seem presumptuous thus to speak, to put aside so much
which it has seemed to so many good men vital to affirm or deny.
F
66 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
Yet I can, I think, claim a good deal of evidence that this is the true
course. What has been the case of those controversies which filled
volumes, and occupied Synods, between Arminian and Calvinist,
between the combatants of Freewill and those of Predestination ?
Have we not quietly laid them aside, clear from experience as to
that which perhaps might have been known otherwise, that that
way no progress lies for our limited faculties ? I do not speak dis-
respectfully, in this case or the former, of those controversies : I do
not say that they taught nothing, I think that they taught much.
They emphasised the value of each element in the complex facts,
the value of man's real responsibility, the value of God's indispensable
grace. They showed the error which came of giving full logical
result to either of these, to the neglect of the others. They gave
us confidence that when we conclude to hold by both, in spite of
being unable to explain their compatibility, we are not yielding to
laziness or timidity, but really following the lead of truth.
But we should think it an enormous waste of spiritual power to
re-open them now.
Something of the same kind is true of the great matter of the
inspiration of Holy Scripture. We believe in it, I hope, as our
fathers did ; but we are far less disposed to theorise about it, and
experience has taught suspicion of confident affirmations as to its
precise nature and extent.
But indeed, if I mistake not, it belongs to our whole modern
training to realise that " fact," natural or spiritual, is greater than
explanations of fact ; and that above all Life — in the living things of
Divine dealing and human character — is deeper, richer, and fuller
than our poor, and often belittling, attempts to analyse or explain it.
I could apply much of what I have said about the Sacrament
to that other topic of our unhappy divisions, I mean the Ministry.
There can be no doubt that the Prayer Book doctrine of the
Ministry is a high doctrine ; no doubt that men who have passed from
other Christian bodies into the Ministry of the Church through
the Ordinal have again and again testified to the difference in
practical effect between the conceptions of Ministry which they left and
those to which they came. But here too there was unquestionably
much to be revived. In our fathers' time men were admitted to Holy
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 67
Orders with a lack of preparation, and a corresponding lack of con-
ception of the ministerial Office and character, which is to us almost
incredible. This was one of the defects in the Church which
wounded the Methodist and afterwards the Evangelical conscience.
It has been supplied in no small degree by recurrence to the great
tradition of consecrated and disciplined Ministry, which is part of
the inheritance of the Church Catholic. Yet here too it is unfaithful
and unhistorical to forget that the conception of Priesthood in the
form in which the Mediaeval Church developed, and the Roman
Church retains it, has in it exaggeration for us to avoid, as well as
spiritual depth for us to appropriate and maintain. Its exaggerated
claims of authority and of immunities, its clericalism, its dispropor-
tionate stress on certain aspects of the Ministerial Office, provoked
before and through and after the Reformation a deep-seated
antipathy and prejudice in the English mind. Any assertion of
Priesthood in the England of to-day has the full brunt of all that
prejudice to bear. Is it wise then, it may be asked, on the part of
some among us, to give the impression that there is nothing to be
done but to get as near the Roman conception of Priesthood as
possible, with the rather significant exception of celibacy ? Yes,
it may be answered by some; it must be wise if it is right.
Our reply is that, in a very deep sense, it is not right. I need not
dwell on this, because it has been worked out with such admirable
force, and in so truly eirenic a way, by Dr. Moberly.^ But I
should like to point out that one great part of our wisdom is
recurrence to fact. We find a Ministry in fact appointed by
our Lord ; we find it in fact (without going into detail) handed on
as a matter of solemn responsibility. We recognise as a fact
that by the end of the Apostolic age the functions of rule
and transmission of office are taking organised shape in the Epis-
copate. And then, when we come to the nature of the Ministry in
the Christian Church, Ave still follow the guidance of fact, and by it
we are shown that the Ministry has, as a fact, a leadership and
specialised part in that worship towards God which is the worship
of the whole priestly people, exactly as it has a leadership and
^ Ministerial Priesthood, by R. C. Moberly, D.D., Lady Margaret Professor of
Theology. (John Murray. 1898.)
F 2
68 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
specialised part in that testifying witness and pastoral care towards
men which also is the task and privilege of the whole witnessing
and mutually edifying people. Consider these facts earnestly and
adequately, as facts not of accident or of merely human ordering, but
by arrangement guided by the Holy Spirit; add that fact of faith, which
the Church has always believed, that the Grace of the same Spirit
is specially given for each Ministry to which He calls men; and
you have the essentials of a doctrine of Ministry, Pastorate, Priest-
hood, fresh, wholesome, rightly proportioned, and profoundly spiritual.
We should surely be able increasingly to commend this to the con-
science of our nation.
III. But where two terms are correlative, there can be no correct
understanding of one without the other. Such" are the words clerical
and lay. The tendency in Roman Catholic countries abroad to use
the word clericalism as an equivalent for Christian allegiance points
to disorders of thought and fact which come to full expression in the
grotesque but appalling use of " laicise," to describe the process by
which religion is excluded from schools or hospitals. Such words are
portents of warning, whose significance we are bound to read. Where
they are used something or everj^hing is all wrong. Clericalism and
laicism point to faults of two kinds, and all the blame is not to be
cast on clerical shoulders. Perhaps, indeed, we should find that
historically the beginnings and growth of whatever is false in
clericalism, of undue severance between clergy and other people,
of undue clerical assumption, was really due not more to the
natural selfishness and grasping of the Clergy, than to the spread
of laxity in faith and practice among the laity. Then better motives
and worse conspired. An easy and popular sacerdotalism on the
side of the laity willingly left to a professionally religious class the
stricter demands and more irksome tasks of religion; while clergy
and people would alike desire to fence off from the effects of this laxity
those who were obviously and visibly in contact with holy things. We
have the familiar example of this in the shallow compliment paid
to us by those who will not swear or talk ill when a parson is present.
Assuredly then — and this is ground on which many may meet —
in any really sound Christian life or ecclesiastical revival, the standard
of lay life and lay position is an element of vital importance. It
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 69
■would be interesting to trace the witness of this in the part played by
the laity in the best religious times and movements. The Franciscan
and Jesuit movements were both largely movements of lay life, though
taking of course at once highly specialised forms. The Wesleyan
movement had the same character in a more open and democratic form.
The intense grip of religion upon Scotland was due to the fact that
the people made it their own ; and perhaps in part to the large place
allowed to them in the Presbyterian constitution. We acknowledge
a genuine debt in this respect to Nonconformist example. The
times when the Church has shone brightest amongst ourselves
have been times when lay effort was conspicuous. We measure
the vigour of the Church of the post-Restoration time not by its
ecclesiastics, but by such laymen as Robert Nelson and those who
founded S.P.G. and S.P.C.K., and in large numbers banded them-
selves in societies of spiritual life. We find a counterpart of a different
sort closely connected with our own diocese, in the piety of the group
of laymen who lent lustre to the name of Clapham. We felt the force
of the Church revival of the nineteenth century most of all perhaps
because of the sort of laymen upon whom it laid hold, and the depth
of influence which it had upon them, as one great name, that of Mr.
Gladstone, pre-eminently witnessed. One of our intensest anxieties
centres on the question whether their mantle falls and will fall on the
shoulders of others as devoted, if not as distinguished. The splendid
extension of the American and Colonial Churches has brought us,
among other benefits of reinforcement and encouragement, the
evidence of a vigorous lay life building up into the new constructions.
I have told you before what an impression of fresh, genuine, con-
tagious Christian life I received from the great lay Convention of the
St. Andrew's Brotherhood in the city of Buffalo in 1897. Amongst
ourselves we know, by the double experience of possession and lack,
what lay force contributes to the life of a Church — the warmth, the
practicality, the wholesomeness of it.
But how much more all this needs to be drawn out ! The word
" Ecclesiasticism " has its own suggestion for us here. Formed from
" ecclesia " it has come through " ecclesiastic." Certainly the
ecclesiastical dangers find in us ecclesiastics their special victims and
agents. As ex-officio professors and exhorters, we are tempted in a
70 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
special degree to personal Pharisaism ; as having no other profession,
we are more likely than others to get a professional zeal for Church
interests ; as " persona " (or parson) of the Church, in the diocese, or
in the parish, we get a share of the loyalty, attachment, and respect
which belongs to it ; we are flattered about its successes, and abused
about its mistakes; and both these things make us jealous for it,
vnth a jealousy which is in part godly, but in part egotistical.
Our training, though the highest and best, is not always the best-
proportioned and soundest, the most bracing, or the most exact.
There are, I think, few things better for the personal life of the cleric
than that, holding fast to the necessity and blessing of a special
spiritual training and discipline for himself as Minister of Christ, he
should actively, cordially, and constantly recognise the excellences
and virtues of the laity, of common folk, and should ponder carefully
the lessons which they read to himself Reverence untarnished by
familiarity, readiness for the lower place and for unobtrusive service,
a strong sense of right with a wise and charitable reasonableness in
applying it to others — these are some, at least, of the things in which
ecclesiastics may learn of the body of the ecclesia.
Let us then put it before us more and more to summon and
welcome the laity to their part in Church life. The bottom of this
must, it cannot be too strongly remembered, be spiritual. It must
be the man of true faith, pure life, genuine endeavour to follow the
Master, who will help to make the building more solid and the body
more sound. But in spiritual, as in all other parts of human life,
the power of an ideal is a great power ; and even an unimaginative
race like ours can surely feel the noble fitness of the ideal of the
Church ; its patriotism, the highest of conceivable loyalties ; its fellow-
ship, the widest and intensest of bonds ; its esprit de corps, the power
of love which comes into it through the Spirit of Christ from the very
life of God ; an army for vigilance of attack and defence, a crusade
in zeal and energy, a home in its command of the true resources of
peace, refreshment, and strength. Without some sense of this ideal,
life narrows to self-culture or self-salvation, or dwarfs to a morality
of Christian tinge. Yet how little of this sense there is in many of
our people, and we surely are in part to blame. For ought not this
to be much more definitely than it is an aim and effect of our teach-
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 71
ing ? The sense of membership should be more distinctly than it is a
result of our instructions for Confirmation and of our Communicant or
Bible Classes ; membership spiritually understood, not merely an ex-
ternal thing, still less a thing of controversial associations. No thought
comes to us with nobler stimulus than that which tells of membership
" incorporate in the mystical body of Thy Son, which is the blessed
company of all faithful people." The Church, with its obligations
to the brotherhood and to all men, should appear to the young as
the natural sphere and context of those things of service and un-
selfishness, those duties of almsgiving and prayer, which are the true
antidotes of our modern diseases in a selfish and materialist time.
To aim high is, we know, to have more chance of hitting the gold. To
present the Christian life in something like its real proportions and
range of meaning and demand, is largely to increase our chance of
obtaining a real response from the conscience, and making a per-
manent impression on the mind and life.^
But what is enforced in exhortation and teaching must also be
embodied in action and organisation. The standard of faithful lay-
manship will rise with the demands made upon it. We must not be
purists in this matter, or demand in the case of the laity what we do
not get in our own case, the case of the Clergy. The fact that there
are indifferent men, and worse, among our ranks does not affect our
view of the Ministry ; and the case of the laity is parallel. Let it be
one of the things which we put before us, and about which we test
ourselves, to encourage with real cordiality the work of laymen. There
is a strong feeling among many that there is a jealousy among the
Clergy of lay helpers unless working in entire subservience, an unwill-
ingness to trust them with responsibility, and allow them any
freedom of initiative. No doubt there are many cases where some
^ Cf. Gore, Romans, i, 218. " We suffer from an over-close adhesion to the
'matters of fact,' or 'the things which do appear.' We do not think of our
life, ourselves, our Church, according to the divine principle which they embody, or
according to the pattern shown to us in the Mount. Thus we are never uplifted,
enlarged, ennobled, by the \asion of
. . . . ' The gleam,
The light that never was on sea or land.'
We have almost all of us got to learn the practical power of the Christian imagina-
tion, disciplined and spiritually enlightened, to enrich and ennoble actual life," etc.
72 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
such jealousy of encroachment is not without its grounds. The
work of the Church must often give opportunities to the little
ambitions and egotisms of character, especially in men of a little
education, but not much real culture. This is only to say that we
can see their faults ; as they assuredly can also see ours. But my
own experience is, that the laymen who do most in the Church are
those who recognise most fully and respectfully the difference be-
tween lay and clerical functions. It was on the very day that I wrote
this that I came across these words in Sabatier's Life of the great
layman of Assisi:
" One of the most frequent recommendations of Francis bore upon
the respect due to the Clergy : he begged his disciples to show a
marked deference to the priests, and never to meet one without kiss-
ing his hand." Yet Francis in his lay work made his own difficulties
for the Clergy. We must not be too thin-skinned.
It is in the Church as in States : the people who are really to be
feared are the unenfranchised ; those who stand aloof, sullen or exclu-
ded, and recoup themselves by irony and dislike.
It is the veriest commonplace that an increased recognition of the
laity in the organised work of the Church is one of the special pro-
blems of our own time, and, let us add, one of its great opportunities.
There are lions in the path, of course. But it is impossible not to ob-
serve the simple and natural way in which the younger and non-estab-
lished Churches of any Communion have carried out the changes which
give the layman a natural place in the Church's order. I do not know
that there is ground for unfavourable generalisation in any respect as
to the results. The exception would, I think, be the cases, in the
United States of America and elsewhere, where the parochial fran-
chise of the la3rmen is combined with the power of the purse. The
Free Church of Scotland, as well as the Scottish Church of our own
communion, have known how to avoid this system, which makes the
Minister's stipend dependent on his pleasing the pew.
If I touch the question of authority and early precedent in the
matter, it is with the diffidence of one who is no expert.
Very plain, and deeper than any special regulation, is the way in
which the Apostle relies upon the behaviour of the whole community,
the d8e\^0T^9, the TrvevfiariKol, for condemnation of evil, for restora-
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 73
tion of the sinful, for the setting forward of the Gospel, for what
should meet the various needs of the disorderly, the faint-hearted,
the weak, for maintaining the high standard of Christian enthusiasm.
Christian hope, Christian liberality.
It would seem, therefore, clear that if we put along with this what
we believe about a Divinely-ordered Ministry, here is one of the many
cases in which two principles have to be combined, and are combined
where vitality is real and prudence and charity are present. Such
combination is found when in modern Church life a democratic
constitution gives the laity a place in the Church legislature, but
preserves the vote by Orders and the assent of the Bishops ; or again,
where questions of faith or doctrine are excepted from those with
which all may deal.
Coming a little later to the conciliar period, the question
constantly besets me, whether this is not a case in which it is im-
possible precisely to follow a precedent, and you must decide to go
a little beyond it or fall a little behind it. The reason is that the
arrangement which it is sought to imitate was not one of formal
constitution, but of practical working. The laity were present at the
Councils ; they approved and applauded ; they deprecated or urged.
But they were not members of the Council. Make them so by tech-
nical rules defined right, and you will have increased their power
beyond the pattern. But leave them out in your technical and
definite arrangements, and then, since the ancient Council can no
more be reproduced in Ecclesiasticism than the Homeric Boul^ and
Agora in the political world, you will have practically shut out the
laity from a great deal of their ancient influence. My own inclina-
tion would be, as I have implied, to choose the first horn of the
dilemma. This seems to me suited, in a good sense of the words, to
the temper of the times. If the times of the early Church had been
times of democratic constitutions in secular matters, it seems probable
that the substantial influence of the laity upon Councils would have
taken a more organised form. The standard of demand upon indi-
viduals for competency in constitutional action is a much higher one
now, and the influence of this would affect Church life. It is not so
easy to maintain with confidence that in point of attachment and
Christian intelligence the modern layman is superior to his prototype.
74 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
We know indeed, with regard to parts at least of the early period,
how strongly the case can be put the other way. Read for example
the words of one of the most vivid and most accurate of living
Church historians, Dr. William Bright :
" The primitive layman, as such, was supposed to be a weekly
communicant : he was one of ' a flock adhering to its own shepherd,'
as St. Cyprian words it ; he knew exactly where he stood as a
Christian and a Churchman ; his position kept him constantly in
touch with all the Spiritual questions and tasks which concerned the
body to which he belonged, and the officials who repaid his support
by frankest confidence. If he fell into grave sin, he knew that
he was amenable to a discipline which would severely test his repent-
ance. At any moment he might be called upon to give the most
effective of all possible guarantees as to his religious loyalty and
constancy ; and if he failed in this stern trial, he forfeited the
privileges of Church-fellowship." ^
But even here it is possible that there is more to be said on the
other side than at first appears. The analogy of what we call Native
Churches would suggest that in the case of new converts beautiful
signs of faith and goodness do not exclude (how should they ?)
possibilities either of instability, or of character very imperfectly
Christianised. A Missionary Bishop of great experience told me
that observation of these weaknesses in young religious life had
taught him to see more clearly the strong side of traditional or
hereditary religion. So in the early times we can be practically sure
that in those who had been but now drawn out of heathenism and
were still surrounded and influenced by pagan atmosphere and in-
fluence, there would be a good deal of material for the living Church
which would be of very uncertain value.
There is, further, this important point, that we have had expe-
rience which the early Church had not. We have known what it
is for ecclesiasticism and clericalism (for this, rather than sacer-
dotalism, is the really relevant word) to reach a rankness of
growth in which all its possibilities of evil and corruption — that
'worst' 'corruption of the best' — have been realised on an immense
scale, to the detriment of religion and morality alike.
^ Some As2Kcts of Primitive Church Life, p. 96. (Longmans, 1898.)
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 75
I should plead, then, with some confidence for a large and ready-
admission of the laity to a greater share in our Church life.
There are several spheres in which this may take place. There is
the sphere of deliberation : parochial, diocesan, or for the Church at
large. We have our Houses of Laymen, and we look with confidence
to see their importance and influence steadily gain in actual strength
and in recognition, preparing the day when they shall really become a
branch of our Church Legislature. We feel the great help of laymen
in our Diocesan Conference. The Committees of the great Societies
which are, in the phrase of one of my predecessors, ' the diocese in
action,' would be very different without their lay element. In this
connection, I could not pass by without a word the newest of our
organisations, viz., the Association under the Act of 1897 in respect
of the Special Aid grant for our Schools. Here the work has been
predominantly the work of laymen, presided over by laymen of high
position. Sir William Hayward and Sir Charles Elliot, and wholly
the work of Church educationalists. This seems the more worth
noting, because we were told by eminent politicians that the money
was to be given over to clerical bodies.
In our parochial life the counsel of the laity is with us in many
shapes, formal or informal. [I have lately expressed my sense of the
practical value, in working effect, of the ancient office of Church-
wardens, supported, as they frequently are, by Sidemen. Meetings
of District Visitors and of Adult Guilds bring us a contribution of
another sort ; its value will depend largely, I repeat, upon the degree
to which they and we recognise that pastoral care and evangelisa-
tion are the work of all, in their degree, and not of the Clergy
alone. But it has been rightly felt that something more definite
and constitutional was needed, and Parish Councils have been the
result.
We remember the time of well-intentioned proposals to give
such Councils general and legally-recognised existence.^ They have
been rightly laid aside as in a very serious sense, premature. But
this has increased rather than diminished the obligation upon us to
work in that direction, when and as we may. You have supplied
me with statistics as to our o"svn condition in this respect.
1 e.g. Mr. Albert Grey's Church Boards BiU of 1881.
76 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
From these I gather that we have over seventy Parish Councils
with some degree of constitutional form and representative election,
without reckoning about as many cases where the Wardens and
Sidemen collectively are treated as a Vicar's Council.
In one case the Vicar writes that the Council has ' worked splen-
didly for ten years,' in another, that it has been ' most useful, and
turned away many difficulties, ritual, financial, and others.'
In eight cases, Councils formerly existing have been dissolved
" from dissensions," " from friction," " as controversial," or " for want
of business." In two or three, a Council is contemplated. In
I several, the laymen have themselves refused (in one case, repeatedly)
the suggestion of a Council. One of the most respected and popular
Parish Priests in South London Avrites very strongly of its inex-
pediency as likely to create difficulties.
This variety of opinion and practice is what we should expect in
such a matter. I should be very unwise if I made, and you would
be unwise if you accepted, any general suggestion about the matter.
There are many good things which are out of place without fitting
context and adequate material. Perhaps I might put my feeling
best by saying, that if I blamed a Parish, it would not be so much for
not having a Parish Council, as for not being such, in its Clergy and
Laity, as to yield one naturally, and work it effectively. But even
such blame as this, I should be slow to express in word or thought,
in many an individual case. The customary ways are not quickly
changed. New patches may easily hurt old garments. Really
fruitful, constitutional developments must grow and not be forced.
It seems to be an obvious corollary that, speaking generally, the
more modern a parish in quality, the stronger will be the case for a
Parish Council. I should be most disposed to urge it in parishes —
and there are none more interesting — where the Church is set amongst
a large working population, and can know no progress or success
except so far as she wins their loyal service and enthusiasm. No-
thing is so likely to enlist this, and build it into lasting form, as the
feeling among themselves that it is needed and welcomed, and that
the Church is, in a true sense, their own, by the double tie of what
they do for it, as well as by what it does for them. More and
more, that is the direction in which we should set our eyes, and
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 77
happily experience amongst ourselves show that it is a practical
ideal.
The same considerations apply to the constitution of Parish
Councils as to their existence. It cannot be uniform. It had better
not be too definite. The cases where it is well to give it printed
form and regulation, will be those where it is most important to
show that it means business. I am not, I hope, showing myself too
clerically minded, if I agree with what I gather to be the general feeling
among yourselves that the status of the Council should, as a rule and
for the present, be consultative, leaving to the Parish Priest the final
responsibility of action. This must be so in some matters, and had
better be so in all questions of public worship, while in financial
matters the control of the Council may rightly be more positive. But
if this be the arrangement, it increases the obligation upon the
Incumbent to give due weight to their counsel, and to distinguish
equitably between the matters in which, if he consults them, he
ought to follow their counsel, and those in which he should explicitly
seek their advice, and no more.
I should like, before leaving this subject, to draw attention to the
Report of Convocation on Parish Councils,^ which some of you will
read with more interest for the large part in its production taken by
a Bishop in whom this Diocese still claims a special right, the late
Vicar of Lewisham.
Akin to the deliberative sphere is the judicial, and we touch that
most vexed question of the Courts. It has seemed to me that one
element, perhaps the gravest in the difficulty about them, has been that,
as things are, the defence of spiritual rights has seemed to mean the
defence of clerical rights alone. It is freely so charged by opponents of
the Church's liberty, and the word " clerical," with a foreign flavour
about it, recurs constantly in this connection. I was much struck by
the way in which the representatives of the Diocese in its Conference
at Richmond last June seemed to find alleviation, at least, of our
difficulty in the suggestion of a Court Ecclesiastical in which laymen
should have a place.^ Certainly I feel myself, negatively, that there
' Appendix II., infra.
2 The Rev. R. Appleton moved, Mr. G. W. E. Russell seconded, " That this Con-
ference would approve the constitution of a court of final appeal in matters of doctrine
V
78 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
are great drawbacks to clerics as judges; and positively, that we
shall not be using the resources which God has given us if we do not
use the trained clearness, discernment, and impartiality of Christian
lawyers, and the wholesome breadth of the lay mind, in determining
our differences one with another. Should we trench, by so doing, on
the authority of the Episcopate ? The question is one for discussion ;
but I should be strongly disposed to think not. It would be possible
to employ the lay element as assessors, giving great effect, by public-
ation and other securities, to their opinion. But even if they formed
an element in the Court, that Court might be appointed with authority
from the Church ; and behind it and its decisions upon individual cases,
would lie the ultimate right of the Bishops to declare the Church's
doctrine. Our present difficulties about Courts are gravely increased
by the fact that judgments obtain an abnormal importance where
there is no such reserve power of declaration on the part of the
spiritual body through its proper organs.
You will observe that I am speaking of what should be if we had
to arrange for ourselves, apart from the complications of Establishment
and State interference. I think it is important so to treat the
matter, partly because we might so easily and soon reach that state ;
partly because we can only steer our course rightly in the more
complicated case by reference to what we should do in the simpler ;
partly because we shall in this way best make our case intelligible to
opponents and outsiders.^ On the actual question of the moment
and ritual which shall be ecclesiastical, and shall be representative both of the Clergy
and the laity, and shall be approved by the two Convocations and the Houses of Lay-
men." Rochester Diocesan Chronicle, July 1899, p. 513.
^ Our present difficulties, anyhow great, are greater in proportion as our case is
treated by itself, and will be lessened just in proportion as we make it clear that our
contentions in the matter of Courts are only those of all really self-respecting
spiritual societies, and have little or nothing to do with sacerdotal pretensions. No
arrangement can have any permanent success which takes ' established ' conditions
as essential or normal conditions of Church life. In this respect, we may thank the
Dean of Ripon for exhibiting the Erastian view (to use that hardworked word) in its
full development. Never, surely, was there one against which it is more possible to
say " Securus judicat orbis terrarum." The trend is all the other way. Here, as
elsewhere, there is danger of undue discouragement, and of counsels of panic, from
not realising how great has been the quiet gain. The conception of the inherent
authority and rights of the Church stands, as compared fifty, or even twenty years
ago, in an immensely clearer and more recognised position, as also I thankfully believe
does that of her responsibilities.
\
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 79
I wish to say very little. We shall all of us have our opportunities
of thinking and speaking, and I think the less we commit ourselves
by declarations beforehand the better. On the one hand, there are
principles to be defended and drawn out into increasing clearness ; on
the other, there is the reasonable claim for compromise in a matter
where our controversy of to-day is only a phase or stage in a con-
troversy of secular length, in which all parts of the Church have
had to make or endure compromises in greater or less degree.
If we are strong for our own principles we must respect those
of others. If we are keen for rights which we ought to have, whether
established or no, we must be prepared to allow definite recognition
to the rights of the State, under the connection which we call
" Establishment." If, as I have suggested, we do not mean by the
rights of the spirituality, pure clericalism, we shall be more patient
^vith the attachment of others to arrangements which, in however
clumsy and illegitimate a way, bring in the element of lay judgment.
And so perhaps, if passion and temper are excluded, we may
move on both sides towards some arrangement which may be for
both tolerable, even though not ideal.
IV. There is another fault of Ecclesiasticism which I cannot
altogether omit, because it is one which would be oftenest thrown
up against us. It touches our behaviour towards those that are
without. How difiicult a matter this is, is only known to those who
are accustomed to attempt the double task of real loyalty to cherished
conviction, and of genuine and unassuming brotherly kindness towards
those who, although differing, are our brothers, not only in manhood
but in Christ. There is no taunt quite so shallow as that which
calls every insistence on principle intolerant and uncharitable.
It may help us to realise the difficulty if we ask the question,
how would St. Paul, if he were among us to-day, deal with the
Congregationalist or the Wesleyan ? We can see the parts of his
teaching and character which would come into the decision : his
intense love of charity, his skilful dealing with the differences between
men who regard the day or do not regard it, who eat all things or
eat herbs, and again his firm insistence on the common tradition, on
the rule of the Churches, on unbroken unity. But how would these
have combined, and what result would come out in his treatment of
80 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
modern problems ? Perhaps he would tell us that our modem
condition is too much to wrongs altogether for any course to be really
right. Certainly he would detect very readily how much the blame
of our divisions in the past is to be distributed among all concerned,
and would allow us, on the side of the Church, no complacency of
exclusive rightness. These, I think, are the thoughts which should,
and I believe do, underlie, and give tone to, all our dealings with those
from whom we are separated on the right hand and the left. They will
keep us humble, and humble people do not offend whatever they do.
Then as to our actual behaviour, it seems to me that the best help is
to remember that our main duty is to do our own work on what we
believe to be right lines, and to attack others as little as may be.
In the case of moral good and evil we must attack the one just as
vigorously as we cherish the other. But the opposition between
sound and unsound, churchly and unchurchly^is very far from being
an opposition of this absolute kind. Let us ro.aintain what we believe
to be right : let us quietly refuse recognition to what we could not
accept without denying our own principles, and blurring our own
witness. But let us remember that controvers}; is only an incident
of duty, at times but not always necessary, while duty itself lies in
what is positive and constructive, in teaching what we believe to be
true, and building up work on principles which we believe to be
sound. Another principle of some value is that of trying to remember
and realise our ground of agreement with; those from whom
we are divided as well as our ground of differenc^e. We cannot surely
doubt, if we go back to our initial descriptio;n of the Church's work
and position as God's instrument for human recovery, that a share in
that work is done by all those bodies which preach Christ crucified
and love Him in sincerity. It does not folliow that we can treat the
differences between us and them as slight or indifferent. But it does
follow that we can feel about them habitually, as something very
much other than mere opponents. It is one of the most painful
features in life that our smaller differences often bulk in practice so
much larger than our larger agreements.
Speaking practically, I do not think we can, in any but a very few
instances, rightly co-operate with orthodox Nonconformists (Roman
Catholics, of course, decide the question for us) on strictly religious
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 81
ground, nor take action which would appear to sanction or assist
organisations whose raison cVetre is separation from the Church, such
as we believe her to be. But there remain two spheres in which I
think that cordiality and co-operation ought to be, and I am glad to
know often are, actively pursued : the first, the sphere of personal
and social relations ; the second, the sphere of public efforts for
moral and other reforms. It was a great happiness to me, when
Vicar of Leeds, to follow an example set at Wakefield, by my dear
friend Bishop Walsham How, and to unite the ministers of all
religious bodies in signing a strong, but temperate letter against the
evils of betting and gambling, which was then circulated by the
different organisations to their clienUle, and preached upon in the
different pulpits on a given day. I only mention this to show that I
do not speak altogether in the air ; but of course different methods
will suit different cases and times.
May I add how much, and favourably, I have been impressed in
reading your answers by the general tone and character of relations
to Dissenters as there given ? There is, indeed, as the result of
divided and separate organisations (as we feel most intensely in the
Roman Catholic case), an immense practical aloofuess and rift in all
the ordinary associations of working religious- life ; and no doubt
there may be sometimes rather too ready a relish for the practical
wisdom of " We go our way and they theirs." But I am much struck
by the recurring references to cordiality of personal relations, and this,
as much, or nearly as much, on the part of men whose Church views
are strongly opposed to those of Nonconformists, as on that of those who
are nearer to them. There is frequent co-operation in the matters on
the outer fringe of our work, and frequent mention of a completely
even and fair treatment of them in visiting, and so far as they or their
children come within our charitable or educational work. Of direct
collision, and of proselytising, in an unfair sense, against them, I find
very little trace. Only in a very few instances is it] recorded that
overtures from our side for friendly relations have been refused from
theirs. In one region, that of Lambeth, a fraternal gathering of clergy
and ministers for breakfast and discussion has aimed, successfully, I
believe, at a greater intimacy. Whether it is desirable to go further
on occasion and join in a common prayer meeting and the like is, to
G
82 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
some extent, a question of opinion. My own is, that it is generally
undesirable ; it becomes clearly so if it involves any ignoring of the
real and serious differences which divide us and them ; and positively
objectionable in the cases where such joint action is used as a means
of increasing divisions among ourselves, and is pointed against
brethren within the Church's pale.
Personally, I constantly remember wdth gratitude and pleasure
the reception given to me by the Nonconformists of South London
on my entry into the See, and have been very glad to find some
opportunities — all too few owing to the constant pressure of claims —
of social intercourse and co-operation. If the words which I have
here spoken come under the eyes of any Nonconformist, they will, I
trust, receive them from me, personally and in your name, as words
of sincere brotherliness on the part of men whose loyalty to our
Church is too strong and convinced to allow us to ignore division.
I do trust that we may increasingly co-operate with them in works
of temperance, purity, and social justice. With regard to the first
of these, in particular, I should like to think that within the next
few months we might agree to co-operate in some modest, but
practicable, attempt to secure definite reforms, choosing, perhaps, in
the first instance some of those which can claim the authority of both
the Majority and Minority Reports of the recent Commission.
B.
We have now considered together the true dignity of the Church
and the nature of her life ; we have scrutinised frankly those besetting
dangers which, gathered up under the word Ecclesiasticism, are forms
of the temptation to magnify or serve herself, rather than her
Master or His people. And now what of her relation to the world — to
the masses of human life around her ? How is she regarded by them ?
What does she accomplish for them ? " When Jesus saw the multi-
tudes He was moved with compassion toward them, because they were
distressed and scattered as sheep not having a shepherd." ^ That surely
is the motto of the Church in South London.
' S. Matt, ix, 36 (R.V.).
V
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 83
Does she inspire their best thoughts, and interpret to them their
own best aspirations ? Is she a spring of life and hope amongst them ?
Does she prompt and purify their motives ? Is she the nurse of their
progress and their liberty ? Does she make, visibly and actively, for
a better, fairer and more just order of life for them and for their
children ? These are questions — different shapes of one question —
which it is impossible to put without tremendous misgivings, if also
with much thankfulness. Is there not ground for both ? So much is
done : so much, tremendously much, is left undone. Thankful we must
be as we feel how much the Church to-day follows the methods of her
Master.^ " He went about doing good." Ministry to bodily needs took
up a large part of His time. It was the first instinct of His Divine
and Human Love. It was also the first step to arouse faith and hope
and make them feel the touch of God-sent help, and so of God
Himself and His direct visitation. How much the Church is
allowed to do in this way, may be best measured by thinking what
would be the case if what she does were withdrawn. It is work
which touches individual lives, but for that very reason much of it
makes but little show. And the mass of need is so gigantic that it
drinks help like a sponge, and remains hardly altered in shape and bulk.
But — let me say it out with affectionate respect, giving honour where
honour is due, — I know nowhere where the work of Christ's charity is
done with more patient and unflagging zeal than it is in South London
by the clergy of our Church. Amidst masses of need which they can
(in a sense) hardly touch, baffled often by the shifting of population,
by the degrading and cruel conditions of life for many to whom they
minister, feeling by sympathy the weight of the heavy load which
weighs down life around them, often with little visible result to cheer
them, and less still to realise their ideals, themselves strained by over-
work, isolated from companionship, sometimes with the burden and
anxiety of poverty at home, they still work on in their Master's name,
sustained only by the thought of His service, refreshed only by
gleams of gratitude, or the traits of purity and charity which they
can often admire, and sometimes assist, in the lives of the poor.
But even here, before we congratulate ourselves too much, let us
recall, what in other connections people impress upon us so readily^
1 Acts X. 38.
G 2
84 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
that the clergy are not the Church. Is the Church as such doing its
part with these vast populations ? Does it indeed bear them on its
heart ? Is it moved with compassion for them ? That is a question
which I think goes home. I associate with the clergy in this respect
their special helpers, the Deaconesses, Grey Ladies, Sisters, and such
like, the Teachers in the Schools, and that little group of dear true-
hearted Christian folk, who in almost every parish strengthen the
clergy's hands, and give their time and strength without stint in
doing work under the Church for their neighbours ; and high among
these I name in many cases the wives of the clergy, ladies of whom
I will only allow myself to say that by their courage, patience and
charity, they are among the brightest ornaments of English
womanhood.
But when all this is said, it remains true, painfully true, that the
Church as a whole, the general body of average Christians within the
Diocese, is in no sort of way really conscious of its true responsibility
and task of duty to these great needs. It is here that we feel so
painfully the contrc-coup of our religious individualisms, and our
religious sestheticisms, as well as of those plainer things, our
parochialisms and selfishnesses, personal and corporate. Here is one
way in which we feel intensely the lack of that true Churchmanship
which realises life as life in a body, which makes all the members
suffer and rejoice with one another, which binds all the parts together,
which sets over against the selfishness of nature and the world, the
bonded and living fellowship of a unity in the Spirit of God. You,
my reverend brethren, for example, who have to manage our
wealthier suburban parishes, you know the difficulty. It is a diffi-
culty first for yourselves, with your organisations to ' run ' and your
people to look after and perhaps a fair slice of poverty within your
own limits, to think of the places outside where need is heavier, and
resources infinitely more scanty ; and then afurther difficulty, when your
own hearts are touched, to really stir the hearts of your people. They
are so content when their own Church pays its way, and the fittings
and ornaments are all nice and continually receive some little fresh
touch, and the organisations are numerous and solvent. The Bishop
who comes down one day and speaks of " our Diocese," is an idealist
talking over every one's head, or he is pushing his own business.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 85
The preacher who comes as Diocesan Secretary, or as Vicar of some
poor slum parish, and sets out the great needs in the streets of London,
in our sudden-springing suburbs of workmen or clerks, in the popula-
tion which clusters in a great mass round our Dockyard and Garrison
at Chatham, is listened to, if he does it well, with momentary sym-
pathy, as it might be if he was speaking of the needs of the natives
on the Gold Coast or in India. But to get deeper than this, and to
win real recognition for what is after all one elementary result
of real Christian principle, the duty of the richer and more favoured
to the poorer and needier places, is a task so difficult that one
would sometimes despair of it if it were not so obviously a duty to
persevere. It was not one of ourselves, but a member l)f the Stock
Exchange, and one much versed in the methods of raising money, who
said to me (in substance) about large numbers of our suburban popula-
tion, " There is plenty of money among them for your work, much more
than you have found out ; but they have never learnt to give ! " Nor
will they, it may be added, till they have learnt to think and feel and
love in the school of Christ. Then not only money, but many other
ministries of help, will freely flow.
I do entreat you, brethren, to work for this, and pray for this,
and more and more to set it before your people so to work and pray.
This, be sure, is our true business. If our hearts were duly and
sufficiently set upon this, the fires [of our controversies would surely
die down, and, at least, the bitterness of our divisions would be lost in
the one constraining desire and effi)rt to cope -wdth so mighty a
demand. You know how to speak to people of the Mission Work of
the Gospel and the Church ; can you convince them, can you bring
home to them, this plain and literal truth, that our Diocese is in God's
providence a great Mission to His English people, there where their
need is sorest and most vast ?
Let me point this by a comparison. I have told you of our £22,000
or £25,000 for Foreign Missions, and what I think of it. Not one
penny of it do I either grudge or covet. But it is neither grudging
nor covetous to wish that it was matched under the heading of
Home Missions, and, in particular, of Diocesan work. For surely
claim matches claim. From S. Mark's, Surbiton, the Archdeacon of
Kingston (and I catch at the opportunity of paying a debt of honour
86 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
and affection owed equally for public and for personal reasons) reports
to me contributions to Foreign Missions £293, to Diocesan Work
£298. But such an entry is very rare. I have not cast the total of
contributions to Diocesan work, because I can get at it more easily
another way. The accounts of the Rochester Diocesan Society for
1898, though the income stood higher than in any previous year, yet
showed only a total of £7,339 in contributions from within the
Diocese. Compare this with the other sum and say whether the sup-
port of the work for which God has given to us a direct and particular
responsibility stands in right proportion to that of the work for which
we share the obligation of the whole Church. Do not think that this
is only a fancy in statistics. I declare that if we had the correspond-
ing £20,000 for our own work, every atom of it would be needed for
work which clamours to be done : for Churches and parishes among
new populations which it is urgent to build and to form. For want
of it, faithful men whom I could name, doing the hardest work of the
Church, are wringing their hands and breaking their hearts as year
after year passes, and the little Mission chapel or iron room, goes on,
and the work which is growing and ready to grow is kept tied up and
cramped.
If, again, our people had a real sense of membership in a great
Mission to the people of this City, Avould it be possible (to take an
instance which weighs on my heart) that there should be any lack of
young Christian women from our innumerable suburban homes to come
forward as recruits for our order of Deaconesses ? We have a system
of training which commands general confidence, a Head Deaconess
who has been the trusted instrument and counsellor of three suc-
cessive Bishops, a beautiful and healthy Home on Clapham Common
for training, and then an office and life of privilege, usefulness, charity,
of which it is hard to speak with a steady voice, so great are its
opportunities, so real its beauty, so rich its rewards from the
gratitude of the poor. We may and do rightly pray that fresh grace
of the Spirit of consecration may guide more of the Church's
daughters into such service. But as a rule it will only be where
Church life around is mindful of need and warm with charity that
such special purposes spring up in individual hearts.
Meanwhile let us not despise little things and small steps. Even
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 87
now, if the total of what is done for South London could be cast, it
would surprise us all : little as it is in proportion to what ought to be
done. Each link of affiliation between a poorer and richer parish ;^ each
one of those (and their number, thank God, increases steadily) who
feel the magnetism with which a great human claim draws Christian
hearts, and who come do\vn for part or all of their time to lift a
comer of the great task ; each one, who without being able to do
this, makes himself or herself the outside friend of some poor parish,
cheers its clergy with sympathy, and helps its people through them ;
each of these is not only an immediate contribution to present need,
but is helping to Christianise opinion and feeling in this respect.
I have myself been favoured and encouraged by more than one
or two such offers of help which have given me the happiness of a
commander who is able to send a timely reinforcement. The growth
of settlements of men or women is one form in which an increase of
the impulse to help will take best and most congenial shape, receiving
back from them a reinforcement of strength. The transformation of
Trinity Court into Cambridge House, and the addition of two new
Women's Settlements, that which is connected in the first instance
with the United Girls' School Mission in S. Mark's, Camberwell, and
that which has been founded by students of Lady Margaret Hall,
Oxford, in Kennington Road, are welcome events since your last
Visitation. As I write, I receive the project of another. But I
cannot welcome these ^vithout a word to recognise the senior work of
the Settlement in Nelson Square, albeit not upon lines of attachment
to the Church and, I venture to think, losing something by the fact.
I cannot help hoping that a steady but large growth of this Settle-
ment plan will be the instrument gradually hammered out or evolved,
by which Christian society will meet the immense evil of the entire
local severance of classes.
But let me press on, for there is more to say. All this work
of the Church is in a measure known and honoured by the people.
Therefore you find injury or insult so rare, and when work is well
done there is so much kindly respect. But there are questions, as
^ This good work is organised, as far as may be, by a Committee of the Diocesan
Conference. To Canon Streatfeild we owe its institution and active development.
Mr. Colman carried it on a stage before he left us.
88 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
you well know, behind. Has the Church the ear of the people and
their confidence ? Is she, in their feeling, their own ? Does her
Word make them look up and lift up their heads ? Do they find in
her message and in her action what is needed both for the remedy of
their ills, and for the inspiration and guidance of their own best
efforts for bettering ? Is her presence in the midst of them a
source of those great gifts Life, Liberty, and Love ?
You will, I know, sadly shake your heads. You will remember
much good done by the Church and recognised by the people. But
you will tell me, as of the predominating fact, of a great "indifference"
(that is your word), which hangs like the smoke-pall of a great city
over all your work. You feel that your ideals are uncomprehended.
They do not seek the word at your lips.^ The Church is not their
hope, nor her worship the utterance of their best thoughts and
aspirations. They do not understand what you are at, except in the
mere outward actions of kindness ; they take good from you, but not
your best ; they are at a loss for your motives ; they look upon the
clerical mind as something like a ' freak.'
Worst of all, it often happens that the keener spirits, the men
with most hope, grit and energy, do not reinforce the Church with
these gifts, but leave her aside if they do not even oppose her, and
find their ideals in other directions, and as held out by other voices,
in pursuit of education which they regard as secular, in schemes of
co-operative effort or social reconstruction. The good of their world,
as well as its evil, is separate, and perhaps separates them, from the
Church.
I know not whether I state the case clearly or clumsily, whether
I make plain its enormous range and depth. But the experience of
many of you can gloss, and interpret, and underline, and illustrate
what I say. Anyhow, I know, if I know anything, that in substance
1 We must not be too much depressed by this, as peculiar to our own time. Words
have been recently discovered which may possibly be, as they profess, words of our
Lord, but which in any case reflect very early feeling about the response of the world
to Him.
" Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in my flesh I was seen of
them, and I found all men drunken, and not one found I thirsty among them, and
my soul is weary for the souls of men, and they are blind in their heart and see [not
poor, and know not] their poverty." — Lock and Sanday, "Sayings of Jesus'*
discovered at Oxyrynchus. (Clarendon Press).
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 8^
I am right ; right, too, if I say that here is the problem upon which
a great amount of the energy and zeal and diligence should be spent
which is now spent upon things more purely ecclesiastical. I can
much more easily conceive our Lord's searching us by the question
whether we have really helped to make brotherliness a reality
in a world of competition, or to reinforce and rally the spiritual
and moral forces against intemperance, impurity, or selfish luxury
— than I can imagine His asking us whether we have adorned
His worship by the use of incense, or protested against such
corruption of its simplicity. Such a contrast is, perhaps, foolish,
but it may at least help to make us think. "These ought ye
to have done, and not to leave the other undone,"^ is a principle
of our Lord's own guidance. It is enough if we see the proportions
of the less and the greater, and realise that what is most human
in its touch upon life is also most Divine in its character and
obligation.
One of the worst results of recent events in the Church has
been to strengthen the impression that we lack this sense of propor-
tion. Facts preach ; and the ordinary man who does not go deep
into things gets accustomed when he catches the word " Church "
in his newspaper to connect mth it instinctively something about
ritual or protest against ritual. It is difficult to exaggerate the
harm done by these object lessons, as they seem, of what most
interests and occupies the minds of Churchmen. They confirm what
men are always too ready to think, that we live in a world of our
own, occupied with what they think trivial and technical things. I
do not assign or distribute blame, but I do bitterly regret.
Let me at once state as qualification what you may otherwise raise
as objection.
It is quite true that the Church's direct and primary duty is
spiritual ; that her method learnt from Christ and His Apostles is
religious in the more definite sense of the word. However she may
seek to work for the whole good of men, physical, moral and spiritual,.,
social and corporate as well as individual, it is by the great convic-
tions of Faith and Hope in God, by the Light of Christ's work and
Person, by the inspiration of strength, and truth, and charity given.
1 St. Luke xi. 42.
■m THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
and sought from' above, that the work is to be done. To cherish
these things and to instil them, must therefore always be her primary
task. The care for them must be as a sign set high on all she does.
However general and inclusive her aims, these things are her
speciality.
It follows directly from this that much of the good which she is
to do is to be done indirectly. She makes, by God's help, the
Christian ; and the Christians of her making are to give health and
•soundness to life, professional, social, commercial, political and the rest,
in regions where her direct touch would be, as experience has often
•shown, unwholesome and out of place. Social stability and social
progress will be the result of the steadfastness and the move-
ment of those in whom the Christian leaven works, and it is her best
result to set it working.
This is all true. But it only suggests two urgent questions, the
first : Why is so simple and sound a method so little understood ?
the second : Does the influence work out in this way, or are our
best citizens those who are most attached Church members, and vice
versa ?
As to the first, the very grief and grievance is that the Church
has so largely failed to convince people and explain to them what
she is about, and make them understand the inherent and vital
connection in which she herself believes between the things of
spiritual Revelation and Faith, and the right ordering of all life.
As to the second, does the instinct of the people (a thing not to
be despised) teach them to look to Churchmen as such (mind, I
.am not speaking directly of parsons) for the best and wisest energy
in reform of housing, of liquor sale, of health regulations and the other
immensely important things which exercise material influence upon
•our corporate life and corporate morality ? or do they look specially
to the Church for men who, in discharge of the wholesome though
•drudging duties of municipal administration, will make strenuous
quest of fairer conditions and more equal opportunities for all ranks
.and^kinds of men ?
Is there not something out of gear ?
I shall not attempt to analyse in detail the what and why of this.
On the Church's side alliance in past days with the upper parts of
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 91
the social order rather than the lower, the habit of working from
above, with something of condescension, rather than amongst men
and alongside them, the influence of wealth and other interests upon
the Church, a false specialisation of religion as a thing quite separate
from the other concerns of this present life, the growth, in days of
Church weakness and torpor, of great masses of population who have
lost all habits of Church loyalty, and owe her less than no thanks
(as it seems to them) for past indifference to them — these are all
causes at work. The action of anti-religious teachers, the infiltration
of doubts about the reality of the things of religion, assisted no
doubt sometimes by large misconception of their real meaning, and
by narrow and unintelligent treatment on our side of difficulties or of
new truth — these again have had their share in the result. Greatest
and most terrible of all is the pressure of straining or crushing
material conditions which do deadly work directly by stunting or
stifling the higher parts of life, and indirectly by giving a dull im-
pression that force or money rule the world, and that God for practical
purposes is not.
But I would seek to give one or two hints as to our duty in face
of the result.
1. The first is that we behave ourselves so as to leave men in no doubt
of the identity of religious and moral aim. When these things fall
apart all goes ^vrong ; and it is a lesson of all history, mthin the Bible
and without it, that they may most easily fall apart, Avithout the men
of religion being aware of it. ' Holiness and righteousness ' is the
text of a difficult but absolutely necessary connection. The world is
always on the watch for the severance of the two, and this is a great
service which the world does to us. The thing that is good, let it be
the aim of all our work to produce that ; and (what is even harder)
Avhenever we find it, however uncongenial the place or surroundings,
let our greeting to it be frank, cordial, and unreserved.
These are ways in which, in the great phrase of the Apostle, we
may " commend ourselves to every man's conscience." ^ Let us plainly
not be mere professionals with a business, occupation, and even a
" lingo " of our own. It is quite possible to care much for our Church,
1 2 Cor. iv. 2.
92 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
but more for goodness, because our Church is only God's instrument
for His work of goodness in the world.
2. Let us accordingly have open minds towards men and move-
ments. Where we cannot teach, let us at least be teachable, and we shall
find how quickly the other follows. He is a poor pastor who goes out
among his people only to teach and not to learn, to give and not to
receive, to lecture human nature and not to reverence it. What is
true in individual pastorate, is true of our whole Churchly bearing to
the world's life around us.
The Christian Pastor of to-day, the Christian Church of to-day,
has need of a boundless sympathy, tender-hearted and nimble-witted.
We must be ready in many and many a case to postpone as it were
provisionally our real desire to win men by personal conversion to the
faith and service of our Master ; and recognising the almost ' in-
vincible ' difficulties and hindrances which prevent this, we must take
a man where he is, recognising and perhaps warming the good that is
in him by our sympathy before we try to point him to what is higher
yet or help him to discern the true source of his good. If we are often
to win men by the " Repent " which stirs the sinful conscience with
fear and hope ; yet often also " Thou art not far from the Kingdom
of God," may be a motto of our approach. There is nothing which
repels or hardens a man more than when what is good in him is rebuffed
or slighted. He knows, perhaps confusedly, that he is right so far,
and judging accordingly by the best touchstone he has, he condemns
and rejects a person or a religion of whom he understands very little,
and only knows that they do not seem to find place for what right is
his. Consider for a moment what many an one who looks out upon
the world with the eyes of a working man, may well take to be the
things which have most claim on his sympathy and allegiance.
What will appeal most to the warmer natures, and stronger minds ?
Pretty surely it will be that which will, he thinks, bring remedy
to the great visible evils around him. It is no better than an
insolent libel to call this mere selfishness and the like. There will be
selfishness in it, as there is, I expect, in most of our own plans and
aspirations for life, especially in its earlier days. But it will take
up also the better things in him, the brotherliness and care for his
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 93
class and kind. Do we realise the least what the evils of our social life
appear looked at from below ? What is more, is not such an estimate
of them the truest because drawn straight from fact ? Such evils
must seem to govern the situation. Accordingly, the man who will
seem most worth listening to, is the man who has most to say, and
most hope to offer, about better conditions of work, more equal
distribution of property, better public health, more opportunities
for all of education and enjoyment. Other things, things spiritual and
heavenly, may well seem distant, shadowy, almost irrelevant. Can
we not understand this frame of mind, even if we think that we see
more, and know that the world is most bettered by those who have
learnt to look beyond the world, and that Christ is not only our Fore-
runner into the state beyond, but the Light of the World ? Can we
not feel how very near we may come to their thoughts, even though
we seek to ' set our affections on things above ' ^ if we are true to
Him Who set such store by feeding the hungry, clothing the
naked, giving sight and hearing to blind and deaf, in a word doing
good to men as they are ; and Whose disciples were to give proof of
their faith by their works, the works of love ? Mind, we have not
done with the movements or aspirations of which I speak, when
we have recognised in them a rightful pursuit of temporal im-
provement. The very point of them is that there is also a spiritual
good in them which wants recognising and reinforcing, and that this
must be in the long run claimed for Christ, when we have first
won confidence and shown that we make the claim in no selfish
motive — but only because to Christ they belong, and in Christ alone
find their true proportion, and inspiration, and guidance.
Let me take an instance. One says, " I am alone in the world ;
but in the Socialist^' movement there are men and women whose
hands I may hold, whose eyes I may look into and say, ' Thou art
indeed a brother,' and ' Leave me not, my sister.' "
Are not these words of which we should all be sometimes glad
to hear a clearer echo in Christian congregations ? Have you got
working men to realise that in the Church they will find such
brotherhoodjand brotherliness ? and if not, is it because that quality
and aspect of Churchmanship and Church-membership is so in-
1 Col. iii. 2.
\
94 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
distinct ? It is not set on a candlestick nor does its light shine, in
too many cases.
I have expressed before, and I must express again, my conviction
that one of the very best, and I would even say necessary, things to
be done by the more intelligent of the younger Clergy is to gain
some acquaintance with what may roughly and generally be called
Socialist writings. Such advice may, of course, easily be misunder-
stood or misrepresented. It does not imply any recommendation of
the opinion that the State should be the sole proprietor of the means
of labour, or that there should be no private property — nor even of
opinions much less extreme than these. It is not intended, indeed,
to be a recommendation of any opinions at all, but only of a quickened
and sympathetic care for those things for which some of the keenest
of the working classes care. A frank and warm-hearted reader would
not only find that such reading quickened and stimulated his sense of
the evils against which we ought to work, think, and pray ; and so
his genuine sympathy with what is suffered by those on whom those
evils press most. He would also feel that he has gone abroad to
find what is his own, and has gained some thoughts about social
service, self-sacrifice for the common welfare, and the possibility of
a social life in which the unselfish motives have more and the selfish
ones less power, such as he cannot help feeling to be Christian
indeed.
I have noticed with thankfulness in your replies that some of
you have been able to come into close touch with movements of the
kind. Church Parades of some of the popular organisations give
occasion, as the Vicar of Battersea reports, for cordiality and counsel.
A series of sermons on social subjects seen in Christian light may at-
tract attention and dispel notions of the Church's indifference to them.
Still more valuable must it be where, as in one place, there is a
conference of working men, asked to elect their own chairman and dis-
cussing such subjects as "Labour," "The Church," "Reynolds's News-
paper," " Gambling," " Tithe " ; or, where, as in another, the Church
Debating Society is attended by Socialists and members of Labour
Organisations. This is in a parish where I know the spiritual sides
of the work to be most carefully treated. In a few places the Clergy
have felt able to go further, to get into friendly relations with the
^
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 95
Dockers' Union, to join (as I have done myself) in meetings of the
Early Closing Association, to take part in meetings about Housing
organised by the Labour Party, or to attend Socialist meetings, to
allow a Labour leader to speak in a Parish-room under the Vicar's
chairmanship, to arbitrate between bricklayers and carpenters and
avert a strike, or, which is the extreme case, to take office in a Trades'
Union and speak at Labour Demonstrations. I am glad to hear
one of you who ought to know say that the representatives of labour
trust the Clergy more than they did. How far these things or
any of them can be done must be matter for most careful considera-
tion in each case. The possible dangers from partaking are as
real as those of abstaining. The Church's real dignity, her dis-
tinctively spiritual aims, the feelings and prejudices of our own
people, have to be considered, though not always deferred to. I can
well understand the counsel of one of our most sagacious Clergy, " I
abstain from these organisations till they are less political and one-
sided." Only I think that we might rather oftener err on the side of
sympathy, considering how often we have erred by aloofness or worse.
I observe with great satisfaction that a great number of Clergy
find it possible to help forward the better application of the laws in
regard to matters of health and decency by representations in detail
to sanitary and municipal authorities. This is not showy work, but
it is one of real practical kindness as well as usefulness, and will be
so appreciated. I think this should be steadily bome in mind in
the training and guidance of District Visitors, There are those who
are able and willing to address such workers, and give them practical
hints as to what they can do in this, and in the even more delicate
work of bringing evasions of workshop and such like legislation to
the notice of authority. There must be many a case where one of
our workers is practically the only person who can stand between
helpless people, especially women and children, and the indifiference
or worse which embitters their daily lot, and even imperils their health
and lives. The counsel to leave matters of this kind alone may
easily be one of indolence or timidity rather than of prudence. But
prudence will certainly be needed in handling them.^
^ I desire especially to call the attention of workers in this connection to the
Industrial Laws Committee, a small body which exists for the very purpose of helping
<»6 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
It is a great satisfaction to me that the Diocesan Conference has
appointed a Committee on the matter of the Housing of the Poor.
Possibly no problem at once so difficult, gigantic, and urgent has ever
pressed on any community. That question has lately been brought
to us in statistical and scientific as well as in more sensational form.
On this ground (as well as in the interests of Temperance reform), I
^sk special attention, which many will have already given, to Messrs.
Rowntree and Sherwell's book,^ while Mr. Haw's reprinted articles
will bring the bearings of the question vividly before the reader.^
The matter touches the very vitals of our life, its elementary
decencies, its social, moral, and religious foundations. I do not
know how much such a committee can accomplish. But if it can
make its little contribution to informing, awakening, and stirring
public opinion, and if it can bear its little witness that this thing
hangs heavy on the Church's heart, it will not be in vain. Larger
powers of acquiring land at a little distance from London at reason-
able prices, larger extension of the obligation to run workmen's trains
to such districts, fast, cheap, and punctual — and therewith I fear a
faster disfigurement of our home counties, — seems to be the most
serviceable remedy. So we should make more room for those who
must be close to the scene of work. Let me thank the good Rural
Dean of Beddington, who has persuaded his neighbours to found a
tiny Cottage Building Scheme as the local memorial of the Queen's
Jubilee.
Let me say, in passing, a respectful word of an institution of social
help within the Diocese, though worked on indeterminate Christian
lines, the Labour Colony of the Christian Union for Social Service
at Lingfield. Its work in different departments for unemployed,
epileptic children, and inebriates appears to have good promise, and
sets a good example.
In all these matters let us work hopefully and not bitterly, and
help to give our poor suffering populations more of the patience of
practical workers in matters of the kind. It is presided over by Mrs. Tennant who
(as Miss Abraham) was the first lady H.M. Inspector of Factories. Communications
will be gladly received at 33, Bruton Street, W. Mrs. Talbot is a member of the
■Committee.
^ The Temperance Problem and Social Reform (Hodder and Stoughton).
^ No Room to Live, *' Daily News " Office.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 97
hope. I think we shall find ground for this in the experience of
what has been done. If a Rip Van Winkle from 1820, or from the
days of Alton Locke, could come amongst us now, I think that while
he might see that the enormous massing of population had in some
ways aggravated our difficulties, he would be as much surprised as
delighted at the development of social aid, in law and administration,
in voluntary service, and in the amount of public interest and
attention devoted to the matter.
There are two remarks which I should like to add here. I would
ask you to remember that my counsels upon this matter rest upon
very much more than my own personal opinion. The Lambeth
Conference of 1897 gave to considerations of the kind very emphatic-
ally and unitedly the stamp of its high authority. Has the Church
of England, it may be asked (and I ask it of myself as well as of you),
responded at all adequately to the high charge and challenge then
delivered to her by the voice of the Episcopate of her Communion ?
I reprint that Report and the Resolution in order that you may
more easily consider the question.^
This leads to the second remark. I would bespeak warmer
interest for the efforts of those who have tried in the Church's name
to think and speak on these matters. I have followed the action of
the Christian Social Union (to whose membership I belong) with
gratitude to it for the way in which it has tried to work for us. It
has, I think, attempted a difficult task, not only with pluck and
perseverance, but with real wisdom and charity. I should like to see
more branches of it, which will be valuable in proportion as they
include members of different parties and classes. The C.S.U. exists
to represent a responsibility, not a policy: principles rather than
methods, enquiry rather than opinion upon debatable questions of
application. What should unite us in the matter is a common
temper, and a common conviction, that international, national,
commercial, industrial, social relations and conditions need to be
leavened and governed in their different ways by the spirit and
principles of Our Master and Lord.^
^ Appendix IV., infra.
' 1 have myself found great stimulus from the little monthly paper, The Comvion-
wecdth, and I think that many would find it useful in the same way, however far they
i may be, like myself, from sharing all the opinions which it expresses.
98 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
The third remark is a caution against a danger of wrong propor-
tion in my own words. These matters are for Christians not only
subjects for debate, or for movements more or less ambitious. They
enter into the details of practical duty, e.g., how we trade, how we
invest, how we employ. They require of us to do what we can to
mitigate and make better what is, and not only plan or work for
what may be. Thus, as we have been reminded. Christians
emancipated and cared for slaves before the da}' came for abolishing
slavery. No element, one may add, in any movement of change is
more wholesome or more quietly effective than the sense of need
for such change which gradually deepens and defines itself in the
minds of thoughtful men and women engaged at close quarters with
the details of practical philanthropy: just as conversely the mere
theorist has been often found the most inflammatory and dangerous
of radicals. Thought and work form the ideal combination for effect.
3. But I rise to yet higher things. Of this we are sure, that
whatever v:c are, Christ is the World's need and the True Bread of its
life. If you find much to disturb and depress you, if the Avord of
the Master seems to be slighted, and you begin yourself perhaps at
times to feel the qualm of doubt whether what is so little accepted
can indeed be true, look again and be reassured. Watch the move-
ments as they come up, listen to the testimonies and confessions of
men. Constantly )"0U will find His words upon their lips, fragments
of His ideal before their minds, their reverence, even if disguised as
mere admiration, returning to Himself They never get past Him :
and they know it. They l"ay hold of the word Christian as their best
and most honourable epithet, even though they sometimes think that
they must pull it away from us Christians before they can use it.
Try then in all your doings to let the proportion of your meaning be
seen : that it is Christ that you mean : Christ in all His human
simplicity and nearness: Christ in all that wonderful fulness of
Divine life and meaning, which makes it possible that the poor
Workman and Preacher of nineteen centuries ago should still con-
tinually prove Himself central to the world's thought and to its
life. Of Him the lips must speak, but as from the heart : and the
life must witness in patience, gentleness, unwearied service and
sacrifice, and intense care for goodness. Church History shows the
\
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 9!)
power of this true talisman of faith, and the recurring need in men
and Churches to be brought back to it. It would be interesting
to have a History of the Church written from this side showing
how the Church's power has waxed and waned in proportion as
this has been effectively the centre of her life and thought. The
nobility of the Crusades came from the motive of loyalty to Christ :
their weakness and futility from their giving to His Sepulchre what
should have been spent upon His living truth. The greatest moral
initiative of the Middle Ages, that of Francis of Assisi, drew its
strength from its recurrence to the Christ of the Gospels, not only in
the outer things of poverty, but in closest study of His words, and in
beautiful faithfulness to the temper of His Life. Coming nearer
to ourselves, the hymns of Wesley remind us that " Back to
Christ from Christian evidences and even Christian ethics " was
the secret of the power of the great revival which shook and
kindled the conscience of England. It is perhaps not so well
remembered, but we have it on the direct testimony of the best
of all our ■s\itnesses — Dean Church — that the Revival which followed
1833 had, for one of its effects, to turn men back from the con-
stant repetition of formulse about Christ's finished work, to Christ
Himself, the Christ of the Gospels : ^ and, let us add, the Eternal
Christ of abiding Presence among His people.
It is this truth of Christ Himself as The Way, The Truth, and
The Life, a truth absolutely and uniquely characteristic of His religion,
which is ^^dtnessed to even by those whom we must reckon as against
us, though we own and cherish what they have in common "sWth us.
' Back from the Creeds to Christ Himself.' ' Back from the Christ
of Miracles to the unadorned and holy Personality.' ' Back from the
over-painted portrait of adulterated Gospel narrative to the true
Christ, whom criticism will discern for you.' These are demands
which are made upon us to-day. We shall try to meet each of them
with a reasonable answer, as of those who have their senses exer-
cised to discern elements of good and evil in these cries.
'Back from the Creed to Christ.' Certainly the Creed will
not be alive for you, and it may become a mere formula, unless you
are able to clothe that " He " of whom it speaks with the living,
^ The Oxford Movement, ch. x. p. 191 (small edition).
H 2
100 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
and speaking personality of the Jesus of Scripture. But the
Creed itself points you to Christ, points you in narrative simplicity
to the facts of His Life, and, where it goes further, does so to
prevent your missing the depth of meaning behind those facts.
' Back from miracles to Christ.' Yes, in this sense that, as all
the most fruitful teachings in the Church for years past have shown,
it is rather Christ Who proves the miracles than the miracles which
prove Christ ; or at least that they have meaning and force only in
their place as part of the great manifesting of the Glory, and not
outside it as a formal credential.
' Back from a traditional Christ to the true Christ whom criticism
will disentangle.' We have not that trust in a criticism whose
answers have been constantly varying, and which has lately told us,
by the representative voice of Professor Harnack, that in the main
the New Testament documents, of which so many had been scorn-
fully and confidently treated as unauthentic compositions of later
date, must be accepted as being what they have been held to
be.^ But this we can do, as my brother the Bishop of Ripon has
lately well said in words to which I hope he will give wider
publication. We can realise that we see through the Gospels
to the living Person, and do not merely see the portrait on their
surface. We can deal fairly and frankly with questions as to this or
that detail of narrative or utterance in the Gospel, and not, as it was
once said, stake our faith upon the authenticity and accuracy of every
detail. Even if there are blurs in the portrait — and I intentionally
leave that aside — the beauty and character and expression of the
Face is unalterably ours.
Forgive me if I touch in this hasty incidental way upon things
•which, though at present little considered by many amid the heats of
other controversy, are of greater and more lasting gravity, and which
affect more than we often know our task of " commending " our faith
" to the conscience " of men.^ These few words about them are
parenthetical to what I have tried to say about making it plain to
men that Christ, and nothing less or more, is what you preach. It is not
for us to aim at this by cutting down our Gospel to a morality drawn
1 See an article by Dr. Sanclay in Guardian, Jan. 20th, 1898, p. 99.
2 2 Cor. iv. 2.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 101
from His teachings, or to a mere narrative of historical fact, for the
simple reason that we do not believe that we should thus be giving
Christ simply, but rather Christ superficially and imperfectly under-
stood. We ' believe in the Holy Ghost ' ; and in His testimony to the
meaning of Jesus, of His Life, Death, Resurrection, of Himself.
But it is of immense importance, it makes, indeed, all the differ-
ence, if we keep, and are seen to keep, all things in proportion,
to value teachings. Sacraments, evidences as gifts or instruments
or witnesses of Him Who is their centre, upon Whom they
depend, to Whom they testify; if we watch, and are seen to
watch, even the things that are most sacredly and certainly
His, lest anyhow in effect they should obscure Him from men.
The counsel is at least impartial to us all, for experience has shown
that the favourite words and ways of any fashion of Christian
thinking may become opaque instead of transparent.
May I add this much more ? We have no need to discredit
our faith by making men think it either complicated, or in the
wrong sense dogmatic. They do often think it both. Let us show
them both its simplicity and our reverent sense of its limitation.^
The Creed, it is well to show, is very simple. We have no long cata-
logue of various doctrines. What God is so far as in Christ we have
been allowed to know ; the course of the life begun on earth, and
ending behind the Veil at the Right Hand, by which He is kno^vn
to us, and did His work for us ; the eflfects o "ihis upon our life
here and hereafter, in forgiveness, united and corporate Life,
mutual fellowship. Resurrection, and Eternal Life — that is the One
Truth, full-limbed but one, which the Creed declares. It is simple,
and it is divinely sufficient ; but it leaves us, indeed and truly,
agnostic or ignorant beyond the limits of what it is needful for
us to know. For us, as for men of old, it must needs be that we be
disciplined by the remembrance our great ignorance that is the
counterpart of the.mystery of His infinity and unknowableness, Whom
we worship, and of the stupendous scale of those Divine workings
^ See the striking account of the latter days of Henri Perreyve, and his intense
sense of the need for a " simple religion," or, in other words, for a grip from within
upon the core of our faith. Henri Perreyve A .Gratry, Eng. Trans, p. 186 (Ri\'ington3
1872).
^
102 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
of which we know something " in part." Even the things that we
do know, Incarnation, Inspiration, Sacraments, we know with a know-
ledge which is everywhere compassed by and tinctured with ignor-
ance. " We have known, or rather are known," is the Apostle's
significant self-correction.^
Let me now summarise the main line of thought which I have
tried to put before you, and with which I have sought to link in what
seems to me natural connection, the several particular topics of my
address.
There is, as I believe, committed to the Church of England (Avith
the Anglican Communion of which she is at once the mother stock
and most ancient branch), a task and opportunity of very special
significance, but also of exceptional and extraordinary difficulty. We
do not, I think, any of us consider enough what this is. Some of
us insufiiciently recognise its existence, some by whom it is em-
phasised go (too often) the wrong way about it. It is broader,
deeper and harder than we any of us see.
Our task is to set forth and represent the revealed truth
of the Church as the instrument of the Son of God for ac-
complishing, through the Spirit, His work of bringing Man, and
through Man creation, back to God. But we have to do this with
eyes wide open to the dangers and evils of Ecclesiasticism, and
amongst a people in whom the experience of those evils in the past
has created a strong prejudice against anything that is ecclesiastical
or Churchly.
The Church of England has a vivid faith in the Holy Catholic
Church. She does not indeed take it as synonymous vnth the
Kingdom of God (whose scope and operations go outside it, and
are wide as the world), but she holds it to be the purposed organic
instrument and representative of that kingdom. The Church of
England has no doubt of her own part in the Holy Catholic Church ;
its Creed is her Creed, its ordinances her ordinances, its Ministry her
Ministry, the highest act of her worship is one form or edition of the
Church's ancient Liturgy ; she defines in simple form (as in the
Lambeth Conference of 1887) the essentials of Churchmanship ; she
1 (.'ai. iv. 9.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 103
looks back over all the history of the Church, and feels it, with its
triumphs and its manifold evils, to be her own ; she sees in the things
against which she is ' protestant,' the corruptions or misuse of true
teachings or ordinances, of the Sacraments, of the Ministry, of the
true spiritual authority of the Church.
She recognises in the conception of the Church with its manifold-
ness in unit}^ with its broad character as true human society
and fellowship, with its order and freedom, with its privilege of
Divine Presence and operation, the thing which meets the needs of
modem life, because it meets the fundamental needs of man.
She cannot recognise any Gospel which excludes this article about
the Holy Catholic Church, She knows that the Church's existence
is the true context of its teaching. The fresh witness of very dif-
ferent men such as Ritschl in Germany, and Dr. Sanday among
ourselves, confirms her teaching that the Christian Society, and
the individual believer only in and through it, is the object of
justification. She cannot for a moment accept the view that the
organic and collective part of Christian life is only a matter
of terrestrial and passing interest, or of human devising. She
does not so read the word spiritual as though it discredited
the forms which embody and the means which express. Still
less can she suppose that the Church means nothing more than
the more spiritual or better side of that natural life of the world
out of which she was to draw men one by one, building them up into
her new fabric.
But then with all this strong high inspiring belief, what does
she find, what do we find as we look about us ?
Imperfect and inadequate realisation in actual fact of this high
ideal ? That of course ; for that we are prepared. Backwardness and
unwillingness to accept the ideal on the part of the unconverted and
the carnal ? That also, of course. But surely more and worse than this
We find a prejudice against the very name of what is of the Church
or Ecclesiastical. That prejudice is widespread among men ; it is
shared by some of the best and noblest, nay, by many who are
themselves devoutly Christian. We look abroad where the Church
is organised most powerfully, and we find it habitually regarded as a
great ' interest,' often pursuing very selfish ends, allying with very
104 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
questionable forces, obstructing spiritual freedom and moral progress,
almost entirely governed by and identified with its own professional
class ; and anything but the holy centre round which gathers what-
ever is pure and lovely and of good report in the human life about
it.^ We come back to ourselves, and we find this anti-ecclesiastical
feeling, tempered indeed and happily free from much of the intense
bitterness Avhich it has abroad, but still strongly marked and widely
diffused.
We ask the reason of all this ; for our conscience tells us that we
cannot put it all down to the inherent perversity of our fellow-men.
The answer comes to us from history : history interpreted by our
knowledge of the human heart. The heart is deceitful above all
things ; but its deceiving power is at its height when it can give
itself the sanction of religion ; when it can flatter itself that its pre-
judices or narrownesses are zeal for truth, and its self-assertion
and love of power zeal to bless. What a record there is against
us ! I do not attempt to summarise it. It is ill Avork, indeed,
registering the sins of our forefathers, when we ought to be
discerning our own. But no man, in my judgment, is com-
petent to deal practically with the Church's w^ork to-day who
J does not recognise that by a process which had reached a climax in
the later Middle Age, the Church had been deformed almost out of
likeness by those errors of its own, those ' defects of its qualities ' and
exaggerations of its meanings, which in a single word may be
summed up as Ecclesiasticism. And we can put our finger on its
component parts. Exaggeration of the difference between clergy
and people ; the perversion of pastoral care and authority, whether
in higher or lower place, into a domination masterful and often
tyrannical of the conscience ; ^ the beauty of a free and equal spiritual
brotherhood almost gone ; the interests of right and truth largely
identified with the external interests of an institution very earthly in
much of its character ; the witness to truth changed into a claim to
impose, and to prohibit, and to define with increasing peremptoriness
^ A painful light has been thrown on these words since I wrote them in July by
what has lately passed in France.
- Cf. Dr. Moberly : "The materialisms and the arrogances which are the besetting
sins of a false sacerdotalism." In Sanday's Conception of Priesthood , Appx. p. 151.
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 105
and presumption and minuteness, about things as to which we have
not been told and therefore do not know and cannot tell ; a corres-
ponding development, in the sphere of observance, of the mechanical,
ceremonial and external parts of religion, till there was an almost
incredible misunderstanding of their relation and proportion to the
other deeper and more interior parts ; a dissociation of religion as a
formal crystallised thing from the instinctive moralities, and aspira-
tions, and movements of human conscience and thought.
I do not wish to exaggerate by an iota ; but I do not believe that I
am exaggerating, if it is always remembered that I am speaking of
the evils, and not of the beauties and sanctities, of the Mediseval
Church. And I do say that distortion so great, so glaring, and also
so subtle and far reaching, of the true pattern cf the City of God, has
naturally and inevitably governed to a large extent the whole sequel
of life within the Church, and of opinion outside and about it, and
does so govern to-day. I do not wish to do more than allude to the
fact (which intensifies so enormously this result) that to a very large
extent the results and methods and evils of the Mediseval Church
were maintained, and carried forward, and in some directions even
intensified, by the Church of the Roman obedience, which is always
at our side, a great magnet of attraction and repulsion by which
none of the needles are unaffected.
I pray and charge you, then, beloved brethren, to give grave and
serious consideration to these things, and with your best powers, by
God's grace, to read their teachings. But especially do I charge yoii
each not to read to himself the teachings which may be his neigh-
bour's need but are not his own. Depend upon it those warnings which
we do not at first see are often those Avhich we need most.
For those of you who rate high the place of the Church in Christian
life and teaching, and to whom such a description as mine of its claims
and dignity may have been welcome, the duty, I think, is to face un-
flinchingly, and to realise to yourselves by honest study, the tremen-
dous lesson which history reads to us of the extent, and depth, and
power of the tendencies to Ecclesiasticism, to watch against them most
vigilantly in yourselves and in the movements with which you have
to do ; and then, secondly, to consider much and often what special
prudence and care is to be used in commending the Church's truths
106 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
to a people like ours, upon whose memory and imagination the ex-
perience of those immense perversions has left so deep and abiding a
trace. It is not too much to say that much has been said and done
amongst us in neglect of these two great considerations, and as though
those lessons of historical warning were not written for our admoni-
tion. This is, I think, real disloyalty, not so much to the Church of
England as to the guidance of God through facts. It has been lately
said of Richard Hooker that " he wrote as one who was aware of a
wide prejudice against the cause he is maintaining ; " ^ it is not added
that this made him more defiant and careless of the prejudices or
opinions with which he had to reckon ; but only that he measured
his words and scrutinised his own position with the more scrupulous
care.
You, on the other hand, who, though you recognise (as I
believe, increasingly) a certain value in the Church's order are not
tempted to overrate her importance and the value of her inheritance
of teaching and worship, and who read ecclesiastical history chiefly
for its warnings — you surely will recognise the immense probability
that the very same causes warp your judgments as warp your
brethren's, though it may be in an opposite sense ; that reaction has
done upon you its distorting work, and that 3'ou may be slighting,
or even attacking, parts of truth and aspects of a complete Christian
life, which you irresistibly connect with their perversions or carica-
tures. It is poor work, at the point where we stand to-day, to
be merely reiterating the negative voices of protest to which
Mediagvalism drove the aggrieved hearts and consciences of men.
Nor is this all. We minister to each other's mistakes. Laugh
at the dangers of Ecclesiasticism, and you raise some one else's
apprehensions of it to panic. Slight the Church's rules, and you
only provoke the more in others an undiscriminating loyalty which
will even hug her abuses or faults.
I speak to you, as I believe I ought, in the tone of one who
teaches; but not as one who fancies himself exempt from these
dangers. Some of us may be conscious that both kinds in their turn
lay hold upon us.
Meanwhile the voices both of our failures and of our vocation are
^ Introduction to Hooker, Book V., F. Paget, D.D. (Clarendon Press, 1S99).
THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH 107
loud in our ears, if we have ears to hear. The first tell us how near the
Church has come to being regarded by masses of Englishmen with
indiflference, as a thing that may be passed by, an institution aloof,
a sphere of eccentric beliefs, controversies, and observances. But the
second — the voices of our vocation — how austere and bracing at once
is their sound ! They tell us of a high responsibility for ministering the
purpose of God to the great race to whom, more than any other, it
seems as if the future of the world and of humanity may belong. We
cannot think, we who know England, and whose hearts beat with
English life, that this great work can ever be done by any mere revival
of mediae valism. We are equally sure that it requires more than the
meagre and partial subjectivities of Protestantism. It must be done
by a great Church, in whose life all that time of corruption and con-
troversy is only an episode of humbling and bitter discipline, through
which it pleased God to bring her still alive, and ^^^th opportunities not
altogether foregone. It must be done by a Church which knows the
power of the Spirit and the Present Christ, and the radiation of that
power and that presence through Sacraments, through the work of the
Ministry, through the intercourse of Christian fellowship, through the
exercise of charity ; but which knows also by experience how easily the
pettinesses of human explanation and human execution can deform and
lower these holy things. The Church for that great work of the future
must be able to bring forth out of its treasures things new and old ; ^ it
must have its ears open to hearken, from generation to generation,
what the Lord God will saj^ concerning it ; - it must, like every faithful
pastor and teacher within it, learn from those whom it teaches, ennch
itself from those to whom it ministers. To the truth with which it is in
charge, the responses of human experience, and instinct, and thought
must bring their own illuminating and interpreting comment. It
must have no such conceited thought of an exclusive possession of
all truth as may prevent the ' kings ' of the earth's natural goodness,
and advancing knowledge, and developing thought ' bringing their
glory and honour into it ' with acclamations of welcome.^ It must be
a magnet attracting to itself all the kindred things of piety and good-
ness among men. It must wield influence as of a gracious and
^ :Matt. xiii. 52. - Ps. Ixxxv. 8.
' Rev. xxi. 24.
108 THE VOCATION AND DANGERS OF THE CHURCH
Avinning personality, under whose touch others give of their best
and come to their best. You will say that this is the vague descrip-
tion of an ideal. Yes, but it is ideals which command and attract.
When ideals are false or narrow, life is contracted ; when ideals are
faded and lacking, life burns low and dull. The ideal such as we
have tried to draw, if it be in the likeness divinely meant, may
at least often draw us to lift up our hearts, to look abroad, and
to look forward, to see the things of our own choosings and con-
tentions in something more like their true proportions, and to feel
the solemnising yet kindling power of a great responsibility and a
great hope.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I.
(Page 9.)
The following Prayers for Rogation Days may be worth reprinting.
The first is by Bishop Cosin, or at least found in his handwriting.
The second (which would hardly be suitable in other than rural parishes) was
proposed by the Commission of 1689.
Some of Bishop Andrewes' forms of intercession, adapted in detail by the
officiating Minister, serve admirably for Rogation use. It will be remembered that
Andrewes' forms for Consecration of Churches, &c. , are in substance those which
are in general use.
I.
Almighty God, Lord of Heaven and Earth, in whom we live and move and have
our being ; who do'st good unto all men, making thy sun to rise on the evil and
on the good, and sending rain on the just and on the unjust : Favourably behold us
thy people, who call upon thy Name, and send us thj" Blessing from heaven, in
giving us fruitful seasons, and filling our hearts with food and gladness, that both
our hearts and mouths may be continually filled with thy Praises, giving thanks to
thee in thy Holy Church, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
IL
Almighty God, who hast blessed the earth that it should be fruitful, and bring
forth everything that is necessary for the life of man, and hast commanded us to
work with quietness and eat our own bread ; bless us in all our labours, and grant
us such seasonable weather that we may gather in the fruits of the earth, and ever
rejoice in Thy goodness, to the praise of Thy holy Name, through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.
Blunt, Annotated Book of Common Prayer, p. 110.
APPENDIX II.
(Page 9.)
"All Priests and Deacons are to say daily the Morning and Evening Prayer
. either privately or openly, not being let by sickness, or some other urgent cause.
110 APPENDICES^
home, and not being othei'wise reasonably hindered, shall say the same in the Parish
Church or Chapel where he ministereth, and shall cause a Bell to be tolled thereunto
a convenient time before he begin, that the people maj' come to hear God's word,
and to pray with him." — Booh of Common Prayer, " Concerning the Service of the
Church."
Compare the careful directions : " The Psalter shall be read through once every
month as it is there appointed, both for Morning and Evening Prayer." " The New
Testament . . . shall be read over orderly every year twice/^ • > » -• 'v-^n /
s^'oC ^ ^i^w^ -^'"/Vpendix hi.
(Page 75.)
Parochial Church Councils.
Resolutions agreed to by both Houses on July 5, 1898.
1. That this House desires earnestly to impress upon the parochial Clergj' the
importance of securing the confidence and co-operation of lay Churchmen in the
manner which, in each parish, maybe best adapted to its wants ; and that one mode
by which this end might be accomplished would be the formation of Parochial
Church Councils.
2. That the initiative in forming such Councils should rest in the Incumbent,
subject to the approval of the Bishop of the diocese.
3. That such Councils should consist of the Incumbent or Curate-in-charge, who
shall be the Chairman of the Council, the assistant Clergy licensed by the Bishop,
the churchwardens and sidemen, duly appointed and admitted, together with
elected councillors.
4. That the elected councillors be male communicants of the Church of England
of full age.
5. That the electors be baptized and confirmed members of the Church of England,
resident in the parish, and of full age.
6. That the duties of the Council should be to take the principal share in the
raising of funds and administration of finance, to assist the Incumbent in the initia-
tion and development in the parish of all departments of parochial Church work, and
to advise him on matters on which he thinks it expedient to consult them.
7. That if it should be considered by the Incumbent to be desirable that the
Council should be dissolved, then, with the written consent of the Bishop of the
Diocese, the Incumbent may dissolve it.
APPENDIX IV.
(Page 94.)
Report of the Committee appointed to consider and report upon the Office
OF the Church with respect to Industrial Problems — (a) the Unem-
ployed ; {h) Industrial Co-operation.
I.
The Committee desire to begin their Report with words of thankful recognition
that throughout the Church of Christ, and not least in the Churches of our own
APPENDICES 111
Communion, there has been a marked increase of solicitude about the problems of
industrial and social life, and of sympathy with the struggles, sufferings, responsi-
bilities, and anxieties, which those problems involve.
The}- hope that they rightly discern in this some increasing reflection in modern
shape of the likeness of the Lord, in whose Blessed Life zeal for the souls and
sympathy for the bodilj' needs of men were undivided fruits of a single Love.
The Committee, before proceeding to touch upon two specific parts of the subject,
desire to record briefly what they deem to be certain principles of Christian duty in
such matters.
The primar}- duty of the Church, as such, and, within her, of the Clerg}-, is that
of ministry to men in the things of character, conscience, and faith. In doing this,
she also does her greatest social duty. Character in the citizen is the first social
need ; character, with its securities in a candid, enlightened, and vigorous con-
science, and a strong faith in goodness and in God. The Church owes this duty to
all classes alike. Nothing must be allowed to distract her from it, or needlessly to
impede or prejudice her in its discharge, and this requires of the Clergj', as spiritual
officers, ' he exercise of great discretion in any attempt to bring within their sphere
work of a more distinctively^ social kind.
But while this cannot be too strongly said, it is not the whole truth. Character
is influenced at every point by social conditions, and active conscience, in an
industrial society, will look for moral guidance on industrial matters.
Economic science does not claim to give this, its task being to inform but not to
determine the conscience and judgment. But we believe that Christ our Master
does give such guidance by His example and teachings, and by the present workings
of His Spirit ; and therefore iinder Him Christian authoritj- must in a measure do
the same, the authoritj', that is, of the whole Christian body, and of an enlightened
Christian opinion. Tliis is part of the duty of the Christian Society, as witnessing
for Christ and representing Him in this present world, occupied with His work of
setting up the Kingdom of God, under and amidst the natural conditions of human
life. In this work the clerg}% whose special dutj- it is to ponder the bearings of
Christian principles, have their part ; but the Christian laity, who deal directlj- with
the social and economic facts, can do even more.
The Committee believe that it would be wlioUy wrong for Christian authority to
attempt to interfere with the legitimate evolution of economic and social thought
and life bj- taking a side corporatel}' in the debates between rival social theories or
systems. It will not (for example), at the present day, attempt to identify
Christian duty •with the acceptance of systems based respectively on collective or
indi%-idual ownership of the means of production.
But they submit that Christian social duty will operate in two directions : —
1. The recognition, inculcation, and application of certain Christian principles.
They offer the following as examples : —
(a). The principle of Brotherhood. This principle of Brotherhood, or Fellow-
ship in Christ, proclaiming, as it does, that men are members one of another,
should act in all the relations of life as a constant coimterpoise to the instinct
of competition.
{h). The principle of Labour. That every man is bound to service — the serWce
of God and man. Labour and service are to be here understood in their
widest and most inclusive sense ; but in some sense they are obligatory on all.
The wilfully idle man, and the man who lives only for himself, are out of
112 APPENDICES
place in a Christian community. Work, accordingly, is not to be looked upon
as an irksome necessity for some, but as the honourable task and privilege
of all.
('".) The principle of Justice. God is no respecter of persons. Inequalities,
indeed, of every kind, are inwoven with the whole providential order of
human life, and are recognised emphaticallj' in our Lord's words. But the
social order cannot ignore the interests of any of its parts, and must, more-
over, be tested by the degi'ee iu which it secures for each freedom for happy,
useful, and untrammelled life, and distributes, as widely and equitably as
may be, social advantages and opportunities.
(d.) The principle of Public Responsibility. A Christian community, as a whole,
is morally responsible for the character of its own economic and social order,
and for deciding to what extent matters affecting that order ai-e to be left to
individual initiative, and to the unregulated plaj' of economic forces. Factory
and sanitary legislation, the institution of Government labour departments
and the influence of Government, or of public opinion and the press, or of
eminent citizens, in helping to avoid or reconcile industrial conflicts, are
instances in point.
2. Christian opinion should be awake to repudiate and condemn either open
breaches of social justice and duty, or maxims and principles of an un-Christian
character. It ought to condemn the belief that economic conditions are to be left to
the action of material causes and mechanical laws, uncontrolled by any moral
responsibility. It can pronounce certain conditions of labour to be intolerable. It
can insist that the employers personal responsibility^ as such, is not lost by his
membership in a commercial or industrial Company. It can press upon retail
purchasers the obligation to consider not only the cheapness of the goods supplied
to them, but also the probable conditions of their production. It can speak plainly
of evils which attach to the economic system under which we live, such as certain
forms of luxurious extravagance, the widespread pursuit of money by financial
gambling, the dishonesties of trade into which men are driven by feverish competi-
tion, and the violences and reprisals of industrial warfare.
It is plain that in these matters disapproval must take every different shade,
from plain condemnation of undoubted wrong to tentative opinions about better and
worse. Accordingly any organic action of the Church, or any action of the Church's
officers, as such, should be verj'^ carefully restricted to cases where the rule of right
is practically clear, and much the larger part of the matter should be left to the
free and flexible agency of the awakened Christian conscience of the community at
large, and of its individual members.
If the Christian conscience be thus awakened and active, it will secure the best
administration of particular systems, while they exist, and the modification or
change of them, when this is required by the progress of knowledge, thought, and
life.
It appears to follow from what precedes that the great need of the Church, in
this connection, is the growth and extension of a serious, intelligent, and sympathetic
opinion on these subjects, to which numberless Christians have as yet never thought
of applying Christian principles. There has been of late no little improvement in
this respect, but much remains to be done, and with this view the Committee
desire to make the following definite recommendation.
They suggest that, wherever possible, there should be formed, as a part of local
APPENDICES 113
Church organisation, Committees consisting chiefly of laymen, whose work should
be to study social and industrial problems from the Christian point of view, and to
ckssist in creating and strengthening an enlightened public opinion in regard to such
problems, and promoting a more active spirit of social service, as a part of Christian
duty.
Such Committees, or bodies of Church workers in the way of social service, while
representing no one class of society, and abstaining from taking sides in any disputes
between classes, should fearlessly draw attention to the various causes in our
economic, industrial, and social system, which call for remedial measures on Christian
principles.
Abundant illustration of the kind of matters with which such Committees might
deal will be found in the following sections of the Report : —
II.
The problem of the Unemployed brings us face to face with the two questions : —
(I.) How best to help those who are unemploj-ed, and in need, at any particular
moment.
(II. ) How to counteract the causes in the society of our time which tend to drive
people into this necessitous class, and make it so numerous.
(I. ) The unemployed are of different types and require different modes of treat-
ment.
(a. ) The unwilling, such as the lazy, and the vagrant.
These especially need authoritative discipline and corrective management. The
existence of such an idle and necessitous class being a danger to society, the
State should undertake the duty of dealing with them, both by means of dis-
ciplinary authority, and by an enlightened administration of Poor Laws,
making labour a condition of relief, and using all possible means, by training
and otherwise, to turn them into good citizens.
(6.) The unfit, viz. : (1) The aged poor, for whom Christian society is bound to
provide by pension or otherwise some form of decent support ; (2) the sick,
who must be nursed and tended while ill, and should be assisted in making a
fresh start when they recover ; (3) destitute children, who should be main-
tained and educated, so that they may have a chance of growing up to be honest
and useful members of society.
(c.) The unfortuivate, the wreckage of our industrial and social system. Many of
these are wrecked, not by any fault of their own, but through dislocations of
trade, changes of fashion, mechanical inventions, the lack of technical
training, and other causes, and they have a strong claim on Christian society
to assist them by some form of organisation ready for the purpose.
(d.) The morally weak, who are wi-ecked through lack of character, being rendered
useless by drunkenness and other forms of vice ; and they offer a large field
for the healing and reforming influences of Christian charity, such as homes
and reformatories.
II. The causes which tend to swell the number of the unemploj-ed and suffering
poor present even greater difficulties. The Church will best contribute to their
solution by patient consideration of such matters as the following : —
(1) Forms of trade or industry, or any usages, which lead to the "sweating"
and degradation of the labouring class, and possible methods of reform.
I
114 APPENDICES
(2) Methods of moralising industrial and commercial relationships.
(3) Stronger control by public opinion and authority over the housing of the
poor, both in town and country, and methods by which the existing laws may be
more effectually carried out so as to secure the conditions necessary for a decent moral
life.
(4) The encouragement of all sound organisations which have for their object the
advancement of thrift and temperance, and the assistance of the working man in
making provision for sickness and old age.
(5) Possibilities of minimising fluctuations and dislocations of employment, with
the sufferings consequent upon them, by means of such agencies as Labour Bureaux,
Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, and some judicious use of public works in
times of stress.
(6) Methods of making country life and occupations more attractive and re-
munerative, so as to lessen the drift of population into great towns.
(7) The success or failure of the many agencies and schemes, both public and
private, which are already in operation for the healing or prevention of these
social ills.
III.
In dealing with the subject of Industrial Co-operation, the Committee desire to
record their appreciation of the benefits which its originators and supporters have
conferred upon the community.
It has helped to spread and strengthen the feeling of mutual membership or
brotherhood, and to conciliate the interests of the capitalist, the workman and the
purchaser. It has been equally beneficial in contributing largely to the growth of
thrift, independence, a sense of the dignity of labour, and happy family life and
contentment, among that portion of the working classes who have taken a share in
it. The Committee hope to see it as successfully established on the side of productive
industry, as it is in the field of commercial distribution.
At the same time there would seem to be the need of a note of warning. The
very success of the movement is bringing with it an element of danger.
It will be equivalent to the comparative failure of this great movement if it should
degenerate into a vast system of joint-stock shopkeeping or industry, conducted on
selfish principles, with no dominant moral purpose pervading it, no longer earnestly
striving for the amelioration of social and industrial conditions, but aiming chiefly at
large dividends.
Such a system is only selfish competition decked out in new garments, and bearing
a new name.
The sympathy of the Church with the co-operative movement must depend on
the faithful adhesion of those who direct it to its true moral and spiritual purpose.
Such Committees of Social Service as have been recommended above should draw
attention to subjects like the following : —
1. The dangers that threaten the co-operative movement through its becoming
infected by the spirit of selfish competition, as illustrated by its tendency to give up
the principle of profit-sharing on the part of the workers.
2. The elevating influence which the feeling of associated ownership exercises on
the character of workmen.
3. The great importance of education.
APPENDICES 115
4. The necessity of confidence in approved leaders, and readiness to entrust
responsible authority to capable individuals, and to remunerate them liberally.
5. The vast opportunities for social amelioration which the co-operative system
has before it.
The Committee hope that they have shown conclusively how varied and urgent are
the questions which demand Christian thought and attention ; and that they have
sufficiently indicated some of the ways in which it is possible to permeate commercial
and industrial life with the regulative and inspiring force of applied Christianity.
They record their conviction that conspicuous, sustained, and widespread effort
in this direction, more particularly on the part of Christian laymen, is required at
the present time, as one special sign and form of the witness of the Church to the
all sufficiency of her Divine and Incarnate Lord, and to the transforming, enlighten-
ing, and quickening power of His Spirit upon human character and life.
Resolution formally adopted by the Lambeth Conference in 1897 : —
' ' That this Conference receives the Report of the Committee on the duty of the
Church in regard to Industrial Problems, and commends the suggestions
embodied in it to the earnest and sympathetic consideration of all Christian
people."
APPENDIX V.
Ordinations for the Three Years 1896, 1897, 1898.
Number of men ordained Deacons 1896 — 1898.
Ordinations at Trinity 37
,, in September 30
,, in Advent 37
Total 104
In 1896 29
In 1897 ; 44
In 1898 31
Total 104
Of these 25 were graduates of Oxford.
45 ,, ,, ,, Cambridge.
14 ,, ,, ,, other Universities.
7 ,, Associates of King's College, London.
7 came from non-graduate Theological Colleges.
6 were Literates.
Of the Oxford and Cambridge candidates 23 had graduated with honours, 6 in
the 1st Class (one a double first), 6 in the 2nd Class, 10 in the 3rd Class, and 1 in
the 4th Class.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNOAY.
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