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 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 *S, 
 
 6-/5^^ 
 
 Division 
 Section,, 
 Number i 
 
 (7 
 
 I 
 
 l 
 
V^>' 
 
CHRIST AND HIS TIMES 
 
CHRIST AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE DIOCESE OF CANTERBURY 
 IN HIS SECOND VISITATION 
 
 BY ^ 
 
 EDWARD WHITE 33€?t5oH. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 1889 
 
 The Right of Translation and lleproduction is Reserved 
 
Richard Clay an-d Sons, Limited. 
 
 LONDON and BDNGAY. 
 
[The Form of these Addresses is cxiJlaincd by the Forms of 
 a .Visitation, and their Common Title by the Opcnincj of the 
 Second {p. 47). One is added on the Oneness of the Church 
 in History and Work in England and Wales. 
 
 I venture to hope that it is only in headings, and that for 
 a reason {p. 18), that they may be found to lack ' co- or dinar 
 tion,' and not in connexion of subject. — Ed. C] 
 
PR^SENTI CHRISTO 
 
 CUJUS NOMEN 
 MATKI ECCLE«IiE INVOCATUM EST 
 
 QUI POPULUM PAUPEREM S ALVA BIT 
 
 CUM MUNDLS MUMDUS EP.IT 
 
 IN SCIENTIA AESTINENTIAM MINISTIIAT 
 
 NOS FECIT REGXUM SACERDOTES 
 
 ITNANIMES IN DOMO 
 
 BEXEDICTIO ET HONOR ET GLORIA ET POTEST AS 
 
CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — SOCIETY THE OHURCH's TEST 3 
 
 THE MOTHER CHURCH U 
 
 VOX PETRI . ly 
 
 II. — SUFFERING rOI'ULATIONS 47 
 
 III. — THE DISCIPLINE OF DESIRE. 1. PURITY 83 
 
 ^^- — " )» ,, 2. TEMPERANCE .... 119 
 
 v.— CHURCH CITIZENSHIP. LAY AVORK 149 
 
 THE church's oneness. WALES 183 
 
 NOTE ON ST, PETER'S TEACHING ON SUFFERING 211 
 
 APPENDIX OF LETTERS AND TABLES 216 
 
PRO CHRISTI TEMPORIBUS. 
 
 CUSTODI, DOMINE, QU^SUMUS, ECCLESIAM TUAM PROPITIATIONE PERPETUA 
 Et quia sine TE LABITUR HUMANA MORTALITAS 
 
 tuis semper auxiliis 
 
 et abstrahatur a noxiis 
 
 et ad salutaria dirigatur 
 
 Per Christum Jesum Dominum Nostrum 
 
 Qui Tecum vivit et regnat 
 
 IN unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus 
 
 in siecula s^culorum. 
 
 Amen. 
 
 SACK. GEL AS. L. HI. x. 
 
-THE CHURCH OF CHRIST OF 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 H% 
 
SOCIETY THE CHURCH'S TEST. 
 THE MOTHER CHURCH. 
 VOX PETRI. 
 
SOCIETY THE CHURCH'S TEST. 
 
 In opening the Yisitation of the Diocese I 
 cannot but recall the two last times when this 
 chief sanctuary overarched and overawed church- 
 assemblies with the sense of power and blessing 
 and responsibility. 
 
 At our Home-conference in which the Diocese Social and 
 
 Moral 
 gathered to advise on the advancement of good questions 
 
 works it was natural that the interest should 
 
 turn on plain main duties.^ 
 
 But it was not without some sort of kindly 
 
 surprise — it is a kindly world — that public 
 
 organs remarked that a solemn assemblage of 
 
 prelates from the whole world, the like of which 
 
 ^ See Report of Thirteenth Diocesan Conference of Canter- 
 bury (Gibbs, Canterbury, 1889), 
 
 B 2 
 
CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 this mother of mother-churches from its earliest 
 
 to its most splendid times had never seen, 
 
 concentrated its force on questions moral and 
 
 social.^ 
 
 occupy They were not of course expected to pro- 
 the real 
 mind of the mulge some modern figment as a doctrine, or 
 Church 
 
 to claim some new form of inspii^ation, but 
 
 perhaps men of the world and doubting men 
 were a little surprised to perceive that those 
 whom they were ready to accuse of dwelling 
 among speculations and antiquities and forms were 
 abreast with tough problems of modern life ; 
 to perceive in them a conviction that the facts 
 of revelation were of immediate application to 
 newest needs ; to perceive that Church doctrine 
 was surcharged with stimulus to action, for 
 believers in God's personal sympathy ; to per- 
 ceive that ever fresh manifestations of that 
 sympathy were held to be the province of the 
 Church ; to perceive that problems as they arose 
 were not to be solved by rule, nor committed 
 
 ^ Origin and History of the Lambeth Conferences (Dean of 
 AVindsor. S.P.C.K. 1889). 
 
SOCIETY THE CHURCH'S TEST. 
 
 to wellmeaningness excited by religion ; but 
 
 that religion required them to be dealt with 
 
 scientifically and constructively. 
 
 For chui'chmen this was no new idea. Yet I in ^pite of 
 
 appear- 
 cannot deny that there was justification for the auces, 
 
 surprise. Party is a loud spirit, fixing attention 
 on itself. There are many in England to-day 
 to whom Party is more than their Church. Want 
 of knowledge produces in many Clergy that want 
 of respect for Law which makes the wisest men 
 look with dismay on the probable effect of 
 their example on other classes in other ques- 
 tions. Again, some who claim to have more 
 clerical knowledge than any Clerks virtually 
 maintain that the predominant functions of 
 the Chui'ch are Worship and Doctrinal Teach- 
 ing. These are in all ages the great means, 
 for they are divine means, towards the divine 
 end. But whenever in history they have been 
 treated as the end, the roar of controversy 
 round them has deafened the ear to other 
 stiller, smaller voices, and dulled the eye for 
 perceiving true Signs of the Times. 
 
CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 I thank God it is not so in Canterbury. In 
 perfect loyalty to you all I could utter all my 
 heart. 
 
 Some things there are which I should be glad 
 to speak of, because I have somewhat to say, 
 but for the present I feel bound in honour to be 
 silent, and it must not move me if any feel 
 it less. 
 
 There is then nothing to keep us back from 
 those things which seem to me to furnish the 
 present true, worthy problems to the English 
 Church : — Poverty — Temperance — Purity — Lay- 
 work. 
 
 These will form the subjects of my several 
 addresses. Not so unconnected as perhaps they 
 seem. 
 
 Here are the fields and wildernesses on 
 
 which the Church is this day called to bring to 
 
 bear the Gifts of God and the Graces of Life 
 
 and are in the Spirit. I cannot believe that she so 
 til 6 triiG 
 outcome of misreads the Signs of the times as to think 
 
 true doc- , , . . . n • -, , i 
 
 trine, that this is an age m which the sanctuary 
 
SOCIETY THE CHURCH'S TEST. 
 
 itself should be the battle-ground. Here are 
 the fields in which whatsoever combatant of 
 whatsoever party achieves success, be he Church- 
 man, Nonconformist, or Roman, the victory is 
 the victory of Christ. 
 
 Need I add once for all this word — that I 
 do not cease a moment to dwell on Cardinal 
 Truths while I dwell on the Effect and Fruit 
 of them. That when we see their moral and 
 social "Virtue we shall the more livingly hold 
 by the Faith and the Objects of Faith ; be 
 more sure that the Image of God is being re- 
 covered by the Immanence of the Word in the 
 Flesh. 
 
 "Whoever then may not have expected that 
 throwing controversy into the background, the 
 gathered fathers of the Church should concen- 
 trate thought, speech, and counsel on moral and 
 
 social questions, to churchmen it ought to be — as in 
 
 the antient 
 it was — no new idea. None of the great Fathers Church 
 
 of their Church thought ever otherwise. Not 
 
 Cyprian in the first organizations that ever 
 
 dealt with the health of a heathen capital ; not 
 
CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Clirysostom who mirrors Society in his homilies; 
 
 not the others either Greek or Latin who state 
 
 such axioms on the origin and on the obligations 
 
 of wealth ; not Gregory in his Land-laws, as we 
 
 may call them, his principles of sound and just 
 
 administration of territorial property. 
 
 and in jq'or yet the "Eye-witnesses of the Word." 
 
 Scripture. 
 
 From His Forerunner's first warning to the last 
 
 apostolic clause, and onward through all sound 
 
 unselfish epochs in Christendom, it has been 
 
 declared with overpowering conviction that the 
 
 Divine in Man must be proved by visible fruit 
 
 borne in moral force and social healings. Two 
 
 combined sayings of Christ ' I have ordained 
 
 you that ye should bring forth much fruit and 
 
 that your fruit should remain,' and ' Heal the 
 
 sick, cast out devils, freely ye have received 
 
 freely give,' make the effect of the Church 
 
 upon Society the final test of her faithfulness. 
 
 Effect on From the moment when the Mission touches 
 Human 
 Society the idleness, falseness, shamelessness of the lowest 
 
 native tribes up to the highest training of Christian 
 
 children, the manliest exercise of self-restraint. 
 
SOCIETY THE CHURCH'S TEST. 
 
 full justice and free generosity of rich to poor, 
 and peace among nations, her Duty is ever to be 
 forwarding, ever lifting the cause of Humanity. 
 Never did Christ say to her ' My reward is with 
 me and my work before me' with a more dis- 
 tinct voice and more direct finger than now. 
 
 In town and country each one of these great is the 
 
 Church's 
 questions is to the fore. All men look to see touch- 
 stone. 
 how she stands this test — Effect upon Society. 
 
 If there are places among ourselves in which the 
 
 test is feebly, scarcely, recognised, we may not rest 
 
 until the general movement of the Church has 
 
 reached them. The town and village life of the 
 
 Church gives and was intended to give the greatest 
 
 scope for the exercise of moral force and social 
 
 healing : wherever her ministers, with all their 
 
 advantages of position, are backward — even if 
 
 they are not outrun by any others— in bringing 
 
 up the state of morals and the social tone to 
 
 a higher level (each successor, I mean, in his 
 
 own occupation of his benefice), there both the 
 
 Church and the world have grave reason to be 
 
 dissatisfied. 
 
10 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 There is no place anywhere in which, among 
 changed and changing conditions, spiritual powder 
 in all its ability and knowledge and reflection and 
 energy and concentration are not required in a 
 new degree and measure. The stadium is one, 
 though the direction changes. As in the antient 
 chariot race, one limb of the long course is 
 run ; the other lies in its length before us ; 
 our chariot has to wheel round the goal with 
 incredible swiftness. All turns upon the judg- 
 ment, vigour, and alertness of our Love 
 
THE MOTHER CHURCH. 
 
 I HAVE sufficiently indicated the line which The 
 
 ^ Cathedral 
 
 I shall take this week in addressing the Body- 
 representatives of the organization of the Church 
 in this Diocese. And now to turn to our- 
 selves. — I say ourselves, for in every Cathedral 
 the Bishop is one of the Confratres, only the 
 first of the Canonical Body ; and in this, above 
 all Churches, the customs of installation, and 
 the order of the choir fix the fact upon our 
 retina. 
 
 At the head of the precious and prized 
 organization, diocesan and parochial, stands its 
 chief glory, the mother Church, with all its 
 uplifting power of consecrated art, its romantic 
 history, its systematized opportunities of con- 
 sultation among practical men selected for their 
 
12 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 ability in religious matters, and dwelling in the 
 House of God as friends. 
 
 There — ever since Ethelbert 'refused not the 
 licentia iyr<x.dicandi^ ^ ever since Augustine built 
 the ' Singers' Choir ' and raised the ' High Ascent ' 
 beyond — there the preaching of the Truth by 
 many witnesses, the higher education of Youth 
 and its loving association with religion, there 
 the frequent communions, the open doors, the 
 continuity and the worthiness of worship abide ; 
 functions and facts which have never been in- 
 termitted in either their symbolic or their 
 effective power and in our day have been 
 quickened with new spirit. There, when the 
 
 to touch small staff left to her can mainly surrender 
 and head 
 moral and itself to diocesan teaching and labour, there (as 
 
 social 
 movement individuals admirably exemplify) may be im- 
 in the 
 Diocese, mensely stimulated and strengthened, even though 
 
 not centred in it, every one of those moral, 
 educational, social organizations which have so 
 many diflSculties to contend with, which re- 
 quire so much nursing and encouraging; wdiich 
 1 Bede, I. 25. 
 
THE MOTHER CHURCH. 13 
 
 sometimes, among unresponsive, half despondent 
 quietudes, look for a firm, gentle touch of 
 friendly pressure — a fresh breeze over a smooth 
 mere ; — may I say, a tone from Bell Harry not 
 out of harmony with village chimes. 
 
 I proposed to my Yery Reverend Brother, 
 
 that the Chapter should no longer exempt itself New 
 
 Visitation 
 from the so serviceable answering of Visitation enquiries 
 
 questions, I proposed it, I hope, with deference, 
 
 and I cannot express my thanks sufficiently 
 
 for the response — so full, so suggestive and 
 
 hopeful. 
 
 The opinions and counsels given by the Dean so 
 
 answered 
 and Chapter, the several Residentiaries, and the as to 
 
 foreshew 
 Honorary Canons, are too important to receive 
 
 a general reply or be adequately treated by 
 comments in an address. They require illustra- 
 tion and discussion, and are such as then to lead 
 on to profitable action. My hope is therefore 
 to be allowed to have a conference with the 
 residentiaries and early next year with the whole 
 body of canons. 
 
14 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES, 
 
 fresh help- In the meantime it may be a satisfaction to 
 
 fillll6SS6S 
 
 every one to know that the whole body, un- 
 animous save for one single half- despondent voice, 
 — unanimes in Domo — believe their Domus to be 
 capable, and know that it is desii-ous of extending 
 and strengthening by fresh activities happy and 
 serviceable relations to the parishes, the city, 
 the diocese, and my own office. Of such blessed 
 relations I have, as you know, formerly both 
 made the sketch and enjoyed the substance. 
 
 Some such new activities — for instance, the 
 widespread usefulness and enjoyment of the 
 Church Reading Society, with its lectures, li- 
 braries, and even examinations, the religious In- 
 spection of higher grade schools, the quiet solid 
 work of the Sunday School Association, the 
 teaching of Purity in pure ways, the develop- 
 ment and conduct of Missions, with other works 
 — receive special furtherance, and in some in- 
 stances their main direction and force, from 
 Residentiary Canons, Honorary Canons, and Six 
 Preachers. 
 
 How further the strength of corporate life or 
 
THE MOTHER CHURCH. 15 
 
 aids to the devotional life, assistance to diocesan 
 societies or relief to diocesan difficulties, parochial 
 interests, or church education, may, at least some 
 of them, step by step be advanced, must come 
 under the consideration to which we now look 
 forward. 
 
 One thing is certain. We must never count Its lines 
 the unavoidable as a bar to work. Limitations, if clearer ; 
 really insuperable, are never mere disadvantages. 
 If we regard them as Conditions meant to 
 difference our work from other work, we 
 often find them the truest promptings, and the 
 clearest guides. 
 
 Of the present resources of the Cathedral, it 
 
 is enough to say that it has shared in each and 
 
 all of the several forms of depression which affect 
 
 the Chui'ch : that Finance could scarcely have 
 
 been, can scarcely become, more perplexing, but 
 
 that the outlook — beyond the near future — is 
 
 not discouraging. 
 
 And one point of deep satisfaction I may its present 
 
 peace, 
 respectfully beg leave to touch. We know 
 
 how any fret frets most in hours of solemn 
 
CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 worship. And therefore I learn with a reverent 
 pleasure how, more than in old times perhaps, 
 the members of the body strive together that 
 their community may be a sympathetic present- 
 ment of cathedral life as well as work. There 
 is a beautiful saying of one of our antient Priors 
 — the aged and sagacious Henry of Eastry — 
 ^ Kisi tem2Jore 2KICIS non bene colitur jjacis Auctor.' ^ 
 A perturbed society cannot w^orship and intercede. 
 But, Pax altaris Pax Altissimi. 
 
 1 Litterce Cantuar tenses, No. 140, vol. i. p. 132. Ed. Dr. 
 Sheppard, Rolls Series. 
 
vox PETRI. 
 
 Cognovit vocem Petri. Act. App. c. xii. 
 
 Reserving then further capitular detail for a 
 capitular sitting, I shall ask you to give me 
 your patience in marking how close Social Ques- 
 tions, our own Questions, lie in the heart of 
 the Bible. 
 
 If the four streams of the Faith compass the 
 whole earth, Social Problems are the beds and 
 rocky gullies through which One Hand pours 
 them 
 
 Which laid those dark foundations deep, 
 and bade the weltering waves their oozy channels keep. 
 
 The constitution of a Nation environs the 
 Christ- Angel 1 of the Old Testament. The prin- 
 ^ Vid. Cyprian, Testim. ii. 5 et locc. ibi citt. 
 
 C 
 
18 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 ciples of Society stream from the Man Christ 
 Jesus of the New. 
 
 Our But it is best and most interesting to take 
 
 present 
 
 problems a single concise writer who sets ^ the prob- 
 lems and the revelation in conjunction before 
 him. 
 
 Poverty — Temperance — Pimty — Church - Citi- 
 zenship — these indicate four quarters of the 
 Christian heavens, if I read the Times of Christ 
 right to-day. It is pathetic that there is yet 
 no remedial word answering to 'Poverty' as 
 ' Temperance ' and ' Purity ' answer to Evils of 
 Desire. But ' Church-Citizenship ' is the clear- 
 ing off of Heathenism, antient and modern, and 
 to it, in its undeveloped workings, we look if 
 we say ' It will be fair weather to-day, for the 
 sky is red.' 
 
 were Tliey indicate also four quarters, if I read him 
 
 ^to the right, of the Heaven of St. Peter, who had its 
 
 Apostles. 
 
 key ; and, if so, of all the Apostles, who " cer- 
 tainly were what Peter was,^ endued with an 
 
 ^ Cyprian. Be, Ccdholicce Ecclcsice Unitate, c. 5 (Trans, ed. 
 J. H. jSicwman Library of the FatJiers, p. 134). 
 
vox PETRI. 19 
 
 equal fellowship both of honour and power" — 
 and if so, of all the Times of Christ. 
 
 I am not going to be so presumptuous as to Tlie First 
 
 Epistle of 
 trespass on the "work which will always class Saint Petei- 
 
 among the first of uninspired scriptvires." ^ The 
 commentary of our philosophic saint who opens 
 in the First Epistle of Peter such "a treasure- 
 house of experimental divinity." 
 
 But as it is said of Leighton, that there is 
 " no artificial arrangement observed by him in 
 discussing the several subjects introduced by the 
 Apostle" — in fact, his first editor calls it "con- 
 fusion" — the way is just open to any one who 
 desires to call attention to that one point only, 
 " the arrangement of the subjects of the apostle." 
 
 St. Peter's is a concentrated treatise, the is a Lettar 
 
 1 • • (. T • 1 IT ^" these 
 
 larger intention or which may not be always problems. 
 
 present to us when devoutly applying it to our 
 
 private lives. I may have your permission to 
 
 ^ Pearson's Life of Abp. Leigldon, p. 89 — ' Crown of his 
 p)Osthumoiis glory in the universal Church.' And see Colc- 
 riilge's Aids to Reflection, Aph. xcvi., xcviii. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 just touch the line of thought he follows in 
 
 showing how and why the Church was to be 
 
 constructed. 
 
 1. The The Church was to be built up of very- 
 
 Salvation 
 
 of scattered and unthought-of elements. There was 
 Society ; 
 
 no portion of human society so low or weak 
 
 or ill-used ^ that it was not to find place and 
 
 a home in the Church. 
 
 He speaks of what we as well as he call 
 " Salvation " ^ — the Salvation of Society, the Salva- 
 tion of the Individujil. But whereas with us the 
 word is commonly used of the individual soul, 
 St. Peter mainly means by it the ' Salvation of 
 the World ' — of Society — of mankind at large. 
 
 Salvation is to him a present process. It 
 has its counterpart and completion hereafter. 
 But it is flowing at full tide upon all the shores 
 of this world. 
 
 The forecasts and inspirations of the past had 
 foreseen its approach. Not without perplexity 
 
 ^ TTopeTTtSrjjUots Siacnropas, 1 Pet. i, 1 ; Kvir-qQivTes, i. 7 ; 
 KoXacpiCofievoi, ii. 20, et passim. 
 - 1 Pet. i. 10. 
 
vox PETRI. 21 
 
 and some distress.^ They bad seen that it would 
 run so counter to the accepted principles of the 
 old world that not only its preachers but its 
 whole following w^ould suffer extremities before 
 it gained the day ; that they would be content 
 to suffer ; as they would be with everything 
 which identified them with their Head and 
 Founder. We need not here dwell on the 
 peculiar identification with Him which was in- 
 volved in the knowledge of Who and What this 
 Founder was beyond what appeared at first sight. 
 It is enough now to say that St. Peter brings 
 out the reality of "the Salvation" of Society 
 as begun, continued, and certain to continue, 
 but liable at any future period to find that real 
 faithfulness to its principles, or return to them 
 when forgotten, might provoke the severest 
 opposition. 
 
 We may pause an instant to ask ourselves 
 at what point in the development of this idea 
 we think we now stand? 
 
 ^ Trept ris crwTrjplas i^e(r]Tr](Tav Ka\ i^epevt^jjaav Tfpo(pr)rai . . 
 ipevvwi/Tds . . irpofiapTvpofJievov ra els XpifTThi' iraQ-hpiara . . 
 ovx eavTOLS . . Aih aua(w(ra./j.(voi K.r.\. 1 Pet. i. 13. 
 
CHEIST AND HTS TIMES. 
 
 continuous Forwarder, I believe, than ever before. Im- 
 mensely behind where we might have been, yet 
 never so forward. We have rushed full tide up 
 many great false channels. AYe have strayed 
 into many mere ditches. We have swamped 
 many low lands. But the right river-coui-se has 
 been found also, and up it the fresh sea is 
 flowing fast. 
 
 Adversity proves us. Prosperity has tempted 
 us. Criticism clears and cleanses us. At present 
 there is something like a balance of currents, 
 but there can be no doubt which will prevail. 
 Never in the world's history were so many 
 minds animated and penetrated with Christian 
 ideas, bringing those ideas in infinite forms to 
 bear on the world's problems. That is the progress 
 of the " Salvation of the World." 
 
 St. Peter with one touch as to the sobriety 
 of judgment which ought to mark the main- 
 conditions tainers of this " Salvation," for we can find 
 
 of its 
 promoters : no better word, assigns to them universally 
 
 three characteristics — knowledge of facts below 
 the surface observed and revealed — self-dedica- 
 
vox PETRI. 23 
 
 tion to a purity of motive far beyond the average 
 
 — possession of a spiritual contact and intercourse 
 
 carrying them along the same lines as reason 
 
 but into a region above it. 
 
 Now an Association possessing these characters, 
 
 he says, does really constitute a Home ^ to and 
 
 from which neither birth nor estate nor culture 
 
 admit or exclude any fragment of humanity — a all- 
 inclusive, 
 home with all home's happiness for the spirits 
 
 of men — for the best and characteristic part of 
 their nature. In this home was to be found what 
 the Stoic called ' Kingship,' claiming it for every 
 soul which would assert its right to it, were it 
 soul of slave, or soul of consul. In this home 
 was to be found what the Hebrew called 
 'Priesthood' — the certainty that one was qualified 
 to approach God for oneself, and to approach 
 Him in behalf of others, with an availingness 
 which could not be baffled ; and bound to dis- 
 charge constantly one function in society, ex- 
 pressed by St. Peter in a most striking phrase 
 namely, ^' to tell out the Virtues of God.'' "^ 
 
 1 1 Pet. ii. 5. 
 1 Pet. ii. 9 — OTTOJS ras aperos i^ayyel\r]Te tov... 
 
24 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 These functions attach to every member of 
 
 this new " Household of Salvation." — " The Holy 
 
 Nation, The Royal Priesthood." 
 
 2. Its Then St. Peter passes on to lay down the two 
 working 
 Principles, principles of the construction of this House and 
 (1) Disci^ r r 
 
 pline ; Home. The fii^st is the Discipline of * Desire.' No 
 
 Buddhist teacher has more emphatically pointed out 
 that Conformity to Desire, Obedience to Mortal 
 Desires, is the root of human sorrow and sin. 
 The different forms of Desire are, he says, always 
 ' on campaign against the human soul.' ^ The old 
 Asiatic Prince Ascetic saw (by the gift of God 
 undoubtedly) what is at once the foundation and 
 the ruin of society. He was ignorant as to how 
 other and nobler elements had to be and could 
 be wrought in with it, to make of men's impulses 
 a beginning and foundation. He only saw Desire 
 unchastened — Desire overruling every other prin- 
 ciple — a cause of ruin. St. Peter saw Desire as 
 a power controllable, reducible, convertible. And 
 while again and again he rings out the word as 
 the secret of Heathen Misery, he knows the 
 spell for its conversion. 
 
 1 1 Pet. ii. 11. 
 
vox PETRI. 25 
 
 The other Constructive principle of the New (2) Crea- 
 tion of 
 Home is ' Good Service to Mankind '— AFAeonoi ia Good. 
 
 — if we may not rather render it a Creation of 
 
 Good. This is not only an interior activity. This 
 
 will change the attitude of Kingdoms, and 
 
 Nations towards the producers. It is a Leverage 
 
 by which the Church will naturally build up 
 
 herself, without making her own building 
 
 her object. For St. Peter foresees for 
 
 her in the largest aspect that commanding 
 
 position out of which must finally spring what 
 
 we call the establishment of Churches. From 3. There 
 
 ensues a 
 
 her first moment of weakness the Church Definite 
 
 Kelation 
 
 feels the responsibility of Loyalty to the State to all 
 
 Polities, 
 
 and exertion for its good order. She will at 
 
 first be utterly misunderstood and misconstrued, 
 but her purpose will dawn on them, and all 
 governments will end in taking a religious view 
 of her religious position. Thus he speaks '} — 
 ' Keep your intercourse in and with nations 
 
 ^ 1 Pet. ii. 12 — t}]v avaarpocp^v v/jlwv iu to7s ieQi/^civ fxovTes 
 KaXi\V 'Iva iu wKaTaXaXovaiv vjxoov £os KaKoiroiwu, e/c ruv kuXwv 
 epywv, iiroTTTevaavTes, bo^dcrucn rhv Qehv iprjfJLepa inicr KOirri s . 
 
26 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES, 
 
 ' high-toned — that in case they decry you as 
 'mischievous men, they may in consequence of 
 ' the high-toned action, upon observation of it, 
 'glorify God, at some epoch of recognition.' 
 Yes, 'tliey will glorify God.' What is that 
 but saying that Christian lines of action will 
 win the adherence of Civil powers % 
 
 He proceeds ^ ' Submit to any human consti- 
 ' tution — the Emperor as Sovereign — Governors 
 ' as through him emissaries for penal purposes 
 * on criminals, for moral support to those who do 
 'good service — because this way lies God's 
 ' purpose, that by rendering Good Service, you 
 ' muzzle the unperceptiveness of the unthinking 
 ' multitude.' 
 
 The divine logic of your appeals may not at 
 first reach these — but a Creation of Good among 
 them will not only stay the vulgar bark and 
 bite, but secure, in varying degrees as ideas 
 
 •^ 1 Pet. ii. 13. — virordynre ndcnj avQpooirivr) Krlan . . . 
 e£T6 ySatriAet ws inrep^xovri, efre r^yc/xoai, cos 5i' avTOv Tre^Tro- 
 IJ.4vois els iKdLKr](Tt.v KaKOTTOiwv enaiuov 5e ayadoTroictiV, on ovtccs 
 earl rh de\r}fxa tov Qeov, ay ad ottolqvvt as (pi/xoiiu tt]V tcHv 
 avdpwirwu ayvuciav. 
 
vox PETRI. 27 
 
 grow, support and recognition from political namely 
 
 establjsh- 
 authority. ment. 
 
 Of what St. Peter foresees we shall not see 
 the end : he sees what lies ultimately in the 
 nature of Society. 
 
 And this is St. Peter's ground-plan of the 
 Church — the true " Saint Peter's," an immense, 
 ever-growing Society serving the universal Society 
 of all times and places in Self-discipline and in 
 beneficent Labour. 
 
 The motive powers of these energies are (as we The 
 
 noble 
 saw) Knowledge of God, the Memory of a Self- obligations 
 
 Dedication, the reception of a supernatural Gift. 
 
 It is plain that a perfect sense of the reality involved 
 
 for a 
 of these motives is essential ; that the obligation clergy, 
 
 of any order of Men appointed to recommend them 
 
 is a very overwhelming obligation ; for with any 
 
 decline of such sense of reality, the Service of 
 
 Humanity by the Church will decline — and with 
 
 it the position of the Church, not as regards 
 
 temporal questions, but the place which it fills 
 
 in the sphere of Humanity. 
 
28 CHRIST i\XD HIS TIMES. 
 
 How far It is matter of gravest reflection how far the 
 
 now 
 realised ? Church of the present is fulfilling its tremendous 
 
 function — whether such motives are realised 
 keenly — whether they are pressed to realisa- 
 tion by those who ought to press them — 
 whether any modern phenomena rise or fall in 
 exact proportion to the pressure and the realisa- 
 tion. Societies there have been on smaller scale 
 which have sought worldwide influence for in- 
 fluence sake, have practised vigorous self-denial 
 and exercised inexhaustible bounty in order to 
 attain power. But the great society of Mankind 
 
 in unself- has found them out again and again and re- 
 ishness 
 
 jected and overthrown them. 
 
 It is only when working for the sake of 
 
 Mankind, and not for her own sake, that the 
 
 Church fulfils her appointed function. If the 
 
 power that is in her by the Gift of God is 
 
 used to obtain power by the Gift of man, she 
 
 begins to fail and go backward. If it is used 
 
 only for the service of man after God's will, the 
 
 power that comes to her is unmeasured, and 
 
 remains so while her heart is pure. 
 
vox PETRI. 29 
 
 No one need fear lest in giving herself to with faith 
 
 in her su- 
 social problems and moral duties she should be pernatural 
 
 enclow- 
 chilled back into what is fairly called ' the mere ment 
 
 morality of the last century ' — classical morality — 
 so long as in her divine Services she cherishes 
 her sense of the reality of the imparted Spirit, 
 while she tenderly glows over the gifts imparted 
 once and for all to her every babe, and the im- 
 mortal food that comes daily down from heaven ; 
 whilst in the studies of her scholars she pores over 
 the Inspiration of the Word, and the philosophies 
 and the criticisms of the ages, as they pass, 
 supply ever fresh intellectual and spiritual dis- 
 cussion to this great wonder ; while in her ora- 
 tories she adores the Being of the Trinity and 
 the Living Mystery of the Incarnation ; while she 
 wreathes her graves with the bright and fragrant 
 ' sure Hope ' of the Resurrection of the Body. 
 
 But whenever she looks over this world's for the 
 
 solid good 
 sea, with the eyes of the Fisher of Men, she will of society, 
 
 be, she must be, as devoted to Morality, as ab- 
 sorbed in the teaching of Morals, as industrious 
 to i*emove every hindrance, physical or social, as 
 
30 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 keen to band young and old together, to form, 
 
 to enforce the public opinion, whether of the village 
 
 or of the nation, as if the Service of Men were the 
 
 whole and only Gospel she is commissioned to 
 
 teach. 
 
 which is It is here, I think, that whatever impression 
 
 the final 
 
 test of a may be made on the public by the stir of advo- 
 
 triie 
 Mission, cates and of societies, it is here that in ordinary 
 
 range of Christian intercourse, we are in danger 
 of falling behind the standards of the Scripture 
 and the Prayer Book. Occupied as we are with 
 theoretic or ritual or political questions affecting 
 the Church, the currents of our thoughts, our 
 hopes, our fears agitated or coloured by our 
 religious journals, whose topics are necessarily 
 limited and transient, we pastors are in danger 
 of forgetting that the soul of an Apostle, all 
 afire with the personal knowledge and love of 
 God in Man, burning with the secrets denied to 
 prophets, clear with an insight that angels longed 
 for, drives by every argument, by every illustra- 
 tion, home to the souls of Christians that the 
 tending of the Lambs and the Sheep is vain, is 
 
vox PETRI. 31 
 
 nothing, is absolutely not done, unless Morality 
 in every relation of life, the morals of the people, 
 the substantial welfare of the nation, come out 
 as the result of all we teach, as the serious issue 
 and palpable mark of Discipleship. 
 
 And how is it with us 1 1 Side by side with, and Imper- 
 surrounded by Parishes in which every possible unexcused 
 effort is put forth, and— often under severest diffi- v edimTnt. 
 culties — is rich in blessing, Parishes there still ' 
 are in which there is no Sunday School, no 
 organized endeavour to make men temperate, in 
 which young men are never warned or helped as 
 to chastity, in which no instruction is ever given 
 as to the rightful position of the Church of Eng- 
 land, in which there is less interest in the pro- 
 pagation of the Faith than there was, we may 
 be sure, in the same hamlets and lands in the days 
 of Augustine, Parishes in which no one would 
 dare to lecture on the privileges of the Church, 
 because its visible privileges are limited to what 
 Acts of Parliament would enforce. Small as the 
 
 ^ oil KavxvcToiJi.sda ei jj.i) iu rals aadev^iais. 
 aTr' aaQiveias duva/xov/nevoi. 
 
32 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 proportions of such neglect may be, one evil 
 instance works a harm to Christ's Church which 
 sorely strains all that can be done by all in 
 redemption of her honour. We live among eyes 
 which mark and tongues that trumpet every 
 blot, though they have no sight or speech for 
 utter self-sacrifice and modest devotion. When 
 we would correct the evil, there are elements 
 abroad which permit no correction. 
 
 But even unfair hindrances cannot in the Light 
 of God's will be unmeaning. He is, as it were, 
 forcing us to correction from within. When the 
 Philistines would not let the Hebrews sharpen 
 their own weapons, they had still " a file for the 
 " mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the 
 "forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the 
 " goads," ^ until the tools were found weapons. 
 
 Evermore the most powerful argument is St. 
 Peter's still — that ' after whatever misrepresenta- 
 tion,' a day comes in which men must glorify God 
 for a faith and worship, which writes itself down 
 in the Morals of the community. 
 1 1 Sam. xiii. 21. 
 
vox PETRT. 33 
 
 There is yet a subject to which the feeling heart 4. The 
 
 of the Apostle seems to turn and turn in endless has special 
 
 mi , relation 
 
 recurrence. Ihere were then, as now, classes of as to 
 
 Society which seemed drowned in suffering. In " ^ ^^ ^' 
 
 the antient world they were largely included in 
 
 the ranks of slavery— that "abyss of misery 
 
 and woe which," the Historian,i "leaves to be 
 
 fathomed by those who venture to gaze into it." 
 
 Into the Mysteries of Suffering and its eternal 
 work he penetrates deeper than it is well for us 
 at this moment to try to follow him.2 But what 
 bears on the Social Work of the Church is this 
 
 Of undeserved suffering, not drawn down by 
 man's own action, but coming, as it were, capri- 
 ciously down upon them in the way of discharge 
 of duty, there was no instance so typical as that 
 of the honest maltreated slave. The principles of 
 the Eoman world on slaves or slavery made 
 millions of such sufferers. 
 
 Common life, says St. Peter, contained no 
 
 such type as this being was of the most Innocent, 
 
 ^ Mommsen, History of Rome, B. iv. c. 2 (vol. iii. p. 80, 
 Dickson tr.). 
 '^ See Note on St. Peter's Teaching, p. 211. 
 
34 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 the Man of Sorrows. To the slave, in all their 
 epistles, the Apostles speak most tenderly. Of 
 him Christianity was most careful. Not in 
 preaching against the institution a crusade 
 which would have endlessly multiplied their 
 miseries, but by instilling such views as would 
 first ameliorate the system, and make it at last 
 impossible. 
 
 so to our May we justly believe that there are no suffering 
 own suffer- 
 ing popu- populations connected with our daily life which are 
 
 lations. 
 
 at as low an average of living, of comfort, of 
 
 morals, as the population within a population 
 whose case moved St. Peter and the first 
 Christians'? They had at any rate daily food, 
 clothing, shelter secured. It is a difficult com- 
 parison — perhaps impossible. But it is a terrible 
 word — " suffering population " — continuously suf- 
 fering — and it is a true one, and it ought not to 
 be true. 
 
 Each deepening utterance as to life and duty 
 under suffering, which we cannot now analyse, is 
 by him addressed naturally to those who suffered 
 round him — the despised, the outcast, the nothings 
 
vox PETKI. 35 
 
 of this world. Each pastor has so to learn the The 
 
 Pastor's 
 deep tones that he may first of all himself so duty on 
 
 ^ • "^ their 
 
 speak to sufferers within his reach. But he has a behalf to 
 
 further duty. He has so to transpose all the notes 
 
 of it that they may reach every one of those 
 
 persons and those classes, ourselves among them, 
 
 whose requirements and exigeance create at least 
 
 some part of the griefs ; reach every one who 
 
 can contribute some quota of influence to alter 
 
 and to uplift. 
 
 Save for nine lines of his Letter, there is 5. The 
 
 Laity. 
 
 nothing limited to Pastors or Elders. The pathetic, 
 
 stirring, sacred utterances are to the Laity of the 
 
 Christian church. Not one duty of this social sort, 
 
 either of work, or of self-denial, or of any Christian 
 
 principle is laid on the Clergy which is not bound 
 
 equally on every Layman. There is no difference 
 
 made or marked. Upon every churchman the St. Peter's 
 
 is not a 
 Apostle lays it to stem the destroying flood of Clerical 
 
 Letter. It 
 Desire, and so to counterwork it as to save concerns 
 
 Lay Life, 
 others with ourselves ; on every one to be in Lay Work, 
 
 sympathy with " suffering populations " ; and 
 
 with strong, careful hand to deal with their 
 
 D 2 
 
CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 disabilities, their amelioration, and their restora- 
 tion. 
 
 Mentally, when they hear such things as 
 "proclaiming liberty to the captive, and binding 
 up the broken-hearted," the laity apply them 
 to the clergy. They find fault with the clergy 
 for doing or for not doing all that is not a 
 whit more clerical than it is Christian. 
 
 It is the Laity to whom St. Peter says that 
 they are always to be ready to take up the 
 Defence of Christianity with any questioner ^ — 
 with any who ask for an account of the hope 
 that is in us. It is the Laity to whom he 
 says that knowledge and power of reasoning are 
 a duty, but that the effectiveness of their mean- 
 ing must finally rest on their personal character. 
 
 This has been ever the thought of the Church of 
 England. Mores, Bacons, Hales, Boyles, Lockes, 
 Nelsons, Newtons, Wilberf orces, "Watsons, Shaf tes- 
 burys, — all the great leading laymen of the 
 English Church, have been such leaders as 
 no other Church has had. Such we have still, 
 1 1 Peter ill. 15. 
 
vox PETRI. 37 
 
 though some are passing away and though 
 young men are too ready to be ahenated by 
 mistakes. But their duty is to the Church in 
 spite of mistakes. 
 
 Not a Christian living can either disdain his 
 obligations, or contract himself out of them by 
 deputing them to ecclesiastics. 
 
 To St. Peter's mind there is ever present 
 one vast solid society. Of its constitutional 
 form he gives the merest hint ; that hint corre- 
 sponds with our form. What he labours to 
 show is that it must itself be perfect in these 
 three fields, Desire, Action, Suffering, and that 
 its function is to mould all human life in those 
 three areas — three which are one. 
 
 Those fields of life or areas of condition are and has 
 
 wider 
 the same as ever. The body itself is no doubt range than 
 
 ever. 
 more vast. But, all other circumstances 
 
 remaining the same, I know not who has 
 received authority to disband its working 
 populations, or to declare its work to be 
 changed. Who has received a shadow of com- 
 mission to narrow down to Doctrine and 
 
38 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Worship the religion that began with Morals 
 
 and Society, or to limit to the Clergy the 
 
 responsibilities of the Church 1 
 
 Supposing now that we have rightly read the 
 
 Apostle's Letter On the Church, that we have 
 
 seen his true gist as to the sphere of the Church's 
 
 working and the issues to be expected from it, 
 
 we ought next to observe the conditions which 
 
 to-day surround us as the same Church, and to 
 
 put them to ourselves without exaggeration. 
 
 The He spoke of 'Desire' as 'the Will of the 
 
 conditions 
 
 Gentiles,' — the actual characteristic of Heathen- 
 ism — and of its developements in ' lasciviousness,' 
 in ' wine-bibbings, re veilings, and drinkings.' 
 
 He spoke of a very suffering class in the 
 population. 
 
 With both of these conditions the Chuixh 
 was dealing — and not without success, even in 
 those hours of her dawn. 
 
 Kow our own conditions in these two relations 
 are these : — 
 
 Intemperance is in far greater rage and ravage 
 than among those ' Gentiles.' And we can con- 
 
vox PETRI. 39 
 
 trast the state of our vast drinking population 
 not only with that of our own more sober classes, 
 but with that of classes parallel to itself in 
 countries where sobriety is even partially the 
 rule. We read in black and white the great- 
 ness of our excess and of the criminal misery 
 it creates. 
 
 We know the state of " Morals " (as we speak) 
 in large classes of the community — not less in 
 some strata of the rich than in some strata of 
 the poor. We know that the streets of London 
 fling temptation broadcast before youth and in- 
 experience. We have heard grave persons speak 
 of a necessary occupation, a necessary mode of 
 female livelihood. Our medical authorities speak 
 of a river of poison flowing into the blood of 
 this nation. 
 
 Then the Apostle spoke of a suffering popu- 
 lation. We know of one which can only just 
 exist, hanging on a sharp edge of illness, hunger, 
 uncleanness physical and moral, incapacity mental 
 and bodily, in full sight of abundance, luxury, 
 and waste. 
 
40 CHRIST AND HTS TIMES. 
 
 Consider what it is certain that they, and 
 more still, all who feel for them, are piling up 
 in the way of reflection on their condition ; what 
 it is essential that a faithful Christian Church 
 should feel as to rightful amelioration; how 
 appalling the thought of other sorts of attempts 
 at redress. 
 ^^® , It is absurd not to know that, though similar 
 
 facts have run on through the past, the propor- 
 tion of them now to the palliatives in use is 
 more formidable. 
 
 The world j^ jg impossible to think that a material or 
 powerless : 
 
 secular education is on the way to aboHsh the 
 virus of Self-indulgence in either kind, or the 
 pleasure of Extravagance, or the Passion for 
 Wealth, or the Recklessness of extreme Poverty. 
 "It is often in vain to inform the understanding 
 and convince the judgment. It is admitted 
 that you do not thereby reform the hearts of 
 men, who, though they know their duty, will 
 not practise it," unless some fresh motive is 
 found. 
 
 But if some sufficiently powerful motive is 
 
vox PETRI. 41 
 
 supplied there comes in the application of all that 
 knowledge; not only economy and sense in the 
 poor, but self-denial and wisdom in the rich. 
 With the will comes even the ability to devise 
 the means and measures of an elevating self- 
 help. 
 
 Then we may well consider whether our The 
 m (. Church 
 
 Church of England may not silence bickerings able, if 
 
 willing. 
 and postpone controversies, which, in the sight 
 
 of such fields of necessity and of work, I am 
 
 ashamed to name, in order to devote her 
 
 energies to such problems and to strike out 
 
 agencies for their solving. Her doctrine and 
 
 her worship will not suffer while she is ' trading ^ 
 
 with her Lord's loan of Minse;' so long as the 
 
 Great Fountain of Doctrine and Worship and 
 
 Character rises soundingly in the midst of that 
 
 market-place. 
 
 Lastly, our Wealth may 'consider its CalHng.' 
 
 It is not certain that the Love of Money is a 
 
 constant passion in man, either for its own sake 
 
 ^ Upay/ji.aTevaa(jde. — Lu. xix. 13. 
 
42 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 or for self-sake. Ages have been of which it 
 
 was no characteristic, and may be again. Art 
 
 and Faith and National Glory have in their turns 
 
 ousted it. What if we should be at the verge 
 
 of a new time in which Wealth may devote 
 
 The calling gome real proportion of itself, after the manner 
 of wealth. 
 
 of our Fathers' wealth, to a religious solution of 
 problems, which left to themselves, can solve 
 themselves only in whatever may be the natural 
 outcome of despair. 
 
 Kiches and Poverty can both contribute to the 
 endeavour. Healthful homes and work-places 
 can be insisted on. Magnificent Institutions 
 and Common spaces — things which in all reason 
 may supplement the surroundings of tiny homes 
 — these wealth can give. 
 
 Only the Church can supply the soul of the 
 work. A personnel trained in the Organization 
 of Charity, and the Teaching of true Religion, 
 commanding means for working all necessary 
 Agencies, having no aims beside, can alone 
 recover what the Educational System of the 
 State and the Parochial System cannot over- 
 
vox PETRI. 43 
 
 take. Not that these " break down." They 
 are more efficient than ever. But there is a 
 Supplemental work to be clone. 
 
 Only the Church can supply the Men and 
 the Spirit within the Men. Let her. 
 
II.-CANTERBURY. 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 
 
II. 
 
 Every King of Men is enshrined to us in 
 his own Age. The best history of it is his 
 biography. To some sphere of humanity he has 
 been so much more than to any other, that neither 
 he nor his age can be afterwards understood apart. 
 The ' Age of Augustus,' ' Luther and his Times,' 
 the * Napoleonic era ' present distinct ideas. The 
 range is bounded, even when the influence of the 
 men far overruns their contemporaries. Important 
 books have been devoted to illustrating the first 
 third of the first century with the special pur- 
 pose of helping us to understand Christ by 
 familiarising us with His historical surround- 
 ings. Without underrating the interest of such 
 pictures, it is of highest importance to us 
 to have it constantly in mind that tJiese times, 
 
48 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 this century and decade, are the Times of Christ, 
 no less than the reign of Herods or the governor- 
 ship of Pilate was. The present day is one of 
 His Days, and we are His contemporaries. 
 
 Faith in "I am with yon" He said, "I am with you all 
 Christ 
 Present the days, even to the end of the Age." Our Faith 
 
 means that His teaching is altogether unexhausted; 
 
 that if we can hear it and use it, it is fresh as 
 
 at the first ; as applicable to our problems as if it 
 
 had been applicable to none before. If it be 
 
 so what we most want is what all His immediate 
 
 friends wanted for a time, " Ears to hear." 
 
 involves To believe this it is necessary to admit that 
 
 Human "Human Nature" as it is called, is capable of 
 
 rises. being changed. Thucydides,^ wisest of men, 
 
 wrote that so long as it remains the same, political 
 
 crises will always settle themselves by revolution 
 
 and massacre. But a changed human nature 
 
 does not think so; from the beginning of the 
 
 world slavery was an institute of Humanity, 
 
 until in our fathers' days, in our own vale of 
 
 Keston, a servant of Christ resolved that the 
 
 1 Thuc. iii. 82. 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 49 
 
 world must know it no more. And now a great 
 
 nation would sooner suffer a dire war than tolerate 
 
 slavery in its borders. 
 
 The problems on which Christ has been con- Social 
 
 Problems 
 suited, and has given no uncertain answer, are are His. 
 
 the greatest problems of the past. The present 
 
 has a problem of its own which may be not much 
 
 less difficult or less extensive than any past 
 
 questions. Christ must have something to say 
 
 to it, if He is the Person our Faith assures us 
 
 that He is, and if that Personality of His affords 
 
 the reason of the effectiveness with which His 
 
 doctrine has done its work so far. If He has 
 
 nothing to say, we shall admit that His religion 
 
 is drawing near its close ; and that the Times of 
 
 Christ are limited like those of other masters. 
 
 The problem now before us, or rather upon His Mind 
 
 ought to 
 us, is what is called in a special way the Social be read on 
 
 the now 
 Problem. I shall not pretend to be able to most 
 
 extended 
 state the question in its magnitude — still less to one, 
 
 deal with the many and strong answers which 
 
 both powerful intellects, and large masses of men 
 
 have tried to make to it ; nor to express, dogmati- 
 
 E 
 
50 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 cally what the answer of Christ is. Its fulness 
 lies in many principles of His, shone upon by 
 the light of events. Any one's failure in call- 
 ing attention to His teachings leaves the answer 
 itself unaffected, and open still to all to read. 
 I shall only dwell on the fact that such answer 
 there is ; that Chiist is standing by looking all 
 compassion on the sufferings and injustices borne 
 by many — by many who not knowing Him speak 
 evil of Him — and expecting us to fulfil what we 
 learn of Him ; and that it is the duty of Christians 
 to consider carefully what He thinks of the present 
 state of things, and to use and apply w^ith the 
 utmost obedience to Him and trust in Him what 
 we can discern point by point of His mind. 
 
 which is The social problem presented by the conditions 
 injuring 
 
 the Spirit of lifelong wretchedness, under which a vast part 
 of Man, 
 
 of our town populations lives its life and 
 
 works its work, is difficult enough and moving 
 
 enough, if only looked at nakedly. How much 
 
 more when we ascertain what effect it is having 
 
 on mind and heart. Of course men sometimes 
 
 are unhappy, even miserable, without being made 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 51 
 
 the worse, but rather the better, but when we 
 ascertain that this is producing immense degra- 
 dation of spirit and feeling ; when we learn 
 what view they take of their own condition, 
 and of the causes which produce it ; when we 
 are told that they are penetrated through and 
 through with hostility to the classes and persons 
 they believe to be chargeable with it, and with 
 hatred of the order of things which they con- 
 sider to sanction and encourage and increase their 
 extremity ; the word ' terrible ' is too light to 
 describe the importance of the problem. But it 
 is a terrible state of existence for thousands 
 on thousands of our fellows to be born to 
 without escape. 
 
 When we look beyond the seas which shut us on a 
 
 world-wide 
 in, and observe that what we are experiencing scale. 
 
 is being experienced in most other countries — 
 
 and that the feelings and wishes and intentions 
 
 (if they can be realised) of many times the 
 
 numbers of our people who are so minded, are 
 
 aggravated and intensified beyond anything that 
 
 we know to prevail here ; when we perceive that 
 
 E 2 
 
52 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 the very sight of these people, and their disabili- 
 ties, fills large classes of men in Spain in Italy, 
 in Germany, in Russia, in America, in Australia, 
 who are not themselves suffering in the same way, 
 with intense feeling, affects their whole view 
 of society and civilisation, creates extraordinary 
 conceptions of the near future, and poisons their 
 very idea of Eeligion, of Providence, of God 
 — then we may think, we must think, what 
 Christianity has to say to these things : what 
 other Churches have to say : what the Clergy 
 and Laity of the Church of England ought 
 to do. 
 
 It clings In a few lines we can state what we see to be 
 fast to 
 
 civilisa- some main causes, so far as we know them, which 
 tion itself. 
 
 in the course of less than fifty years have accumu- 
 lated these populations and their miseries. Of 
 course there always were poor. In the days of 
 Job there were those who ' embraced the rock 
 for want of a shelter.' In the days of David 
 there were rich men Avho ' ravished the poor when 
 they got him into their net.' But the poverty of 
 uncivilised tribes and of the victims of direct 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 53 
 
 oppression is a different phenomenon from this 
 
 poverty which rears its head in the midst of 
 
 civilisation, — which liberal employers of labour see 
 
 spring up round them without their being able 
 
 to prevent it except at their own ruin, and then 
 
 wider spread ruin still. 
 
 There certainly is no drier fact within the Cool heads 
 
 look for a 
 ken of human beings and Christians than the remedy. 
 
 Chancellor of Germany's blunt words express— 
 
 "There is a social question. Something wants 
 
 doing." 
 
 But what does it mean if you clothe the word 
 
 with the thought of the fibre and nerve of 
 
 humanity, the tension of souls, the darkening of 
 
 spirits, that underlies that " wants doing " ? 
 
 It is a consolation to know that vast numbers . Great 
 
 improve- 
 
 of working men are better paid and housed than "^ent^s 
 ever they were, can purchase more with their distract us 
 money, have more time and means for self-im- 
 provement, more funds in the banks, and excellent 
 habits. It is a consolation to know that this is 
 due to strong and orderly forces working upward. 
 But it is a consolation which does not yet lower 
 
54 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 the sea of trouble in which we behold undiminished 
 numbers swallowed up. 
 
 Yet ^^ wants doing'' means that of mankind 
 very many suffer at present hopelessly ; many 
 are distressed for them hopelessly ; many are 
 dismayed ; and that if there are any who neither 
 suffer, nor sympathize, nor fear, they are not 
 the best nor the most prudent part. 
 
 We said that some immediate causes which 
 
 produce this state of things are soon stated. 
 
 If there are more obscure causes they would 
 
 probably vanish along with the patent ones. 
 
 Inoom- The worst sufferers are unable to earn enough 
 ])etence 
 
 losing means to live decently as regards space or hours 
 ground, 
 
 or food or health or morals. Incompetent, or 
 
 non-competing through feebleness, or else crushed 
 
 in the competition. A small proportion of the 
 
 poor, yet a fearful number absolutely. 
 
 and Un- A much larger number are not trained or 
 controUed- 
 
 iiess enabled to make or refuse to make the best 
 
 use of what they can earn, and, whether they 
 earn much or little, are scarcely to be dis- 
 tinguished externally from the former class. 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 55 
 
 Observation traces the steps by which new under 
 
 shifting 
 methods of production, with multiplied popu- conditions 
 
 lation, have turned whole classes of growers, 
 makers, owners, sellers who lived mainly by 
 what they grew and made, into workers under 
 others, and receivers of wages. This has made 
 them on the whole, with the help of free 
 trade, better off, and with increased prosperity 
 has given them independent political power, 
 but it has made their position uncertain, 
 and at intervals helpless, because of the cur- 
 rents and fluctuations of demand, of produc- 
 tion, of the finance of the w^orld. Moreover 
 a large proportion of them think that they 
 never at the best receive a fair share of the 
 profit — the increasing profit — of their labour, 
 which they believe to be the fountain of the 
 world's wealth. On the other hand, those who 
 supply the capital by which the whole 'plant' 
 and wage and world-wide negotiation is provided 
 have necessarily to enter into such vast and 
 dangerous competition with all other countries, 
 since communication and distribution have kept 
 
56 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 pace with production, that to them it commonly 
 appears that their own share is not only not 
 excessive, but that it is not more than safe, 
 and that it cannot generally be diminished 
 except at risk of ruin to themselves, which 
 means most widespread ruin among the classes 
 whose labour they sustain. 
 
 In answer to this the labourers point to 
 numbers of persons who, without pains or risk, 
 simply let their fortunes turn over and over in 
 investments, or idly watch the movements or 
 
 and Indig- activities of others multiplying the value of their 
 
 nation at 
 visible and own lands ; they point to the visible increase 
 
 inferred 
 
 wrong of enjoyment and luxury, and even waste, which 
 
 makes so bitter a contrast to the misery of 
 wliich we spoke. This shameful expenditure 
 puts out of their sight what even their most 
 earnest champions have not been " slow to re- 
 cognise as the sacrifices which the upper classes, 
 and especially the landed aristocracy, often make 
 for their good." ^ Those w^ho do nothing, they 
 say, are best off, while they who do all the 
 1 Memoir of A. Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. xii. 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 57 
 
 work just live, and they who cannot get work 
 cannot be said to live. The more thoughtful 
 attribute also much of the unthrift of their 
 poor neighbours to the pleasure-seeking example 
 above them. 
 
 Thus we have to add to all the material causes exasperate, 
 of anxiety which poverty produces, the exaspera- 
 tion and bitterness of a struggle about the whole 
 economy of life between classes which divide 
 nearly all substantial power between them. 
 
 I suppose that before we can even take in with Remedies 
 
 conceived . 
 open ears the words of Christ about the times, 
 
 we must just think over, though we cannot 
 discuss, some of the remedies which have been 
 proposed in the interest of justice and peace 
 and happiness. 
 
 Of course some are not just or peaceful ; Con- 
 science will never set seal to them. Some assume 
 that men may rightly or wisely "to do a great 
 right, do a little wrong;" some pronounce the 
 "little wrong" to be no wrong but a righting 
 of wrongs ; some are willing to make, as they 
 
58 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 think, one plunge more themselves into the worst 
 
 wrong-doing of the past they condemn, hoping to 
 
 find themselves, after a deluge of crime, in a 
 
 land of equality and content. 
 
 ^ot It is not fair to class all these plans tosrether 
 
 all faivly ^ ^ 
 
 called ' So- under the name of ' socialism ' and so to brand it. 
 cialism.' 
 
 There is much in 'socialism,' as we now under- 
 stand it, which honestly searches for some bene- 
 ficial remedy — much which is purely religious 
 and Christian. 
 
 It is no wonder that the thought of the 
 ' question of starvation ' alone — starvation of soul 
 and body — should produce some unwise solutions 
 which are but the 'cries of philanthropists who 
 have lost their way.' But I will touch only a few 
 of the stronger remedies proposed, trusting not to 
 misrepresent them by the curtness or the breadth 
 with which I have to bring them before you.^ 
 
 Key-notes One theory, maintaining that the wage-system 
 of Prin- 
 cipal must eventually reduce all wages to the lowest 
 Schemes, 
 
 ^ See Le SoGialisme Contemporain, M. de Laveleye ; 
 (4me, edit. Paris, 1888) to whom I must express constant 
 obligation. 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 59 
 
 keeping of soul and body together, would gradu- 
 ally substitute for it a State system of subsidised 
 Cooperation. Another would by revolution dis- 
 perse all capital as an accumulation of misappro- 
 priated funds. Another, taking competition to be 
 the origin of all the dislocation, would revert to 
 the antient order of Trade-guilds and Corporations, 
 monopolies, exclusive apprenticeships, and prices 
 fixed by regulation. Another would protect 
 agriculture, fix wages arbitrarily, give workers a 
 larger share in profit, and exclude them from 
 politics. Another would fix the right profit 
 arbitrarily, and divide it by a joint jury. 
 
 Most of these systems would place powers of Place or 
 
 No-place 
 
 strong government in as many hands as possible, of 
 
 Religion. 
 
 and count Religion a thing indifferent. Another 
 
 series would centralise to the utmost and treat 
 Religion, for good or for evil, as the most potent 
 of influences. 
 
 Thus, one would bring Monarchy into imme- 
 diate contact with an educated democracy of 
 perfect equality, and would suffer no ministers 
 of religion. 
 
60 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Another would bring Monarchy into similar con- 
 tact with the people, whom it would instruct and 
 ameliorate by all agencies of Evangelical Religion. 
 By Trade Corporations it would regulate com- 
 merce, enforce insurance, fix hours of labour and 
 days of rest ; the State would undertake the 
 erreatest works, share the interest with the 
 labourers, and graduate taxes. 
 
 Yet a third of this class would revive the 
 Papacy as the central institution, bring Religion 
 to bear on every part of life by careful organi- 
 zations, found magnificent institutions to promote 
 co-operative trade and all elevating objects for 
 the working classes, by stimulating such private 
 munificence as in the Middle Ages founded so 
 liberally for the poor, as well as by State sub- 
 sidy, and would fix the workman's wages by 
 legislation. 
 
 Each of the two last commands large associa- 
 tions in Germany. 
 'The Inter- Upon the exactly opposite standpoint another 
 vast scheme lately united throughout Europe an 
 immense aggregate of working men of all nations. 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 61 
 
 " The International " has recently broken up, 
 but not without having sown harvests, which may 
 yet have to be reaped. Its aim was to control 
 all capital by universal strikes, to bring the 
 management of all commerce under self-governing 
 co-operative bodies in federation, and to effect 
 the transference of all land to the whole popu- 
 lation collectively. 
 
 Another, which has not broken up, but which ' Nihil- 
 
 ism.' 
 within the great empire of the north is believed to 
 
 have a vast mass of secret adherents, largely com- 
 posed of educated and partially educated persons, 
 who find no scope for their powers in the country 
 as it is administered, is the system of Nihilism, 
 whose maxims seem to start out of a wild in- 
 credible dream. ' Pan-destruction ' by every fatal 
 energy is declared to be their fii-st aim, and the 
 substitution of nothing else for the social and civil 
 fabric, but a return to the primitive elements of 
 existence and to " sacred ignorance " of all that 
 is worth knowing. The mover was one who 
 suffered years of Siberia, years of previous im- 
 prisonment for opinions, which were said to be 
 
62 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 mainly a reaction in him against the horrors which 
 
 his relative (and he under him) had been employed 
 
 to inflict on Poland. The discipline of repression 
 
 seems to have reconverted him to plan horrors 
 
 of a grander scale. 
 
 None However they may look thus baldly stated, but 
 
 should be 
 unmarked. I trust not unfairly, without argument and only in 
 
 their salient issues, these ideas are scarcely any of 
 
 them mere matters of ridicule. Either they have 
 
 been thought by sincere and able thinkers, or they 
 
 have been seriously and passionately entertained by 
 
 masses of men not instructed enough to see their 
 
 refutation or their consequences. 
 
 They Some points that once seemed quite practical 
 
 modify 
 
 them- have been exploded, as the subsidising of Co- 
 selves. 
 
 operation was by the declaration of the French 
 
 workmen themselves. Some would be self-de- 
 structive, as, for instance, the fixed prices or 
 fixed wages, which would be annihilated by 
 the competition of other parts of the world. 
 There can be no hope in a mere reversion to old 
 precedents, however suited to their times, for why 
 should they have been abandoned excejDt that 
 
SUFFERING rOFULATIOXS. 63 
 
 changing times threw them out of gear 1 Some 
 
 plans would be overthrown by their own atheism. 
 
 For Atheism only comes to hand as a weapon, why 
 
 ' Atheism ' 
 since the wish to exasperate the masses leads enters into 
 
 any of 
 leaders ignorant of the true spirit of Christianity them. 
 
 to think that a religious patience here, and the 
 hope of glory hereafter, must make men acquiesce 
 in injustice and a low standard of daily existence. 
 We shall hear little of Atheism when they know 
 what Christianity does teach. 
 
 At the worst, while repression is the hot-bed Free dis- 
 and forcing-house of truculence (we noted it just the best 
 now), the immense benefit of allowing free dis- of them, 
 cussion is evident in the fate of erroneous ideas 
 which are gradually dispersed by it, while any 
 grains of gold are seen and saved ; in the occa- 
 sion it gives for the diffusion of sounder views, 
 and the avoidance of conflict with authority. 
 At this moment the Nationalisation of land is 
 
 under this wholesome process. 
 
 „ and has 
 But it is difficult to conceive how the benents brought 
 
 could otherwise have been obtained which not g^j^^g ^f 
 
 them 
 only the labourer and artisan, but the master already, 
 
64 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 and the capitalist and all society, now own them- 
 selves to have derived from the combination of 
 Trades Unions, and the development of Co-opera- 
 tion to proportions so unexpected, which yet are 
 small perhaps in comparison to the expansion 
 which awaits its undertaking production. 
 
 and there Close as is the tangle and thicket of opinions he 
 is more 
 
 good to is blind who cannot see and follow threads of 
 come. 
 
 light running through the maze, and cannot 
 
 mark lying there an unconscious Christianity 
 
 ready to be awakened. 
 
 Non-inter- The simplest remedy of all is not yet mentioned, 
 ferenceun- n- c 
 
 justifiable It is Non-interference. It regards the conflict ot 
 
 private interests as Nature's constitutional method 
 of ordering the ranks and fortunes of mankind, 
 and its apparently calamitous accidents as in- 
 evitable. This — once the accepted " English " 
 theory — mounted in many minds to a certainty 
 when analogy came to its aid with the great natur- 
 alist's observation of the ' struggle for existence ' 
 and the ' survival of the fittest ' in the animal and 
 vegetable world. But unless the best and noblest 
 part of the being of our fellow-men, their moral 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 65 
 
 and spiritual nature, is utterly disregarded, and to- 
 gether with it all sense of duty as to cultivating 
 and elevating that nature, and every sympathetic 
 movement of compassion and natural charity left 
 out of consideration, it seems impossible to estab- 
 lish a resemblance between the cases. The blind 
 or brute struggle for existence is not the same 
 phenomenon as the conscious human claim for 
 decency or for instruction, for freedom and 
 light. These are not accidents which can be 
 ignored with safety for the whole, or agreeably 
 to human sense of duty. That claim and that 
 sense are answering chords. The fact in nature is 
 only newly observed. In the moral world Non- 
 interference would be a new fact, produced by 
 new lines of conviction and action. It is not 
 true that through the past history of Man self- and im- 
 acting ' laws ' have been allowed their course, and ^'^*^"^^^- 
 have so far moulded us. The East has been trained 
 every hour for ages by the unswerving disci- 
 plines of the Yedas, of Buddha, of Confucius, of 
 Mohammed. Western Society has been modelled 
 by the flexible but ceaseless pressure of Mosaic, 
 
 F 
 
66 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Roman, ecclesiastical, constitutional legislations. 
 By an infinity of corrective and protective influ- 
 ences the classes have been deliberately trained, 
 which are in the ascendant. The classes which 
 are now miserable and perilous are exactly 
 those which have been neglected. The survival of 
 the fittest in nature means the survival of the 
 most beautiful, the best endowed with power 
 suited to their position, the cleverest, but the sui^- 
 viving ' fittest ' might among men, in not in- 
 conceivable conditions, be only the strongest in 
 some material ways determined by numbers and 
 dynamite. 
 There is a But all these social difficulties and solutions, 
 
 to the — what have they to do with the Church's 
 
 Church to 
 
 attend to work? are these not secular and economic ques- 
 tions 1 Yes, and therefore Church questions of 
 deepest moment. These are the phenomena of 
 the very world in which Christ is now living. 
 These form the Times of Christ. We are ask- 
 ing what He says to them? 
 
 Christ on those points to which Socialism has 
 powerfully directed man's attention gives no 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 67 
 
 detail of direction. That is not His method. 
 
 But He lays down principles of unmistakable 
 
 application to those questions. 
 
 First, nothing can be more plain than that He Christ 
 
 attended 
 does not admit struggle and survival as the one law to them, 
 
 of development. His ' Kingdom of Heaven ' was not 
 the reign of private interests. His ' Kingdom of 
 God ' not equivalent to the Kingdom of Ego. 
 The indigent class was very large then as now, 
 and the first character he ascribes to His own 
 system is ' Good news brought to the poor.' 
 
 Christianity must, then, have a distinct relation 
 to poverty, and an encouraging one. " Blessed 
 
 are ye poor" connotes at least an unfavourable 
 view of the position held by the rich towards 
 the poor in an age when there was abundant 
 almsgiving. " The poor ye have always with 
 
 you, and whenever ye will ye can do them 
 good." It is an approval of the impulse when 
 a Master points out that there can never 
 be a lack of opportunity to obey it. *' Who- 
 soever shall give you a cup of cold water in 
 My Name shall not lose his reward " must 
 
 P 2 
 
CHRIST A^'D HIS TIMES. 
 
 apply more strongly to greater gifts for the 
 service of body, mind, and spirit — say a hos- 
 pital or a reading-room. When His Apostle 
 urges men to "work that they may have to 
 give to him that, needeth," and "to fulfil 
 the law of Christ by bearing one another's bur- 
 dens," although he cannot mean that every rich 
 man is to be virtually compelled to manual 
 labour for the support of the community, he 
 certainly does not assent to the labour of one 
 class being consecrated to the accumulations of 
 others, and he certainly makes the alleviation of 
 burdensome conditions a pressing duty. 
 
 and the On whatever ground the young proprietor's 
 Apostolic - - . , , 
 
 Church, duty to surrender his whole estates ror the 
 
 benefit of the poor rested, or however it may 
 not be a rule of wide obligation, it is obvious that 
 such sacrifice falls within the scope of Christian 
 ethics, and in certain cases is a positive duty. 
 
 However clear it is that the public fund formed 
 by a general surrender of fortunes at Jerusa- 
 lem was no instance of Communism, Avas never 
 allowed or suggested elsewhere, and was an extra- 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 69 
 
 ordinary effort to meet the sudden emergency of 
 
 a " locked out " mass of people thrown on the 
 
 hands of a small and generally poor community ; 
 
 still it is enough to show that such complete 
 
 sacrifice of property (as the young man's should 
 
 have been, and as that of Barnabas was) may 
 
 be from time to time demanded and made by 
 
 many persons at once. 
 
 The principles, therefore, mapped out by Christ and the 
 
 ' Fathers 
 make essential reference to social problems now 
 
 before us. The Christian Fathers never doubted 
 that they did, and indeed give somewhat alarm- 
 ing point to those which bear on rights of 
 acquisition, tenure, and expenditure. There is 
 no acquiescence in the disappearance of the 
 feeble as a beneficent law. 
 
 But one spinal cord there is which animates All teach 
 
 that all 
 all the humanitarian words of Christ. One prin- substan- 
 tial better 
 ciple deducible from ' all these Sayings.' Every ment 
 
 depends on 
 one of them is directed not to a mere ame- the better- 
 ment of 
 lioration of conditions, but to the elevation of the man. 
 
 the man — the improvement of the receiver, and 
 
 coincidently of the giver. It is impossible to 
 
70 CHRIST AND HIS TOIES. 
 
 make the man happier (no, nor even permanently- 
 richer) by any act or scheme unless you make 
 him better. XJnthoughtful almsgiving is not 
 justified by one word of Christ's. Order and 
 attention to the effects produced stand out 
 in every account of and allusion to the use and 
 distribution of means. The most coveted social 
 changes work nothing but confusion, unless they 
 are the accompaniments of enlightenment, of 
 habits governed by judgment, and of religious 
 temper. 
 
 Hence Here, then, appears the duty of the Ministry to 
 
 these 
 problems take up the problems of poverty, not barely as 
 concern 
 the Minis- individual kindnesses, but with a knowledge 
 try, and 
 
 require of the subject, and therefore with a pursuance or 
 more 
 knowledge it as a study, 
 in them. 
 
 Personal administration of supplies seems to 
 
 We are have been the particular business which they first 
 
 gave up in favour of larger work, lodging it in 
 
 good hands, — yet even now (as Arnold Toynbee 
 
 saw) " a double mischief arises to individuals and 
 
 to the Church. The clergy undertake a burden 
 
 too heavy for them to bear, while the mass of 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 71 
 
 the laity are unorganized for the work of im- 
 provement. They are the reverse of an army 
 going up against the strong places of evil. . 
 Efforts are desultory. . Only here and there 
 an individual pursuing aims of philanthropy, 
 or perhaps getting up a benevolent society. . 
 The intelligent classes ought to be one body 
 for one common purpose, masters of their own 
 circumstances and fellow workers towards a 
 common end." 
 
 Knowledge itself would restrain the clergyman and yet in- 
 terfering, 
 without political or economic experience from for want of 
 
 knowledge 
 intermeddling in questions which require both, 
 
 and from interposing his weight of character 
 where equal discussion alone can determine a 
 fair issue. But knowledge would show him 
 where he could and ought to intervene. To 
 those who know not all questions are on a level, 
 small or vast, things practical and impractic- 
 able dreams. They treat possibilities and im- 
 possibilities with the same free pen and full 
 voice. 
 
 But to study, to think out, to keep before 
 
72 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 in measure the minds of his own people, the principles and 
 
 and 
 proportion the agencies by which lasting amelioration, with 
 with the 
 Times, interim help, may be effected is become a first 
 
 duty of the clergyman. To open to every dark 
 
 soul the knowledge of Christ is the first thing, 
 
 to show how to use it is part of teaching the 
 
 knowledge. Until fruit is borne St. James says 
 
 the knowledge is dead. In the old agricultural and 
 
 manufacturing life of the village the clergyman 
 
 was familiar with all, with ' Masters, Dames, 
 
 Servants, and Apprentices ' as the Rubric says. 
 
 Unless now he understands what Master and 
 
 Workman talk of as their necessary interests, 
 
 what he has to say will sound to them unreal. 
 
 And it has been well said that the Gospel of Duty 
 
 is now even more easily preached to all than 
 
 formerly, as listeners stand now on equal ground, 
 
 and debate their interests on equal terms. On 
 
 the other hand, without acquaintance with the 
 
 problems round him, I do not see how the 
 
 clergyman can serve the Times of Christ. And 
 
 as the problems grow more complicated and 
 
 beyond personal experience they must be read 
 
resources 
 
 SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 73 
 
 and studied. No young man can be considered 
 
 as fully equipped for Ordination until he has 
 
 some knowledge of these subjects. 
 
 The clergyman who has such knowledge can Sucli 
 
 Know- 
 immediately begin to bring it to bear with in- ledge in 
 
 the Minis- 
 estimable gain at least on that second class which try unseals 
 
 I spoke of. Even if the feeble casual is beyond 
 almsgiving, and beyond him, and beyond any de- 
 vice so far,i he can immediately begin hammering 
 upon that vast number who, earning well and 
 being very capable at work, are not trained or 
 encouraged to make the best use of what they 
 earn, who are environed by low temptations, 
 and succumb to them. He can command plenty 
 of assistance if he has that tact and modesty 
 which he above all men is bound to cultivate. 
 The clergyman can do marvels in the extending 
 of institutions and societies which cultivate self- 
 control. 
 
 Such Societies encourage men to form their 
 own useful little capital and to employ it in co- 
 operative association or industry or land owning ; 
 ^ See Mr. C. Booth, Life and Labour, p. 166. 
 
74 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 make them feel bound in honour to be considerate 
 in their own employment of workers ; bound in 
 elder-brotherhood to prevent the corruption of 
 the young in the workshops ; enable them to 
 own their own homes ^ and make them fair 
 and bright, and to spend improved wages and 
 gained time on interests to which vice is odious 
 and contemptible, and on Knowledge which 
 will avert grievous mistakes from the time to 
 come. For we must not suppose that when the 
 * standard of comfort ' is raised and reached the 
 first effect upon the uninformed mind is Satis- 
 faction. It is rather so to stretch the material 
 desires, that it is a happy thing if a sincere 
 wish for Knowledge remains. In cherishing it 
 the main thing is to remember that no man 
 can receive cultivation as a gift ; earn it he 
 must. Hence, in any of the men's Institutions, 
 details are endless, troublesome, and delightful. 
 
 ^ The Lincoln Cooperative Society has in six years ad- 
 vanced £22,000 to members to purchase their own houses. 
 Repayments are monthly, and until they are discharged the 
 property is secured to the Society. The Derby Society has 
 used £68,000 in this way. 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 75 
 
 What is beyond their means is commonly forth- 
 coming, or must be obtained for them, but the 
 point is, by opening gates and tracks and pas- 
 sages for them, to persuade the men to put 
 their own hands to the saving of themselves 
 and others. 
 
 There is no ameliorating of Condition, which finds a 
 
 native 
 is not worked through the building up of Christian- 
 ity ready 
 Character, and surely in that Self-sacrifice where- to stir ; 
 
 in men spare neither their positions, nor their 
 long savings, nor the well-being of their families, 
 to take their place by the side of needier men 
 in support of their claims, there is a stern, un- 
 selfish Christianity latent, full of lessons for all 
 ranks, the recognition of which is essential to 
 its expansion into faith. 
 
 The parson's sermons are not at a discount 
 when he has some creative touch on things out- 
 side, while he teaches that faith not only enables 
 people to suffer and to hope, but that as the 
 Apostle says, it effects great changes, — 'subdues 
 kingdoms, and works righteousness,' makes * men 
 strong out of weakness, and valiant in warfare.' 
 
76 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 opens the This is a Gospel for those who are weighted 
 Gospel not 
 
 only to the in the race, and want to use no foul means in 
 worker 
 
 hut to the There is a Gospel for the Employer too — not 
 Employer; 
 
 the little Employer only whom all are too ready- 
 to vilify — the ' little master ' who works and 
 lives as hard as his men. Such an one's 
 personal kindness often brings him nearer to 
 the ailing, over-wrought ' hands ' than the best 
 ventilations and sanitations of the absentee Em- 
 ployer.^ But all large employers are not even of 
 this sound, hard, economic type. There is over- 
 crowding, there is illegal overwork, exaction of 
 the last farthing, dishonest supervision, careless- 
 ness of morals, even temptation. On the other 
 hand, great firms there are which know no 
 jealousy against combination, which offer their 
 men cooperative shares, which are ready to plan, 
 assist, found, or furnish all the Institutions neces- 
 sary to the men's substantial self -improvement. 
 
 Among all the thorns lies a half -choked Gospel. 
 
 If the Clergy developed and preached it, they 
 ^ C. Booth, Labour and Life, vol i. p. 492. 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 
 
 would find its power rise above their parish or restores 
 
 fading 
 all parishes. They w^ould be able to affect public influence 
 
 for good, 
 opinion and public action. Their attention has 
 
 been for many years so much absorbed by what is 
 beautiful, and comely, and correct, and in a limited 
 way restorative, that they have less weight ia 
 social questions. Many give scant thought to 
 men's happy living, so things which concern their 
 own work vitally get no hearing. But these ques- 
 tions of poverty and labour, amelioration of 
 conditions, larger participation in the rapidly in- 
 creased wealth of commerce, are grown so important 
 that it is necessary the Clergy should know and 
 think, and be able to advise those who would 
 gladly consult them if they thought they could do 
 so with advantage. For how have all the industrial 
 classes gathered with reverence to the Country 
 Bector and the College Preacher who did care 
 for these things. 
 
 And the State would care for them far more with the 
 
 State; 
 effectively if we and our people had instructed 
 
 minds. If the State is the ruling activity of the 
 
 best elements of a country, the first charge on it 
 
CHRIST AN'D HIS TIMES. 
 
 is, on behalf of all it rules, to favour the develop- 
 ment of all good elements, to interfere with cor- 
 rupting elements, to stem degradation, especially 
 the degradation of the helpless. 
 
 In material things it cares for sanitation, 
 and safety of goods and persons, in intellectual 
 matters for education up to a certain point ; it 
 does not allow liberty as to the employment of 
 women and children ; it deals to a certain point 
 with the sources and stimulants of crime. 
 
 At this moment the pitiable and formidable 
 condition of the poor asks for some similar treat- 
 ment up to some yet unfixed point.^ 
 
 The State has to touch developments and re- 
 pressions, and yet without touching too much, 
 because Legislation which much outruns Public 
 Opinion is vain, and even injurious and self- 
 defeating. 
 
 Now, it is that Public Opinion, upon which 
 
 sound legislation in all these departments must 
 
 rely, which the clergy can and do affect. They 
 
 are set as Ministers of God to win our attention 
 
 ^ Life and Labour, p. 166. 
 
SUFFERING POPULATIONS. 79 
 
 and to carry us forward in the principles of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 If they exercise their function aright, they prepares 
 first render much evil unnecessary to be touched work, amf 
 by the State, — it is being dealt with in the best ^^^ ^^ ^^ ' 
 way by voluntary effort ; and secondly they mini- 
 mise the difficulty of the State in dealing with all 
 the rest, by preparing Public Opinion to suggest 
 and to support the best and wisest social 
 measures. 
 
 As the spiritual organ of the Nation, if not is the 
 ,, Tv-r ,. •, in ' , Nation in 
 
 the JNation itselt m another aspect, the Church highest 
 
 is bound to hear and see and feel and express the 
 
 Nation's truest and best mind. 
 
 None are aliened from her compassions; no H^umani 
 
 nihil 
 human wreck, no living ruin ; she steps in, she '^^'^cniom ab 
 
 ecclesia. 
 is commissioned to step in, to the cell of the 
 
 condemned criminal and to the dens of filthiest 
 freedom. 
 
 And Poverty— St. Francis' Parable of his 
 perfect Bride. *Know we not this Parable? 
 How then shall we understand all Parables?' 
 
80 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 The state of mind in which men live and 
 move about is always our field in the Times 
 of Christc 
 
 The mind of the Poor themselves, the mind of 
 the nation about them — the facts w^hich affect, 
 the aims which inspire, the thoughts which guide 
 and which trouble them — are enjoined on us by 
 HimseK and these His Times for special study 
 and devotion. 
 
-ASHFORD. 
 
PURITY. 
 
ill. 
 
 Socialism in its fiercest forms tries one kind- Society 
 
 must 
 ling word for women, for whom generally it reform its 
 
 possesses least attraction. It says, ' feociety pre- Socialism 
 
 . avenge it. 
 sents to a large proportion of your sex this 
 
 alternative — * Sell yourself or starve.' While 
 
 Society lasts as it is it will never have another 
 
 word for them ; but we say, ' Live, work, and 
 
 love."i 
 
 If that indictment were true ; and if Society 
 
 were governed only by mechanical laws and could 
 
 not renew or reform itself without breaking up, 
 
 then we should have nothing to say. Society 
 
 would be doomed. Class after class of women 
 
 would refuse to endure the shame, sin, and 
 
 1 Manifesto of Women's Sections (Italian) of the Inter- 
 national. 1887. Laveleye, p. 266. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 anguish of their sisters, and the pi ice of their 
 
 redemption would have to be paid. 
 
 Society There would be nothing for us but despair if 
 can reform 
 
 it we did not believe it to be possible for the reason of 
 
 the men even yet to be reinforced by a sufficiently 
 
 strong motive, and for Society to take a tone 
 
 and to make a stand, as in other moral matters 
 
 it has done from time to time. 
 
 The herds of appetite need not take this to be 
 
 a weak hopefulness. We are persuaded that 
 
 such hope is the last fence which stands between 
 
 themselves, the moral enemies of Society, and 
 
 its material assailants. The ranks of these wait 
 
 only to be swelled by the thousands who, if they 
 
 dared, would hold their peace. 
 
 if it There is only one motive strong enough. We 
 
 chooses to 
 avail itself will only say here that it is not the mere prof es- 
 
 of one 
 
 motive, sion of rehgion, nor the most thorough religion 
 
 injudiciously applied. 
 
 Science The evil is not only stronger than knowledge 
 
 it. of consequence, it is confessedly too strong for 
 
 science. "There is one plague-spot (said the 
 
 President of the British Medical Association the 
 
PURITY. 85 
 
 other day ^ ) which [the man of science] would 
 fail to conquer, which would remain to fester, to 
 kill, to maim, to disfigure, to sap the health of 
 millions, of deserving and undeserving alike, and 
 as the great curse of humanity, to baffle all 
 their efforts. . . . The curse that steadily and 
 vindictively pursues the track of licentiousness 
 . . of hateful sensuality. So long as human 
 nature remains what it is . . no ray of light or 
 hope will fall on that dark track . . The foul 
 stream . . will meander whithersoever it will 
 through the world of life." 
 
 'So long as human nature remains what it is.'' 
 Are we, who do believe that into the depths of 
 human nature there has fallen a new seed, a new 
 vitality, a new energy, — we who are charged to 
 say so, to plant it, to water it, to minister to 
 it — are we to hear this noble lamentation of 
 science — " like a wind that shrills all night in 
 a waste land where no one comes" — and be 
 content to make no more stir than we have 
 done? 
 
 1 Mr. Wheelhouse at Leeds, August 13, 1889. 
 
S6 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Are we to hear William Blake's * Song of 
 Experience,' that, above all London's dreadful 
 sights and sounds, what rings upon his ear are 
 those midnight imjDrecations which 
 
 Blast the new-born Infant's tear, 
 
 And blight with plagues the Marriage-hearse. 
 
 Are we to praise that wailing " song of one that 
 
 hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an 
 
 instrument — and hear the words and do them 
 
 not " — do nothing about them beyond what we 
 
 have done? 
 
 It is ^nd what can we do 1 
 
 attributed 
 
 to causes There are things to which many trace as causes, 
 which are 
 no causes : at least contributory causes, most of the evil and 
 
 all the danger : things which all that are in a 
 
 way guiltless, and many that are not, Avould 
 
 gladly see cured and removed. 
 
 to Crowd- Poverty is no Mother of Vice. Christ banished 
 ing ; -^ 
 
 the thought. But the crowding of the inside of 
 Homes is a confidently stated cause. Nor is 
 there a creature that would not desire un- 
 measured improvement. But this is no adequate 
 caus3 of evils pervading the whole body social. 
 
PURITY. 87 
 
 The latest enquirers do not even believe to 
 any full extent the horrors ascribed to this cause 
 within its own limited range. The evil then is 
 more outside than within the home. Spacious 
 homes are not much more safe against it. Great 
 unrefinement of speech and act can and does 
 exist without wickedness. Luxury and refine- 
 ment court it. Coarser days than our own have 
 not been more corrupt. The presence of higher 
 principle keeps crowded and unfit homes in purity, 
 as among the poorest peasantry of Ireland, as 
 among even wandering tribes. 
 
 The Love of Dress, the Love of Money, the 
 Love of Ease, the Love of Drink, are commonly 
 put down among helpful books as causes of the 
 evil. That they are often its accompaniments 
 and sometimes its incentives is obvious. Yet 
 some of those motives strictly characterize settled 
 and orderly ranks, and the Drunkard has often a 
 supreme contempt and dislike for the Unclean. 
 
 The bad Literature afloat among the working to Liters 
 
 ture ; 
 classes is set down as a cause. But plainly it is, 
 
 like the perhaps more corrupting literature afloat 
 
CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 among the highest classes, a symptom which would 
 
 disappear with the disease. 
 
 to ' Upper In higher and richer classes much is ascribed 
 Classes ' : 
 
 to a low tone about marriage : parents and 
 
 daughters rating Character below many things. 
 
 The Will of the chivalrous Prince Charles de 
 
 Ligne, in 1792, expressed his desire that the two 
 
 children whom he loved, his daughter and the 
 
 adopted son whom he rescued from the fire of 
 
 Belgrade, should marry, 'however little liking 
 
 they may have for one another. It is the 
 
 thing I most desire, and I request my executress 
 
 to effect it.' 
 
 Probably no one thought it strange. We do. 
 
 Yet it was less dangerous to society than the 
 
 habitual introduction then and now of sorry 
 
 reputations and blighted persons into 'families.' 
 
 The immediate results of acquiescence fairly 
 
 general in such social relations are visible. The 
 
 next step seems natural. It was the next step 
 
 in France, and the antecedent to the great 
 
 break-up of society, that the marriage-tie 
 
 from being a convention became a kind of 
 
PURITY. 89 
 
 freedom. This and not the outbreak was the 
 real dissolution of Society. 
 
 A ristocratical institutions in themselves tend 
 to the substantial preservation of "the Family" 
 as the ground of society. The disruption of 
 family ties is taken more lightly in countries 
 where " The Family " is less emphasized. 
 
 The belief that a low tone about marriage in 
 marked ranks is a provocative to general corrup- 
 tion, is probably exaggerated, if we take account 
 of the reprobation with which characterless or 
 sordid unions are saluted in the journalism of 
 the people. When low temptations are yielded 
 to by those whose position is meant to give them 
 a strong moral footing, we must rather take it as 
 a symptom. " Riches and power made to minister 
 " to luxury and idleness provide as suitable a 
 " nidus for the growth of moral disease as drink 
 " and ignorance do among the poor — and the 
 " needed iyKpareta must go through the whole 
 " system in order to grapple with the worst 
 " evils." 
 
 Public Schools have been written of lately as 
 
90 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 to Public if they were at least in part a cause of evil. I 
 Schools ; 
 
 shall have more to say as to how incident mis- 
 chiefs may be lessened, but I am satisfied that 
 the boy community — with all its strenuously 
 pursued objects, responding as it does to the 
 thoughtfulness and sympathy of both older and 
 younger men of highest culture and spotless 
 character, and with its definitely but not intru- 
 sively religious habits — is infinitely more con- 
 ducive to a strong morality than any institution 
 since the Cyropcedeia was written. 
 
 "Whatever can be truly alleged of circumstances 
 that affect Public Schools cannot be advanced 
 against their characteristic tone and spirit. But 
 to this I shall return. 
 
 Up to this point then, essential as it is to 
 deal with overcrowded habitations and workshops, 
 with debasing Literature, with incidental corrupt- 
 ness in school life, with the passionate vanity, 
 indulgence, and avarice of the time, or the 
 concentration of these in fashionable ideals of 
 Marriage, they none of them are true causes. 
 The very variety of this sad congeries shows 
 
PURITY. 91 
 
 that they have a deeper common cause. Eemedj 
 
 them with all power, but not with the idea that 
 
 the extinction of any one or all of them would 
 
 quench the wrong. It is like the not very old to impei- 
 
 feet Legis 
 physical error of supposing that unsanitary con- lation. 
 
 ditions gave actual birth to typhoid, instead of 
 being but a soil acceptable to living germs. Even 
 against notorious wrong Legislation has but a 
 limited scope— and its limits are not very in- 
 definite. If it is held even to create new 
 evils in some regions which it seemed compelled 
 to visit, plainly it has no application to social 
 tendencies or principles within the circles of 
 home and school life. It would destroy the action 
 of higher forces. But it can make streets 
 
 less full of offences, dwellings and work places 
 more fit for their purposes ; can come down upon 
 the outrages of publisher, advertiser, exhibitor, 
 and of the inveiglers of helplessness and ignor- 
 ance. This field it does traverse more or less 
 lamely. And so far it leaves a fairer field for 
 Christianity — that is all it can do. 
 
 Here then we find ourselves face to face with 
 
92 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Christian- our own duty. Christianity dare not shrink 
 ty aloi 
 las thi 
 hope. 
 
 ity alone 
 
 has this from the fact that it has undertaken to do battle 
 
 with the evil, and that faith in the Faith 
 involves faith in its power. 
 
 Healthful thought has so far advanced of late 
 that few would now say that Christians to 
 whom the subject was repugnant were on that 
 account free to let it alone. Fewer are found 
 to say that it must be let alone as an inevitable 
 evil. More believe that the early Beatitude on 
 the Pure in Heart can be realised by those they 
 love. 
 
 It is asked then, if we are taking new courage 
 
 at the desperate prospect, must we seek new 
 
 The work methods 1 And if by methods are meant such 
 is Indivi- 
 dualWork. methods as other vast bodies have taken to in 
 
 order to accomplish vast ends — Cooperation for 
 
 this purpose, namely, and Trades Unions, the 
 
 answer is ' Yes '. But if new methods meant 
 
 new principles, the answer is 'No'. The 
 
 extension of Christianity in either Beliefs or 
 
 Morals must be Individual by Individual — from 
 
 Individual to Individual. The Soul, the Person, 
 
PURITY. 
 
 is the working unit. The Soul, the Person is the 
 unit worked on. The Mustard- seed Parable of 
 atomic beginnings is the image as of the Church, 
 so of every Church work. The Sower Parable 
 gives the separate growth of every grain as the 
 law of the Kingdom. 
 
 As one new method, Publicity has been re- N'o hope in 
 
 Publicity. 
 sorted to by the despair of Christian men — 
 
 unsparing communication to all readers of all 
 ages ; things " which it is a shame even to 
 speak of." It has been said "sewers must 
 be cleansed." But sewers are not shot into 
 market places. It has been said " a cannonade 
 can spare neither women nor children." But 
 Christ's words on Purity are very unlike can- 
 nonading. The effect might be perhaps to 
 propel legislation, but not to alter tone — rather 
 to leave many troubled or tempted with gross 
 images for life. 
 
 One further terrible risk is lest Publicity should 
 lead on Shamelessness. There have been times 
 when neither England nor France dreaded 
 
94 CHRIST A^^D HIS TIMES. 
 
 Publicity. Public opinion takes strange sides 
 
 sometimes. There are those who assert even 
 
 now that the profligate man is not to-day an 
 
 unpopular character, and might be easily made 
 
 into a popular one. 
 
 No large Exactly the opposite method to Publicity 
 hope in 
 the Con- 
 fessional. 
 
 hope in 
 
 the Con- had been for some centuries the once new 
 
 method of one Church — to induce and to insist 
 on the most secret confidences of lives inno- 
 cent or guilty being probed and poured, time after 
 time, into one ear, with a view to creating 
 repentance and being renewed by the assurance 
 of forgiveness. 
 
 It would be presumption to deny that pure 
 and able men have, with God's own help, 
 ministered thus to souls diseased. But what 
 upon the whole has been the working of 
 this Church method? What is in the sum 
 of its effect now ? 
 
 Coming into frequent use about the time 
 of Charlemagne among the other modes of 
 disciplinary education for childish nations, it 
 was a gain upon the abominable Penitential 
 
PURITY. 95 
 
 Books, previously in the hands of Priests, 
 which priced every sin, but it was a great 
 depravation of earlier ^ customs of mutual con- 
 fession or open acknowledgment. Only by 
 degrees it solidified into a " necessity " along 
 with other privilegia, and, step by step, fresh 
 powers were assumed. 
 
 But what was its effect in the time before the 
 Revolution, when the Roman Church had abso- 
 lute command of all education and of every 
 official rank, and worked through the confessor's 
 access to every home % Memoirs of the time make 
 one feel the influence of religion striking every 
 
 vein of the body — and not the slightest rcqyproche- It is a 
 
 proved 
 ment between it and morals. " It was not a la failure 
 
 mode then to be a good father or a good hus- 
 band," wrote a keen observer ^ who had been 
 through it all. Great men went from a mass to 
 an orgy, and numbered great clergy among their 
 intimates. A famous courtisan boarded in a con- 
 vent, and astonished no one. This was whilst 
 
 ^ ' Up till lately,' as Tliomassini shows from Jonas Bp. of 
 Orleans, who died a.d. 843. De Benef. I. ii. 11. 
 
 - Perey, Mdmoires d'une Grande Dame aic xviii" Steele 
 
96 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 abbeys of the purest life and teaching were 
 
 educating noble families — while some of the saints 
 
 of the earth were preaching and living — and 
 
 Ketreats for a month were fashionable even for 
 
 men. Confession was regular and constant. 
 
 It then had no effect upon public morals, and 
 
 the experience of its operation in famihes has 
 
 done more to alienate educated men in France, 
 
 Italy, and Spain, and now to hold them aloof, 
 
 from Christianity, than even fictitious doctrines. 
 
 rejected by To some such false Doctrines it is too thought- 
 our 
 Church, lessly a habit now to extend a kind of charity 
 
 which is due only to persons ; but it is in the 
 
 interest of true Morals I deprecate a habit of 
 
 recommending Confession one step beyond that 
 
 point which our Prayer Book defines. 
 
 It is contrary to the teaching of the Roman 
 Church itself to assume that any priest may 
 exercise the function at will. 
 
 It is false teaching to call any form of Con- 
 fession 'Sacramental' — an attribute not given to 
 it apparently before the time of Innocent III. 
 
 To put any mind through a catechism of sins 
 
PURITY. 97 
 
 and crimes, and especially on the subject we have 
 before us, is not only a violation of the minis- 
 terial commission,^ but is a lesson in corruption. 
 
 We are not concerned at present with the 
 matter of Confession outside the subject of 
 this portion of the Charge, but it appears that 
 neither the method of Publicity nor the method 
 of Secrecy are likely to have any wide or bene- 
 ficial effect in raising the tone of Society on the 
 great question of Purity. 
 
 There are, we know, many plans by which (legis- 
 lation doing its proper work) the cause may be 
 helped and forwarded, and which many not 
 religious people will second. 
 
 But plans will not do all. There is a founda- The 
 tion for them wanted, and I fear that we of purity 
 Christians and Clergymen do not speak out with 
 sufficiently emphatic voices some vital axioms of 
 our Religion which are that foundation. And 
 
 ^ A Book which excited just indignation in 1877 was 
 withdrawn by the editors. I cannot too much reprobate 
 the fact that extracts from that book are widely circulated 
 in the supposed interests of Protestantism. 
 
 H 
 
98 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 equal to this fear is the confidence that if 
 
 we do — or when we do — we still may remove 
 
 mountains. 
 
 We need not shrink from owning that they 
 
 are mountains and beyond our weak engineering, 
 
 for to own it openly is the condition of God's 
 
 own aid. We are nowhere instructed in the 
 
 removing of molehills. 
 
 lies in With all our popular preaching of any school 
 
 deeper, 
 wider care we fail to teach that The Inner Life is the only 
 of the 
 
 whole Life. And that is the axiom for this subject and 
 Inner Life. 
 
 the secret of dealing with it. The truth is so ad- 
 mitted in theory and so absent from practice, that 
 courage fails when I attempt to put it once more. 
 
 The Inner What I mean is this. We most of us take 
 Life is 
 
 slurred our life as a whole. ' The Life of Action and of 
 over, 
 
 ' Speech is our substantial life,' we think. 'It is 
 
 ' Action and Speech by which work is done or 
 
 ' impressions made on the world. It is by deeds 
 
 ' done in the body and by idle words spoken we 
 
 ' shall be estimated as well by God as by man. 
 
 * Conduct is the thing — not meaning of course any 
 
 * merely acted conduct, but real genuine conduct. 
 
PURITY. 99 
 
 * Thoughts meantime are to be watched over, 
 ' and regulated, and evil thoughts admitted are 
 ' to be repented of, even if they do not ripen 
 ' to action.' 
 
 This, I think, is a fair account of what is 
 generally taught and acted up to by Christian 
 people. They are not unmindful of the import- 
 ance of Thoughts. They do regard them as a 
 third subject of prayer along with Words and 
 Deeds ; and Conduct proves the man. 
 
 But the conduct is not the Life. And I believe 
 that until we are bold to teach constantly that 
 the Life is something infinitely deep within, 
 deeper far than conduct, deed, word, thought — 
 and that it is Life only with which Christ deals, 
 leaving it to produce and regulate all else, we 
 are always studying problems without knowing 
 the axioms — and we fail to work them out. 
 
 Conduct is but a partial exhibition of Life. 
 There is an infinite activity of Life which does 
 not come to the surface. Conduct represents the 
 pressure or the temperature of Life as instru- 
 ments register changes of atmosphere. But 
 
 H 2 
 
100 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 the atmosphere is an infinite thing as compared 
 with the column of mercury. So is any man's 
 real eternal inner Life compared with the 
 indications of it. 
 
 yet is a We are conscious of this in ourselves and in 
 perfectly 
 recognis- 
 able thing; 
 
 perfectly 
 
 recosiiis- others. We feel it in our intercourse. In all the 
 
 higher range of feeling we know how soon the limit 
 of expression is reached, and that there are worlds 
 of love, of pity, of sympathy, of self-consecration 
 beyond anything that lips, or even countenance, 
 can render. It is the same with wickedness — 
 we dare not imagine the blackness of passion 
 which lies beyond all power to translate hatred 
 into act. If we come to commonplace transac- 
 tions, how constantly people part, aware that 
 they have seen in each other, through crannies 
 as it were which only the inner being perceives, 
 or have betrayed in themselves, meanings, inten- 
 tions, feelings, which found not the slightest 
 indication in any power which was under 
 control. 
 
 If we think of our devotions, all are at once 
 in the inner life, and deeper we need not go. 
 
PURITY. 101 
 
 Yet it need not be left unsaid that spiritually- 
 gifted men have avowed that they possessed even 
 in mental prayer no power that rendered in the 
 language of thought itself the feeling with 
 which the whole living being was possessed 
 before God, 
 
 But apart from all high experiences — is the 
 
 object of 
 that the Inner Life is so much greater than Christ's 
 
 work, 
 the material and intellectual implements with 
 
 which it works, and that it is the Inner Life 
 which Christ as Yery Man searches and touches, 
 is assumed by Christianity, and assumed and put 
 before us in the simplest ways. 
 
 Christ speaks of the sin we have before us as 
 fully done without what we call deeds — ' He 
 hath committed adultery already in his heart.' 
 St. John says, 'He that hateth his brother is a 
 murderer' — so unmetaphorically, that he ends 
 the sentence with 'and ye know that no mur- 
 derer hath eternal life.' These sayings would 
 have no meaning unless the Inner Life were 
 complete life. Then too the Beatitudes, Christ's 
 first lesson, assume the same, — ' Blessed ' — quite 
 
102 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Blessed already — are the poor in spirit — the meek 
 
 — the pure in heart. 
 
 and is I believe that this is our Gospel. That the 
 the work- 
 ing power, Inner Life is the working power — such inner 
 
 life as the simplest are conscious of. That we 
 
 must more earnestly teach that it is possible for 
 
 people to be pure within, and that, when we talk 
 
 of sins, the real sin is in the heart. It is not 
 
 necessary to go over people's heads in explaining 
 
 it. We have to say so, and the hearts of men will 
 
 go with us, and will agree that corruption is not 
 
 natural but is the destruction of nature. 
 
 The victory over corruption will not be won 
 by the Confessor's questions, no, nor even by 
 dwelling on sin in questionings of ourselves. 
 We must teach to the young the aversio 
 mentis — the turning away of the thoughts 
 utterly from everything that defileth. The quies- 
 cence of the spirit will be followed by what 
 physicists tell us is their only perfectly health- 
 ful state — the quiescence of the body. 
 
 As Christians we must speak of the hope 
 of the sight of God, the sight of Christ as 
 
PURITY. 103 
 
 He is. From that hope we must draw the 
 obvious lesson conveyed to very simple people 
 in that sound, early Beatitude— St. John's infer- 
 ence, "He that hath this hope in him purifieth 
 himself even as He is pure." We must give 
 this positive teaching to our congregations, 
 drawing them away from mere negatives, and 
 from mere condemnations of offence, the easy 
 mention of which has an evil power. 
 
 We must not mind being told that we set f^nd the 
 
 attractive 
 an impossible standard before minds already standard 
 
 tinged and excited. It is not so. Purity is 
 
 the reality, the substance, the eternal thing, 
 
 and, like all Truth honestly and simply stated, 
 
 it has an attraction for the true and the 
 
 strong, yes, and even for the weak and the 
 
 stained. All people are saying what an 
 
 attraction Science has for men of our day. 
 
 Well, Christianity teaches what Society cannot 
 
 teach, but exactly what Science verifies and 
 
 enforces about all these things. 
 
 True E-eligion will go hand in hand with 
 
 everything that is scientific and progressive ; 
 
104 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 will animate every enterprise, and throw herself 
 
 into secular details as keenly as if this world 
 
 were really all. 'Beat the world at its best 
 
 weapons.' ^ To her nothing is secular. Conduct 
 
 is more than ever to her when Conduct is seen 
 
 as an expression of Life, so that every flaw in 
 
 Conduct indicates a deeper dread beyond — a 
 
 failure in that which is eternal of the man. 
 
 and the There is no scheme for lessening temptation, 
 spirit of 
 
 organiza- and bringing healthfulness into Society which 
 tion, 
 
 will not be promoted. The Education and 
 
 Recreation of Women, the admitting them 
 
 to any Occupations for which they are as 
 
 fit as men, their Emigration, so necessary 
 
 to our Colonies, the pledging of them to rescue, 
 
 help and protect each other, their younger sisters, 
 
 the child- women, the fallen women, the women that 
 
 stand in peril — all organizations for such purposes 
 
 will be sustained, set on sound footing, ably 
 
 administered. Thousands of womankind may be 
 
 so saved, and men with them and by them ; 
 
 1 Wm. "Wilbei-force, Religious System of Professed. Chris- 
 tians, p. 140 (Ed. Griffith and Farran's excellent '* Antient 
 and Modern Library of Theological Literature "). 
 
PURITY. 105 
 
 many more be so placed as to do God's 
 
 work and the world's in the best way, 
 
 and the thought will be not the preventing 
 
 of evil — but ayaOoTToda, the Creation of the 
 
 Good. Not one step taken thus far in woman's 
 
 education and advance can be said to have led to 
 
 one evil or done one mischief. Her dignity has 
 
 risen steadily with her power for good. No 
 
 scandal, folly, luxury, extravagance can be 
 
 pointed to as results. Next a determined and the 
 
 moulder of 
 front will be presented in Society. Conversation, Society. 
 
 as it has excluded profanity, so now will no- 
 where sicken with the innuendo, the double mean- 
 ing, the anecdote that stabs the reputation of 
 the subject and the refinement of the listener, 
 the mystery or the censure which quicken the 
 interest in the sin. A bold contempt, a pithy 
 scorn, a wholesome saltness and sharpness, a finer 
 wit on finer subjects, the readiness which belongs 
 to strong possession of one's opinion, will make a 
 struggle with the slippery, risky, heathenish 
 evTpaTreXca which St. Paul turns out of the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
106 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 They who command no such powers will 
 passively, as they know how, discountenance the 
 countenancing of corrupt men. 
 
 God knows how far we are from even such a 
 
 sway of purity as this. But the word has gone 
 
 out from Him through the many experiences of 
 
 this generation. There is a slight, in some places 
 
 a strong ripple, a certain cleavage. It is not amiss 
 
 that there should be a certain partitioning of 
 
 theatres and audiences : that there should be a 
 
 society within society : that a strong morality 
 
 should be the religion of avowedly irreligious 
 
 people : that careless people should show some 
 
 care for the poor, some anxiety about the 
 
 young. These are signs. 
 
 Parents And now may I add another word about Public 
 
 and 
 Schools. Schools and questions which have been agitated 
 
 about them. Their young fresh public opinion, 
 
 the fusion of ideas and tones from so many classes, 
 
 the fair outlook of so many futures, the vigour of 
 
 outdoor life so thoroughly gained as to keep scholars, 
 
 statesmen, priests, lawyers, young when they are 
 
 old, act as fences of purity as well as of integrity. 
 
PURITY. 107 
 
 The very knowledge of evil that comes in like 
 spots on the glory of the classics, comes, as 
 Charles Kingsley said, with all circumstance of 
 safety. No one who knows the inside of a sixth 
 form room doubts that. 
 
 But, ' Are there no backwaters there to the 
 stream of public opinion 1 And is not the in- 
 fluence of any evil spirit felt there in a very fatal 
 way 1 ' The answer to both questions is without 
 doubt Yes. And it is no mere retort to say that 
 while there are unconsecrated homes, homes which 
 have no inner life, there will still be backward cur- 
 rents, and ' noisome pestilences ' in schools. It is ab- 
 surd to think of separating the homes and schools 
 of England by such a line as to suppose the school 
 can be all pure while there are homes indifferent, 
 reckless, or vicious. And let it be understood 
 that brain, or what is behind brain, is in boyhood 
 so impressionable that lives of self-restraint and 
 mental discipline do not get wholly rid of the 
 torture of being unable at will to exclude thoughts 
 which the mind can date back to particular 
 boyish talks. Evil thus admitted is riveted on 
 
108 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 the imagination. It is burnt into the intellectual 
 being. 
 
 But no one would di-eam of destroying boy 
 society because of such partial mischief. It could 
 not be done. The boy society of natural selection 
 would be demoniacal as compared with the boy 
 society of school. 
 
 There is one course only to be taken. That 
 is to prevent, obviate, mitigate, expiate — to the 
 utmost. 
 
 It is the parent's place to give a warning 
 before ever the boy leaves home for his first 
 school. For in " the other " school — the early 
 school — Public Opinion is naturally much feebler 
 and more easily infected. 
 
 To the parents it must be left to decide how 
 far their warning may go. To speak very plainly 
 would be with some a constitutional impossibility. 
 I suppose that those who feel they can, probably 
 can. Those who after reflexion feel they can- 
 not, had better not do ^^olence to their own 
 nature. But there is no father who can be 
 forgiven or excused if he will not say, "My 
 
PURITY. 109 
 
 lad, you will hear new things talked of. If 
 you have heard them already, I am sure you 
 know that you ought not to have heard them, 
 for you have never thought of speaking to me 
 of them. But anyhow you will feel in a moment 
 that you would not for the world have your 
 mother hear you talk as some fellows will. 
 Think of your mother then. Go away if you 
 can. Have nothing to say to such things, and 
 determine you will not let them stay in your 
 thoughts — and then ask God at once for help." 
 
 Whether he understands you or not, he is 
 not likely to forget what you say. And against 
 his hour of temptation you have enlisted his 
 loyalty, his chivalry, his filial tenderness, just 
 when those finest notes are 
 
 All on fret by string or golden wire. 
 
 I have known that spell keep boys as true as 
 Abdiel. Let perfection of modesty and tact 
 and nerve say what more it can. 
 
 Do not tell the boy that sin is 'ungentlemanly.' 
 The world's notion of a gentleman must rise 
 
110 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 before the word will fall true on his ear. Call 
 up his ' religion ' if you have called it up before ; 
 if he can understand you when you say a word 
 about 'Inner Life.' But for Religion's sake do 
 not call Religion in here only. Do not use her 
 to enforce your ideas of respectability, respectable 
 as they may be. 
 
 Add one word. Tell him not to believe what 
 he is sure to be assured, that ' all boys are alike — 
 and he must be like all.' Tell him it is the great 
 Liar's lie from the beginning. He used it to 
 Christ when he told Him that ' all kingdoms 
 and all glories were his.' 
 
 If a tutor or master knows — and know he will — 
 that the parent has not forearmed the child, the 
 duty becomes his, and he too must do it as God 
 gives him grace — in the way that he can, and 
 knows he can, Some schools have a chaplain 
 between the masters and the boys. Arnold would 
 none of that. I feel myself that it would have 
 lowered my dearest responsibility and abolished 
 my best moments. 
 
 There is no one who has not some precious 
 
PURITY. Ill 
 
 tie to some English school, and if parents^ are 
 
 as true to them as they are proud of them, 
 
 they may strengthen even the immense power 
 
 for good which is in the Schools of to-day. 
 
 And now, who is there that does not read 
 
 between our lines that the case of Schools, 
 
 Masters, Boys is not really other than the case of 
 
 Parish, Clergy, People 1 
 
 Miss Beatrice Potter in her essay on the Parishes 
 
 and 
 "Jewish Community in London,"^ speaking of Districts. 
 
 the smaller communities of its working class 
 dwells on the great " influence for good of self- 
 creating, self-supporting, self-governing commu- 
 nities; small enough to generate public opinion 
 and the practical supervision of private morals, 
 and large enough to stimulate charity, worship, 
 and study by communion and example." 
 
 There is not a District Church which has not 
 all these powers in a superior degree. Such 
 communities in such a stage show us what all 
 our Parish-churches have been in their earlier 
 
 ^ Let me commend to them the Papers of the Master oi 
 Trinity, and the Rev. E. Lyttelton. 
 - Life and Labour, v. i. p. 170. 
 
112 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 stages ; and so far as they do not maintain or 
 revive that character they lose their most im- 
 portant power. Amid sceptical, indifferent or 
 hostile surroundings each congregation can be 
 such a community with its public opinion con- 
 stantly raising morals. Mark that word ' Study. ' 
 Through library, and lecture, and address, ' Study ' 
 can be sustained by our people surely as well as 
 by these poor Jews. And it is for want of it 
 that * Arcady ' is Arcady. We are past all days 
 of non-reading-and-writing simplicity. What we 
 can do is to make the best of — surely not 
 an unreasonable thing to make the best of — 
 the extended ideas and cultivated sense of our 
 day. 
 
 It is possible, as it never was before, to band 
 men together. I have been astonished to see 
 country Village Men ready to come together 
 against the evil which is our point — as ready as 
 University men after a searching address to bind 
 themselves together to be pure and help the 
 young ones by word and example. 
 
 There are questions belonging to our own day 
 
PURITY. 113 
 
 in which men want some instruction. They know 
 that early marriages are one great source of 
 misery. But they do not know always what 
 early marriage is — that any marriage is too early 
 of which the offspring cannot be reasonably ex- 
 pected to be nurtured and brought up decently. 
 That marriage at marriageable age is not too 
 early if there is reasonable prospect of children's 
 maintenance in the condition of their parents. 
 
 Men hear of the calamities of over-population, 
 and imagine, or are told, that the increase of 
 population is itself an evil to a country, whereas 
 the only evil so far is a population that goes 
 far beyond St. Paul's denunciation of one that 
 "will eat and will not work," — a population 
 "that will drink and will not work." This 
 
 is the sort of population that is wrecked by pre- 
 mature improvident marriage, whose swarming 
 condition has drawn out infamous suggestions, 
 suggestions which are working not the pros- 
 perity but the shrinkage of France. On this 
 subject I will do no more than quote the newest 
 views of the newest school of political economy — 
 
114 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 lest I should seem to be preaching old-world 
 views of right and wrong which must not affect 
 modern good and evil. Arnold Toynbee writes 
 thus in his Eleventh Lecture on the Industrial 
 Revolution ^ : — 
 
 " A man in the Superior or artisan or middle 
 classes has only to consider when he will have 
 sufficient means to rear an average number of 
 children ; that is, he need only regulate the time 
 of his marriage. Postponement of marriage and 
 the willing emigration of some of his children 
 when grown up, does meet the difficulty. He 
 need not consider whether there is room in 
 the world for more, for there is room; and in 
 the interests of civilisation, it is not desirable 
 that a nation with a great history and great 
 qualities should not advance in numbers. 
 
 "For the labouring masses with whom pru- 
 dential motives have no weight, the only true 
 remedy is to carry out such great measures of 
 social reform as the imjDrovement of their dwell- 
 ings, better education, and better amusements, 
 1 P. 114. 
 
PURITY. 115 
 
 and thus lift them into tlie position where moral 
 restraints are operative." 
 
 Surely the shepherds of the flock of Christ 
 are only translating St. Peter and St. Paul, and 
 the Preacher of the Mount Himself, when they 
 learn and when they teach such things as these. 
 They then are what ISTeander calls their pre- 
 decessors in these lands of ours, ' Light in Dark 
 Places '. 
 
 And now — for a simple step in this direction — The 
 I earnestly beseech the Clergy who have not done Purity 
 so to learn how ^ simple and how right and 
 natural the steps are which can be taken, to 
 see what varieties of means present themselves, 
 for wise treatment of varying views and tempers. 
 Meetings rare. Language measured and deli- 
 cate. No sensationalism. The individual taught 
 not to fix his thought on his own evils but to 
 divert it : helped to the reality of the Inner 
 Life, to what his Faith can do for him, to the 
 
 ^ Apply to Canon Blore at Canterbury. Obtain from 
 the Church Purity Society the Master of Trinity's Address, 
 or Mr. Lyttelton's paper, and that Society's or the White 
 Cross series. 
 
116 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 feeling that in a purer air his own strength 
 becomes the strength of ten, and that Com- 
 panionship for good is the Knighthood of our 
 time. 
 
 Let no one fancy that our trust is in organi- 
 zations. They are but ways of coming face to 
 face, of bringing face to face. Some such ways 
 there must be when men are real, when men 
 have real purpose. 
 
 The Once more St. Peter 'wielding the Keys 
 
 witness for 
 Christ, of Heaven in greyhaired might' opens to us 
 
 that the perfect piu-ity of Christian women was 
 
 one first great means of the conversion of the 
 
 men. As time went on Tertullian tells us how the 
 
 virgin manhood of their bright boys preserved 
 
 to hoary-headed age, was one of the Christian 
 
 Church's unanswerable appeals to a Heathendom, 
 
 which itself knew what the glory and the gain 
 
 would be to Society. And yet again St. Peter 
 
 opens us another door and shows us the secret 
 
 of the mystery. It is the Purity of the Inner 
 
 Life_'< Sanctify the Lord God in your Hearts." 
 
IV.-MAIDSTONE. 
 
TEMPERANCE. 
 
IV. 
 
 If Christ is with us ^all the Days' the present Christ 
 
 increasing 
 
 T\„„ ;^ TTi'c in favour 
 
 Day IS His. ^^,.^^ ^ 
 
 With all its drawbacks, it is hard to say Man'? 
 whether any of the Days of His Divine-Human 
 Life and Presence have seen more of Him than 
 ours; or have in Society, which is His province, 
 set more currents stirring either in His Name, or 
 —even though without His Name— in His Spirit. 
 
 If this is true. He and His Spirit are foot by 
 foot taking possession of Society. 
 
 He said He would. Concurrently, He said, Evi^l^grows 
 the contest with Evil would grow more severe ; 
 evils would multiply and be fiercer and stronger, 
 sustained more and more by spiritual forces 
 adverse to His own and, like His own, invisible. 
 This is the tenor of the apostolic foresight also. 
 
120 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 We need not now follow up either the mystical 
 or the metaphysical threads which catch our 
 eyes now. But practically we can scarcely 
 doubt that, as when Daniel beheld it, the 
 world-sea is heaving with monstrous shapes 
 which no one but the Son of Man can master. 
 
 Intem- Take one of those 'Desires' of the Flesh of 
 
 PERANCE : 
 
 which St. Peter speaks as ' the corrupting of 
 
 the world' — a Passion for wine and wine-like 
 
 things. OLvo<f)\vyLaL,^ he contemptuously calls 
 
 its acts of indulgence — how shall we render it? 
 
 the ' soaking in of wine ' 1 or the ' welling-up of 
 
 wine ' 1 So low an evil, Aristotle says, that though 
 
 how no creature would reproach blindness caused by 
 regarded 
 
 in Chris- nature, illness, or a wound, every tongue w^ould 
 tianity ; 
 
 rail at blindness brought on by olvo^Xvyia or 
 
 intemperance.2 What Christ and His first 
 
 Christians said of it w^as (in various places) 
 
 this : — - 
 
 The drinker's morning headache and his 
 
 draughts, as surely as the most sordid anxieties, 
 
 1 1 Pet. iv. 3. - Ar. Eth. N. iii. 5. 
 
TEMPERANCE. 121 
 
 crushed the mind, destroyed its powers of ob- 
 servation/ made it unfeeling, unfit for society ; - 
 stamped a class ^ of men. 
 
 Meetings held for the indulgence ranked as 
 one of the so-called ' night offences ; ' * in their 
 complete power to extinguish upward tendencies 
 and associations they ranked with dishonesty, 
 violence, homicide, and disgusting crime. ^ 
 
 As to Christian Life — Intoxication prevented 
 its spiritual powers from taking any effect; the 
 fast-falling soul could not be ' drest in virtues ' ^ 
 still less, in the high and secret region, ' be 
 drest in Christ,''' and attain to the inner inter- 
 course of joy with God.^ 
 
 It once crept into the Christian assembly of 
 a certain town. To prevent this for ever the 
 ritual of the whole Church was revolutionised ^ 
 and so remains. It was a principle that any 
 Church-member guilty of it should not be associ- 
 ated with.i^ Neither outwardly nor inwardly 
 
 1 Luke xxi. 34. " Luke xii. 45. ^ Matt. xxiv. 49. 
 
 4 1 Thess. V. 7. ^ Rom. xiii. 13 ; Gal. v. 21. 
 
 « 1 Thess. V. 7. ^ Rom. xiii. 13. ^ Eph. v. 18. 
 
 " 1 Cor. xi. 1" 1 Cor. v. 11. 
 
122 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 could such men have the rights of citizens, or 
 even of minors, in the kingdom of God.^ 
 
 In the Apocalypse a lurid reflex light is 
 thrown on the character of the sin by its being 
 made the emblem of universal Anti-Christianity. 
 
 Such strength of utterance, to which even the 
 
 heathen conscience assented, has never left the 
 
 least cranny of excuse open to Christians. The 
 
 record was plain to our forefathers when the 
 
 vice was in fashion. But as the Days of Christ 
 
 vast pro- proceed the proportions are vaster. Northern 
 portions ; 
 
 climate, and newly-settled countries, and new 
 
 forms of labour, and dense population,^ and un- 
 sanitary tracts of town-streets, as well as of 
 undrained wild land, are found to induce and 
 attract and rapidly to spread the habit. Of 
 these conditions one or more is everywhere. In 
 some regions it has seemed a question whether 
 the customs or the peoples would be extirpated 
 first. In some it is a question still. The 
 
 ^ Gal. V. 21 ; 1 Cor. v. 11. 
 
 - Eeport of Select Committee of House of Lords on In- 
 temperance, 1878-9, s. 22, 
 
TEMPERANCE. 123 
 
 earth's long- sealed dark continent, stored with 
 her grandest products, is being developed for the 
 wealth of the world through the application of 
 intoxication to its innumerable tribes by civilised 
 traders and Christian merchants. Governments 
 which would come to the rescue are beset with 
 forces political, commercial, personal — even geo- 
 graphical.^ 
 
 A scene so limitless was of course utterly un- 
 imaginable to those who took the Good News to 
 the beautiful little cities and harbours of Greece 
 and who uttered in them such strong true 
 voices, although there the vice lived on so small 
 a scale that the antient arts and the stage itself 
 leave but trifling reminiscences of it. 
 
 So then the Christian Church, it would seem, 
 if its work really is to win mankind into the 
 Kingdom of God, to make the Kingdom of God 
 felt, to clear ground for the Kingdom of God ; 
 if it is to fight, if it is to conquer, stands now in 
 
 ^ See Protocols of West African Conference at Berlin 
 (Blue Book, March, 1855), pp. 11, 133 ff, 150. Mark a 
 " commercial custom," p. 135. 
 
124 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 the midst of a campaign and a peril in which 
 nothing but the supernatural vantage of Christ's 
 presence among His troops could give them hope, 
 vast effect; To put it baldly — Of the entii^ely overwhelming 
 necessity that the Church should vehemently 
 contest the ground with Intemperance there is no 
 manner of doubt. It is in one way the work of 
 this present Day of Christ, for unless it is done 
 very little else can be lastingly done. In docu- 
 ments which I lately looked through, I see 
 judicial and statistical authorities variously 
 stating the conviction that of all the punished 
 crimes within their own range two-thirds, three- 
 fourths, four-fifths, seven-eighths are due directly 
 or ultimately to intoxication. Our Lord Chief 
 Justice says, 'scarcely a crime comes before him 
 which is not dii'ectly or indirectly caused by 
 strong drink.' Others are not really at variance 
 with this who point out that the criminal rarely 
 has had a good start, and that drink is not the 
 motive power in many crimes ; they admit that 
 the general demoralisation produced by indul- 
 gence is the hotbed of crime and sin a.t large. 
 
TEMPERANCE. 125 
 
 What then is the sense of a proclamation about 
 "taking away the sin of the world" so long as 
 Intemperance is not taken awayl 
 
 But How? 
 
 There was never more difficulty as to the right not curable 
 
 by Legisla- 
 means. The difficulty is not one of magnitude tion alone. 
 
 alone. Only difficulty does not excuse our not 
 trying. One country has been said to have 
 been arrested in a downward track — physical 
 deterioration and 'unparalleled prevalence of 
 crime '^ — by regulation. But it is a very dif- 
 ferent country from England, or America, or 
 Africa. And I am sure we shall find that 
 
 all the differences throw much more responsi- 
 bility for action here visibly upon the Church. 
 
 Legislation undoubtedly has a great part to 
 play. We know well enough that " the Lav/ 
 cannot make men virtuous," and had better 
 not try. Yet Legislation within its proper sphere 
 can make it, as in all things which affect security 
 of person or property or public health or order 
 or comfort, harder to do wrong, and so unpleasant 
 
 ^ Lords' Commission 1878-9, s. 33. 
 
126 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 to have done it, that it requires the exertion of 
 a strong will to be criminal or even vicious or to 
 bear the odium of breaking the law. Without 
 travelling far into the theory we may say that 
 Government has some rights and duties in re- 
 striction of conduct under which the community 
 or certain of its helpless members suffer. Still 
 those theoretical rights are not proof against 
 all theoretical objections ; and when they are put 
 into force the objections become practical also, 
 to an extent unforeseen by those who first 
 approach the subject or Avho lecture us upon it 
 without having approached it. 
 
 A policy which claims to proceed purely " upon 
 principle" generally means upon one principle out 
 of many. But other principles insinuate themselves 
 like grit into the wheels, and bring them to a 
 standstill, or incautious persistence throws up a 
 mass of obstacles. The question arises whether a 
 Statute which cannot be enforced, perhaps passed 
 with a certainty that it cannot, produces more 
 ffood or evil. Some arsfue that it must still act 
 to some extent in terrorem, and be an educating 
 
TEMPERANCE. 127 
 
 power. ^ But more thoughtful men feel that an 
 unenforced law acts against Law itself and is a 
 demoralising influence.^ If it is a new law it 
 must so act very strongly. 
 
 The Duty we have already spoken of as 
 St. Peter's ArAeonoiiA — the Duty of Producing 
 Good — is certainly the duty of Law as a human 
 instrument, framed and wielded by ourselves. 
 The legislature therefore must take into account 
 whether, under varying conditions, tlie action 
 of a given law is invariable. When the temp- 
 tation is very strong and restrictions excite 
 resistance, when the power of enforcement 
 is inadequate and ojDinion does not reinforce 
 it, a law which under milder conditions acts 
 beneficially may be unsalutary to the general 
 morals. It must then be considered whether it 
 can possibly be made universally salutary. If so, 
 How 1 And if not. What is the Bevrepos ttXovs ? 
 
 We will take two cases — and I think those 
 
 ^ See Report of Canadian Commissioners on Prohibitory 
 Liquor Law (1875), p. 31. 
 
 - See Lord Aberdare's letter, Welsh Sunday Closing Act, 
 tvith Introduction by L. Stcj)licns, Esq., p, 164, 
 
128 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Examples: who will read the evidence itself, apart from 
 America, 
 
 arguments raised on it, will not consider that 
 
 I misstate it.^ 
 
 In certain of the United States there is (as 
 
 is well known) a Total Prohibition of the Sale 
 
 of Intoxicating Beverages. It was adopted because 
 
 of the proportion observed between crime and 
 
 drink,2 and because the old system of Licensing 
 
 1 As regards the first, I shall show what I can from the 
 Report of the Canadian Commissioners of 1875, because it 
 now forms a sort of historical medallion of principles and 
 experiences. The history and present energies of ' Prohibi- 
 tionism' are given in the Handbook of Prohibition, 1889, 
 (Chicago), and in the Political Prohibitionist for 1889, a 
 Handbook for the Aggressive Tem^jerance People of the U. S. 
 (Funk & Wagnall's). The Report of the Select Committee 
 of the House of Lords on IntemperancCy 1877-9, with Evi- 
 dence and AjjpendiXf is the great English work on the 
 subject. The Report by itself in a smaller form is a 
 moderate and comprehensive manual. The great value and 
 important effects of the Reports of the Convocation of 
 Canterbury (1869) and of York (1874) are well known. 
 
 I have also to thank the Bishops of Maine and Massachu- 
 setts and D. L. Moody, Esq., for information and opinions 
 on the subject. 
 
 - One district containing only a quarter of the population 
 of Maine paid seven-eighths of the spirit-tax and supplied 
 one half of the convicts. In years when Licensing was re- 
 sumed there was a startling increase of crime : in one State, 
 of twenty-four per cent, as to drunkenness and thirteen per 
 
TEMPERANCE. 129 
 
 was thought to place no check on excessive general 
 drinking. In these States (I have to speak 
 generally) Licensing was reciuTed to sometimes 
 in alternate years as one or other party gained 
 ascendency.^ The experiment was therefore 
 thoroughly tried. 
 
 cent, in other offences. In one the building of fresh prisons 
 was recommended. Even when malt liquor only was licensed 
 there was a great increase of commitments. [The Report of 
 the Lords Committee on Intemperance (1878-9), see. 20, 
 points out "the fallacious character" of conclusions drawn 
 from "police returns."] 
 
 ^ (1) In Maine, Iowa, Kansas, and a few others, there is 
 Total Prohibition, (Rhode Island has lately removed the Pro- 
 hibitory clause from its constitution. ) Unadulterated liquors 
 may there be sold only for manufacturing, medicinal, or 
 religious purposes, and only by agents of Government. All 
 discovered liquor to be destroyed or delivered to the agents. 
 (2) In Massachusetts and others the system is that of ' High 
 License with Local Option,' i.e. any town may prevent the 
 sale of liquor within its boundaries ; if allowed, it must be 
 sold by dealers appointed in proportion to the population, 
 giving large bonds, paying heavy license (lighter for malt 
 liquors than for distilled), closing at a fixed hour, and 
 altogether on Sundays and other holidays, not selling to 
 minors, drunkards, or persons affected by liquor, and not 
 within a certain distance of schools, churches, &c. Some 
 of these States recently submitted a prohibitory clause to 
 the suffrage, and it was rejected by a majority not composed 
 of lower classes. 
 
130 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 The evidence seems to be irresistible that in 
 most country places and wherever the people 
 are with it, the system reahses its object; that 
 in the average of the whole of a State there is a 
 great diminution in crime, poverty, lunacy, and 
 therefore in public burdens, and a corresponding 
 increase of material well-being, of trade in the 
 necessaries and amenities of life, of thrift, of 
 attendance at public worship. The Prohibition 
 Law is said to take a strong hold of the senti- 
 ment of large masses of the people in whose State 
 it exists. It is asserted that it is not more 
 difficult to carry out than a License Law w^here 
 the people are with it. 
 
 The accounts of success become in fact mono- 
 tonous, except where they are varied by the report 
 of an empty gaol, a population without a pauper, 
 or of the great fire of Boston, where the imme- 
 diate stoppage by the military of every intoxicant 
 kept a dangerous mob harmless, if not helpful, 
 through seventeen dark and gasless nights. 
 
 We said however that the law acted where 
 the people at large were with it. And in this 
 
TEMPERANCE. 131 
 
 lies the hitherto visible moral of the story. That 
 
 is not the case in towns to a sufficient extent ; 
 
 and the shadows which overlie the bright picture 
 
 are very dark. It is denied that in large towns 
 
 the prohibition is or can be enforced. It is said 
 
 that in them open sale is not much diminished/ 
 
 that this defiance of the law produces a dangerous 
 
 state of feeling, that attempts at enforcement 
 
 force the sale into pretended clubs, into uncounted 
 
 private houses, into the lowest streets, into the 
 
 lowest hands ; that the poor cannot escape it, the 
 
 liquor is adulterated to poison, drunkenness and 
 
 its progeny increase. The administration of the 
 
 law was held to make unfair demands on local 
 
 officers who could not act without the assistance 
 
 of State officers; on juries reluctant to convict, 
 
 on judges deprived of discretion as to penalties ; 
 
 on the spirit of law itself, since the evil is in 
 
 the use but the penalty upon the sale (sometimes 
 
 only the last sale) of the commodity. 
 
 ^ I understand that the great number of defiantly open 
 ' ' saloons " in the city of Providence was the cause of the 
 recent erasure of the prohibitory clause from the constitution 
 of Pihode Island. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 I do not know how far any of those results 
 may be modified in detail. Kot, apparently, so 
 far as to satisfy the mass of thinking Ameri- 
 can citizens that Total Prohibition is the cure 
 of intemperance.^ 
 
 But this is not our point. All that we at 
 present want to mark is that a law to be 
 effective must not overstrain general opinion. 
 And this is illustrated by the mere variety of 
 the results, even supposing the report of the 
 evils to be exaggerated. 
 Wales. The second example of very important legis- 
 lation on this subject — is our own Welsh Sunday 
 Closing Act. Its phenomena are now under 
 the minute investigation of an able commission. 
 And we abstain from any strong or premature 
 judgment of the whole c[uestion. But so far 
 as evidence -' has yet gone those phenomena are 
 
 1 Private correspondence indicates that far more is hoped 
 from the system of " Prohibition with High License." In 
 Philadelphia (Penns.) over 4,000 saloons are stated to have 
 been closed in two years. A three months Report of sixteen 
 
 cities in Massachusetts is striking {Boston Daily Advertiser, 
 August 16, 1889). 
 
 - Reprint from JJ'cstrni Mail {Owen, Cardiff, 1889). 
 
TEMPERANCE. 133 
 
 singularly parallel — though, of course, on a 
 narrower scale — to tlie American observations. 
 The same improvements in thinly populated 
 parts, the same doubts about towns. Our 
 own experiences relate but to one day in the 
 week. They are qualified by the fact that 
 even on that day persons appearing in a certain 
 character, claimed on singularly simple terms, may 
 be served freely. And we have not open defiance 
 of the law. At Cardiff, Swansea, Merthyr, 
 upon Sunday, as at Baltimore or Portland 
 every day, offences formerly common have 
 disappeared from good quarters of the town. 
 Public temptation has ceased. Places of Wor- 
 ship are much better attended. Workmen go 
 to work with more regularity. There is strong 
 sentiment in favour of the Act. Yet here, 
 too, a multitude of pretended clubs appeared — 
 clubs which were open on three days only of the 
 week j clubs from which men never stirred 
 from Saturday night to Monday morning. The 
 clubs were nearly checked. And then " Sheb- 
 beens " (which had previously existed) grew more 
 
134 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 numerous and more vile, provided evil-doers 
 with a maintenance for evil-doing, carried 
 temptations, and worse temptations than before, 
 close to every poor home. Raids on the Sheb- 
 beens did not succeed in suppressing them, 
 but succeeded in driving the trade deeper into 
 private houses. For the convenience of such 
 private sale new vessels and measures came 
 into existence. Troops of men qualified as 
 travellers entitled to demand liquor by a walk 
 or ride of three miles. Troops of men flocked 
 over the boundaries into counties where the 
 Sunday did not close the houses. 
 
 It appeared that it was easy to alter 
 customs but not easy to change habits. 
 
 What seemed strange at first was that with 
 Sunday closing week-day drunkenness fell off, 
 but Sunday drunkenness increased. Appetite 
 was stimulated by a not invincible obstacle and 
 by the pleasure of the excursion. 
 
 This degree of failure is not imputed to 
 executive neglect. The framers of the measure 
 were men of special exactitude and ability. No 
 
TEMPERANCE. 135 
 
 diligence, earnestness, or knowledge up to the 
 time could exceed theirs. 
 
 Whatever else then may be needed to a right 
 and true solution, two things seem essential — 
 
 1. Experiment under various conditions : — which 
 requires facilities for the application of schemes 
 that approve themselves to competent judgment. 
 
 2. An immensely extended preparation of Public 
 Opinion, specially a laying siege to the Feeling and 
 Opinion of places in which a strong minority is at 
 present determined not to be saved by restriction. 
 
 And now, where are we 1 For the interest it is more 
 
 than a 
 of the skirmishing is so strong that we may be t3mporal 
 
 evil. 
 absorbed in it and even forget the magnitude 
 
 of the war, and the holiness of the cause. 
 Amid the merits and the demerits and amend- 
 ments of Prohibition or Closure or Option, we 
 must not lose the consciousness that we 'are 
 fighting against Sin,' that ' The Battle is the 
 Lord's,' that this is ' The Day of Christ,' that we 
 bear His Gospel before Him in His Living Presence. 
 We may not be required to sketch a Tem- 
 
136 CHRIST A^B HIS TIMES. 
 
 perance Policy, but it is mere human duty to 
 attend to facts like those, to see that some policy 
 is required, to promote discussion of facts and 
 measures, to second rational effort. 
 
 But the duty of the Clergy and of Church- 
 men wants stating in other terms. Two 
 conclusions start out from all we have watched, 
 unless we have watched all in vain. 
 
 Legisla- They are that the best i-egulations are power- 
 powerless less unless they rest on Public Opinion ; and 
 
 without 
 
 PubHc 
 Opinion, 
 
 that regulations may easily alter the forms of 
 vice without reforming the Habit of vice. 
 
 But there lie the Fields of the Church — 
 Public Opinion and the Force of Habit. It 
 was the Opinion of the World on which she 
 w^as first commissioned to act ; and it is hers 
 to acquaint men with Heavenly Gifts by 
 which the Power of Habit itself is wrestled 
 with and overcome. Some Churchmen as in- 
 dividuals are called upon to consider Policies. 
 All Churchmen are called upon to do their part 
 to improve the common feeling and animate the 
 inner spirit of their fellows. 
 
TEMPERANCE. 137 
 
 If we did not believe that we could do this 
 the prospect before vis would be fearful. Fov 
 is it not fearful to read in that cautious Report 
 of the Lords' Committee ^ that " speaking 
 generally, the increase of intemperance is mainly- 
 due to the rapid rise of wages, and the in- 
 creased amount of leisure enjoyed by the 
 manufacturing and mining classes " ? Better 
 wages and more leisure — the very blessings 
 which they are chiefly set on obtaining, which 
 most men wish them to obtain, which all 
 men are sure they will obtain. So then, if 
 they attain their coveted objects before they 
 learn to use them, the possession will be no 
 blessing but a dire curse to themselves and 
 to society — nothing but a portentous opening 
 of the fountains of poverty, of crime, of mad- 
 ness, to deluge themselves and their children. 
 
 The Church of Christ knows that the case audi. 
 
 PubHc 
 is not hopeless if her own children are not Opiniou is 
 
 the 
 faithless. She has in modern times seen Church's 
 
 field. 
 Public Opinion and the Face of Habit utterly 
 
 ^ Sectiou 21. 
 
138 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 and is changed, — not only in the matter of slavery, 
 alterable. 
 
 of which we have spoken before, — but through- 
 out the higher and middle classes of society, 
 in this very matter of Intemperance. 
 
 It is not so long since dining-rooms and 
 clubs saw daily — with finer clothes and more 
 polished manners — the scenes that the public- 
 house and the liquor saloon still enjoy. In 
 the health of how many families is the effect 
 of those once constant habits still felt ! 
 
 Culture It is often said that education and the pro- 
 inadequate 
 to alter, gress of general cultivation have made the 
 
 change. But it must be remembered that the 
 most highly, learnedly, 'elegantly' educated 
 persons, whose perfection of manners was a kind 
 of religion, did habitually, and almost as a 
 matter of pride and breeding, accept and share 
 in those social customs. They neither protested, 
 nor in any way stood out from their surround- 
 ings. Culture would have done nothing but for 
 an impulse which it, in common with other 
 strains of life and feeling, received. 
 
 It requires some acquaintance with the prosier, 
 
TEMPERANCE. 139 
 
 duller, and now dustier walks of literature to The altera- 
 tion is a 
 see that it was really even then the influence Keligious 
 
 one. 
 upon society of the Moral and Religious schools 
 
 of thought which wrought the change. The 
 groups of good men, both Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters, who in the reigns of William III. and 
 Anne, founded so vast a proportion of our great 
 charities and societies, were unwearied and very 
 successful in their assaults on " profanity, vice, 
 and immorality." Then come the interest in 
 the Moravians, the earnest dealings with Deism, 
 the great Wesleyan movement, the still greater 
 Evangelical movement and its succession. Cul- 
 ture at first lent itself to ridicule their attempts 
 to touch the springs of society. Sydney Smith's 
 Essays on Indian Missions, or on Methodism, 
 are some of the last instances of wit which even 
 a clerical litterateur could discharge with ap- 
 plause on such a subject. But a great throb 
 and thrill had really run through Society at the 
 reviving sense of Christ's presence pleading with 
 its own self, moulding it, giving it work to do 
 for Him. AYhen William Wilberforce, with his 
 
140 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 rank, position and political influence had interro- 
 gated Society as to what it meant by calling itself 
 Christian, and with a masterly hand had traced 
 the outline of what it ought to mean, the 
 cause was so far won. The public ear was 
 opened to many new and forcible voices. 
 
 And yet we can ourselves remember that 
 long after great changes had passed upon the 
 face of things, the first apostles of Temperance 
 met nothing but contempt and the reproach 
 of fanaticism from any stratum of society 
 except the lowest and the lowest-middle classes. 
 That states would ever feel the discussion of 
 it vital to theii' prosperity, classes to their 
 existence, Churches to their redemptive and 
 regenerating mission was undreamed of. 
 
 But tliis is the situation of to-day, and it 
 is so because — we impress it again and again 
 upon ourselves — Christ Himself '' walketh in 
 the midst of the seven golden candlesticks." 
 And this is our view of the situation. 
 
 More temperate populations are of vital 
 necessity to the well-being of the nearest future. 
 
TEMPERAInCE. 141 
 
 Legislation has stepped in on that account. 
 But the contest of enforcement with an un- 
 changed pubHc opinion is an unequal con- 
 test. A contest of politics on the question is 
 dangerous to both politics and morals — viz., that 
 either side should buy "the temperance vote." 
 
 The contest of Religious Motive is neither 
 dangerous nor unequal. It enrols gratitude and 
 pity and the Love of God in the work. It appeals 
 to what remains of best and noblest in men even 
 more strongly than to the instinct of self-preser- 
 vation. It uses self-denial and self-dedication 
 as its attractions, and there are none stronger. 
 It resorts to Prayer and teaches men to pray and 
 so leaves them in contact with God. In the tones 
 of St. Peter it not only warns men to ' escape from 
 the corruption which is in the world through desire,' 
 it invites them to ' hallow their souls by obedience 
 to the truth. '^ It recalls them to the Hour of 
 their Baptism, and as then they made many vows 
 in one, it now receives their renewal of one which 
 they have abrogated, cancelled, and made obsolete 
 ^ 1 Pet. i. 22 ; 2 Pet i. 4. 
 
142 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 in their record. If any teacher objects to such a 
 
 vow let him raise the opinion of his people above 
 
 the necessity for it. 
 
 2. Public Public Opinion we said was the field of the 
 
 Opinion 
 
 becomes Church's campaign. But Public Opinion is also 
 
 the 
 Church's the Church's allied territory. All that it wins it 
 
 ally, 
 
 changes, and all that it changes follows with it. 
 
 In its march it makes Recruits of the Conquered, 
 
 it even trains their children, like the Ottoman 
 
 of old, to be its Body Guard. 
 
 This was the line which of old the Church 
 
 pursued without swerving. This it was which won 
 
 her all the reverence and affection that peoples 
 
 and kings had to give. This it was which gave 
 
 her establishment, secured her vantage ground 
 
 for the Kingdom of God. 
 
 and has Her operation on public opinion is not complete 
 tjiven to 
 
 with that. Her establishment is not for her 
 
 every 
 
 own sake, but to remove difficulties in the way 
 of that Salvation which it is her sole business 
 to diffuse here. The hereafter is her Lord's. 
 Her operation on public opinion is not, will never 
 be complete until she has so changed it as to 
 
TEMPERANCE. 143 
 
 render special organizations unnecessary — those 
 organizations which she constitutes in virtue of 
 
 o 
 
 freely-given power Ho bind and loose.' But 
 
 meantime she is bound to use that power, and 
 
 every minister and member of hers to make 
 
 himself part of that power. 
 
 Everv Englishman is in immediate touch with Individual 
 '^ ^ a right 
 
 her. Whoever wishes help in the mending of his to claim 
 
 her hel]i, 
 
 own ways or the assisting of his neighbours has 
 an officer of the Church whom he has a right to 
 ask to help him. It is obviously true that he 
 has a personal right to claim the help of his 
 parish clergyman — and of other authorities too, 
 who themselves have in these days no mind to be 
 officials and not men : — a parishioner with a griev- 
 ance knows his way to every one of them at once. 
 
 Then, what access they have to him. And it ^^^ ^^^® 
 ^ work IS an 
 
 is true that " you must conquer that evil of Individual 
 evils by a straight appeal to one individual after 
 another. . . . Dead-lift individual effort will 
 eventually reduce the ills to a minimum." ^ 
 
 ^ "Ethics of the Drink Question," Mr. Runciman, 
 Contemporary Ecvicu; October, 1889. 
 
144 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 and it is The steady use of this right of mutual access 
 within the 
 
 Church's is exactly what has given our Society its special 
 power to 
 
 meet the effectiveness in this g-i-eat reliafious and national 
 claims. 
 
 question of Temperance. The main hindrance now 
 
 is local apathy and unintelligence, and this branch- 
 ing, all-touching organization of the Church can 
 and ought to dissipate it. The Institute and its 
 branches, down to the humblest kind of rooms, 
 the recreation, the resource or the craft learnt 
 in evenings, the visit, the choir, the bells, the 
 guild, the school lectui-e and cottage talk, and 
 the sermon itself — ten times more interesting 
 and touching for its interest in and touches of 
 real life and for the light of facts let in on 
 stupid dreams— all these are truly marvellous 
 means (if we consider how some have used them) 
 of raising the people's standard of comfort, sense 
 of decency, order, taste, principles, the use of 
 time and the use of wages, and means of letting 
 in a little of that "emotional impulse" which 
 stirs good sense to act. Is there any neglecting 
 of the Faith in all this ? IS'ot so. ' An un- 
 converted teetotaller is as much an animal as 
 
TEMPERANCE. 345 
 
 a drunkard' said a great teetotaller to me the 
 other day, 'with conceit added.' Without the 
 Faith we shall do nothing. Without it the 
 Church is as helpless as the shorn Samson. It 
 is the Eaith which we bring to make solid ground 
 for the Legislator and the Economist. Unless 
 we even recognise it in each of our meetings 
 our societies languish and break up. But the 
 scope of Faith is Human Life. The scope of the 
 Church of England is the Life of Englishmen. Tlie 
 To teach men to die cannot be done without 
 teaching them to live. Considering this— that the 
 Church was founded by Christ to fortify and 
 reinforce all good things with knowledge of God, 
 and to bind mankind together, I cannot under- 
 stand how any clergyman (or indeed any one) has 
 a right to the name of Church-Man who only 
 worships and formulates that knowledge correctly, 
 and does not Work it into the Life of his neigh- 
 bours and bind them together in all upward 
 ways and works. 
 
 Cliurcli 
 
 man's 
 
 calling. 
 
V.-CROYDON. 
 
 L 2 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 
 
V. 
 
 Opened in the Cathedral the Visitation closes Croydon. 
 
 The See. 
 in this archiepiscopal parish church of the 
 
 Diocese. One of the most antient benefices and 
 constant homes of the See, through all our Eng- 
 land's History fastest bound by all ties of names 
 and foundations of our own times, a noble 
 architectural monument glowing now with the 
 revived beauty of our great benefactor's tomb, 
 Croydon is the fittest place for the last of those 
 gatherings of all our whole Church Clergy and 
 Wardens which every four years begin in 
 Canterbury. 
 
 This year the feelings of affection for this old The Two 
 
 Pastors. 
 home are deepened by the unexpected sorrow 
 
 which has visited it, and the new hope which 
 
 succeeds the sorrow. We lost in the height of 
 
150 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 a noble manhood one whom a whole great 
 population affirmed to be (in George Herbert's 
 old phrase) truly "a Priest to the Temple" — 
 we receive one whom the northern arch-diocese 
 commends to us. A worthy successor — no imi- 
 tator, but one who will genuinely " mind the same 
 things " with the same " parish care," the same 
 " Diocesan Patriotism," of which he has himself 
 spoken so forcibly. 
 
 It is a singular but happy token that they two 
 should have received holy orders kneeling side 
 by side in this very place. As the Consecration 
 so may the Benediction be one. 
 
 The Days Throughout this Visitation I have tried to 
 of Christ, 
 
 and St. keep one theme before us. I have tried to realise 
 
 Petor on 
 the Church and help others to realise that the Times in which 
 
 Christ lived are not past. These are Christ's Times. 
 
 He is working among us as much as on the 
 
 Galilean masses. We are believing and following, 
 
 or going back and rejecting Him, as they did. 
 
 I have also tried to keep in view one small 
 
CHITECH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 151 
 
 treatise, a few pages long, bound up in the New 
 Testament. This I have done because it seems 
 to me to give the clearest, pithiest account we 
 have of the Church and Church Principles. Per- 
 haps it wears that aspect to us now the more 
 because the particular Church Pi-inciples brought 
 out in it touch our day closely. 
 
 The Apostle Saint Peter's First Letter shows 
 that Poor and Neglected Masses are not only 
 the charge of the Church but are the bulk of 
 that human material which is to form the Church 
 itself. 
 
 Then he shows how the miseries of the world 
 
 come from the relentless gratification of Desire 
 
 — which spares neither Self nor other. 
 
 Thirdly, he shows how the substance of the of this His 
 
 present 
 Church's work is what he calls ' the Doing Good ' Day, 
 
 — or more exactly ' the Creation of Good ' in the 
 
 world. Material Production the world's main 
 
 work. Moral Production the Church's. 
 
 Answerably to those three points of St. Peter 
 are the three points of the England of To-day. 
 
 1. The Problem of the Poor is a Problem to be 
 
152 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 settled. If those Masses were not to be made 
 into the Church (give the word the largest sense 
 you please) they would unmake the world. 
 
 2. The Gratification of Desire is the means by 
 which they (and here they are helped by a large 
 proportion of the rest) are now engaged in 
 unmaking the world nearly as fast as it is 
 made — namely, by Impurity and by Intemperance 
 — or Intemperance in both kinds. 
 
 3. The Production of Good is the work of the 
 whole Church. St. Peter (who speaks quite 
 plainly nevertheless on the apostolic and clerical 
 functions, and their identity) calls this work the 
 Sacrificial offering of the ' Spiritual House ' or 
 ' Pure Priesthood,' which is his name for the 
 entire Church of Laity and Clergy. 
 
 and on the As it is allowed on all hands that the clergy 
 thereof, ^i'© to do good of that kind, but that the laity 
 are not to do so unless they like, Lay Work 
 seems to be natm^ally our third subject. 
 
 And Lay Work seems at this moment especi- 
 ally the subject for Croydon, because of the 
 coming Mission. A Mission which is a true 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 153 
 
 one necessarily leaves the people's minds full of 
 
 the thought of Lay work — their own. 
 
 I divide Lay Church Work into three : 
 
 Ofl&cial, Associated, Personal. 
 
 I. Official Lay Church Work, which concerns us I. Their 
 
 Official 
 to-day, is the work of Churchwardens and Sides- Work 
 
 men. I am thankful to learn that the number 
 of Churches which appoint Sidesmen is growing. 
 Four years ago I told the Churchwardens all my 
 heart about themselves ; how much power they 
 have ; what pride, I see, they take in their 
 work ; what pride the Archbishop, I know, has 
 in his Officers ; how precious and how service- 
 able a thing it is to be called by their fellow 
 parishioners, or placed by the Rector or Yicar 
 in an office in which they have not only the 
 right, but the duty to remonstrate against what 
 is wi^ong, or to stimulate generosity, or to say 
 out that this proposal or that person ought to 
 be and shall be supported. 
 
 I said, and say again, how greatly the people 
 of the place and the whole Church are indebted 
 to men who, under trying circumstances, when 
 
154 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 a parish is agitated by real troubles, " keep things 
 together," as we say; how I rely on such men 
 to the utmost, and rarely I have been disappointed. 
 Even the occasional personage who in his troubles 
 conceives that his Bishop forgets their griefs, 
 and that he himself must resign his "Wardenship, 
 and think about disestablishing the Chui^ch, re- 
 covers his justice at sight of the facts, and 
 his spirits at sight of the new incumbent. 
 The law about Sequestration is as bad as it can 
 be, the law of Patronage wants amending, and 
 the difficulties in removing a bad clergyman, even 
 if he is a contrast to all about him, are very great. 
 But of course they will continue to be so, as 
 long as you send to your Diocesan and others 
 private denunciations of scandal real or ru- 
 moured, and, when you ought to be appealed to 
 in public, refuse to be called on for evidence ; 
 and again so long as before the legislature we 
 cannot obtain time for that discussion which 
 is essential to clear the ground and secure 
 unitedness. 
 
 Perhaps it is wiser for the present to make 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 155 
 
 the best of our powers in default of that 
 legislation which we fail to obtain. But in that 
 case we must have all moral support — and we 
 must appeal to you to give it more firmly and 
 courageously. However I say that (as a rule) 
 the Canterbury Churchwardens do their duty — 
 and that, as the tradition goes on, and their 
 influence widens, that duty is discharged not only 
 conscientiously but intelligently. 
 
 It is interesting to see that above three hun- 
 dred years ago the same demands were made on 
 Churchwardens as at present. The old draft of 
 statutes, which I quoted to you about your- 
 selves at the last Visitation,^ says that then as 
 
 now the churchwardens were to be responsible now nearer 
 
 to the 
 for the good order of the people and the Ideal. 
 
 good order of the buildings and for their 
 
 own personal attendance at Visitations, at 
 
 Synods, and at Chapters. But it is strange 
 
 indeed to us to read that for any failure in any 
 
 one of these duties they were to be fined and the 
 
 fines to go into the parish chest. It must have 
 
 1 Reformatio Legum. De Gardianis. 
 
156 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 been a strong sense of duty which enabled a 
 man to take the office under such conditions. 
 Surely the present state of things is much better, 
 when the work is so done for love that we should 
 laugh at the notion of a fine, and when more- 
 over such assemblies as are named have become 
 realities in the Ruridecanal Conferences of which 
 every Churchwarden is a member, and in the 
 Diocesan Conference to which they elect their 
 representatives. May I here add my expression 
 of thankful satisfaction at the Minutes of Dis- 
 cussion, which I receive from the Kuridecanal 
 Conferences on very important subjects, and 
 at the large part now borne by laymen in our 
 Diocesan Conference. 
 
 I need not detain you by dwelling on the 
 increasing work done by many devoted men who 
 have received the Office of Lay Reader. It 
 is definite, and it stands between Official 
 work, technically called so, and such work as 
 we next speak of. Some desire that the 
 Office should grow into an Order, and be 
 exercisable in any: part of the Church, and 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 157 
 
 not only within a diocese or a group of 
 
 parishes. So wide a Commission for such 
 
 responsible work could not be conferred except 
 
 on a recognised standard involving examination 
 
 and training. There are movements for training 
 
 on foot. My annual day with oiu' own Readers 
 
 is one of the best of my year. 
 
 II. I proceed to the Associated (and presently II. Their 
 
 associated 
 to the Personal) work of Laymen in and for their- Works. 
 
 Church. And I will say now, what I shall enlarge 
 on afterwards, that if the Church AVorkers will, 
 now that their work has attained such develop- 
 ment, link their Associated and Personal Activities 
 together by the band of a Church Workers' 
 Society, however simply constituted — if they 
 will "agree on earth" daily to pray for each 
 others' work and occasionally, as they can, meet 
 and talk it over, they will find immensely increased 
 force added both to theii^ work and to their own 
 personality — I say it from observation. 
 
 What then do we really mean by Lay Church What is 
 
 Lay 
 Work'? I think it will be of use to us to Church 
 
 Work ? 
 classify and to define a term loosely used — 
 
158 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 and seeming to some ears to mean almost any- 
 thing. 
 
 By 'Work' I understand something which 
 costs thought, exertion, and some giving up of 
 pleasure. That it gives, or is a greater plea- 
 sure of another order, does not interfere with 
 this character. 
 
 By ' Church Work ' I understand thought and 
 exertion applied to the ends the Church has in 
 view, upon unquestionable Church-lines of doctrine 
 and worship. 
 
 By ' Lay Church Work ' I mean work which 
 would naturally lead me to suppose that the 
 doer of it was a Layman ; which would not make 
 me assume him to be a clergyman if I were 
 not otherwise informed. 
 
 The idea which some clergymen seem to wish 
 
 to assign to the Lay Church Worker, is that he 
 
 plainly should be as much of a Clergyman as possible. 
 
 not 
 clerical. I think that is a misconception. For example ; 
 
 the Liturgies and Services of consecrated places 
 
 stand by themselves. The Reading aloud of 
 
 Scripture in those separated places, and in all other 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 159 
 
 places, the Praying with the brethren, and quali- 
 fied Teaching too seem, and have always been 
 taken as functions which an instructed layman 
 may as a layman rightly exercise in virtue of his 
 baptism and communion. But the consecration of 
 places means the setting them apart for special 
 authorised service, celebrated by special authorised 
 persons, ordained of Christ to be the organs of 
 the mystical body. It is an incongruity and almost 
 a contradiction, arising from imperfect instruc- 
 tion, that at meetings of lay readers some one is 
 sure to propose that the Litany or other parts of 
 the Divine Service should, even when a whole 
 church, complete in all its members, is worshipping 
 in its sanctuaries, be assigned to laymen. Doubt- 
 less we might have places of worship not con- 
 secrated, not separated for ever, to be from all 
 others the full representation upon earth of " The 
 general assembly of the First Born." Such com- 
 pleteness is not necessary to the saving of souls ; 
 but while we have, while we aim at, complete- 
 ness and perfectness of order, let us under- 
 stand and use it. 
 
160 CHRIST AN'D HIS TIMES. 
 
 Its PoAver: It is not in any function of a Clergyman 
 
 that the character of the Church Layman is 
 
 brought out in its power and dignity. 
 
 The Layman has in virtue of his position as 
 
 a Member of Christ, the Child of God, and an 
 
 Heir of the Kingdom, a high order of privilege 
 
 and responsibilities. 
 
 1. over the 1. The Education of children and especially of 
 young, 
 
 the baptized Children of the Church must be in 
 
 his sight a thing of vital importance. All that 
 he can do will be done to diffuse a Church 
 education. Beyond the line of those who can 
 or ought to be brought wdthin Church 
 schools, the religious instruction of all must 
 surely exercise his mind. Now Croydon itself 
 is a grand instance of what can be done ; even 
 whilst Board Schools are flourishing and ad- 
 vancing it has been shown how Church Schools 
 can advance and flourish by building for hundreds 
 of children and filling the buildings. They are a 
 memorable monument of the energies and charity 
 of the late vicar. But not one single interest of 
 his did they divert from the Board Schools — and 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 161 
 
 there too he has himself assured me how good the 
 teaching and how Christian the tone. 
 
 Well, in promoting the great work of our 
 Diocesan Society for Religious Instruction (the 
 most important of Diocesan Societies), or on 
 a Committee of Managers of Church Schools, 
 or on the School Board, there is a special 
 place for the religious layman who has any 
 insight into secular education and its require- 
 ments. For let not Churchmen think that at extending 
 
 .still 
 any moment they can say ' What we have given 
 
 hitherto is a sufficient education — at this study, 
 at this stage, at this cost, we will draw a line.' — 
 Whatever is asked of knowledge or skill for the 
 carrying on of the great world's business, that 
 armour the Church must be ready to buckle on 
 the young squire of Christ with her Blessing. 
 We must not, we need not, shrink because of 
 expense. The cost to us of these extra demands 
 is little compared with what our fathers 
 laid out in the actual foundation of the National 
 Schools. We must indeed ask justice in finance, 
 and palpably as to Bates ; even School 
 Board rates, levied on our Schools. Our posi- 
 
 M 
 
162 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 tion is as if a Railway made under Act of 
 Parliament were required to subsidise a new 
 parallel line constructed by Government to com- 
 pete with us in serving the same stations. But 
 whatever happens the Church has always been 
 the pioneer, the first beginner, of every advance in 
 systematic education. She must keep that place. 
 
 A sensible person desirous of using as much 
 influence for good as possible on the present 
 and the future at as little outlay as possible of 
 time and trouble (of which he has not much 
 to spare,) should try to be on the Board of the 
 Managers of a School. Let him read the Paper ^ 
 which Archdeacon Sinclair as a Member of the 
 School Board of London wrote on Management 
 for his Buridecanal Conference. 
 
 I shall pass by the manifest use and popularity 
 of Classes and Night Schools and the thoroughly 
 English institution of Sunday Schools, — through 
 which great Chancellors of England have done 
 some of their most permanent work. But I shall 
 
 1 The Work of the London School Board in 1886. By 
 William Macdonald Sinclair, Member of the London School 
 Board. Jaqiies, 58 Kenton Street, London, W. C. 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 163 
 
 beg yon of this Diocese to do what you can to 
 promote our own young Association for the Ex- 
 amination of Higher Schools in Religious Know- 
 ledge — the only way in which the standard of 
 that Instruction can be raised. Its average is 
 low. The better schools are aware of it, and 
 are beginning to use us. Many more are very 
 ready to be pressed to do so. 
 
 2. From the Self -Association of Laymen in fur- 
 therance of Education, we pass to works done 
 in Association for the People. 
 
 And first for the Secular ones in which Church 2. for the 
 
 People. 
 Laymen excel. There is the creation of Clubs. 
 
 Artisans and working men want them as much 
 or more than " gentlemen." They cannot provide 
 the club rooms, the light, the warmth, the re- 
 freshments. That is well known. So in every 
 street and nearly every village are provided 
 plenty of accommodation for the purpose, and 
 a kindly manager and manageress. In return 
 for the subscriptions, which are very large, is 
 provided unlimited refreshment, which under- 
 mines many a health, wealth and family. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 When the benevolent Laymen of the place 
 provide just a similar plain, bright ' accom- 
 modation/ without expecting returns, then a 
 different kind or amount of refreshment, plea- 
 santer and cheaper games, and more abundant 
 literature, are kept going by the men merrily. 
 If such ' accommodation ' were provided every- 
 where, the face of England would be changed ; 
 and the gross ideas and habits, and besotted reck- 
 lessness, and disenabling viciousness, and unthrift 
 with all its threatening discontents, would begin 
 to wither in that light which makes our best 
 artisans or "tradesmen," foremen and working 
 men, such true men as every one who knows them 
 knows vast and steady classes of them to be. 
 
 Such Clubs cannot be of one type — simplicity 
 and reasonableness and enjoyment characterize the 
 good ones to which employers and neighbouring 
 men of sense give such assistance and interest 
 as is required. Then a number of local character- 
 istics in endless combination vary them from the 
 Village Club and the Boys' Club up to the Church 
 Institute. Music, Church music, bells, games of 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 165 
 
 prowess, games of thought, games of skill, the 
 athletics which honour strength and shame vio- 
 lence, carvings and drawings, and hammerings. 
 Collections and Microscopes, Books and Maga- 
 zines, Readings and Meetings, Discussions and 
 Lectures, are elements of variety and of perse- 
 verance which have the same charm for them as 
 for us. It is delicious to see what a little enter- 
 prise and enthusiasm effect in one parish — 
 though the next is Alsatian in town, and 
 Boeotian in country exactly as Parson and Lay- 
 men please. And you, if you travel in a 
 straight line through a county will hear either 
 ' Mine are the most delightful people, and ready 
 for anything,' or else ' You know ours are very 
 peculiar people,' and you read the reason on 
 the brow of the speaker. 
 
 I have said elsewhere that Freedom of Dis- Discussion 
 
 not to be 
 cussion is what maintains popular English politics feared. 
 
 at a fair level of sense, if not in high wisdom; 
 destroying the wildness and desperate foolish- 
 ness with which such subjects are discussed under 
 repression. I do not feel a))le to deny that it 
 
166 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 should be equally effective in all matters which 
 are really thought about. If unwisdom is talked 
 so is reverence and sense ; and we need not so 
 give up human intelligence in any place as to 
 think that in fair field " Moria " finally prevails. 
 Church Laymen who have gifts will do better 
 to enter into than to decline discussion. There 
 are some subjects in which facts are tolerably 
 patent; others, perhaps the more tempting, in 
 which facts are singularly unknown. 
 History Therefore Historical Lectures and Illustrations 
 and all such studies as our Diocesan Church 
 Reading Society so ably and successfully assists, 
 should be promoted by Churchmen in every 
 available centre. They are easily arranged^ for 
 and are always fascinating. The English Church 
 rejoices in the light of History, its investiga- 
 tion, its independent tests. She knows that 
 "Whatever record leap to light she never shall be shamed. 
 Some of oiu' counties have been plied and 
 
 ^ Apply to the Rev. James Carr, Adisliam Rectory, Secre- 
 tary to the Canterbury Church Reading Society ; or to the 
 Secretaries of the Society for Promoting Christian Know- 
 ledge, or of the Church Defence Institute 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 167 
 
 riddled with the ceaseless assertion that to 
 them the Church of England was no home 
 growth, but an alien Church, billeted, as it 
 were, on them. In a recent address the in- 
 consistency and baselessness of the statement 
 was pointed out, and the identity of our Church 
 existence with their own. Next day the anti- 
 church organs lightly declared historical argu- 
 ments to be quite out of date. 'It was not 
 worth discussing whether the Church was an 
 alien institution.' Let us hope then to hear no 
 more of it from that side. Let us also honestly 
 examine present facts and statistics, and lay them 
 before people. The most modern History delivers 
 the same testimony in scarcely less picturesque 
 forms. 
 
 3. But Associated Lay work has yet a wider 3. through 
 
 the "Great 
 range. There are the magnificent Societies of the Societies." 
 
 whole National Church — the " Great Societies " — 
 
 great engines, whose throb is felt to the bounds 
 
 of the empire, and beyond them. Laymen will 
 
 not forget their part in the foundation of the 
 
 Christian Knowledge Society exactly two hun- 
 
168 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 dred years ago. Of its five founders four were 
 Lord Guildford, Sir Humphrey Mackworth, Mr. 
 Justice Hook, and Colonel Colchester, the other 
 was Dr. Bray, — four laymen to one clergyman. 
 Among the earliest promoters of the Propaga- 
 tion Society were E-obert Nelson, Melmoth, 
 Philipps, Sir H. Mackworth, Lords Colchester and 
 Guildford, John Evelyn, Sir John Char din. 
 General Codrington.^ There has been no time 
 since, when the cooperation of distinguished lay- 
 men with the leading clergy has not characterized 
 those and other our " Great Societies." With 
 the invigoration of life in the Dioceses it is 
 to be hoped that more of their great laymen 
 will respond to the impulse, and to the desire 
 of so many men to be headed by the same 
 leaders who head them in secular matters. Loy- 
 alty to them grows with the depth of the 
 interests they espouse. 
 
 4. Through 4. And so with our Diocesan Societies. Every 
 
 the 
 Diocesan layman who takes part in their work becomes 
 
 Societies. 
 
 1 Abbey, English Cliurch and its Bishops, 1700-1800, pp. 
 54, 86. 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 169 
 
 a power which is felt — In what 1 In the Religions 
 Training of the next generation, or the Building 
 of Churches and Mission Rooms — in the Christi- 
 anity of the Masses, in the Conversion of other 
 countries by the modes which converted our own. 
 And it is felt by us here — for there is not an 
 advocate on a platform, there is not a Collector 
 in a Rural Deanery whose zeal is not regis- 
 tered in immediate results. And (I say it with 
 deepest regret to any who say that their indi- 
 vidual efforts would be little worth) — coldness, 
 too, is felt and tells at once on our position. 
 
 The forces of our souls act exactly as all 
 other forces in nature act, centred as they are 
 in particles. That is, there is none of them 
 without effect, they are propagated from one 
 to another infinitely, no force ever dies out, 
 the inaction of any one particle would disturb 
 what the work is divinely framed for. In universal 
 analogies like these we trace that the Redeemer 
 is indeed He ' By whom the worlds were made.' 
 No soul can exempt itself from the Laws of 
 Grace, and no atom from the Laws of Matter. 
 
170 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 I observe in passing — with a view to future 
 use — that Workers taking their share in our 
 Church's and our Diocese's main organizations, 
 would be naturally helped and strengthened by 
 having something of coherence among themselves. 
 
 III. Their III. And I pass on to another class of works 
 Personal 
 
 Works which belong to the Laymen of the Church — par- 
 ticular forms of Personal as distinguished from 
 Associated work. 
 
 There are those whom the faculty of business, 
 the gift of oLKovofxta, makes most capable of Lay- 
 man's work in association. There are others 
 whose gift of sympathy, and power of awakening 
 sympathy, makes Personal influence their natural 
 atmosphere. There is scarcely any one without 
 
 through one of these two gifts. They draw others to 
 Individual 
 sympathy, trust and consult them, they carry them along 
 
 with them to their amusements, to their favourite 
 
 books, to the cultivation of taste or mind, to 
 
 ways of thinking about serious matters. Yet 
 
 none of these are done without exertion of the 
 
 will, even if, as is natural, the exertion of their 
 
 will is easy and spontaneous. 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 171 
 
 It suggests itself to all tender consciences, 
 Does my will take right direction ? Am I using 
 my sympathies hour by hour for good? Are 
 they ministering after all only to myself and my 
 own enjoyment of life 1 or am I using them " as 
 a good steward of the manifold gifts of God?" 
 Living within the blessings of this visible church 
 on earth, is my will directing my sympathies to 
 those who need them, or only keeping happiness 
 warm about my own bosom? Am I leaving it 
 to official people, my Vicar and the Curate and 
 the District Visitor, to do Church sympathy on 
 my behalf? If so, it is no great wonder that 
 there are religious people who think us church 
 folks wrapt in coldness and officialism. Yet no 
 tongue can tell, no mind can follow the endless 
 charities of life, in kindness, in faith, in humble- 
 ness, in devoutness, which flow from the man 
 and woman to whose mind and heart the teach- 
 inors of the Church come home as reaUties. Time 
 
 o 
 
 would fail to follow the " Love of Souls " into its 
 manifestations. 
 
 But may we not trace just some of the bolder 
 
172 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 lines — remembering that here, as ever, it must 
 be the Individual moving and drawing the Indi- 
 vidual 1 Are not these then some of the bolder 
 Lay-lines, which are like to — and yet very different 
 from — the clergyman's work? 
 
 There is the going to see the Sunday school 
 children, or the young men or women of the 
 Class, at home, and making the home itself 
 glad to see one whose name is often on John's 
 or Mary's lips. There are the sound kind 
 words about "Life" which break up many delu- 
 sions ; which presently move young or old to 
 think of the unction of the Holy Spirit and the 
 Spiritual Food of the Body and Blood of Christ, 
 at first simply because you, whom no one can 
 suspect of professionalism, so love them and feel 
 so moulded by them into that gentle strength 
 of yours. There are the feet that have long 
 ceased to be drawn by the "Angel's music" to 
 worship ; they will go if you will take them the 
 first time or two. There is the little unbaptized 
 child, and it has no friends fit to be sponsors. 
 It is surely a most influencing act of sympathy to 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 17^ 
 
 become a god-parent, to pray daily for that child, 
 to take an interest in its schooling, to teach it 
 its prayer. 
 
 Poor people come within your reach from the 
 ends of the earth to live and work. Their move 
 has detached them from the church life which 
 they had in their old village ; all is new here, all 
 is shy. I believe that no truer kindness is done 
 in one way, in another, no means of saving the 
 chui^ch's children to the church is found half so 
 effective, as when church people early make their 
 acquaintance, and introduce them to the church 
 ways of the new home. One more example of 
 27ersonality in the church's life, and I have done. 
 Nothing more keeps religion at a distance from 
 hearts and homes than the needless, meaningless 
 neglect of Family Prayer. Irreligious people 
 themselves reproach our congregations with their 
 * Sunday Religion.' And here, as in the last in- 
 stance, it is shyness wdiich in most cases just 
 prevents Family Prayer from being commenced. 
 The sympathy of a friend breaking through shy- 
 ness commences it. It is very singular, when 
 
174 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 cottage and villa which do use it, so thoroughly 
 know its power, — and even how it holds the 
 children together in after life — those which have 
 not used it find it so very hard to begin. It is 
 just one person of sympathy and conviction who 
 can carry it from house to house. 
 
 Again a Mission which leaves a Blessing 
 behind it leaves an immense mass of new work 
 as part of the Blessing. But it also leaves a 
 quickened body of church people ready for work. 
 If it were not so the result of a Mission could 
 not be coped with. The nets could never be 
 drawn to shore. 
 
 While then what I have said is said for all, 
 it may I hope find special application to the 
 circumstances of the Deanery which welcomes 
 us to-day. 
 
 All this 
 answers 
 
 worthily Now may I gather up our results so far? 
 to St. 
 
 Peter's The Apostle St. Peter describes the Church as 
 language 
 
 on Church consisting largely of people needing much social 
 citizen- 
 ship, spiritual help. In this world they will not for a 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WOEK. 175 
 
 long while cease to be a "Dispersion ", which 
 wants bonding and building together and ani- 
 mating, almost more than anything else, because 
 it is essential to the strength and reality of 
 everything else. 
 
 This bonding and building and animating ot* 
 the "Living Temple" demands a great force of 
 Church workers. Not merely because the clergy 
 are too few and not equal to the task (as it is 
 sometimes pvit), but because it is the Nature and 
 Essence of the Living Temple. Every particle 
 of the whole organism is at work for every other. 
 The clergy have particular works to do, and there 
 is no work in which they as organs have not some 
 part, as heart or brain or breathing or speaking 
 organs have in the body, but they are not the 
 body. And we say again every layman's existence 
 and duty in the body of the Church are essential 
 to its perfectness, its functions, and its objects. 
 " Through that which every joint supplieth," says 
 the other apostle, " according to the working in 
 due measure of each several part." 
 
 We showed how St. Peter taught that this 
 
176 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 animated Body, this Living Being, of the 
 Church has for its spiritual work set before it 
 1. The Repression of Evil Desire; 2. The Pro- 
 duction of Good in the world. There is the 
 double object of all Church work. 
 
 Next we saw how all Church Work among 
 ourselves and everywhere must fall into one of 
 three sets of hands, the Official, the Self- 
 Associated, the Personal. Then, how each of 
 these answers to a fact of Society and 
 Character; the Official obeying the outward call 
 of the Church, the Associated work finding its call 
 in the constructive and executive faculties 
 devoted to sacred things ; the Personal in the 
 voice of Sympathy. 
 
 The distinct Commission — the spontaneous 
 Energy — the Sympathetic Influence. Here, 
 
 I venture to think, is a true scale of Lay Church 
 Work. There is no labour undertaken by a 
 Christian spirit which does not come under this 
 range : not one detail of all I ventured to 
 name which does not fall under one of these 
 heads. 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY WORK. 177 
 
 But such heads of such a range, surely they 
 are very near heaven. They show us in its 
 truth the dignity and greatness of the Lay- 
 man's work for Christ. It is quite separate 
 from the Clerical office. Does it not somewhat 
 help us to understand that St. Peter was 
 writing of our things, but as they really are 
 before God, when he wrote of all as the ' holy 
 nation and the royal priesthood.' 
 
 Has the Choice of Man fallen on us 1 Let 
 us justify it. Do we possess the capacity to 
 serve a Cause 1 Let us satisfy it. Does Sym- 
 pathy touch us 1 Let us look at Him and " go 
 and do likew^ise." 
 
 I have one more thing to urge. 1 hold it 
 to be a most important one. It is the point to 
 which I wish to draw all that I have had to say. 
 
 These three lines of work would be far TIk- 
 more steadily followed, go far straighter to workers' 
 their mark, and the mark be higher, if the tioih" 
 workers were associated in a Union amonij 
 themselves. The interest would be keener, the 
 
 N 
 
178 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 resolution bolder, the perseverance firmer, the 
 courage higher, the cheer warmer. There would 
 be the daily suffrage for each other, the requests 
 sent month by month, for each other's interces- 
 sions, the communion from time to time with 
 each other, the occasional short meeting for ex- 
 perience and counsel, prayer and encouragement, 
 the full gathering once a year to our antient 
 Lambeth. If only such an ideal could be 
 realised as that every parish, every rural deanery 
 should have its band of workers, with their 
 officers really gathered in love to Christ round 
 their parish priest and pastor, often coming to tell 
 how evil spirits of mad desire were being cast 
 out and solid good founded in their very sight, 
 and if every such band were knit to every other 
 praying its petitions, learning by one word 
 its good news, and joining in thanksgivings, 
 that would be an apostolic vision realised accord- 
 ing to the measure that these days admit of, 
 and in many ways facilitate. It would be a 
 sign w^orth something to the world that 
 Christianity was not dead nor effete. 
 
CHURCH CITIZENSHIP— LAY AVORK. 179 
 
 I am sure this is no dream. It is no untried 
 experiment. It is perfectly simple, practical, 
 and practicable. I have ventured to cast on 
 paper the way in which it may be carried out 
 in every parish, and I have communicated with 
 every clergyman about it. The Rural Deans 
 are, as is theii' wont, most true and kind and 
 helpful. No other guild or society need be 
 disturbed for it. With the simplest threads 
 all they who are ready to work for Christ 
 and to love each other will be enabled to feel 
 the touch of mutual prayer and help and comfort. 
 
 We know that He is with us 'all the Days.' 
 We must do all we can to help each other feel 
 His presence in our own short day. 
 
 xx 2 
 
CARDIFF. 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 
 
"Guard of the Faith and Lover of his Land, 
 Liegeman of .Justice — here Paulinus lies." 
 
 It is the rude couplet cut twelve centuries ago The an- 
 
 tieut ideal 
 
 on the gravestone of a Churchman of Wales, the of a Welsli 
 
 Church - 
 Teacher of S. David and S. Teilo.-^ man. 
 
 What permanence in the type ! The centuries 
 
 have all borne witness to his race, that their 
 
 strength of religious conviction is unsurpassed 
 
 even by their patriotic temper. Add the later 
 
 well-known testimony to their " vehemence in 
 
 every enthusiasm," and it seems as if this had 
 
 been the very tone of mind and character which 
 
 should, not spontaneously perhaps but with 
 
 gi^eatest gain to both, have blended with the 
 
 ^ Servatur fidaei patrieque semper amator, 
 Hie Paulinus jacit cultor pientissinius aequi. 
 
184 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 adventurous yet somewhat solid and unspecula- 
 
 tive Saxon. 
 
 The set of And so in truth it is. We are prone to talk as 
 the Church 
 
 con- if we were always at the end of things, as if all 
 tiiiuously 
 
 towards were failure which was not yet fruit. I rather 
 unity. 
 
 think that we stand now at a time when the fruit 
 
 of long discipline is to appear, and the future to 
 he richer and greater for the Church than all the 
 past. At least this is a good time to consider 
 that preparation through the ever-varying ex- 
 periences of our Church ; to consider the present 
 demands upon the pastorate ; to consider what 
 careful encouragement this gathering may add 
 to their work. 
 
 How noteworthy then it is, from the very 
 first moment of contact, that when Augustine 
 approached the venerable British pastors the only 
 test which they applied in so great a transaction 
 was the test of Character. This is expressed in 
 the record that they judged whether he had the 
 Humility proper to a ruler (spirit and energy 
 they knew he had) by the mere token of whether 
 he sate still or whether he rose to receive them. 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 185 
 
 The Church questions between them he reduced The 
 
 ' English 
 to tln^ee, of which one simply Avas, "Would they Church 
 
 melted 
 form one mission with his own to the heathen into the 
 
 Celtic, 
 English? The other two, the time for Easter 
 
 and a Baptismal observance, they presently con- 
 ceded. The difference and separateness were 
 purely personal. They would not have this im- 
 perious Italian with his hot language for their 
 Archbishop. And very soon Bishops of British 
 succession were uniting in the consecration of 
 two of the greatest and saintliest of the Saxon ^ 
 Bishops. 
 
 As the land was swept by these waves of 
 nationalities one after another, which, above all 
 causes, make their joint descendants citizens of 
 the w^hole world, ecclesiastical discrepancies were 
 the least of the actual hindrances to perfect 
 union, although in the Church, as in every other 
 active range of life, every such hindrance showed 
 its power. A sagacious statesman of the Middle 
 Ages recorded his opinion much later on, that 
 
 ^ See Blight's Early Enrjlish Cliurch History, p. 211, 
 p. 170. 
 
186 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 whatever of unity and pacification between the 
 two races had been up to his time effected was 
 due to the action of the Church and its central 
 See in England, more than to arms or politics.^ 
 
 Like waves pouring in at many points upon 
 the sands, and throwing far their interlacing 
 circles — the antient Galilean wave which con- 
 verted the Briton, the British w^liich rolled on 
 we know not how and never more failed from 
 off the whole West, from Strathclyde to Lands- 
 end ; the Roman which converted the Men of 
 Kent ; the great Celtic billow which poured from 
 Tyne to Thames, and then onward with a new 
 rush and into Boman side-waves to the Channel ; 
 the Burgundian wave, if we may so count it, 
 w^hich rose upon the East and met the Celtic 
 backwater ; the wide English which absorbed the 
 Dane; the Norman which overswept the whole, 
 melted all as circling waves melt into one spring- 
 tide of waters, one tide and one sea. 
 
 1 Hubert Abp. to Innocent III., a.i». 1199. Councih 
 and Ecclesiastical Documents (Haddan and Stubbs), vol. i. 
 p. 401. 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 18/ 
 
 As with Northumbria, as with Cornwall, so 
 with Cambria, the unity was deep and solid, the 
 separations were evanescent accidents, which 
 presently counted for nothing in the Kingdom 
 of God. The facts when realised inspire not 
 only hopes but confidence and certainty for the 
 history that has yet to write itself. 
 
 ^Ye cannot read the authentic documents which 
 remain without sorrow. Every century bears its 
 own grief and shame. But the church of the 
 two peoples, was no author of disunion. She was 
 the one peacemaker. It is indeed grievous to 
 see excommunication and interdict flying about 
 like missiles of war— ail peoples and churches 
 together were plunged in that extravagance of 
 spiritual censure which has since made the 
 very name of discipline abhorrent to them. But 
 it was the English primate who pleaded with 
 the King that the miseries of the Welsh Church 
 were no less than those over which the Tears of 
 Christ were shed. 
 
 It is astonishing and instructive that Rome, 
 claiming to be the centre of unity, trustingly 
 
188 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 not appealed to on both sides, should have had so 
 tlirougli 
 
 the effici- little weight or will for reconcilement. In the 
 ency of 
 Rome, three principal incidents of their contact in the 
 
 thirteenth century, her influence was for dis- 
 union and embitterment, although those w^ere 
 not her licentious days, but a time in which her 
 power was felt to plant and to build, to pluck 
 up and to throw down. 
 
 There were the fourteen years of evasions ^ 
 on the appeals of Urban. The last letter that 
 appears is Innocent the Second's private. assurance 
 to him, that as he had reserved to himself the 
 termination of the case, Urban need feel no 
 anxiety about the report of his own commis- 
 sioners, the Archbishops of York, Kouen and 
 Canterbury. 
 
 There is the grotesque and scandalous story 
 of Giraldus.2 Innocent the Third keeps St. 
 David's vacant five years to decide his baseless 
 claim ; and meantime commits to him the 
 Guardianship of its temporalities, its revenues 
 and patronage, and requires the perfectly irre- 
 1 A.D. 1119—1133. - A.D. 1200. 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 189 
 
 sponsible English Archbishop to bear half the 
 expenses of the wasteful suit. 
 
 There is the intrigue for converting North 
 Wales into a Papal dependency,^ frustrated by 
 discovery and general indignation. It is recorded 
 that the vast price which David had paid into the 
 treasury of Innocent the Fourth remained there. 
 
 And thus throughout, it was by no Roman 
 
 love or justice that any beneficent advance w^as 
 
 made. 
 
 The one lesson that can truthfully be drawn l>ut 
 
 tlirougli 
 from the long series of events ought to be a pro- intercourse 
 
 and 
 titable one for ourselves. It was earnest inter- sacrifice. 
 
 course and personal sacrifice alone which caused 
 
 the felt, realised and step by step organically 
 
 affirmed, unity of the Church of the two races 
 
 slowly to overcome prejudice and resentments, 
 
 weighted as she was with the evil doings of her 
 
 own children on either side. As of late in the 
 
 American Civil War, so here of old the Church 
 
 by its own oneness was of all influences the most 
 
 healing the moment the strife was ended, and 
 
 1 A.D. 1247. 
 
190 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 a mitigating power even while it was at 
 the height. 
 Calamities. When troubles and despair deepened, the four 
 great Church centres had long been impover- 
 ished by the native princes as they owned re- 
 pentantly ; the immunities of the Church violated, 
 religious houses burnt : the movements of her 
 clergy impeded, as much by the natives as from 
 the outside, until these at last charge themselves 
 with the work of protection and restoration ; ^ 
 and on the other hand, in the worst of times, 
 an unimpeachable witness assures the King that 
 many of the native clergy had^ "with their 
 whole might stood by him and his dominion." 
 
 Policy, In that darkest hour of all there is one 
 work, ami 
 tone of the bright venerable figure which shines out not 
 
 Church. 
 
 only wdth a sanctity but with an intelligence 
 
 and a statesmanship beyond his age. The 
 
 documents exhibit Peckham, Archbishop of 
 
 Canterbury, as the only man on either side 
 
 ^ To the King's Bailitls, Councils, &c. p. 486. Cf. pp. 
 436, 487. 
 - A.D. \2%^— Councils, &c. p. 569. 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 191 
 
 who had a policy. While even the great 
 King had nothing to propose but to " termi- 
 nate a final peace and quietness"^ — the peace 
 of desolation — the Archbishop's policy, enlight- 
 ened beyond the conception of his time, was 
 supported by personal devotion and self-sacrifice. 
 Undertaking a tour, in spite of the King's 
 <lispleasure, throughout Wales, amid difficulties 
 and dangers which rendered it necessary to 
 provide for his never returning, and made 
 the journey as Llywelyn himself calls it " in- 
 tolerable," he laboured for peace. To that 
 Prince he sets forth in the tenderest terms his 
 love for the people, his own hopes, his fears, 
 his perception of possibilities of reconciliation, 
 and of the consequences of resistance. He 
 is answered in a very noble strain, but 
 with a terrible indictment against the English. 
 Then all his energy is devoted to setting 
 the intricate questions in a clear light before 
 Edward I., and stating what Avas to be said 
 on behalf of the nation. In a series of letters 
 1 A.D. 1282, p. 546, Edvv. I. to Abp. Peckham. 
 
192 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 to the King he urges that a travelling com- 
 mission should be sent down to examine both 
 sides of the questions ; he represents the ii-- 
 reparable mischief which an embittered clergy 
 may work for any government ; he recom- 
 jnends the gathering into villes or towns, 
 ' as had been successfully done in Burgundy,' a 
 population whose taste or whose necessities now 
 led them to live in a scattered and isolated man- 
 ner ; that boys may be sent in numbers to Eng- 
 land for education, since the clergy have fallen 
 so low (how grievous the contrast with the 
 traditions of Bangor ys coed, and so many 
 Church schools) that they are no longer capable 
 of training them in either letters or manners. 
 Elsewhere^ he shows how the clergy ought to 
 bring moral pressure to bear on idle habits 
 in sections of the population, and to promote 
 useful occupations ; also, how they ought to 
 explain the wrongfulness of usurious interest, 
 and of artificial prices charged at the highest 
 average of the year past — Church lectures, 
 1 Councils, kc. p. 574. 
 
THE CHURCH'S OXEXESS— WALES. 193 
 
 in fact, in the beginnings of political economy. 
 He puts it to the King himself that he 
 should restore at least some of the losses of 
 the wars at his own cost, and he did so largely. 
 The widest measure of all which he urges is 
 the maintenance of the Welsh Church in all 
 its pristine rights and liberties. i 
 
 There is one interesting episode which shows 
 what was still understood to be the civilising 
 power of such institutions, his proposal that the 
 cathedral of St. Asaph shall be removed to a new 
 and rising town, that the Canons may have a 
 worthy field for the influence of their lives, works, 
 and worship, that they may no longer merely 
 " sing," as he says, ''to themselves and the stone 
 walls." 
 
 He visited every diocese and many of the rural 
 deaneries within them, not like his predecessor, 
 Baldwin, as papal legate and to preach a crusade, 
 but, it is expressly said, as archbishop, and " I 
 come" (he writes to their Prince), "I come for 
 their good, both spiritual and temporal. I have 
 1 CounciU, &c. V, i. p. 569. 
 
 O 
 
194 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 ever loved them to this hour, as full many of 
 them know." 
 
 On this holy work, which was going on in the 
 very w^orst of times, I have ventured to dwell, 
 not because of its own historical interest, which 
 is so great, but because I know not how I can 
 more vividly illustrate than by the actions and 
 views of such a person, the recognition and 
 assumption, as a matter of course by all concerned, 
 of the religious fact which some have thought 
 it desirable to question, that there is but one 
 Church known, or ever known, or ever to be 
 admitted as possible for Wales and England. 
 
 Preserva- We pass lightly over notions of denationalisa- 
 tion of 
 
 Welsh tion worked through the Church, for which there 
 Church 
 
 interests is no excuse since the misapprehensions they were 
 
 founded on have been examined. The Church 
 in this sense was truly Welsh. Even amid the 
 cruel conflicts ^ of Henry the Fourth's time, 
 through Henry the Sixth's, and onward, the foui- 
 Bishops were to be Welshmen, when no mili- 
 1 Stat. 4 Hen. IV. c„ 32. 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 195 
 
 tary or legal officials might. Archbishop Parker 
 
 and the great Cecil, William of Orange who 
 
 overthreAv the Church in Scotland, here kept 
 
 firm for native Bishops. It is ungenerous to 
 
 accuse England of what went on in the captive 
 
 days of Walpole, for England suffered most and 
 
 bears most scars. It is idle to assert that the 
 
 Welsh heart was alienated from the religious 
 
 feeling of England when it was from England 
 
 that Wales received with infinite ardour the 
 
 Wesleyan revival — a movement English of the 
 
 Endish, and in its origin churchly of the church- and of 
 
 ^ Welsh 
 
 liest. We thank God that in the very years that Church 
 
 vigour, 
 immediately preceded and followed that origin 
 
 men point to the consecrated lives and penetrating 
 influence of such Churchmen as Edward Eichard, 
 or James Davies, or William Williams or Griffith 
 Jones, or Rees Prichard, Author of the Candle 
 ofCymry, the sturdier homelier Keble and Her- 
 bert of the Welsh cottager, by whose side Bishop 
 Bull desired to be buried.^ We thank Him for 
 testimonies borne by many witnesses to the work 
 1 Robert Nelson's Life of Bp, Bull, p. 404 (Oxford, 1827]. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 of Welsh Clergy of those times, or such as speak 
 from the lives of John Elias with his last charge 
 to his sons, Daniel Ro^Ylands with his prophecy of 
 the great revival in the Church and of the " return 
 of the Bees to the Hive," and Howell Harris, with 
 his Protestant Monastery and his faithful doctrine. 
 But for all this we confess there was ' yet room '; 
 we thank God men were ' compelled to come in ', 
 even by those who * follow not us ' ; we wou 
 not ' forbid ' them for an hour. To- day we admire 
 and rejoice in and love your own zeal, — the 
 spirit which, springing from the inner life is 
 thrilling the whole frame of the Church, — the 
 zeal by which private men within fifty years 
 have increased your church-endowments by more 
 than half their whole amount. "We rejoice also 
 to share our store with you, and, through that 
 Commission in whose effect upon the religion and 
 peace of the whole country Archbishop Peckham 
 might have felt his best hopes more than fulfilled, 
 to help carry the Gospel along the remotest 
 valleys,"^ and perhaps somewhat to restore those 
 ^ 8ee Eqjorf, 1889. 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS-WALES. 197 
 
 early losses which the Welsh princes themselves 
 avowed that they had wrongfully inflicted on 
 the four great mother Churches. 
 
 It is a marvellously diversified chart on which 
 we have laid a cursory finger from point to point. 
 How much more so, could we read more dis- 
 tinctly the ages of the first love, could we turn 
 back the margin of the page that now lies open. 
 
 But who that follows more fully the unbroken 
 thread of God in His Church through such scenes 
 of man's madness and blindness, through such 
 fearful vicissitudes, and stands where he now 
 stands, and says to himself, "How came I here 
 to-day? What brings me and for what?" can 
 faithlessly entertain the least fear that the next 
 page shall record a triumphant snapping of that 
 
 clue? 
 
 "I know the thoughts I think towards you, 
 thoughts of good and not of evil, saith the Lord 
 of Hosts." What must those thoughts be ? The 
 thoughts of God towards usi They must be 
 thoughts of our position, our duty, our spiritual 
 reward. 
 
198 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Old Welsli One who knew his people well hard upon seven 
 Religious- 
 ness centuries ago wrote a remarkable chapter on the 
 
 "Welsh Love of Christianity and their Devotion." 
 
 Forms have changed hut the spirit is the same. 
 
 He held them to be the most religious race he 
 
 had ever seen in feeling and in observances, and 
 
 ' vehement,' he adds (I have quoted the words 
 
 already), ' in every enthusiasm.' 
 
 We have been illustrating the present from the 
 
 past, not, I hope, so merely historically as to lose 
 
 our clue. Let me add three little vignettes as it 
 
 were, not for mere effect, but to show what 
 
 special treasures in the heart of this people a true 
 
 Church pastorate possesses, and thence perhaps I 
 
 may be permitted to characterize that pastorate 
 
 itself. 
 
 , ^^ . 1. Schools. — Sometime before the Norman came 
 
 education, 
 
 hither, a Bishop of this very diocese,^ one who 
 was surnamed the Wise, *the first scholar in 
 Wales,' drew this outline for his priests : " Every 
 one of them was to support instruction from 
 literary works in his church, that every one might 
 ^ Bledii, d. a.d. 1023. 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 199 
 
 know his duty to God and man." That was no 
 cramped mechanical or superstitious ■ ideal of a 
 priest's business. He held that duty to God and 
 man was the aim of teaching, but that that duty 
 would not be fully known even to the measure 
 of the cottage and the hill-side and river unless 
 the mind too were furnished "with literary 
 works" — the chronicler's and the bard's. 
 
 His successor^ added that the priests were "to 
 teach and read the Holy Scripture without pay- 
 ment or gift, and to abandon controversies." He 
 was putting a healing finger on an old sore. The 
 doubts on ritual matters, the disputes on free 
 will and original sin, lingered still, just as the 
 Calvinistic questions blazed up again in later 
 days. Bishop Joseph, like S. Paul, sought to 
 quench the love of disputation in the wider, 
 fresher study of Scripture. 
 
 2. The Love of the Bible. — At the heart of the in Love of 
 
 Scripture, 
 Reformation lay the one conviction that the Word 
 
 of God was the shrine of Christianity. While 
 
 some races practically ignore it, the love of the 
 
 ^ Joseph Bp. 1030 a.d. 
 
200 CHRIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 Bible in Briton and Saxon is one. We mark with 
 interest not only that antient Britain had a ver- 
 sion of her own, or that the most precious relic 
 we have of its old times is the Four Gospels pre- 
 served at Lichfield, but even that the most sacred 
 relic which was borne by the canons of St. Asaph 
 in their itinerant missions even in the thirteenth 
 century was not, as elsewhere, some supposed 
 fragment of a saint's body or of a true Cross, 
 but was nothing else than a very antient copy 
 of the Scripture. 
 
 in Con- 3. The Laying on of Hands. — And one trait 
 iinnatioD, 
 
 there is, singular in its permanence, and how 
 
 full of promise now as then for the Ministers 
 
 and Ministry of the Church — *' Beyond any other 
 
 race," writes Giraldus, " the whole people seeks 
 
 Confirmation by the Bishop, and the anointing 
 
 of that unction wherein the grace of the Spirit is 
 
 given." 
 
 In town, in valley and upland, there is here 
 
 the same desire to-day for that apostolic rite, so 
 
 suited to the opening need of each human life and 
 
 intelligence, so suited for the knitting and banding 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 201 
 
 of young friendships together in the cause of 
 
 the Cross, which opens to us the "great door," 
 
 as S. Paul calls it, for preparation by prudent 
 
 instruction, and for the penetration of the whole 
 
 popular mind of the Church with Scriptural 
 
 teaching. 
 
 Free Church Schools — The Love of the Bible — 
 
 The Desire for Confirmation by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 With such means, as modern as they are antient, all 
 
 cliurchly, 
 and among such dispositions, how will an eager all enforc- 
 ing clerical 
 living pastorate make ' full proof of its ministry ' sense of 
 
 duty. 
 find true sympathy, ' bear much fruit ' ! Urge 
 
 what you will, they, as in the days of Augus- 
 tine, will try the Character, will test the Tone, 
 before they will even look into authentic claims. 
 Then they will receive with honours the * Letters 
 of Commendation' when first they are satisfied 
 with those visible ' signs of an apostle '. 
 
 With such people a careless, easy-going pastorate 
 could never live on good terms, however it might be 
 tolerated elsewhere, but would be utterly con- 
 temned. A country pastorate like that of Ober- 
 lin, which has at heart the secular welfare of 
 
202 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 its charge only less than the spiiitual, which 
 breathes principle into every temporal affair, 
 which spares not even the trouble of the hand, 
 if need be, that is the pastorate for such a 
 people. 
 
 A pastorate which shall have made at least 
 full use of its national College of Divinity, and 
 shall deliver with no uncertain sound (so Howell 
 Harris tells us he won his followers), the founda- 
 tion doctrines of the Church ; a pastorate which 
 preaches (since the natural rhetoric of the race 
 is for all purposes abundant) not for display but 
 for actual rational grounding in the things of 
 God ; w^hich loves the melodious instincts of its 
 people and consecrates these to the beauty of 
 worship, not forcing on its people sorts of sym- 
 bolism that find no response in their nature; 
 which goes missioning among them in their own 
 tongue, and has the interests of children con- 
 stantly at heart ; which brings them up to 
 believe in temperance and chastity, as lovely 
 and powerful before God and Man ; which teaches 
 them early to love knowledge, early to look for 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS-WALES. 203 
 
 God's Spirit— this is the pastorate which all 
 our history teaches us will avail here. 
 
 I might have travelled much more widely over 
 the history of Wales. I am not concerned to 
 defend the terrible sins, the errors, honest or dis- 
 honest, of the past. It would be nearly as difficult 
 a task as it will be five hundred years hence to 
 defend to-day's. But for good or for grief, the 
 history of Wales is Church history, and Church 
 history is the liistory of the country. An Church 
 
 alien Church! Then whose are those noble Welsh, 
 names that gild the chronicle from times obscure 
 with distance down to yesterday— whose are those 
 foundations that defy time— whose are the sacred 
 memorials that provoke the emulation of times 
 to come— are they not all Welsh? If not, to 
 whom do they belong? Assign them. Any other 
 land would be proud of them. And are they 
 not equally Church names. Church foundations. 
 Church memorials, incentives to the Church of 
 the future? If the alien gave them all, let him 
 have the honour of them. But you know they 
 
204 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 are all your own — only that there is no boundary- 
 line between your Church and the Chui-ch of your 
 brethren. 
 
 And now we must say to ourselves — Viewed 
 in Christ's light reflected from the long past — 
 viewed as one incident itself in the vast of 
 Church history — what is this our gathering? 
 Though it be but a particle almost microscopic 
 in the body of the ages, clearly, if it has any 
 vitality it lives organically out of the great 
 system, and is a vessel along which at least some 
 living drop flows on into the future. If it be 
 not itself a demonstration of a permanent, per- 
 vading unity, it is not anything. We may as 
 well break it up into five or ten or twenty 
 assemblies, representing each some special opinion 
 or bit of politics, as they are broken up who, 
 disagreeing each with the other more than with 
 us, unless it be on some special cry of the hour, 
 still by some feat of logic count themselves a 
 majority. It is only because we are one in 
 deepest things that we come in the face of 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 205 
 
 twisted history, argument and statistic, to meet 
 
 and speak quietly of truth, of responsibility, of 
 
 duty and of means thereto, inherited, needing to 
 
 be better realised, to be transmitted unimpaired. 
 
 If we are told that religious men aggrieved by Troubles : 
 
 us will not hear of our redressing their grievances, 
 
 that we cannot be permitted to cure our own 
 
 faults, or pay our fathers' debts ; that moral men 
 
 want to tear our title-deeds of a thousand years, 
 
 careless of the shock which all civil rights must 
 
 feel; that they have no compunction, but find 
 
 a satisfaction in the sight of unrequited duty, 
 
 suffering of tender families, men's own withheld 
 
 from them simply because they are clergy, we 
 
 either disbelieve it, or we feel that the Church 
 
 has more work to do on the social soul of men, 
 
 than men believed. If whispers reach us that how to be 
 
 taken, 
 the Church has friends ready to find a private 
 
 interest in her trials, how are we to treat such 
 rumours 1 Warily, no doubt, but not timidly. 
 We may not in any particular or any word be 
 more un-Christian in the interests of Christi- 
 anity than in our own. We must commit our 
 
206 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Churcli, like ourselves, to Him Who judges 
 righteously, Who woi'ks through the justice of a 
 nation, and through the firmness of governments 
 whose stability is impartial duty. We must 
 double our own compassions, find prudent ways 
 of remedying without encouraging injustice and 
 uncompassionateness, and then distinctly appeal 
 to just men to see justice done. Am I to believe 
 that a national type, like that of Paulyn, con- 
 stant for thirteen centuries in Religion and 
 Patriotism shall then break down in Righteous- 
 ness'? I will not believe it. Who would have 
 believed that in this century we could hear 
 again of actual " wrongs inflicted on ecclesiastical 
 persons and other innocent ones '' in the words 
 of six hundred years ago 1 Still we remember 
 those were wi^ongs yet more bitter, dangerous, 
 and hostile — far more irreparable as it seemed. 
 Each sorrow and danger when it had drifted by 
 became once more a thing incredible. Time judged 
 the doers. The Church went on with her work ever 
 more earnestly. There are no such conversions 
 as are wrought by " doing good to them that de- 
 
THE CHUKCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 207 
 
 spitefully use you." No such spiritual influence as 
 the short-sighted injustice of men is putting into 
 your own hands and the hands of your successors. 
 
 In all other things this assembly, if it is in- 
 deed a portion and sample of the great Church 
 of God, will speed slowly — will neither mistake 
 the symptoms of to-day for a defect of nature, 
 nor give a shock to the constitution when a 
 palliative would suffice. 
 
 We know what adventitious circumstances 
 make a scheme popular, then how there rises 
 some flush of confidence, and, especially if it costs 
 nothing but penmanship, it is adopted before it 
 is experimented. A single success establishes a 
 panacea. That is how we partitioned, nay pul- 
 verised our grandest parishes, and can never 
 undo what we did. But the parish, the diocese, 
 the whole Church are distinctly the weaker, less 
 effective on the spot, less capable of organization 
 for great moral works, less powerful for every 
 large purpose. We have with our own hands 
 broken up the old Church system of strong centres 
 into a fragmentary Congregationalism. 
 
208 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 I pray that the warning may not be lost sight 
 
 of, for perhaps we stand at the point of doing 
 
 worse still in the way of mistaking Division 
 
 for Addition. 
 
 The inner What the Church has to deal with is the vast 
 soul of the 
 Church and vigorous world. It is not by the perpetual 
 
 fingering of her own implements, her organa — 
 
 which some people call Organization — that work 
 
 will be done. The great way for the Church to 
 
 keep her position is that the world should find 
 
 her what they had found her to be who first 
 
 accepted her — find her churches and her clergy 
 
 to be Homes, Fathers, Brothers to the masses. 
 
 Far more important it is for you than any 
 
 new schemes — save only such as should be 
 
 conceived in the manner of the old schemes, 
 
 in firm self-denials and sacrifices of means 
 
 and of men, — that you should know and give 
 
 full force to the words divine which are in 
 
 common use ; seize the kernel of our common 
 
 Church terms, and ask whether they are real or 
 
 conventional to you and yours ; believe in, and 
 
 draw out, to the full, the force of the spiritual 
 
THE CHURCH'S ONENESS— WALES. 209 
 
 functions, offices, and ministrations which were must 
 
 manifest 
 
 ' received ' by Christ Himself as gifts for men ; ^ itself 
 
 through 
 
 and further justify the ceaseless increase of individual 
 
 tenden- 
 
 your national lay riches by a grand God-inspired cies. 
 
 trusteeship for the expansion of poor men's ideals 
 and tastes, aspirations and habits. 
 
 Schemes for better equipping for their work 
 those of the clergy who have to be drawn from 
 less educated ranks ; schemes for providing yet 
 other orders of Christian labourers and teachers 
 among masses, lifted, as the old Gentile world 
 was lifted, into a possibility of appreciating and 
 accepting such teaching ; larger, fuller ways of 
 making Him known and loved, so that men should 
 delightedly walk in His ways ; these are indeed 
 plans right worthy of Churchmen counselling in 
 Wales — like him with whom we began, ' Wardens 
 of Faith and Lovers of their Land.' 
 
 May I be allowed to name, with great respect, the 
 following pamphlets : — 
 
 The Earl of Selborne's Address at Lampeter, October 28, 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 
 
210 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 1887 (Macmillan)— Canon Bevau's Two Essays (Hay 1881) ; 
 The Church in Wales ; The Case of the Church in Wales ; 
 and Is the Church in Wales an Alien Institution ? (Church. 
 Defence Institution). The Eev. A. G. Edwards's (now 
 Bishop of St. Asaph) Facts and Figures, and The Church 
 in Wales (Morgan, Carmarthen). Eev. John Morgan's The 
 Church in Wales (Eivingtons). Some Facts about the 
 Church in Wales, by Rev. Griffith Roberts (35 Wellington 
 Street, Strand). The Church in Wales, by a Welsh Rector 
 (Wrexham). 
 
ST. PETER'S TEACHmG ON SUFFERING. 
 
 Is^OTE ON VOX PETRI, p. 33. 
 The ' Mystery of Pain ' is for intelligible 
 reasons so moving to the heart of our generation 
 that I venture to draw out in short analysis 
 the great Teaching of St. Peter on this matter. 
 
 We must observe that he himself claims a 
 right to speak, on this deep ground — that he 
 had seen the nature and greatness of the Suffer- 
 ings of Christ. 1 Pet. V. 1. 
 I. 
 
 Unprovoked Suffering, not consequent on con- ii. i9. 
 
 cluct, but inflicted to outer seeming capriciously, 
 in the midst of distinct Doing Good (' Creation 
 of Good,' p. 25)—' How to take it 1 ' ii. 20. 
 
 Not stoically — for that assumes that there is 
 no Purpose in it. 
 
 Accept it as conscious of God being concerned 
 in it. 
 
 Such Acceptance is heroic (KXios;). ' God will ii. 19, 20. 
 thank a man for it.' ^ 
 
 II. 
 
 No worldly example of such kind of suffering . > 
 
 can be so typical as that of the high-principled, 
 ^ Abp. Leighton. 
 
 p 2 
 
212 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 ill-used Slave. [Of him therefore Apostolic 
 Christianity is most careful.] 
 1 ret ii. 21. The harder and more unreasonable the lot is, 
 the more visibly has Christ traced for the man 
 who suffers it an outline to fill up, a track of 
 steps to follow across the wild; the more does 
 the man wear to others the very semblance of 
 Christ in His very Hour and Action of Atone- 
 ment. 
 ii. 25. To himself and to all it then comes out that 
 the ' strayed sheep ' are once again with the 
 Shepherd. 
 
 III. 
 
 iii. 18. Such suffering is seen in its purest and solitary 
 
 perfectness in The Christ, Who suffered nothing 
 
 for Himself and all for others ; and in Him it 
 
 exhibits its power " to bring unto God," acting 
 
 i. 19, 20. thus on both the living world and the long-dead 
 
 world of the primaeval past, — with which we are 
 
 bound up more closely than we think. 
 
 iii, 21 The material element which was life to 
 
 believers then, though death to others, 
 
 — a new life out of death — is now 
 
 taken for the sacramental element 
 
 in the gift of new life to us, and 
 
 receives its virtue through Christ's 
 
 passage out of that dead world to 
 
 the eternally living one. 
 
ST. PETER'S TEACHING ON SUFFERING. 213 
 
 That Suffering lias brought us into an eternal, i Pet. iii. 22 
 spiritual realm of reality of which the Central 
 Figure is this Sufferer of Sufferers. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In Christ the Suffering so embraced reaches iv. 1. 
 
 the Climax of Death. Enter into that. Do 
 what He did, as you can. Die you to Sin— that 
 is, Die to Desire. Die to Passion and its iv. 4, 5 
 Devotees. Die to their Death. Dying to Passion 
 evolves New Life. This the contrast between 
 the ' Purpose of the Nations ' and the ' Purpose 
 of God.' 
 
 Again rises that mysterious note. Dying to 
 Men's Desires you are a likeness and a link, 
 as to Him in His Death, so to those who have 
 died naturally to Men's Desires— those whom we 
 call 'The Dead.' He evangelized them, and 
 they live : they have had their gospel : God's 
 purpose for them not mortal judgement only but 
 spiritual life. 
 
 V. 
 
 To suffer as a Christian is a ground of Thank- 
 fulness ; 
 
 for Suffering is in its beginning a purification 
 of the Christian Church, 
 
 and in its end a removal of wickedness out of 
 the order of things : 
 
 iv. 3. 
 
 iv. 6. 
 
 iv. IG. 
 
 iv. 1: 
 
 iv. IS. 
 
214 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 1 ret. iv. 19. SO that he who suffers like Christ, for no wrong- 
 doing, but on the ground of God's purposes, 
 
 (Luke xxiii. will, as He did, simply " commend his life " to 
 
 its Faithful Founder. [Who is sure to be 
 true to His Purpose in founding it.] 
 He will not be paralysed by what he suffers ; he 
 acts on ; he ' creates good ' (ev ayaOoTroua). 
 
 VI. 
 
 1 Pet V. 10. Looking over the whole Field, our Suffering is 
 small in proportion to its Effect — which is Eesto- 
 ration, Security, Strength — for Eternity. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. — Cathedral Body and Diocesan Administra- 
 tion 216 
 
 2. — Commendatory Letters 218 
 
 3. — Progress of Assyrian Mission 221 
 
 4. — Letter on Systematic Almsgiving 226 
 
 5. — Summary of Allowed Arrangements of 
 
 Church Services 232 
 
 6. — Letter to Nonconformist Bodies sent with 
 
 Lambeth Encyclical 236 
 
 7. — Canterbury Society of Church Workers . 237 
 
 8,— Church Services and AVork . . • . , , . • 239 
 
1.— CATHEDRAL BODY AXD 
 
 Most Rev, Edwaid White Benson, d.d. Archbishop 1883 
 
 Very Rev. R. Payne Smith, d.d Dean 1871 
 
 Eight Rev. E. Parry, D.D Eo^deTiary ^^^^ 
 
 Rev. G. Rawlinson, M.A ,, 1872 
 
 „ F. J. Holland, M.A „ 1882 
 
 „ AV. H. Fremantle, M.A „ 1882 
 
 ,, W. Cadman, m.a ,, 1883 
 
 Yen. B. F. Smith, M.A ,, 1887 
 
 Rev. J. P. Alcock, m.a Honorary 1866 
 
 ,, J. Bciteman, m.a ,, 1863 
 
 ,, H.Bailey,D.D ,, 1863 
 
 Right Rev. A. Oxenden, d.d ,, 1»64 
 
 Rev. J. R. Hall, M.A „ 1866 
 
 ,, E. Hoare, M.A. ...^ „ 1868 
 
 „ J. Puckle, M.A „ 1869 
 
 ,, R. C. Jenkins, M.A „ 1869 
 
 Right Rev. C. W. Sandford, D.D ,, 1871 
 
 ,, J. Mitchinson, D.c.L ,, 1871 
 
 Rev. H. A. Jetfrevs, m.a Honorary 1872 
 
 „ W. K Griffin, B.D ,, 1872 
 
 ,, J. Stevenson, d.d ,, 1873 
 
 „ J. I. Welldon, d.c.l ,, 1873 
 
 „ W. A. S.Robertson, M.A „ 1873 
 
 ,, G. C. Pearson, m.a ,, 1874 
 
 „ W. F. E. Knollys, M.A „ 1876 
 
 ,, R. Elwyn, M.A ,^ „ 1879 
 
 „ C. F. Routledge, M.A „ 1879 
 
 ., G. F. Maclear, D.D „ 1886 
 
 ;, G. J. Blore, D.D ,, 1887 
 
 ,, J. W. Bliss, B. A „ 1888 
 
 ,, W. Benham, B.D „ 1888 
 
 ',', J. P.Alcxsck, M.A Six-Preacher 1858 
 
 ,, H.Geary, M.A ,, 1869 
 
 „ J. S. Hoare, B.D ,, 1874 
 
 ,, F. F. Wabond, M.A ,, 1879 
 
 ,, J. Cullin, M.A ,, 1885 
 
 „ H. S. Sprigg, M.A „ 1888 
 
DIOCESAN ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 Archbishop, . 
 
 Dean. President E. Kent Church Missionary Association. 
 
 Bishop Suffragan and Archdeacon. 
 
 [(Oxford) late Camden Professor of Antient History.] o i i 
 
 Lecturer Church Reading Society (Council). Ciiairman Sunday School 
 
 Teachers' Association. 
 [Tutor (Theol.) Balliol College, Oxford.] 
 
 Archdeacon, Hon. Sec. Diocesan Conference. 
 
 Late Warden of St. Augustine's. 
 [Late Bishop of Montreal.] 
 
 President W. Kent Church Missionary Union. 
 Rural Dean of Dover. 
 
 [Bishop of Gibraltar.] ,^., ^ 
 
 [Archdeacon of Leicester, Assistant Bishop to Bishop of Peterborough. 
 Rural Dean of West Charing. 
 Late Rural Dean of Ospringe. 
 
 President Kent Archaeological Society. 
 
 Treasurer Clerical Educ. Fund ; Diocesan Secretary for Lay Readers. 
 [Master of Charterhouse] Hon. Sec. of Diocesan Conference for Church 
 
 Expenditure. 
 Hon. Sec. Clerical Education Fund. 
 
 Warden of St. Augustine's ; Lecturer Church Reading Society. 
 Lecturer Church Reading Society (Council) ; Hon. Sec. Ciiurch Purity 
 
 Society. 
 Hon. Sec. Choral Union ; Rural Dean of Sandwich. 
 
 Examiner Diocesan Education Society. 
 
 Tait Missioner and Diocesan Missioner. 
 Diocesan Missioner. 
 
218 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 2.— ON COMMENDATORY LETTERS. 
 
 To my Charge in 1885 I appended a recommen- 
 dation of the more constant use of Commendatory- 
 Letters for Emigrants from our Parishes. I am 
 sure that all who have used them will, with me, 
 be much encouraged by the following extracts 
 from the Second Annual Report of the New 
 York Port-Chaplaincy. It gives " encouraging 
 " results of this unique yet most important 
 " branch of the Church's missionary operations. 
 " The work is getting to be better known and 
 " appreciated, both in our own Church and in 
 " our Sister Churches across the Atlantic. We 
 *•' have received a larger and a heartier co-opera- 
 " tion from the Churches, and this has both 
 " strengthened our hands and enabled us to 
 " extend and enlarge the sphere of our labours. 
 " A comparison of this year's report with that 
 " of last year reveals the fact, that, while in 
 *' seventeen months we then met 500 steamships 
 *' and registered the names of 4,500 church 
 
APPENDIX. 219 
 
 *' immigrants, during the last twelve months, from 
 " July 1st, 1888, to July 1st, 1889, we have met 
 " but 373 ships yet have registered the names of 
 " 5,423 persons, professing to be members of the 
 " Church of England, the Church of Ireland, or 
 " the Episcopal Church of Scotland, 
 
 " This increase we believe to be largely owing 
 " to the greater number of persons who bring us 
 " introductory or commendatory letters from their 
 " late rectors or vicars in the old country. Up 
 " to the beginning of this present year the cases 
 " were exceedingly rare in which arriving Church 
 " immigrants were found to be furnished with 
 " such letters, or with any other means of Church 
 " identification." 
 
 " During a recent visit, however, made by the 
 " port-chaplain to the British Isles, he was 
 " favoured with interviews with several of the 
 " Bishops and Clergy," in which he laid before 
 "them "the great injury the Church at large 
 " annually sustained by these uncommended 
 " Church people not making themselves known on 
 " arrival, and by their subsequently straying 
 "' away from the Church into other religious 
 " bodies, or into neglect of all religious duty and 
 " obligation." " As a result he is able to record 
 " the above encouraging facts — in a larger number 
 " of Church immigrants giving and presenting 
 
220 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 " commendatory letters from their late vicars 
 " and rectors. It is thus pleasant to know that 
 " the port-chaplaincy, which is principally a 
 " receiving and distributing agency for the 
 " Church's immigrants, is getting more and more 
 " in touch with the Churches that supply the 
 " immigrants, and is receiving more cooperation 
 " from them." 
 
 The Immigrant Port-Chaplain at New York 
 is the Kev. Th. Drumm, D.D., 22 State Street. 
 
APPENDIX. 221 
 
 3.— PROGRESS OF THE ARCHBISHOP'S 
 MISSION TO THE ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS. 
 
 In my Charge of 1885 I laid before the Diocese 
 an outline of the circumstances which led to the 
 formation of this Mission. Having done so, I feel 
 I ought to add now a few words as to its progress 
 since that time. 
 
 Mr. Athelstan Riley has since his visit to Kurd- 
 istan in 1884, twice again visited that country at 
 my request, to gather accurate information and to 
 report to me. 
 
 In response to the appeal from the Patriarch in 
 Kurdistan, I commissioned the Rev. Canon Arthur 
 J. Maclean and the Rev. W. H. Browne, who had 
 generously volunteered their services, to go to 
 Kurdistan in 1886 and establish the Mission. 
 
 In communicating with the Patriarch of An- 
 tioch, under whose supervision the Assyrian 
 Church had anciently been, I set forward the 
 aim of the Mission in the following words:— 
 
 *'Our object in sending out these two priests 
 
222 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 is not to bring over these Christians to the com- 
 munion of the Church of England, nor to alter 
 their ecclesiastical customs and traditions, nor to 
 change any doctrines held by them which are 
 not contrary to that Faith which the Holy 
 Spirit, speaking through the (Ecumenical Councils 
 of the Undivided Church of Christ, has taught 
 as necessary to be believed by all Christians ; but 
 to encourage them in bettering their religious 
 condition, and to strengthen an antient Church, 
 which, through ignorance from within and per- 
 secution from without, cannot any longer stand 
 alone, but without some assistance must eventu- 
 ally succumb, though unwillingly, to the external 
 organizations at work among them." 
 
 The friendly reply of the Patriarch, "praising 
 the good work," and blessing the " priests of 
 the English Church who have undertaken this 
 ministry," is to be found in a Report on the 
 Foundation of the Archhishoj) s Mission to the 
 Assyrian Church in 1886," published at the office 
 of the Assyrian Mission, 7 Dean's Yard, West- 
 minster, S.W. 
 
 I quote one sentence : — 
 
 "In our heart we bear a lively and fervent 
 interest and affection towards the English Church, 
 and we offer earnest prayers to the Author and 
 Finisher of our salvation, beseeching Him that 
 
APPENDIX. 223 
 
 He would strengthen the fraternal spirit in it 
 towards the Orthodox Eastern Church, by which 
 alone shall be possible a closer connection of these 
 two Churches and their full and perfect union." 
 
 Year by year, as funds permit, the educational 
 work of the Mission is being extended. There 
 are now the following establishments : at Urmi 
 an Upper School for priests, deacons and can- 
 didates for Holy Orders ; also a High School for 
 boys under seventeen ; at Superghan a second 
 High School ; at Ardishai a third, and in Turkey 
 a fourtli. Altogether these establishments contain 
 over two hundred pupils, mostly boarders. There 
 are besides over forty Village Day Schools, with 
 an average attendance of one thousand. The 
 printing press is set up in the Urmi Mission- 
 house, a special fount of Chaldean type cast. The 
 Liturgy of the Apostles, the most venerable of the 
 Assyrian liturgical documents, will probably be 
 published before the close of the present year. 
 Hitherto the ancient Chaldean service books have 
 been only in MS., and the number of copies totally 
 insufficient for the supply of the parish churches. 
 The great antiquity of these services and their 
 freedom from corruptions is well known. 
 
 The Kev. A. H. Lang, M.A., joined the Mission 
 staff in 1887, and the Eev. A. R. Edington, M.A., 
 in 1888. The Eev. Y. N. Nisan has just gone out 
 
224 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 as the representative of the American Church and 
 at the cost of that branch of the Anglican Com- 
 munion. Thus amongst the five clergy working 
 in the Assyrian Mission under the direction of 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, are representatives 
 of the English, Scottish, and American Churches. 
 
 The Rev. Y. N. Nisan is a native of Kurdistan, 
 and is a married man. We have received the 
 highest testimony to his zeal and eflSciency, and 
 to the excellent work done by Mrs. Msan among 
 the native girls. I must in the warmest terms 
 mention the generous assistance which the Mis- 
 sion has received from American Churchmen. 
 More than half of the existing village schools 
 are paid for by them ; they have also liberally 
 contributed towards other branches of the work, 
 especially the printing, and they raised a fund 
 for us to distribute, which greatly relieved the 
 distress of the recent famine, and provided seed- 
 corn for the next year. 
 
 The generous response of the Community of 
 the Sisters of Bethany to my appeal will enable 
 the Mission to undertake the sorely-needed edu- 
 cation of the women and girls of the country, 
 and it is hoped that four or five sisters will leave 
 England for Persia in the ensuing spring (1890) 
 to found a house and school in Urmi. A chaplain 
 has yet to be found to go out with the sisters. 
 
APPENDIX. 225 
 
 The English Mission clergy are unmarried, and 
 live together with a common purse, without 
 stipends, each receiving 251. a year for necessary 
 personal expenses. The economical conduct of 
 the Mission will be understood from the fact that 
 the whole of the work detailed above, the board- 
 ing of students, the repairs and additions to 
 Mission building, the outfit and journey of Mr. 
 Edington, printing and every other expense con- 
 nected with the Mission both at Home and in Ku7^- 
 distan last year, was carried on for about 1,300/. 
 
 Note. — Publications giving full details may be had on 
 application to the Hon. Sec, Rev. E. M. Blakiston, 7 
 Dean's Yard, S.W. 
 
226 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 4.— LETTER ON SYSTEMATIC ALMSGIYING. 
 
 ISSUED 1889. 
 
 My Reverend and Dear Brethren, — I desire 
 once more to be allowed to represent to the 
 Parishes through their Clergy the necessity for 
 more systematic arrangements for our general 
 Almsgiving. 
 
 I addressed you on this subject some five 
 years ago with the unanimous concurrence of our 
 Rural Deans and of the whole Conference, lay 
 and clerical, of the Diocese. 
 
 Many Parishes cheerfully adopted the sugges- 
 tions made, and have continued to act on them 
 to the benefit of all concerned. 
 
 And I thankfully acknowledge that there was 
 an immediate and very liberal response through- 
 out our Diocese ; but there has since been a quiet 
 retrogression, which begins to cripple some of our 
 most important religious works. 
 
 I am confident that it will be well received by 
 you, if a sense of the urgency of the case makes 
 
APPENDIX. 22: 
 
 me partly repeat and partly add to what is 
 already before you. 
 
 We shall all agree that every Parish, both for 
 its own sake and because it is an integral section 
 of the Church of Christ, ought to have the grand 
 aims of the Church earnestly brought before it, 
 and to be moved to contribute to their 
 furtherance. 
 
 It would seem that there are two great Diocesan 
 objects which demand the interest of all, viz. : — 
 
 1. Religious Education of Children. 
 
 2. Provision of Churches and Mission Rooms. 
 
 The vital importance of the first of these is in- 
 creasingly felt and understood. The stress is 
 great upon the Church, and will be so for the 
 next few years. Humanly speaking, it depends 
 upon her faithfulness whether the education of 
 England continues to be religious or not. Upon 
 the principles in which each generation is brought 
 up depends the continuance and extension of her 
 work for Christ. Hitherto her example and influ- 
 ence have been felt far beyond her own borders. 
 
 The work of our Diocesan Education Society 
 includes the Maintenance and Extension of 
 Church Schools, the Examination and Encourage- 
 ment of Church Pupil Teachers in their Religious 
 Studies, and that careful Religious Inspection, 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 without which instruction is not complete and 
 thorough. 
 
 The second object is forced on us by all the 
 conditions of our population, and the absolute 
 necessities of our villages and hamlets. 
 
 There are further Two great Mission Objects 
 before the Church — 
 
 3. Home Missions. 
 
 4. Foreign Missions. 
 
 The Societies which are doing noble and ad- 
 vancing work are well known, and it is to be 
 understood, as of course, that the choice of the 
 particular Society to be supported should be, in 
 every case, left to the discretion of the Clergyman 
 of the Parish. Only, every Parish ought to be 
 invited by him to take its own part in these 
 works for Christ's sake. Every Parish which 
 leaves these Christian works undone suffers loss. 
 
 I would here observe that no mistake can be 
 greater than the looking on small sums as 
 unworthy to be added to the income of great 
 Societies. It is of small sums that their chief 
 work is built up. 
 
 Further, I would ask your attention to the de- 
 sirableness of having our Collections (whether 
 made specially or by assigning certain Offer- 
 tories) at regular and exi')ecte(.l seasons. Our 
 
APPEIN'DIX. 229 
 
 system is mainly defective as to fixing definite 
 times, and I am persuaded that many would 
 rejoice to give if a regular plan were before 
 them. 
 
 The Four Ember Seasons would seem well 
 adapted for setting these four objects before the 
 people. They were originally observed as special 
 times of Almsgiving and Devotion (having only 
 of late narrowed down to their present observance), 
 and one thing which I earnestly desire may be 
 brought home to all hearts is that they should 
 offer their every gift with Prayer, should feel 
 that Almsgiving adds reality to Prayer, and that 
 Prayer gives life to Alms. 
 
 I know that it will not be possible for every 
 parish to adopt the Sundays of the Ember \Yeeks 
 at once. It may not be possible everywhere to 
 adopt the four objects, but we may work towards 
 both one and the other. 
 
 The feeling that throughout the Diocese con- 
 gregations have the same holy objects before them 
 at the same time will be found a real encourage- 
 ment in our Christian Communion. 
 
 It is to the Officers of the Pural Deaneries that 
 the Parishes of the Deanery look to keep the 
 subject before their attention with a view to 
 organization and extension of Subscriptions, and 
 
230 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 it is by the Clergy presenting subjects vividly 
 and in due order to the minds and hearts of the 
 parishioners, that they can be led to see, in its 
 right light, the duty and privilege of all Church- 
 men in spreading the Kingdom of God. 
 
 May I request that, beside other ways of making 
 it known, you will kindly give this letter a place 
 on your Church Door 1 
 
 I have said nothing about Hospital Collections, 
 because I feel sure that all desire to aid, and in 
 fact do aid, some Hospital or other, especially 
 those which are most useful to their own neigh- 
 bours ; and the suitable time for that particular 
 collection must vary. 
 
 At present there are many of our worshippers 
 Yv^ho do not know of the existence or aims of our 
 Societies. 
 
 I am assured that this is so, and it is thus only 
 that I account for some of the facts that come 
 before me : for instance, that two-thirds of the 
 Parishes have as yet no collection for the Diocesan 
 Education Society, forty less for the Diocesan 
 Church Building Society. Yet among the number 
 are many Parishes which have received large 
 Grants from them. 
 
 I will then, lastly, venture to suggest, simply as 
 a practical help towards the co-operation which I 
 
APPENDIX. 231 
 
 feel sure you will extend to me, that we should 
 collect, as far as possible — 
 
 For Diocesan Education Society (" Sunday 
 
 School ") on a Sunday near the Ember 
 
 Days of Lent ; 
 For Home Missions, near Trinity Ember 
 
 Days; 
 For Diocesan Church Building Society, on a 
 
 Sunday near Ember Days of September ; 
 For Foreign Missions, on one near Ember 
 
 Days of Advent (or near St. Andrew's 
 
 Day). 
 
 Commending this subject to your kind and 
 earnest consideration, and myself to your prayers, 
 
 I am, Reverend and Dear Sirs, 
 
 Your Faithful Brother and Servant, 
 
 Edav : Cantuar : 
 
232 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 5.— YARIATION IN SEEYICES OF BOOK 
 OF COMMON PRAYER ALLOWED UPON 
 REPORT OF CONYOCATIONS OF CAN- 
 TERBURY AND YORK. 
 
 35 & 36 Yict., c. 35. 
 
 A. Requiring the Previous Sanction of the 
 Ordinary. 
 
 I. A Special Form of Service approved by the 
 Ordinary may be used on special occasions ap- 
 proved by the Ordinary. Such service is to 
 contain nothing (except anthems or hymns) which 
 does not form part of Holy Scripture or the Book 
 of Common Prayer. 
 
 II. An Additional Service varying from any 
 form prescribed in the Prayer Book may be used 
 on Sundays or Holy Days where the whole of the 
 Prayer Book Services for those days are duly said 
 or sung at other hours. Such Service, and the 
 mode of using it, must be approved by the Ordi- 
 nary. It is to contain nothing from the Com- 
 
APPENDIX. 233 
 
 munion Service, and nothing (except anthems or 
 hymns) which does not form part of Holy Scripture 
 or the Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 III. Second Lesson on Sundays. In virtue of 
 the powers of the Ordinary (" Tables of Lessons 
 Act, 1871,") the Archbishop authorises the adop- 
 tion in this Diocese of the Resolution of the 
 Lower House of Convocation, February 19, 1871, 
 viz. — " Upon any Sunday for which no Proper 
 Second Lesson is appointed, if the Second Lesson 
 appointed in the Kalendar be 'paH of a Chapter, 
 the Minister may, if he see fit, instead of such 
 appointed Lesson, read the whole, Chapter from 
 which it is taken ; and if it consists of jyarts of 
 two different chapters, he may read the wliole of 
 either chapter together with the appointed portion 
 of the other. 
 
 B. At the Discretion of the Incumbent. 
 
 I. The Shortened Order for Morning or 
 Evening Prayer may be used in a Church instead 
 of, in a Cathedral in addition to, the Order as 
 it stands in the Book of Common Prayer, on any 
 day excei^t Sunday, Christmas Day, Ash Wednes- 
 day, Good Friday, Ascension Day, as follows : — 
 
 Namely, Morning. (1) Sentence ; (2) Con- 
 fession ; (3) Absolution ; (4) Lord's Prayer ; 
 (5) Versicles and Responses; (6) one Psalm 
 
234 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 of the day with Gloria Patri ; (7) one Lesson 
 according to the Tables ; but if there are 
 two Proper Lessons both are to be used ; 
 (8) Te Deum or Benedicite or Benedictus 
 or Jubilate, after one or between two 
 Lessons ; (9) Creed; (10) Yer sides and Suf- 
 frages; (11) Collect of Day, Second Collect, 
 Third Collect; (12) Anthem or Hymn, if 
 desired ; (13) Prayer of St. Chrysostom ; 
 (14) Grace. 
 
 Note. Any exhortation, prayer, canticle, 
 hymn, psalm, or Lesson, of which the omis- 
 sion is here authorised, may be added in its 
 proper place. Each portion of Psalm cxix. 
 is counted a psalm. 
 
 Evening as Morning, except for (8) Evening 
 Canticles. 
 II. Separation of Services. Morning Prayer. 
 Litany, Holy Communion, may be used as separate 
 services. Litany may be used after the Third 
 Collect of Evening Prayer, whether it has that 
 day been used or not, without prejudice, never- 
 theless, to the powers vested in the Ordinary. 
 
 The Litany may never in any Church he left 
 unsaid on Sunday. If the Litany is said 
 with Evening Prayer, the " five Prayers," the 
 Prayer for Parliament in Session, the Collect 
 for all Conditions of Men, the General 
 
APPENDIX. 235 
 
 Thanksgiving, and other of the Prayers and 
 Thanksgivings on General Occasions ^ are to 
 be said at Morning Prayer. 
 
 If the Litany is used as a wholly sei^arate 
 service^ the "five Prayers" and the Prayer 
 for all Conditions of Men are to be said at 
 dtlier Morning or Evening Prayer ; the other 
 Prayers above named are to be used at 
 Morning and Evening Prayer, or in the 
 Litany instead of at one of these services. 
 IIL Preaching without previous Service. If 
 a sermon or lecture be preached without the ser- 
 vices appointed by Book of Common Prayer, it 
 must be preceded by some one of the Services 
 authorised hereby, or the Bidding Prayer, or a 
 Collect from the Book of Common Prayer, with 
 or without the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 ^ These require no permission when, in the discretion of 
 the Minister, the time requires them. 
 
236 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 6.— LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE PRE- 
 SIDENTS OR CHAIRMEN OF THE 
 NONCONFORMIST BODIES WITH THE 
 LAMBETH ENCYCLICAL LETTER. 
 
 Lambeth, March, 1889. 
 
 My Dear Sir, — I was requested by the Bishops, 
 at their first joint meeting after the Lambeth 
 Conference, to send, with our united respects to 
 yourself, as representing the .... Body, a 
 copy of an Encyclical Letter, issued by the 
 Conference. 
 
 I would ask you kindly to refer to Resolution 
 12, which will be found on page 25, and to the 
 Report on Home Reunion at page 81, and I can 
 assure you that the sentiments there expressed 
 were heartfelt on the part of the whole assembly, 
 and the readiness most real and present. 
 
 "We know that under whatever diversities of 
 
 opinion, a true and loving hope of oneness in 
 
 Christ Jesus is a living power in the hearts of all 
 
 His people. 
 
 I have, &c., 
 
 Edw : Cantuar : 
 
APPENDIX. 237 
 
 7.— LETTER 01^ CANTERBURY SOCIETY OF 
 CHURCH WORKERS. 
 
 Lambeth, August, 1889. 
 
 My Dear and Reverend Brother, — The for- 
 mation of a Diocesan Society of Church Workers 
 has now been in three stages before the Diocesan 
 Conference, and has received their approval, after 
 having been discussed and recommended by the 
 Committee on Lay Readers, as well as by a meet- 
 ing of the Rural Deans. It has been also asked 
 for by the Lay Readers of the Diocese. 
 
 I am anxious by all means to promote the 
 formation of such a Society. It will not only 
 give our zealous individual workers a wider and 
 deeper feeling of the interest of their good work 
 and the earnest sympathy felt for it, and suggest 
 to them fresh openings for Christian exertion, — it 
 will knit the Societies or Guilds or Associations 
 which already exist in a closer bond with the 
 whole life and work of the Diocese ; it will also 
 promote the formation on sound lines of such 
 
238 CHKIST AXD HIS TIMES. 
 
 Associations in parishes where hitherto it has been 
 difficult to form them. 
 
 It is therefore a pleasure to be able now to 
 announce to you that the little Manual of the 
 Society, containing the outline of the Society ; 
 Suggestions as to Church "Works to be under- 
 taken ; Brief Recommendations as to Holy Living ; 
 Office, &c., in preparing which many kind sugges- 
 tions have been made and used, (with cards of 
 Membership), is now ready, as well as the first 
 monthly paper of Intercessions. 
 
 The Rev. E. F. Dyke, All Saints' Vicarage, 
 Maidstone, and the Rev. P. F. Tindall, of Ash- 
 ford, will be ready to assist any Clergy in forming 
 branches, or to visit any places for the purpose of 
 explaining the plan and its application. 
 
 The Rev. George Clowes, Secretary of the 
 Diocesan Society, will supply copies of the Manual 
 or other papers, and wall similarly assist in the 
 formation of Branches. 
 
 Believe me, 
 Your faithful brother and Pastor in Christ, 
 
 Edw : Cantuar : 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 239 
 
 8._CHURCH SERVICES AND WORK. 
 
 Statistics from Visitation Returns. 
 
 There are in the Diocese of Canterbury 
 
 The Holy Communion is celebrated Daily in 
 
 on Holy Days in 
 . "Weekly in ... 
 . Fortnightly in 
 ... Monthly 
 
 There is Daily Service 
 
 There are open for private prayer 
 There are .special services in Lent and Advent ... 
 . Lent alone ... 
 
 There is ca^ec^.^'sw?// in church 
 
 Missions have been held since 1885 
 
 A preachers' book is kept 
 
 Members are elected to the E.D. Conference ... 
 There is a communicants' class ... 
 There is open air preaching 
 
 There are church schools under Diocesan inspection . 
 reported to be statedly in- 
 structed in religious knowledge by clergy . 
 in which the managers interest themselves . 
 There is a Sunday School teachers' class 
 
 425 
 
 11 
 201 
 202 
 
 94 
 
 92 
 
 118 (?) 
 138 
 288 
 171 
 264 (?) 
 
 86 
 369 
 357 
 143 
 
 parishes, 
 churches. 
 
 pan 
 
 322^ 
 
 286 
 215 
 130 
 
 ihes. 
 
 1 The Inspectors return 375, i.e. probably distinguishing departments of different 
 tenure and situation in the same parish. 
 
540 
 
 CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 There are Board Schools 
 
 of these the managers take an active interest 
 . . there are under Diocesan inspection 
 
 The church is insured 
 
 The jiarsoHage is insured 
 
 There are collections for Diocesan Education Society 
 
 (Report for 1888.) 
 
 There are collections for Diocesan Church Building 
 Society. 
 
 (Report for 1888.) 
 
 There is a Lay Reader or other Lay Assistant ... 
 
 . . . branch of the C.E.T.S 
 
 C.E.P.S 
 
 G.E.S. 
 
 The value of the Benefice has increased... 
 
 . decreased... 
 
 This is owing to Diminution in Tithe Rent Charge 
 
 . . . . . . Extraordinary Tithe 
 
 . . . . . . Glebe Rent ... 
 
 There are offertories, collections, or other subscriptions for Foreign 
 
 Missions in 386 parishes. 
 
 There are offertories, collections, or other subscriptions for Home 
 
 Missions in 293 
 
 Some kind of meeting or association for Foreign Missions ... in 187 
 
 . Home . ... in 129 
 
 There is some kind of association for young men in 111 
 
 . a Library or issue of Books in 340 
 
 Commendatory letters are said to be given 'if required' ... in 258 
 
 1 The Inspectors return 13, probably excluding those in which former managers 
 retain religious instruction. 
 
 2 The same number as in 1885. 
 
 3 In some cases two or more causes account for the Diminution. 
 
 N.B. — Owing to diversity of method in making the returns, the accuracy of 
 figures below the line, and of those queried, is subject to correction.