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 ART OF PREACHING and COMPOSITION of SERMONS, 
 
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 r, 
 
ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 CHIEFLY ON CHURCH SUBJECTS 
 
ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Cl^ieflij 011 Cljurrlj Sitbjcrts 
 
 By henry ALFORD, D.D. 
 
 DEAN OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 '^yis- 
 
 J 
 
 VJ 
 
 
 STRAHAN & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 
 r^G, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 
 1869 
 
LONDON : PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND S0N8, DDKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET, 
 AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 These Essays and Addresses are collected in com- 
 pliance with wishes expressed at various times. The 
 publication of single articles, lectures, or sermons is 
 mostly unprofitable, not only in the lower financial 
 sense of the word, but also with reference to any 
 effect which the writer may look to produce, or any 
 permanence which he may desire to secure. But 
 the covers of a volume may serve to provide for a 
 number of such papers a chance of united action, 
 or at all events facility of reference, and a certain 
 artificial vitality. 
 
 The First and Second of those now reprinted 
 call for no remark here. They deal with subjects 
 of interest within the recognised limits of Church 
 work ; and I am not aware that in treating those 
 subjects I have wandered, except in some mere 
 matters of detail, out of the common track. 
 
 The Third Paper has been made the subject of 
 
PBEFACE. 
 
 an adverse argument by the Rev. Philip Gell 
 The substance of Mr. Gell's objections to my view 
 may be fairly stated by saying that he advocates 
 the commonly-received dichotomy of man, as body 
 and soul (or, as he sometimes phrases it, body and 
 spirit), in opposition to the trichotomy — body, soul, 
 and spirit — which, in accordance with the psycho- 
 logy of Scripture, I have upheld and enforced. The 
 objections in detail, which he brings at the end of 
 his volume, nlay all be resolved into this fundamental 
 discrepancy ; with regard to which I do not see how, 
 if we abandon the Scriptural view of our nature, we 
 can arrive at any intelligent account of either that 
 nature's ruin or its redemption. 
 
 On the Fourth Essay, of course, as was to be 
 expected, much has been said by way of blame. 
 The view there taken of our relation to Protestant 
 bodies differing from the Church of England is, in 
 tlie main, that which was received and acted on, even 
 Ijy High Churchmen themselves, from the Reforma- 
 tion to the Act of Uniformity. And even after that 
 disastrous blunder — even in the times of our own 
 fathers — the free recognition of the Christianity and 
 
 Ou the New Birth,' &c. Nisbet, 1868. 
 
PBEFACE. 
 
 Ohurclimanship of nonconforming bodies still lin- 
 gered at the bottom of men's hearts in the Church 
 of England. It has only been by the growth of 
 modern High Churchmanship that the hard and fast 
 line, marking off the Episcopal from the non-Epis- 
 copal, has been deeply inked over and insisted on. 
 This warping of English Church opinion has been 
 in itself of the very essence of schism. It has well 
 nigh severed the bough of the mustard-tree on which 
 England has built her nest. 
 
 The endeavour of my Paper has been simply to 
 put in an assertion of the old Church principle by 
 which, and by which only, our Reformation was 
 justified. If its assertions and proposals sound strange 
 in our days, it is simply because we, and the men 
 around us, have so entirely changed since such things 
 were familiar words in England ; because " the Lord's 
 Song "is not suited to the atmosphere of a land now 
 almost become strange to it. 
 
 The Fifth Address, here printed for the first time, 
 was an assertion of the same principles in one of 
 our metropolitan cathedrals : an endeavour to show 
 that the true path of Christian unity is charity with- 
 out compromise ; not a latitudinarian enlargement of 
 the boundaries of our own communion, but a frank 
 
PEE FACE. 
 
 recognition, public and social, of the nonconforming 
 bodies, coupled witb the maintenance of our own 
 distinctive Church doctrines and practices. 
 
 Around the facts indicated in the Sixth of these 
 Papers, a strong conflict of opinions has gathered. 
 Their history is very simple. An occasion arose of 
 carrying into practice the principles which the two 
 last Papers had maintained. The statutable consti- 
 tution of Cheshunt College was such as to jolace it 
 on the very platform of Christian recognition which 
 I had previously advocated. The education in it of 
 ministers for the Church of England was so far from 
 being obsolete, that only within the past year had 
 one been ordained from its class-rooms, and a friendly 
 letter of approval, and of wishes of Grod-speed, written 
 to the Principal by one of our High-Church Bishops. 
 
 It was suggested to me, privately and most kindly, 
 that the Chesluuit Centenary might possibly be an 
 occasion for the furnishing an example of the conduct 
 towards Nonconformists which I had been recom- 
 mending. As such I gladly recognised it, and have 
 seen no reason to regret, but every reason to be 
 thankful for, that recognition. 
 
 Of course, it was an act in the teeth of that party, 
 unhappily now organised within the English Church, 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 which derives its principles and its sanctions from 
 the modern Church of Rome. But regarding this 
 point, I am thankful to say that English Churchmen 
 are becoming less and less careful. Seeing that the 
 abuse of that party has now been lavished on every 
 thing and every person which our Church holds sacred 
 — her Reformation and Reformers, her Bishops, her 
 Liturgy, her missionary and charitable agencies — to 
 have received the same measure at its hands would 
 seem rather as the inevitable result of having acted 
 according to her principles than as an indication of 
 any conduct really to be reprehended. 
 
 And if the step was one in advance of what wise 
 and sober Churchmen would have advised, I can 
 only say that it was the practical logical consequence 
 of principles in which I believe they would be at 
 one with me : and these are no longer times 
 when mere counsels of caution ought to set aside 
 such practical consequences of acknowledged prin- 
 cij^les. 
 
 On the Seventh and last Paper much has been said 
 by way of blame. In writing it, I did not suppose 
 I was about to carry the majority of Churchmen 
 with me. We have come in this country so entirely 
 to identify the Church with her outward and tcm- 
 
X P EFFACE. 
 
 poral state, that we refuse to contemplate her in 
 any capacity but as a State Establishment, and 
 ignore the fact of her having a divine origin, 
 and a divine mission to the souls of men, irre- 
 spective of any outward standing whatever. And 
 thus we come to regard the possibility of the dis- 
 establishment as a great disaster, and to accuse the 
 men who look before them to such a possibility, and 
 warn others to prepare for it, as craven-hearted, 
 and yielding to a panic, and forsaking all defence 
 in the time of danger. 
 
 The only detailed criticism of my article which 
 has appeared — that in ' Blackwood's Magazine ' for 
 November, 1868 — has been constructed on these prin- 
 ciples. I am there represented as ^'faint-hearted/' 
 as "assuming tliat the future is hopelessly decided 
 against us," "speaking of the Church's doom as 
 fated, and of her cause as lost :" as " having written 
 words which, under the plea of reconciling men to 
 tlie inevitable, insinuate despair:" — and very much 
 more is added of the same kind. In fact, there is 
 hardly a considerable sentence in the article in which 
 this petido ^mncipii is not found. This is a strange 
 way of treating an opponent's argument : to attribute 
 to him your own view of the subject which he has 
 
PREFACE, xi 
 
 treated, and to make him responsible for the 
 dehnquency of which he would have been guilty 
 had he held that view, and written what he has 
 written : whereas his view was just the contrary. 
 
 It is a remarkable feature of the article in ' Black- 
 wood,' that there is not one sentence, from beginning 
 to end, showing any even the least belief in the 
 divine mission or work of the Church. Such a 
 matter never enters into the writer's view at all. 
 And, if I may say it without offence, the author 
 betrays singular igiiorance both of the history of 
 national establishments, and of the history of this 
 question. 
 
 The idea of disproving my assertion, — that our 
 next term in the series of national severances 
 from the Church is, entire dissociation from it, — by 
 the progress of France not having been thus worked 
 out, would seem almost too absurd to be put on 
 paper, did we not read it with our own eyes. 
 
 " She had an Established Church, and that Church 
 was dominant. The citizens who professed other 
 creeds successively emancipated themselves from the 
 'crushing out stage' and from practical disabilities. 
 The development had the aid of the most energetic 
 and sweeping State revolution known to history. 
 
xil PREFACE. 
 
 The series had every chance to continue ; did it pro- 
 gress on to disestablishment? Quite the reverse. 
 The Roman Catholic Church is now established in 
 France, and so are Protestant Churches." 
 
 Now, really, when this is a man's use of history, 
 he had. far better not meddle with it. Can any two 
 national developments be more totally unlike than 
 those of England and France ? And what were my 
 words respecting the evolution of the series ? " Sup- 
 posing always that our nation is left free to develop 
 its onward course." Who shall maintain that this 
 has been the case with France, at all events since 
 1852? 
 
 And as to the history of this question itself. Our 
 critic characterises my assertion, that the admission 
 of Jews into the Legislature caused the State, in any 
 sense whatever, to cease to be Christian, as "standing 
 apart, — as being, at least for us, an original concep- 
 tion ;" and goes on to characterize my definition of 
 the union of Church and State as my own " specific 
 definition, and no one else's, as far as he is aware." 
 May I ask him, did he ever read the Life of 
 Arnold ? 
 
 It was my intention to have given a more detailed 
 reply to various parts of that article ; but on care- 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 fully going over it with that intent, I have really 
 found it to be not worth while. As I have said 
 above, its starting point is a begging of the 
 question on which it stakes its issue : and on this 
 it is all constructed. The difficulties and dilemmas 
 to which the writer supposes he has reduced me, 
 the charge in which he associates me with "a far 
 more responsible person yet," of " using the grave 
 word disestablishment without any serious reflection 
 about its meaning," the terrible picture which he 
 draws of the state of things if disestablishment be 
 carried out, seemed to me all to vanish into thin air 
 the moment one attempted to grapple with them. 
 The article is one ably "done to order" in the interest 
 of the party upheld by the magazine, but actually 
 not touching by one word or one implication the 
 great question at issue. 
 
 On one account alone does it deserve all loraise. 
 It is entirely free from all unfair imputation, and 
 from all personal abuse : no mean commendation, 
 in days when hardly a controversial article appears 
 without examples of both. 
 
 Deanery, Canterbury, 
 
 November 30, 1868. 
 
CON T E N T S. 
 
 The Special Education of the Clergy 3 
 
 IT. 
 
 Preaching: its Adaptation to the Present Times ,. 28 
 
 III. 
 
 The Christian Conscience .. 45 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Union of Christendom considered in its Home Aspect 88 
 
 V. 
 
 Charity, the End of the Commandment 113 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Eeqdisj;tes op an Education for the Ministry in the 
 Present Day 137 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Church of the Future 157 
 
L 
 
 THE SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE 
 CLERGY. 
 
 AN ADDEESS KEAD AT THE BKISTOL CHURCH 
 CONGEESS, 1864. 
 
^HE special Education of our Clergy may be 
 considered under two heads — Theological and 
 Pastoral. 
 
 Can we devise a remedy for the defects at present 
 existing in both ? 
 
 One essential condition of the problem must be 
 carefully borne in mind. We are not called upon 
 merely to produce accomplished Theologians, nor 
 merely to make men skilful in the details of Pastoral 
 work ; but to endow the English Clergyman with 
 more knowledge of both these. We might assemble 
 our young men in Theological Colleges, and direct 
 all their training to the required points. But we 
 should thus leave forgotten our main requisite — that 
 a certain peculiar position and character was to be 
 taken into account. Our English Clergy are essen- 
 
 B 2 
 
4 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 tially members of Englisli society. They have an 
 especial advantage which for instance the trained 
 and discipHned Clerical bands of the Church of Eome 
 never can possess. In all the relations of ordinary 
 life, their influence is present ; and is shewn by their 
 being themselves examples of these relations. They 
 are the leaven in the lump, working for good as none 
 can who are marked off as a separate class of men. 
 
 And the main course of their general Education 
 leads on to tliis their position of advantage. At 
 School and at College, the lad whose destiny is holy 
 orders is but one among his fellows. Here the foun- 
 dations of his future influence are laid. To the 
 acquaintances here formed he commonly owes his 
 family connexions for life ; and to the introduction 
 among them of a brother's College friend, many an 
 English household traces blessings of which this 
 world sees but the dawn. Secure what pre-eminence 
 you may in Theological learning, and what acquaint- 
 ance you will with the duties and difficulties of the 
 Pastoral office, you will have bought those acquire- 
 ments ruinously dear, if they have been gained at 
 the loss of separation of the Lay and Clerical Classes 
 at School or in College. Any scheme for tlie better 
 Education of our Clergy should not sacrifice one year 
 — no, not one day, of our present united training of 
 Clergy and Laity. 
 
TSE SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE CLERGY. 5 
 
 Now school education must be the same for all ; 
 aud we must therefore enquire how far any special 
 theological direction may he given during the 
 University course. For I suppose it will hardly 
 be maintained that the interval between the degree 
 and the taking orders is enough for the purpose. 
 The only solution of our problem seems to be, that 
 our Universities should recognise a course of theology 
 within the Faculty of Arts : or if I may speak as a 
 Cambridge man, that, besides passing the general 
 examination for the B.A. degree, it should be 
 required of all candidates for the ministry to go out 
 in a theological tripos, having its class-li&t like the 
 other triposes. The objections commonly brought 
 against this proposal are surely not to be weighed 
 against its solid advantages, Nor is its end achieved 
 by the present plan of theological examinations. At 
 present they are rather excrescences upon, than 
 integral parts of, the University course. We must 
 make the acquirement of theology a ho7id fide aim of 
 University education and opportunity for distinction 
 in the period of undergraduateship, giving it a place 
 at least- in second and third year college lectures for 
 honour men, and at some definite time marking off 
 the candidates for the ministry for this lecture-room 
 especially. 
 
 When these last have gone out in theology, comes 
 
6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 the necessity of providing for their training in 
 pastoral work. Now can we look on Theological 
 Colleges as likely to answer our purposes ? I own I 
 am not able to think so. This portion of the time of 
 training for onr Clergy ought not to be passed 
 among those of their own class alone. The mixed 
 University career has been the best of prepai'ations 
 for that high social character of an English gentle- 
 man, which is the sine qud non as the substratmn of 
 the character of an English clergyman. Let us 
 leave its effect where it is, and not risk the narrowing 
 it, at this most critical period of a young man's life, 
 into a spipt of a cliqueship and clerical exclusiveness. 
 
 And if only the theological ' department in our 
 great Universities were adequately strengthened, I 
 see no need for incurring this risk at all. Theolo- 
 gical Colleges may be necessary now. I do not 
 believe they would be then. Besides this, they must 
 be, as preparations for the pastoral office, essentially 
 inadequate. In this particular they must fail, as 
 completely as those institutions known as industrial 
 schools have failed in producing good servants; 
 and for the same reason : that they must undertake to 
 teach by theory, or with very scant practice indeed, 
 that which can only be learned amidst the require- 
 ments and growing experience of real work. 
 
 We can have no worthy preparation except by 
 
THE SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE CLERGY. 7 
 
 training in real pastoral work. Let us have in this 
 most important profession, as we have in the others, 
 a proper apprenticeship, during which its work may 
 be learned by experience. Let it become a general 
 practice among us for Licumbents to receive young 
 candidates for orders, to train in parish work. Let 
 these not be gathered in great numbers, so as to 
 form anything like seminaries, but allotted according 
 to the size of the cure, regard being also had to the 
 aptitude of the Incumbent to teach and to attach 
 young men to the work. 
 
 This practice would keep us clear of the dangers 
 which beset every other j^lan ; and it would bring 
 with it not a few important collateral advantages. 
 In most cases the candidate would be under the roof, 
 and form part of the family of the Incumbent. 
 Where this could not be so, he still would be under 
 his eye, and in constant social intercourse with him. 
 At first he would accompany the Incumbent himself, 
 or his Curate, to the cottages of the poor and the 
 bedsides of the sick ; before long he might be 
 intrusted with the sub-pastoral charge of a small 
 district of his own. And thus experience would be 
 acquired, and the first crude practice of the young 
 pastor secured from occasioning disappointment, or 
 furnishing an excuse for future indolence. 
 
 And the effect of sucli a previous training on the 
 
8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 young minister's habits of thought and feeling would 
 be most beneficial. As a preparation for the effectual 
 doing of Parochial work, I know of no substitute for 
 personal intercourse with the poor themselves. He 
 only can think as they think, who often hears them 
 speak their thoughts. It is utterly in vain for a 
 Clergyman to attempt to preach down to their level, 
 who is not in their confidence ; and the mere fact of 
 such a course of cottage or bedside visitation would 
 prevent the young Curate's first year's sermons from 
 being, as they very often now are, almost thrown 
 away upon his hearers. 
 
 If this plan is to become a recognised part of the 
 training of our Clergy, it must of course be under 
 regular Episcopal superintendence. It will be for 
 the Bishop to judge what Incumbents are fitted to 
 undertake the charge. It will be for him to require, 
 before admission to holy orders, such certificate as 
 he may think fit of this noviciate having been 
 creditably and efficiently passed. And I am recom- 
 mending no untried plan, but one which has been 
 already found most valuable and effective; one 
 which surely is worthy to be made general on a 
 systematized plan co-extensive with the Church of 
 England; furnishing, as it does in my view, our 
 only prospect for better pastoral training. 
 
 I now come to the important question of the 
 
THE SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE CLERGY. 9 
 
 education of our English Clergy with reference to 
 Preaching. 
 
 What preaching is it that the Church has a right 
 to expect ? It may be arranged under three heads. 
 
 First, the ivritten sermon. No minister serves his 
 flock as he might, who does not give them the best 
 sermon that his powers of composition, and of 
 careful adaptation to their case, will enable him 
 to prepare. And this is true, of whatever station 
 or character the flock may be. According as his 
 hearers are gentle or simple, well-informed or igno- 
 rant, so will a skilful Pastor vary his style and 
 manner of address ; it may sometimes be his ars 
 celare, sometimes prodere artem. Even with the 
 poorest and most ignorant, the well-weighed word, 
 the carefully pointed sentence, the pathos which 
 owes its power to the studied cadence, will tell and 
 be remembered. Besides this, the clear exposition 
 and defence of the doctrines of the faith require all 
 study and pains in composition ; and again, whether 
 it be to gentle or simple, the well-stored mind, able 
 to reason on its own knowledge, ought to find in its 
 teacher one who can meet it on its own ground ; and 
 if the ignorant are to be taught the whole counsel of 
 God, surely too much care cannot be bestowed to 
 convey it in a form which may attract them^ and 
 be taken up into their understandings. 
 
10 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 For these reasons, the careful composition of 
 sermons ought to be always a portion of the training 
 of the Clergy. And I see no difficulty whatever in 
 including it in the University theological course. It 
 is a matter on which lectures might be given, and a 
 course of reading prescribed. And these should be 
 accompanied with continual practice, not perhaps just 
 yet in the entire sermon, but in expression, in 
 argument, in pleading ; in the opening, the conduct, 
 and the peroration of a given theme. Such matters 
 might form the subjects of competitive trials as much 
 as other composition. 
 
 In the formation of style, this training would be 
 most important. It is surely not beyond the truth, 
 in our day, to say that most sermons have no 
 character at all. Listen to almost any ordinary 
 preacher, and you will perceive that he is not able 
 to do that which he has undertaken, because he has 
 never been taught the use of his tools ; he has never 
 studied the effect of language on men's minds ; he 
 does not know how to put forth with success the 
 thoughts which occur to him. 
 
 And let it not be imagined that by the training 
 Avhich I propose we should risk the bringing about 
 a prevalence of showy and ornate preaching, than 
 which hardly anything can be worse. In most 
 cases a florid style is the result of a shallow kind of 
 
THE SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE CLERGY. 11 
 
 cleverness, and prevails in direct proportion to the 
 absence of worthy subject-matter and real earnest 
 thought. Now and then we find a preacher of this 
 school possessed of true genius ; one whose sparkling 
 words are not phosphorescent, but ardent. Far be it 
 from us to decry this or any other allowable style 
 in itself, or to attempt to limit the Spirit of power in 
 his method of manifestation ; but thus much must be 
 said, that of all styles, the florid is the very worst 
 in the hands of an imitator, and that he is least likely 
 to imitate it who is founded deepest in real theology, 
 and knows most of the great preachers of the 
 Christian Church. At present we want chastening 
 and simplifying in the style of our written sermons ; 
 more of Latimer, and less of Johnson ; more of the 
 homely frankness of our version of Scripture, and 
 less of the conventional grandiloquence of the news- 
 paper article. 
 
 The second kind of preaching is the expository. 
 No man is fit to teach a parish who is not able 
 rightly to lay forth the Word of God. In order to 
 this, the knowledge of at least the New Testament 
 in the original language is indispensable. So far 
 might be j^rovided, as it is already in some measure, 
 in the University course. But with candidates for 
 the ministry, attention to it must be more special, 
 and a respectable degree of proficiency absolutely 
 
12 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 insisted on. That one who is to he for his parish- 
 ioners the last appeal in their difficulties as to the 
 sense of Scripture, should he himself incapahle of 
 reading the words in which Christ's Gospel is re- 
 vealed, is surely an evil too monstrous to be tole- 
 rated. 
 
 Now expository preaching will be sometimes 
 written, sometimes unwritten. Every congregation 
 ought to have the oral running exposition of passages 
 of Scripture laid forth and familiarized by explana- 
 tion and illustration, in a reverent but at the same 
 time in a colloquial manner. The general neglect of 
 this kind of preaching among us is lamentable. Any 
 visitor to Roman Catholic Churches abroad will be 
 deeply sensible of the loss which we thus incur in our 
 influence from the pulpit. 
 
 The preparation will be twofold. It will partly be 
 acquired by acquaintance with the sacred text, the 
 history of its exegesis, and some of the writings of 
 its great expositors. Of these, far beyond all others, 
 stand out Augustine and Chrysostom, without some 
 portion of whose exegetical works no theological 
 course would surely be completed. And then comes 
 the need of practice. As far as written exposition is 
 concerned, this might be supplied, as in the last case, 
 by the composition of the expository homily being 
 required, as well as that of the regular sermon. As 
 
THE SPECIAL EDUCATION OF TUE CLERGY. 13 
 
 regards spoken exposition, the practice will fall under 
 the next head of preaching. 
 
 The Church has also a right to the fall outpouring 
 of the minister's heart in unwritten address. He who 
 cannot sj^eak to his people without book has never 
 learned the most effectual method of influencing them 
 from the pulpit. 
 
 The requisites for good unwritten address are two 
 — what to say, and how to say it. As our Clergy 
 are now sent out, sometimes neither of these is 
 present ; no store of matter has been laid up, no 
 j^ractice in public speaking has been acquired. Some- 
 times there is the store of matter, but without the 
 readiness or the confidence requisite for the putting 
 it into words ; more often, alas, the power of speaking 
 is present, but what to say worthily has never been 
 furnished ; and the result is, the common-place ex- 
 tempore preacher, washy or flashy, — the speaker 
 against time, — the deliverer of one sermon only under 
 various disguises, than whom a more unprofitable 
 cumberer of our pulpits does not exist. It is such as 
 these who have brought the great art of pulpit 
 oratory into disgrace among us — an art which, let 
 me remind you, employs perhaps more, and more 
 simultaneously, than any other, all the highest facul- 
 ties with which we are gifted. For it brings into 
 wonderful contemporary exercise the memory, draw- 
 
14 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 ing from her stores of treasured knowledge ; the 
 judgment, accepting and rejecting ; the plastic power 
 of the creative imagination, clothing in fit words; 
 the fire of the burning heart, in which those words 
 are tempered and made to glow with present life ; 
 the utterance of the ready tongue, pouring forth its 
 periods, now rapid and voluble, easily and quickly 
 apprehended, now grave and well weighed, and of 
 measured march, because time is needed for their 
 effect. Nor are the external organs idle in this truly 
 wonderful concentration of huinan powers ; the ear 
 with its judgment of cadence and rhythm ; the eye 
 keeping watch for effect on the hearers, ready to 
 report the kindling glow of sympathy on the upturned 
 faces, or to give warning of the drooping eye and 
 the flagging attention. I ask, is it excusable in us 
 as a Church not to cultivate this greatest of all the 
 instruments of pulpit influence ? 
 
 And how may it best be cultivated ? At school, 
 the foundation may be laid, in the more frequent and 
 more general practice of speaking and reading in 
 public. But I am sensible that this is the portion of 
 the ministerial work for which it seems least possible 
 to provide adequate preparation. At College, what is 
 done in this direction must be more among students 
 themselves, than as any part of the University course. 
 In the clerical apprenticeship following the B.A. 
 
THE SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE CLERGY. 15 
 
 degree, some practice might be gained, but scanty in 
 amount and inferior in kind. The pupil might be 
 set to conduct the cottage lecture in the presence of 
 his incumbent, and might from him receive hints as 
 to his faults or promise of efficiency. 
 
 But in this matter we must look rather to furnish- 
 ing the mind, and training its faculties, than to direct 
 practice. It would be far from desirable that a very 
 young man, imperfectly furnished with matter, should 
 be habituated to extempore public speaking. Such 
 practice would of itself lead to empty declamation, 
 which of all things we are striving to avoid. 
 
 So that I see no way except, simultaneously with 
 imparting a sound theological and homiletic educa- 
 tion, to impress on our candidates the duty of making 
 the free address a part of their pastoral work ; giving 
 them, perhaps, special lectures on this kind of j)reach- 
 iug, pointing out to them its dangers, and teaching 
 them how to use its immense powers to the best 
 account. 
 
 For practice, we must look to the Parochial work 
 itself. Years on years are wanted, before a Clergy- 
 man acquires the full power and can wield the entire 
 resources of unwritten preaching : bef e he becomes 
 thoroughly aware of its great difficulties, and regards 
 it, not as a saving of time and trouble, but as his 
 highest and hardest effort, and the written sermon 
 
16 ESSAYS AXD ADDRESSES. 
 
 not as the greater, but as the lesser toil of the 
 two. 
 
 On Eeadixg I have not much to say. Here the 
 main work must be done at school, in lessons and 
 prizes in reading, before any special direction is 
 given. If this were the case, I believe that the end 
 desired with regard to our Clergy would be attained. 
 It is not directions how to read this or that which we 
 want, but general instruction in the art of reading 
 well. We want to get rid of the slovenly reader, the 
 drawling reader, the pompous reader, the emphatic* 
 reader ; of the gentleman who, as my Parish Clerk 
 once remarked to me of a casual helper, reads the 
 Lessons as if he had made them : in a word, of all 
 marked peculiarity. 
 
 For our own solemn services ought not to be an 
 exhibition of reading, but a reverent and effective 
 utterance of the prayers of the congregation, and of 
 the inspired Word of God ; and we may say of 
 reading, as Pericles says of the gentler sex, that 
 the best reading is that which provokes least re- 
 mark, and he among us wins the highest praise, 
 of whom a devout parishioner, on being asked how 
 
 * This was much found fault with at the time ; but I repeat it delibe- 
 rately. The reader who has been taught where to lay his emphasis, is a 
 hinderer of effect, as compared with him whose emphasis is the result of 
 cultivated common sense ; and I am mistaken if the result of cultivation of 
 his common sense be not an almost entire absence of emphasis. 
 
THE SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE CLERGY. 17 
 
 liis minister reads, might ans-u^er, that he never 
 observed. 
 
 Here as elsewhere, that which is empty makes the 
 most clatter ; and a studied manner of reading gene- 
 rally shows that the study has not extended much 
 further. The danger of reading Scripture amiss will 
 be obviated by adequate knowledge of the meaning 
 of the sacred text : and the first timidity might be 
 overcome by the practice, which I take it for granted 
 would be general, of the Clerical pupil reading the 
 Lessons in Church. This might also furnish oppor- 
 tunity for hints to be given as to intonation and the 
 management of the voice— if indeed these have not 
 been already furnished at school. 
 
 It will be seen that I have spoken as if the Uni- 
 versities, and they alone, were to be the schools for 
 our Clergy. That this cannot exclusively be the 
 case, I am well aware : but surely the more we 
 approximate to it, the better we shall be furnished 
 with efficient ministers. If the Universities require 
 supplementing, let it be done by other colleges, pro- 
 vided they be conducted under University sanction, 
 and subject to regular inspection from the Univer- 
 sities ; and provided their candidates be required to 
 pass, not their own college examinations only, but 
 that appointed for the University candidates also. 
 
 The only excuse for such institutions would be the 
 
 c 
 
18 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 pressure of numbers ; for I cannot see that the 
 adoption of a lower sumptuary standard ought to be 
 admitted as a reason for sacrificing the immense 
 advantages of University education. On the one 
 hand, I am sure that the opening of any inlet into 
 holy orders which would lower the average social 
 position and influence of our Clergy, would be unad- 
 visable ; and on the other, I am persuaded that every 
 reasonable facility for diminished expense might be 
 gained by foundations at the Universities themselves. 
 What we want is not a larger supply of men at all 
 hazards, but an effectual guarantee for adequate 
 training. And this is only to be found at those 
 great central institutions which are in the full gaze 
 of the public eye, and acted on directly by the ex- 
 pression of the opinion of the Church. 
 
 If I may seem to have dealt but little with the 
 personal religious character of candidates for the 
 ministry, and the means of subserving it, the reason 
 has been because that gravest of all requisites did 
 not seem to come within the actual scope of my 
 subject, but rather to underlie all I might say^ and 
 necessarily to be presupposed. If the heart be not 
 right with God, no amount of theological acquire- 
 ment, or of pastoral training, will make an efficient 
 minister. It is for us to gather the material and lay 
 the pile ; it is the fire from heaven alone that can 
 
THE SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE CLEEGY. 19 
 
 kindle it. By the increased efforts of Christian 
 parents, by the recognised power of Christian baptism, 
 by the mighty pleadings of the Church in prayer, 
 may we gain the outpouring of the blessed Spirit, 
 which may multiply among us men of God ; but by 
 our patient care, and diligent culture, and wise pro- 
 vision, are we to bring about that the man of God 
 may be thoroughly furnished for the work to which 
 that Holy Ghost hath called him. 
 
 C 2 
 
11. 
 
 PREACHING: ITS ADAPTATION TO THE 
 PRESENT TIMES. 
 
 AN ADDRESS EEAD AT THE NORWICH CHURCH 
 CONGRESS, 1865. 
 
A SSUMINGr that our preaching is not sufficiently 
 adapted to the present times, I may begin by 
 saying that I conceive one principal cause of the 
 defect to lie in want of training for the pulpit. Some 
 care is now bestowed to make our clergy theologians ; 
 we still take none to make them preachers. Nor is 
 there much practice gained as the untaught work 
 goes on. At the Bar and in the Senate, every day's 
 experience is a lesson. The novice can observe the 
 defects and the merits of others, and can measure his 
 own successes and failures. A young clergyman 
 hears for years perhaps his own voice only, perhaps 
 but one besides his own. And success and failure 
 are spread over too long periods, and are too partial 
 and questionable, to exercise any real influence over 
 his method of proceeding. 
 
24 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 And I do not conceive special training to be im- 
 practicable. I will remind you that at the last 
 Congress I ventured to look for this training partly 
 to the Universities, partly to private clerical in- 
 struction under the sanction of the Bishop. As this 
 defect is sup|)lied, much of what now obstructs the 
 power of the pulpit will be removed. 
 
 In our training, regard ought to be had to the 
 state of the people, and to the history of the age. A 
 preacher is addressing persons who have lived through 
 certain changes of thought, and have laid up certain 
 stores of experience. He who is unacquainted with 
 these comes to them at a disadvantage, and speaks 
 anachronisms. A young preacher ought to know 
 the history of religious opinion in our land, especially 
 as to its recent and even now proceeding movements. 
 These need not be his subjects of address ; but they 
 ought to lie in the background, and to be had regard 
 to in what he says. 
 
 Local peculiarities should also not escape notice. 
 Our young clergy are generally sent to their cures 
 in ignorance on this point. Preaching ought to be 
 different in its character for differing populations. 
 Yet even so simple an axiom is often neglected. 
 Sermons of the same type and cast of thought are 
 served out to all classes alike. If the candidate for 
 orders received private clerical training in or near to 
 
PREACHING: ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. 25 
 
 the district where he is to labour, this would no 
 longer be so. 
 
 It is to training that we must also look for better 
 acquaintance with the sacred text, and more power 
 of explaining it aright. In this respect the faults of 
 our preaching are deplorable. It is not unusual to 
 hear texts taken without regard to the context in 
 which they occur, their very terms being often mis- 
 constructed and misunderstood. Sometimes a word 
 supplied by the translators is made emphatic, and 
 insisted on as principal in the sentence ; the word 
 which really carries the weight of meaning being 
 passed over as unimportant.* We cannot expect this 
 to be otherwise with those who never have studied 
 the Scriptures with a view to dividing them rightly : 
 but it will be our grievous fault, if we suffer another 
 generation to go forth into our pulpits equally un- 
 prepared. 
 
 I would venture to suggest whether the licence to 
 preach might not be made less a matter of course 
 than it is at present. The question is a difficult and 
 delicate one ; but it is not therefore to be altogether 
 put by. Common sense seems to say that the power 
 to preach should be tested before the duty is under- 
 taken. The difficulty is, that the only feasible time 
 of applying the test is too early in life for the trial to 
 be a fair one. Powers might be afterwards de- 
 
26 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 veloped, in presence of the work itself, wliich would 
 not appear during preliminary training. Still, more 
 might be done in this way than is done ; and a,t least 
 there ought to be some means of preventing im- 
 portant posts in the Church being filled by men 
 notoriously incompetent as preachers. A Bishop 
 ought not to be required to institute to such benefices 
 persons whose pulpit ministrations have hitherto 
 proved inert or obstructive. 
 
 Let me now come to those improvements which 
 may be put in force by ourselves in our present 
 practice. And first, as to our written sermons. I 
 am persuaded that a pgprtial breaking down of their 
 present formality would vastly increase their interest 
 and their power. To begin with the text. It is, of 
 course, desirable that there should be sermons, whose 
 argument or persuasion proceeds in accordance with 
 or in amplification of certain inspired words. But 
 it may be questioned whether our rigid practice of 
 putting the text at the outset might not be with 
 advantage varied. It was usual with some of our 
 elder divines, and is now on the Continent, to intro- 
 duce the text by some considerations leading to it, as, 
 for example, the general circumstances of the day or 
 season, or other particular inducement wliich in- 
 fluenced the preacher in his choice of a subject ; or a 
 statement of the exact phase of the truth which he 
 
PREACHING : ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. 27 
 
 wishes to present, or an earnest pleading on some 
 defective point, afterwards enforced by the sacred 
 words. A text thus introduced, thus accounted for, 
 will come with more force than if it were always 
 abruptly given out, merely because such is the 
 custom. Sometimes indeed it may be well to place 
 our text far on in the sermon, or even towards the 
 end. Our object is to imjDress on our people the 
 sacred words ; and it is for us to consider whether 
 this may not be done in various ways, instead of 
 always in one only. Again, it is surely not of neces- 
 sity that a sermon should always have a text. The 
 free treatment of the subject might sometimes be 
 more impressive than the grouping that treatment 
 rigidly round some Scriptural expression. Such form 
 of composition is not unknown to us under the name 
 of an " address ; " but why should it not be ranked as 
 a sermon, and have its due place and recurrence ? 
 
 Next, as to arrangement. The formal first, second, 
 third, and conclusion, is no doubt occasionally useful. 
 Some minds require it to take hold by ; some again 
 are the better for its precision. But when used, let 
 these divisions be always real, not fictitious : de- 
 pendent on worthy associations of thought, not on 
 trifling and unworthy ones. It is only a fallacy, and 
 causes disorder of thought, to lead a hearer onward 
 by mere alliterations, or by headings whose sequence 
 
28 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 is purely fanciful. Order without a reason is only 
 disorder without its excuse. And when the " heading " 
 system is adopted, the sermon is thereby pledged to 
 lucid and careful distribution according to the heads. 
 The arrangement must carry its own justification, 
 and be well pointed for its particular effect. And even 
 then, if it be adopted too often, it becomes formal 
 and tiresome, and a hindrance instead of a helf). 
 
 But it is one thing to proclaim the divisions of a 
 sermon, another to arrange it under divisions unpro- 
 claimed. All preaching ought to follow some natural 
 sequence of thought ; but the steps of this sequence 
 are often best kept out of view, so that the subject 
 itself, and not its artificial arrangement, may engage 
 the mind of the hearer. 
 
 There are two portions in every sermon, on which 
 its interest, at the time and afterwards, very much 
 depends; its beginning, and its end. Whether the 
 text precede or follow the former of these, one thing 
 must be remembered ; if the first sentences do not 
 ensure attention, it will not easily be gained after- 
 wards. We should make, not affected and startling 
 beginnings, but at the same time not weak and com- 
 monplace ones. The first words should be weighty 
 and impressive. They may either take the hearer 
 in medias res at once, by putting the difficulty of the 
 text or subject in the form of a question to be 
 
PREACHING : ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. 29 
 
 answered, or they may set before him some Scripture 
 or other history, bearing on that which is to be 
 treated, — or state forcibly some recent event or some 
 current opinion, which it will be the object of the 
 sermon to comment on. The conclusion is equally 
 important. The last few minutes should not be 
 spent in diluting the effect of what has gone before. 
 It is natural that we should dismiss our hearers with 
 the mention of that future perfection in the Divine 
 presence to which every Christian effort tends ; but 
 this should not be formally nor monotonously done. 
 The subject previously treated should be kept in 
 view to the last, and all general perorations should 
 he tinted with its tone and character, leaving on the 
 ear a sound full of the spirit of the sermon, not alien 
 from it. And let this sound be the last, except the 
 prayer to bless it, and the final Benediction. Singing 
 after sermon is a mistake^ if the conclusion have been 
 such as we desire. As things are now, it is fre- 
 quently a gain, inasmuch as any devout frame of mind 
 is better than the listlessness of wearied attention. 
 
 These last words lead on to the question as to the 
 desirable length in preaching. Most of our written 
 sermons are too long. It is not the fancied require- 
 ments of the subject, but the well-known effect on the 
 hearers, which is to be considered. Few sermons of 
 forty-five minutes or an hour might not have been 
 
30 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 better compressed into half an hour, wliich should 
 certainly be our ordinary maximum. If, in the con- 
 densation, the expletives are struck out, and fine 
 writing pruned away, so much the better. We all 
 aim too much at rhetorical effect. We all confuse 
 our arguments too much by illustration. In com- 
 posing, we ought to ask ourselves what is most 
 likely to penetrate the hearts of our hearers and to 
 abide there ; and the answer, if we give it honestly, 
 unbiassed by personal vanity, will be, earnest thought 
 expressed in simple words. We are apt to forget, 
 even while we profess it, that " we preach not our- 
 selves but Christ Jesus the Lord ;" and while in the 
 matter of our sermons He is chief, in their diction 
 and style we are often aiming to get ourselves credit 
 by the setting forth of Him. 
 
 There is nothing which req[uires more unsparing 
 self-denial than the really effective sermon. All 
 mere display of learning, all " pride that apes humi- 
 lity," all that savours of petty cleverness, all that, 
 when read over, flatters the man, should be ruthlessly 
 erased. Let the sentences be plain and intelligible, 
 going about their work, and nothing but their work, 
 freed from the hindrances thrown in its way by 
 unusual words, startling or obscure thoughts, and 
 traps laid for applause. 
 
 We need not preach down to our simplest hearer. 
 
PREACHING: ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. 31 
 
 A feast must not be all crumbs. He who labours 
 under a disadvantage compared with those around 
 him, must, .as everywhere else, so in church also, 
 suffer from that disadvantage. The only way in 
 which the simple and ignorant can gain instruction 
 is, from portions understood and recollected in that 
 which, though simple, carries no affectation of igno- 
 rance. Sermons professedly to cliildren are always 
 failures ; being, on account of this affectation, the 
 very worst adapted to children's understanding. 
 There was One who preached to children that which 
 children love ; but it was by His parables, containing 
 dejDths which the wisest cannot fathom. We shall 
 preach best to the simplest, if we preach simply 
 to all. 
 
 And one guarantee for this simplicity will be 
 earnestness and genuineness. Much of the failure of 
 preaching in our day is owing to men not feeling, 
 or not ajDpearing to feel, what they say. A clergy- 
 man's ordinary life is known as matter of fact ; his 
 conversation is patent to all. What he believes, 
 what he feels, on a hundred subjects, his friends and 
 acquaintance know well. But for two half-hours in 
 the week he stands and says things totally different 
 from his sayings at any other time. His thoughts 
 and feelings seem to belong to a different being. 
 They may be good and admirable ; well expressed 
 
32 ESSAYS AND ADDBE8SES. 
 
 and delivered. But who cares for sermons which 
 are not reflected in the hfe ? 
 
 I am not referring now to the graver fault — a 
 man's want of practice of his own preaching, — hut to 
 the almost equally fatal one, his want of sympathy 
 with it : his acting two men — one out of the pulpit, 
 and one in it. We must not always judge this 
 harshly as regards the preacher himself It is not in 
 all cases due to the want of personal religion. I 
 have known it to be so with some of the deepest and 
 most earnest personal Christians — men who would 
 wear themselves out for their flocks, and for the love 
 of Him who sent them. 
 
 It is more the fault of the system, than of the 
 men. There is a divergen(?e between the formal 
 language and thought of the pulpit, and the realities 
 of the life within and without. The force of habit 
 has rendered us different men when preaching and 
 when not preaching. We hear of men overflowing 
 with zeal and love, that they are miserable preachers; 
 and mainly for this reason. The fault is naturally 
 most difficult to overcome ; but it is one so destruc- 
 tive of all the uses of preaching, that no one of us 
 ought tamely to rest under it. If change of place, 
 or form, or time of address, tend to remedy it, let 
 such change be adopted, if it be only for a while, till 
 a better habit is gained. Surely any experiment 
 
PREACHING: ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. 33 
 
 ought to be tried, within the bounds of decorum, 
 which might remove a weight from the preacher's 
 tongue, and give him free utterance of what is at his 
 heart. I beHeve that we all are too apt to regard 
 the sermon as a thing entirely sui generis — as a 
 venerable institution, instead of a mere instrument 
 of conviction and persuasion. We fancy that it 
 requires conventional phrases and forms of thought, 
 and that the free expression of the feelings and 
 yearnings of the heart is out of place. We shrink 
 from allusion to matters of present interest, as 
 beneath the dignity of the pulpit. If such things 
 are at all introduced, it is in so disguised a form as 
 hardly to be recognised. The descriptions are stilted 
 and unreal : as far off actual life as a group of 
 statuary. Surely the pulpit would lose none of its 
 real dignity at the hands of men of intelligence and 
 judgment, by condescending more to real life. It 
 cannot be difficult to touch close on men's habits and 
 practices without mentioning by name things trivial 
 or ludicrous. 
 
 Another cause of unreality is the prescription of 
 motives and states of mind which have no meaning 
 for our hearers. It is not uncommon to hear sermons 
 delivered with the purest intention, by the best men, 
 and sometimes with great earnestness and ability, 
 which have absolutely no point of contact with 
 
 D 
 
34 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 religious life, as it is and must be among ourselves. 
 The preacher has been to his books only, not to his 
 people and to his own heart. 
 
 But of this source of inefficiency itself we shall do 
 well to seek an account. Our lot has been cast far 
 on in a great religious movement. Of the wild stir 
 of our fathers' days, and of our own youth, only the 
 faint echoes have reached the bulk of our present 
 hearers. Over the living sense of the theological 
 terms which we use, grand battles of the Church 
 have been fought ; into the work which God gave 
 those terms to do, holy men threw their yearnings 
 and their lives. But many of those words have 
 survived their first fervid meaning, and have out- 
 lasted the reality of their work. It may be that our 
 theology, even though created by the Divine Word, 
 and breathed upon by the Almighty Spirit, needs to 
 touch anew the mother soil of the human heart, that 
 it may spring up invigorated for the battles of the 
 Lord. 
 
 Another great hindrance to the effect of our 
 preaching is, the spirit of party. It is heart-sicken- 
 ing to go to church to be fed and edified, and to 
 come away having heard nothing but a tirade 
 against those who believe in the same Lord, and are 
 doing the same work as the preacher. 
 
 But the evil prevails among men of more worth 
 
PREACHING : ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. 36 
 
 and weight than the mere disclaimers against others. 
 The Church is divided into sections, distinguished by 
 their Hues of thought and modes of expression. A 
 preacher makes it an object to stand well with that 
 section to which he is commonly reputed to belong. 
 He reflects its peculiarities, he uses none but its 
 well-known phrases. If he happen to stray over the 
 line, and allow himself to take up the other side of 
 truth, criticism is busy with him. Any ingenious 
 freedom of thought and speech opens him to remark. 
 He is tempted to speak, not all that he feels to be 
 true, but only so much of it as he dares to utter. 
 
 And thus our preaching becomes exclusive and 
 one-sided. The Churchman of the opposite party, 
 who might be won by the slightest fair recognition 
 of the great side of truth for which he contends, 
 departs, loathing the teaching which seems to shut 
 him out, and conscious in his own heart of earnest 
 faith which the preacher has ignored or even 
 negatived. 
 
 This will not be remedied, until we learn to 
 recognise in our teaching more of the history of the 
 great currents of religious thought, and also learn to 
 know one another and trust one another far more 
 than we do ; until we cease to make the mere watch- 
 words of party the staple of our discourses, and deal 
 
 D 2 
 
36 ESSAYS AND ADDEESSES. 
 
 with truth as largely as the Bible deals with it, and 
 as the heart of man apprehends it. . 
 
 The two great parties will still retain their own 
 bias. As long as the Church endures, one man will 
 value more the individual subjective life, another the 
 associated and objective. One will lay hold on 
 the Person of our glorified Head by direct acts 
 of faith, another by the Sacraments and their ap- 
 pointed ministers. And each, in doing so, will be in 
 his proper work, provided he give due place for the 
 view of the other, and take into account not one side 
 only, but the whole of that truth which is made up 
 of both views together. 
 
 It is impossible not to say something of the dis- 
 advantage at which those preach in oiu* day, who 
 treat timidly or disingenuously the labours of criti- 
 cism and science. Let there be fewer and fewer 
 among us, who are in these respects defending un- 
 tenable positions merely by strong and despotic 
 words; fewer and fewer of such little faith as not 
 to believe that researches into truth will at last be 
 guided into truth ; fewer, who know not that every 
 truth, wherever and by whomsoever found, is a gain 
 for God's cause and God's Word. Let our attitude 
 be manly, open, and fearless. Above all, let us never 
 adopt nor approach the pious fraud, in dealing with 
 
PREACHING: ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. 37 
 
 Scripture or with nature. Never was there a time 
 when such artifices were easier of detection or more 
 fatal in their consequences. He who can bring him- 
 self to speak lightly of diflSculties which in his heart 
 he feels, or to propound solutions which in his heart 
 he rejects, must not be surprised if the result of his 
 ministry be found on the side of unbelief. The 
 position of the clergy of the Church of England in 
 regard of Scripture criticism and of science is a high 
 and solemn one ; let us not abdicate it, let us not 
 disgrace it. 
 
 I am persuaded that one considerable hindrance to 
 the effectiveness of preaching in our times has been, 
 the undue multiplication of charity sermons. One 
 of the greatest of our London preachers — called away 
 from us, alas, in the full vigour of his pleading for 
 God* — was wont to say, in his strong language, that 
 it was surely a monstrous thing to be obliged so 
 often to suspend his own work, in order to provide 
 common funds for institutions which it was the 
 bounden duty of the whole people to uphold. 
 
 The mind of the great Apostle on this point is 
 very clearly expressed : " That there be no gather- 
 ings when I come." He would not have his office 
 of teaching interfered with, and his power of apos. 
 
 The late John Hampden Gui'uey. 
 
38 USSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 tolic injimction abused, for the purpose of exciting 
 the people to perform the ordinary duty of alms- 
 giving. 
 
 And it would surely be well if those in high place 
 in our own Church followed his example. The 
 present practice is most undesirable. The dinner 
 and sermon system, on which many of our great 
 charities mainly subsist, has confessedly nothing to 
 be said for it, but that it brings in money which is 
 unattainable by other means. The Church, in ac- 
 cordance with the Apostle's rule, has provided the 
 regular incentives to almsgiving — certain sentences 
 of Holy Scripture, read on the first day of each week 
 as a part of her regular public service. There 
 will, of course, be special occasions requiring par- 
 ticular appeal and explanation ; but if the prescribed 
 channel of* almsgiving, the weekly offertory, were 
 restored to its proper activity, more than half of our 
 charity sermons might be spared, and those that 
 were left would become far more solemn realities. 
 
 Much has been said on the written sermon, which 
 applies alike to all preaching. It only remains that 
 we make a few special remarks on the other kinds. 
 
 We sadly need more set exposition of Scripture in 
 its context and argument. Preaching entirely from 
 mere texts, has induced a distorted and fragmentary 
 view of Holy Writ, and has effectually taught men 
 
PBEACHING: ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. 39 
 
 liow not to understand it. One sermon in the day 
 might well be expository. The portions appointed 
 in the service will suggest varying subjects ; and 
 when no great themes claim precedence, whole 
 sections or even books might be taken in hand 
 as a series. But these serial expositions will need 
 watching : they are apt to weary the hearers if 
 unintermitted, and if discontinuous, to lose their 
 interest. Advent and Lent will perhaps be the 
 fittest opportunities, as both justifying the practice 
 and limiting it. Exposition is best unwritten : pro- 
 vided that the necessary conditions, previous careful 
 study, and self-possessed and free expression, be 
 fulfilled. He whose eye is on a book has no chance 
 against him whose eye is on yours : nor he whose 
 words have been set down for him, as compared 
 with him who passes freely from thought to thought. 
 Every preacher should strive after the power of 
 unwritten exposition of Scripture. Where the man 
 is in earnest, the mind carefully stored, and the 
 heart full, I believe that the cases of failure will be 
 found very rare. 
 
 We thus come to speak of the unwritten sermon, 
 the free utterance of the well-stored mind, the 
 yearning heart, and the ready tongue. Witl^ all 
 its immense advantages, it labours under this dis- 
 advantage, that it may be counterfeited by mere 
 
40 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 volubility. And thus, while it might become our 
 most powerful engine for good, its abuse has greatly 
 contributed to lower the influence of the pulpit 
 among us. Most mischievous and most inexcusable 
 is the preacher who, having nothing really to say, 
 yet speaks his half-hour or more of wretched com- 
 monplace Sunday after Sunday, almost without pre- 
 paration at all. Worthily to preach without book, 
 costs beyond comparison the most careful prepara- 
 tion, the greatest anxiety in the forethought, the 
 hardest labour in the act. And the effect of 
 thoroughly good preaching of this kind is high 
 in proportion. As long as it is not cultivated among 
 us, we are leaving the flower and crown of per- 
 suasion for others to grasp. The man who is in the 
 pulpit what our great masters of pleadiiig are at 
 the Bar and in the Senate, is almost unknown to the 
 Church in England. The few seeming exceptions 
 only make the necessity of culture more apparent. 
 The genius which they manifest might, with train- 
 ing, have become effective eloquence ; but now it is 
 erratic, and misses its aim. Men who might have 
 held the hearts and wielded the energies of vast 
 multitudes, are wasting their powers in mere rheto- 
 rical displays, or in raising fair fabrics of speech 
 whose logical foundations are unsound. 
 
 The method of training for public oratory, and the 
 
PREACHING: ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. 41 
 
 safe limits of its exercise, I ventured to suggest at 
 the last Congress, and to what was then said I am 
 obliged now to refer. 
 
 Surely a more solemn position cannot be conceived 
 than that of him who stands and preaches to a con- 
 gregation. From each of those upturned faces there 
 looks out a soul for which Christ died. In that post 
 of vantage stands Christ's ambassador, pleading, con- 
 straining, admonishing. To each of them, he speaks 
 as none else can speak. They are come expressly to 
 be dealt with in God's name. The words which he 
 uses, the motives which he urges, will never be 
 charged with being too serious for the occasion. He 
 can assume, and they will grant, truths which else- 
 where would not pass unchallenged. In private and 
 in society, pride, rivalry, antagonism, come in to 
 withstand the truth. The man is on his defence, 
 mounting guard over the fair front of his building. 
 But here the heart is in its inner chamber, listening 
 for the whispers of truth. Behind those faces work 
 conviction, sympathy, longing desire. " I am the 
 man ;" " God be merciful to me a sinner ;" " Let me 
 spend and be spent ;" " that I were gentle, and 
 holy, and pure ! " — these are the thoughts that the 
 preacher is able to waken ; these the springs of life 
 that he can touch. 
 
 Let us reflect that every Sunday at noon, there are 
 
42 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 in our land many thousands thus employed in speak- 
 ing, many hundreds of thousands in thus listening;, — 
 and we shall have some idea of the vastness of the 
 agency of which we treat. Its results for good, even 
 now, may not be obtrusive or self-assertive ; they may 
 not be distinctly traceable in the spread of any one 
 particular line of persuasion ; they may be constantly 
 vilified and ignored ; but they are none the less real 
 and substantial. Let us not depreciate them, but 
 strive to multiply them tenfold. If within the 
 Church energy is languishing, and love waxing cold, 
 let us not think scorn to lay aside our prescribed 
 habits and cherished proprieties — nay, even, if it 
 must be so, to become foolish and despised, for His 
 work who emptied Himself of His glory for us. If 
 without the infidel rages and is confident, — and to 
 answer him now seem like buckling on the shield 
 when the dart has entered and is rankling, — let us, by 
 simple, earnest proclaiming of our blessed Master, 
 by laying forth His Word, and making real His 
 ordinances, maintain that living and childlike faith, 
 that sober and healthy Church life, which may pre- 
 clude the unbeliever's access to us, and ensure him no 
 sympathy among us. 
 
III. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT GLASGOW, 
 DECEMBER, 1867. 
 
TT seems to me that, in these days, our thoughts on 
 the Christian Conscience want reviewing and 
 clearing. Its origin, its description, its operation, 
 and present extent of influence on public and private 
 opinion and action, may perhaps profitably be made 
 matter for an essay. 
 
 " The good that I would, I do not : but the evil 
 which I would not, that I do." (Rom. vii. 19.) 
 Who are these two — the I that desires — the I that 
 acts ? Not two persons : for it is one and the same 
 Paul that both desires and acts. Nor can we say 
 that both are the simple and consistent doings of one 
 and the same person. There is a complication, there 
 is a conflict, there is a coercion. A' desire to act in 
 one way arises within : this desire is thwarted, and 
 action is hindered. A reluctance to act in another 
 
46 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 way is felt : the reluctance is overborne, and action 
 takes place. And this is not as when the body re- 
 fuses the bidding of the will ; when energy is sus- 
 pended by lassitude,. or the desire of quiet broken by 
 nervous excitement. Those conflicts, those defeats, 
 are temporary ; but this is enduring. Those are 
 between the flesh and the will : this is within the 
 will itself For in this description, there are two 
 wills. We will one way, we act another way. But 
 no man can be j)roperly said to act without willing ; 
 the motion of conscious action is voluntary, abstinence 
 from that motion is voluntary also. So that within 
 the man is a will saying, " I will," and protesting 
 against the will which is carried out in action : 
 sitting, so to speak, bound, and witnessing its own 
 defeat. And when we come to inquire about this 
 deposed, this frustrated will, there can be no question 
 that it is the nobler, the higher of the two, though it 
 be thus defeated. For it bears testimony for good 
 and against evil : whereas its victorious adversary 
 thwarts the good, and carries out the evil. 
 
 So then we find ourselves in the presence of these 
 two phenomena in man : a higher will, a nobler con- 
 sciousness, testifying to good, protesting against evil, 
 but overborne; and a lower will, a less noble con- 
 sciousness, putting aside the good, choosing the evil, 
 and commonly prevailing. And we may observe 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 47 
 
 that both these are resident in the inner man, not be- 
 longing the one to the inner, the other to the outer. 
 However the, lower will may become entangled with, 
 and enslaved by, the bodily emotions, it is yet a 
 decision given not in nor by the body, but in and 
 by the mind. 
 
 But now let us go a step further, and let us sup- 
 pose that in some given case the higher will obtains 
 the mastery, and that the word of command which 
 the mind gives to the body to act or not to act, pro- 
 ceeds not from the lower will but from the higher ; 
 or, if necessarily from the lower, then from the lower 
 subordinated to and absorbed into the higher. Let 
 us suppose, in other words, a state of things which 
 would be expressed by " The good that I would do, 
 that do I : and the evil which I would not do, that 
 do I not." Manifestly, this is no impossible suppo- 
 sition, but one which is often, though not ordinarily, 
 realised in fact. 
 
 What have we now obtained ? Why this : that 
 my practical will, the ruler of the acts which I do, 
 and the non-acts which I refuse to do, lies open to 
 two distinct influences — one drawing it upward, in 
 the direction of good and to the avoidance of evil, 
 the other drawing it downward, in a direction which 
 may lead to the adoption of evil, and to the avoid- 
 ance of good. And there can be no question that 
 
48 ESSAYS AND ADDBESSES. 
 
 this my practical will emanates directly from, and 
 is the expression of, my personality : that it is the 
 exponent of myself. 
 
 But let us advance a step further in this prelimi- 
 nary examination. This practical will, of which we 
 have spoken, is the result of thought, is the issue of 
 determination. Are thought and determination j)ecu- 
 liar to man ? Certainly not. Every kind of organ- 
 ized animal life, in its measure and after its kind, 
 possesses them. The practical will may be as limi.ted 
 as in the oyster, or as free as in the eagle ; but it is 
 equally in obedience to it, that conscious animal 
 action takes place. In man, of all animals, its capa- 
 cities are greatest ; but its nature is not distinct. In 
 man, with all its intellectual powers and wide-reach- 
 ing susceptibilities, it is but the animal soul ; in the 
 lowest organized being, with all its narrowness and 
 dulness, it is the animal soul still. The Greeks, in 
 their wonderfully accurate language, expressed by 
 the same term {^Irvxt), psyche), the soul of man which 
 he has to save, and the life of the reptile which man 
 crushes under his foot. And it would have been 
 immensely for our profit if we had done the same. 
 For then we should have understood what very few 
 now do understand, the true nature, the true place, 
 of this our intellectual and emotional being. We 
 then should have read in our Bibles not only, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 49 
 
 " Whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; and 
 whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall find 
 it ; " but also (for the same word is used), " For what 
 is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world 
 and lose his own life ? Or what shall a man give in 
 exchange for his life ? " For it is this life of man 
 that carries his practical will, with all those motions 
 of intellect and feeling which set it at work : it is the 
 life, which is mysteriously bound up with the body, 
 and which is reft from it at death ; it is this life, 
 which if a man spend upon God and upon good, he 
 shall save to life eternal. 
 
 Infinite misunderstanding, infinite mischief, has 
 arisen from confounding this animal soul of man 
 with his immortal part. We hear frequently, in fact 
 it is the usual and still commonly-received notion, 
 that man is compounded of two parts, the mortal 
 body, and the immortal soul. Whole sermons, whole 
 treatises, proceed on this view of man. Books of 
 argument have been written to prove the immortality 
 of the soul ; and have been for the most part written 
 in vain. The reasons alleged have been acute enough 
 in themselves, but capable of the easiest refutation. 
 The soul, it was maintained, was immortal because it 
 was indivisible, or because of some of the functions 
 which it performs independently of the body in 
 which it dwells. It was easy to see that this, if it 
 
 E 
 
50 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 proved anything, proved too much. For how is my 
 animal soul more indivisible than the animal soul of 
 my dog ? And what faculty have I that, after his 
 kind, he has not? No consideration of this sort in 
 fact proved more than the pretty conceit of our meta- 
 physical poet, — 
 
 " Thoughts whose very sweetness yicldeth proof 
 That they were born for immortality." * 
 
 There is absolutely no reason for believing, if man is 
 compounded only of body and soul, that he continues 
 to exist after this present life. The powers and 
 faculties of the soul decay with the decay of the 
 body. The same blow which ends the corporeal 
 organism, ends also the existence of animal self-con- 
 sciousness, which, as far as we know from any induc- 
 tive argument, is bound up with that organism. 
 
 Even the witness of nature herself was against 
 this twofold division of man. We do not, we cannot, 
 account ourselves a mere higher form of the brute, 
 as on this theory we must do. For according to it 
 we differ from the brute only in degree of intelligence 
 and higher bodily endowment, and not in any matter 
 of kind at all. Whereas it is the impregnable con- 
 viction of our race, unaffected by any adverse theories 
 of philosophers, that between the lowest intelligent 
 man, and the highest intelligent animal, there is a 
 
 * Wordswortli — ' Sonnet in King's College Chapel.' 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 61 
 
 gulf fixed, impassable by any mere intensification or 
 depreciation of existing faculties. 
 
 And wherein does the difference consist, that places 
 man on the one side of this gulf, and the brute on 
 the other ? man on the heavenward side, the brute 
 on the earthward ? Wherein, but in this, that 
 whereas man and the brutes have body and soul in 
 common, man has a third and higher part, which 
 none of the brutes possesses ? 
 
 And this third and higher part is, man's spirit ; 
 that portion of him in and by which he is conscious 
 of Grod. No created being on this earth is conscious 
 of God, but man. 
 
 " Of all the creatures, both on sea and land, 
 Only to man Thou hast made known Thy ways, 
 And put the pen alone into his hand. 
 And made him secretary of Thy praise." * 
 
 And he is thus conscious of God, not by virtue of a 
 higher degree of that which he possesses in common 
 with the lower tribes of animal life, but by virtue of 
 something which he alone is endowed with. No 
 mere animal has a conscience. An animal may be 
 trained, by hope of reward and fear of punishment, 
 to simulate the possession of a conscience — to behave 
 nearly as if conscious of right and wrong. An 
 animal may be acted on by its affections, all situated 
 in the animal soul, so as to lead it to consult, to be 
 
 * Dryden — ' Annus Mirabilis.' 
 
 E 2 
 
52 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 united to, even to anticipate, the wishes and feehngs 
 of another animal, or of a human master ; but no 
 animal ever knew wrong as wrong, or right as right ; 
 ever shrunk from inflicting pain on principle, or prac- 
 tised self-denial except emotionally. Conscience, the 
 source of the will that would do the good, that would 
 not do the evil, is entirely a function of that nobler 
 part, the spirit, which man possesses exclusively. 
 
 How do we know this ? What has enabled us to 
 detect, to describe, to reason upon, this higher portion 
 of the threefold nature of man ? I answer. We know 
 it by revelation. Holy Scrij^ture has revealed to us 
 not G-od only, but our own nature. This its threefold 
 division was not recognised, was not perceptible, by 
 the Greek philosophers. Wonderfully accurate and 
 keen as were their investigations, they could not 
 attain to this discovery, for it was altogether above 
 them. Neither again was it entirely made known 
 in Old Testament days ; nor could it be, in the 
 gradual unfolding of God to man, and of man to 
 himself. It is matter of Christian revelation. We 
 are first led into the secrets of our own nature, when 
 the entire redemption and renewal of that nature are 
 disclosed. 
 
 And in this disclosure, the Christian Scriptures, as 
 they stand entirely alone, so are they throughout 
 consistent with themselves in asserting this triple 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 53 
 
 nature of man. In fact, this consistency is kept in 
 all the anticipatory notices in the Old Testament also. 
 From the first description of man's creation, to the 
 latest notice of his state by redemption, the Scripture 
 account of him is one and the same, and is found 
 nowhere else. The body, created by the Almighty 
 out of the dust of the earth ; the divine nature 
 breathed into this body already organised, by God 
 Himself; the animal soul, common to man and the 
 brute creation, expressed by the same term in speak- 
 ing of the brutes and of man, carrying his person- 
 ality, being that which he was made to be, " and man 
 became a living soul." 
 
 I cannot refrain from further commenting on this 
 very important description, because the comment lies 
 so directly in our course of making plain this matter. 
 
 Man became this living soul. This was his cha- 
 racteristic : this was the hue which his being took. 
 He became this living soul, connected in its upper 
 portion with the Divine spirit breathed into him, 
 connected in its lower portion with the organized 
 body, with the inlets of the senses, with the earthly 
 and the bestial. Let "us mark this well. He was not 
 at first mainly spiritual, but mainly animal ; an ex- 
 ample, not of the spirit that gives life, but of the 
 soul, that lives by life given. This, we are told by 
 St. Paul in his grand reasoning on the words, was 
 
64 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 necessary : necessary, that the man should not be put 
 first into tlie sphere of the spiritual, but into the 
 sphere of the soulish, animal, nature. If we may 
 venture to supply the link missing here, we should 
 say it was necessary, because all Grod's works have 
 an upward progress, not a downward. Our race had 
 to emerge, not to be submerged : from being headed 
 by an Adam who was a living soul, to be headed by 
 an Adam who is a life-giving spirit, — not vice versa. 
 
 Well, then, what followed ? Man being thus con- 
 stituted, drawn upward, drawn downward, — himself, 
 so to speak, standing on the platform of the animal 
 life, — the downward influence prevailed ; the solici- 
 tations of sense overcame the pleadings of the Father 
 of his sjoirit. And what has been the result ? Had 
 the spirit prevailed, life would have been his charac- 
 teristic : the Divine Sj^irit would have endowed with 
 immortality the animal soul, and its vessel the body ; 
 but, the flesh having prevailed, death became the 
 characteristic. The earthly body was not lifted 
 above its natural infirmity of decay ; the animal 
 soul, with its emotions and its intelligences, passed 
 into a living death, bereft of the leading light of the 
 spirit, and having left only light enough to make its 
 darkness visible. The spirit, the informing, guiding, 
 elevating principle, shrunk up and dwindled almost 
 to nothing ; nay more, became corrupted by contact 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 55 
 
 with corruption, as well as by loss of its first guiding 
 principle. And in this shrunken and dwarfed and 
 corrupted state the spirit, the nobler part of man, has 
 continued ; not extinguished, but subsisting, as the 
 comparison has been aptly made, in the same way as 
 certain rudimental organs subsist in bodies which use 
 them not. Man has been, everywhere and in every 
 age, animal, or, as Scripture would say, psychical, — 
 the creature of his animal soul, not of his divine 
 spirit ; led by reason, led by imagination, led by 
 emotion, but not led by consciousness of God. And 
 yet, stunted and corrupted as man's spirit was and is, 
 it has never been extinct, nor has its better voice 
 been utterly silenced. Even when its higher func- 
 tions have been in abeyance, it has testified by the 
 conscience. Right, because it is right, has been 
 approved, even by men who did not practise it; 
 wrong, as being wrong, was disapproved, even while 
 it was being done. 
 
 But I said that conscience, in the ordinary natural 
 man, does little more than make the darkness visible; 
 and so it is. Even in the savage*, the spark remains 
 smouldering, but nothing more. As man rises in 
 civilisation, and in the training of the intellect, the 
 spark brightens and spreads, but it is a sjDark still. 
 It possesses no guiding light, no warming power. 
 In Christian lands first it breaks into a flame, and 
 
56 ESSAYS AND ADDBESSES. 
 
 begins to enlighten and cheer, because there first it is 
 that the law of the Spirit of life sets men free from 
 the law of sin and death ; there it is that the man's 
 spirit is revivified and endowed with its proper 
 growth, no longer stunted and dwarfed ; is put into 
 union with Him who is the principle of all life and 
 all growth, and in virtue of that union becomes par- 
 taker of His prerogative, and, with Him, is waiting 
 for all things to be put under its feet. 
 
 It is a grand and a glorious thing, this higher and 
 nobler part of man, dwelling in perpetual sunshine ; 
 this, of which we may say, almost with the poet, 
 that — 
 
 " Its great bright eye most silently 
 Up to the Throne is cast ; " 
 
 looking evermore above the letter of law to its 
 spirit ; casting its bare arms, free from the fetters of 
 precedent and human tradition, ever up into the pure 
 blue sky ; feeling for love, feeling for truth, feeling 
 for justice : — a grand and glorious, but a wayward 
 and a fitful thing : slumbering for centuries in 
 nations, dormant for long years of a man's life ; but 
 when it wakes, when it speaks, leading, at any cost, 
 however perilous, straight into conflict, straight into 
 solitude, straight into bereavement. 
 
 A strange thing too ; for it may speak ever so 
 low, and armies cannot silence it. Its utterances 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 57 
 
 may savour of folly, or of imprudence, or of inapti- 
 tude for practical life ; but they drop like seeds into 
 the great heart of mankind : they fashion policies, 
 they rule empires : that which was erewhile shouted 
 as the nickname of an enthusiast, that which was just 
 now branded upon the flesh of a martyr, shall before 
 long glitter in gems on a sceptre, and float out to the 
 breezes as the righteous emblazonment of a realm. 
 And a fearful and a dangerous thing it is too ; for in 
 the midst of successful iniquity, or disregarded 
 equity, let it but lift up its voice, and brave men turn 
 cowards ; let but one note of that voice be heard 
 from the lisping tongue of a child, and bold workers 
 of wrong, and busy toilers for gain, and the world's 
 idols, and the world's idlers, shrink and shrivel up, as 
 if the icy north had blown upon them ; because they 
 know that a power, swifter than the telegraph, and 
 keener than the lightning, prints all its words in that 
 book of remembrance which the angel shall hold open 
 when all mankind shall meet before God. 
 
 But we must not treat of men's conscience, even in 
 Christian countries, as being infallible, or universally 
 enlightened. It is clear in its testimony, it is trust- 
 worthy in its verdict, only in proportion as men have 
 become Christians. In every Christian land there 
 are a certain number of persons, greater or less, ac- 
 cording to the purity or corruption of its Christianity, 
 
58 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 who form, as it were, the focus of the bright h'ght 
 of the Christian conscience. Sometimes they are 
 banded together, and acting on the public : but this 
 can only be where the utterance of opinion is free. 
 And even in such lands, the men of pure and clear 
 Christian conscience often know not one another, 
 and work not together. They are separated by bar- 
 riers of rank, or of sect, or of other circumstance, 
 and it is not till God's Providence has made utter- 
 ance inevitable, that it is discovered how irresistible 
 a power was gathering in secret. Thoughts that it 
 would take a bold man to utter on a platform to-day, 
 may to-morrow be carried like a tide-wave over the 
 land, and may the next day have become a confessed 
 basis of national action. Of course, in lands where 
 utterance is not free, the Christian conscience is re- 
 pressed and borne down. But even there, it is, in 
 the long run, repressed and borne down in vain. 
 Like the up-bursting of the boiling granite from the 
 central heat, it will find its way through the chinks 
 and leaks of the thickest and tightest impost of arti- 
 ficial rule ; or, if it cannot, it will end by up-heaving 
 and shattering in a moment the compacted crust of 
 ancient and prescriptive wrong. 
 
 But our immediate concern is happily not with 
 repressive despotisms. We dwell in a land which is 
 of all lands the freest as to this matter. The Chris- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 69 
 
 tiau conscience here may utter its voice, and act un- 
 restricted on society. It is as thus free, and as thus 
 acting, that we have to consider it. The winning of 
 this its charter of freedom has been, of all others, 
 the work which we as a people have had to do in the 
 world. In many of the elements of a nation's great- 
 ness, others may have surpassed us ; in arts, and in 
 arms, it would be mere vanity to vaunt ourselves as 
 first in the world ; but in this one thing we stand 
 unapproached and unrivalled — that of all the nations, 
 we alone have thoroughly come to understand the 
 rights of the Christian conscience, and are in the main 
 acting according to that our understanding. 
 
 And from the moment when our eyes begun to be 
 opened to these rights, we among the nations have 
 taken the lead in bringing about moral changes, and 
 reforms in the direction of the gentler feelings of 
 humanity, in the practice of men. We have had our 
 seasons of torpor, nay, our seasons of apparent retro- 
 gression : but even these latter were preparing the 
 way for advances yet to come, bringing about their 
 own reaction in the Christian mind of the people. 
 And in some of these periods, retrogression and pro- 
 gression have remarkably acted on, and prepared the 
 way for, each other. The assertion of the right, 
 made as it was by imperfect men, who imagined, as 
 those who are impassioned always will do, that man's 
 
60 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 wrath works God's right, contained in itself elements 
 of wrong ; so that while the right was waxing strong 
 and becoming the axiom of the nation, the wrong, 
 even while it was being wrought, was raising for 
 itself adversaries, and so preparing men for another 
 assertion of the right on the other side. 
 
 We might find striking examples of that which we 
 are asserting, in the great struggle of the seventeenth 
 century. There can be no doubt that the Cavaliers, 
 amidst much that was foul, and unjust, and unfaithful 
 to God's law, had on their side also a noble spirit 
 of chivalrous loyalty and love of constituted rule. 
 There can be no doubt again, that their adversaries, 
 while none can admire their close and narrow views, 
 and their superstitious adherence to the ill-understood 
 letter of Scripture, yet were endowed with a grand 
 sturdiness and unbending independence of spirit ; 
 were men who, first and best of their time, knew and 
 valued the inner testimony of a God-fearing consci- 
 ence. What has been the result? We have inhe- 
 rited the chivalrous loyalty of the Cavalier, we have 
 inherited the unflinching independence of the Round- 
 head. The Briton is a strange, but surely a happy 
 compound of the principle of obedience and the prin- 
 ciple of resistance. 
 
 I might draw further illustration of these remarks 
 from what has happened since the date last referred 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 61 
 
 to. But time admonishes me to hasten onward ; and 
 besides, I am not writing in order to praise the 
 achievements of onr national conscience. I am no 
 optimist in this matter, as will ere long be discovered. 
 It is only that I may have ground to start from, that 
 I state these facts — that I go on to acknowledge onr 
 sense of that which the free utterance of the Christian 
 conscience has done for us. There is no use in deny- 
 ing that it has accomplished great benefits in our 
 own times, and that it is going on even now to 
 accomplish more and greater. It spoke, and the 
 fetters dropped from the bondsman ; it spoke, and 
 the lifted weapons of alienated friends fell down 
 powerless, and the vaunted code of worldly honour 
 was torn to shreds amidst the scorn of mankind. It 
 spoke again, and man's ill-judged restrictions no 
 longer denied free course to God's provision of food 
 for the great human family. On another dark place 
 of our national life has its bright light long been 
 turned. Age after age, the hosts of its army of 
 truth have been, as it were, circling the "strong 
 cemented walls " of the fortress of our national in- 
 tolerance ; year by year battlement and bastion are 
 crumbling down, until at last the ponderous ruin 
 shall fall, and the righteous nation which keepeth the 
 truth shall enter in. 
 
 All this I thankfully acknowledge : but I submit 
 
62 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 that these are only partial triumphs, only flashes in 
 the midnight, compared with what ought to he, what 
 might be, the result of the spiritual life which is 
 growing and bearing fruit among this great people. 
 Whole realms of thought and action are as yet in 
 utter darkness, as far as any illumination by the 
 Christian conscience is concerned. And this, with 
 the light shining in the midst of them. Look at 
 private life, look at public morality : and what a 
 strange disparity appears. There is, thank Grod, no 
 lack in our land of the pure clear life of the spirit of 
 man, led in the light of God's countenance, guided 
 by the gentle whisper of His Spirit. Thousands of 
 British families are thus guided, thus travelling, 
 walking on in the Spirit through temptation to vic- 
 tory: Christian parents, Christian lads and girls. 
 Christian children, fearing God, and obeying God 
 
 But where, when we look abroad over public 
 morality, shall we find an exercise of the conscience 
 of this Christian nation, at all in proportion to its 
 undoubted individual and family life ? Shall we seek 
 for it in commerce? Where shall we find it, to cite 
 an example from the things of our day, in any public 
 • action taken with regard to the stupendous failures 
 occurring through what every Christian man must 
 call by the plain name of dishonesty ? Echo may 
 well answer, " Where ? " when public walls can re- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 63 
 
 ceive, and public assemblies applaud, studied apologies 
 for men who have been well called " high-minded 
 and honourable pickpockets," men who have brought 
 ruin on the unhappy thousands who have been simple 
 enough to trust them. Shall we find the working of 
 the Christian conscience in those who tell us that such 
 evil doers " must not be blown upon," for fear the 
 salvage from their wreck should be lessened ? 
 
 I wish we were able to say that unprincipled com- 
 mercial conduct was discouraged and dying out 
 among us. But I much fear that this is far from 
 being the case. I fear that the number of instances 
 is even multiplying, in which the family is upheld in 
 opulence, and is respected and looked up to for high 
 Christian example of charity and good works, while 
 the head of it is increasing the gains whereon this 
 benevolence is fed, by means which he could not jus- 
 tify, and dared not confess. 
 
 If we regard public conduct in another great 
 matter of honour and trust, I fear our idea of the 
 power of the Christian conscience among us will 
 hardly be strengthened. It would be difficult of 
 belief if reported in a written history, that the Eng- 
 lish legislature is continually passing enactments 
 against the practice of bribing electors for their 
 votes, and that a great portion of those who pass 
 these laws deliberately and systematically violate 
 
64 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 them every time that the occasion occurs. And on 
 the other hand it would be hardly credited that there 
 are in almost every constituency a certain number of 
 persons, patent to all, and distinctly defined, whose 
 votes are known to be purchasable by money. No 
 one presumes to justify this state of things, yet no 
 one concerned appears really earnest in wishing to 
 put an end to it. That there would be great diffi- 
 culty in doing so, is not to be alleged in excuse. 
 Conscience, when once awakened, does not stick at 
 difficulties. It is only where a compromise with evil 
 is resolved on, that their existence is put forward to 
 palliate inaction. 
 
 But let us raise our eyes higher — from secular to 
 religious life. Let us ask whether in the practice of 
 the churches of this land the Christian conscience 
 speaks clearly and is obeyed. 
 
 What is the state of things among us in Eng- 
 land ? I am asking the question not with any view 
 of passing a criticism on existing arrangements. I 
 take them as accomplished fact — as the basis of what 
 I have to remark. We have in England one form of 
 Church established, and in connection with the State. 
 We have many other forms existing as voluntarily 
 associated bodies ; existing by recognised right of 
 the Christian conscience. This recognition has, his- 
 torically, not been arrived at without considerable 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 65 
 
 difficulty, and a struggle which has lasted for ages. 
 Though a legitimate and necessary corollary from 
 the principles of our Reformation, it was not seen to 
 be such by the dominant party, till the course of Pro- 
 vidence proved too strong for the self-will of men. 
 We began by persecuting in order to enforce con^ 
 formity ; we advanced to a meagre and ungracious 
 toleration ; and, notwithstanding that our noncon- 
 forming brethren have now, thank Grod, acquired 
 equality of civil rights, at this point of ungracious 
 toleration we for the most part remain still. The 
 State has been more recognisant of, more loyal to 
 the Christian conscience, than the Church, which 
 ought to have been its most jealous and watchful 
 guardian. Nothing is more strongly impressed on 
 my mind, when I look over the religious state of 
 England, than that we, who are members of her 
 Established Church, have need to face the whole im- 
 portant question of our relations to Nonconformists, 
 with a view to a re-adjustment, in the light of 
 the Christian conscience, of our words and our acts 
 respecting them. There is a very wide basis of doc- 
 trine, there is a still wider basis of Christian morality, 
 on which we are absolutely at one. As far as those 
 bases extend, our aim is identical. We may not be 
 able to work together ; our instruments may be dif- 
 ferent ; our tastes may be incompatible. Allow the 
 
 F 
 
66^ ESSAYS AND ADDBESSES. 
 
 utmost force to these considerations ; and the utmost 
 force also to the consideration, that our very differ- 
 ences are themselves j)oints of conscience, and that 
 we are bound to stand up for them, and not to merge 
 nor compromise them. Still, allowing all this, it 
 seems to nie that there is no justification for the 
 present alienation of affection, the present virtual 
 suspension of intercourse, the present depreciating 
 tone and manner, which prevail on the part of Eng- 
 lish Churchmen towards Dissenters, and towards 
 Churches which diifer from ourselves in organization. 
 That such a tone does prevail, needs, I suppose, no 
 proof; but how far it is carried can hardly be ima- 
 gined but by help of illustration. In the last number 
 but one of a weekly Church newspaper, occurred the 
 following sentence, forming part of a review of a 
 work by Dr. Preuss, a Lutheran divine holding a 
 distinguished academical office in Berlin : " His posi- 
 tion as a member of a body of rehgionists without 
 the pale of the Catholic Church, naturally places him 
 without the range of the Church's sympathies." It 
 would be difficult to say whether the insolence, or the 
 ignorance, of this sentence be the greater, or whether 
 both be not surpassed by its utter opposition to the 
 whole spirit of our Blessed Lord and his Apostles. 
 The confession implied in the words " without the 
 sympathies of the Church " is, I need hardly say, a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 07 
 
 sign that he who makes it has yet to learn his first 
 lesson in the nature and attributes of that Church of 
 Christ of which he speaks so flippantly. If her sym- 
 pathies be not with all whom Christ died to save, 
 she has deserted the office to which he appointed 
 her — that of being His body, and the habitation of 
 His Spirit.* 
 
 There lies at the root of all this arrogance a most 
 mischievous, but I grieve to say a widely prevalent 
 fallacy. We of the Church of England have abso- 
 lutely no right to assume our own form of church 
 government to be the only lawful one, and to look 
 askance upon other forms, whether in England or 
 elsewhere. We have not this right, because we dis- 
 tinctly proclaim, as to all things required of necessity 
 to be believed, an appeal to Holy Scripture ; and in 
 Scripture as much, or as little, is found for one form 
 as for another. If depreciation of Nonconformists is 
 excused on the ground of our possessing superior 
 means of education and endowment, then the plea 
 itself involves a violation of the dictates of the Chris- 
 tian conscience ; for, if the fact be as stated, it is 
 mainly owing to our having excluded our brethren 
 from the national advantages w^hich we ourselves 
 
 * An attempt was made in a subsequent number of the jiaper to explain 
 away the words here stigmatised. Unsuccessful as it was, it testified at 
 least to a wholesome dread of Christian public opinion on the part of the 
 writer. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 possess ; and it is high time that such exclusion 
 should come to an end. 
 
 We have, I conceive, a curious example of the 
 perversion of conscience in the English Church, in 
 the fact that a large and increasing party of her mem- 
 bers are at this time agitating for union and inter- 
 communion with the Roman and Eastern Churches, 
 from both of which we are separated by important 
 doctrinal differences — that this desire for union is 
 justified by them on the most solemn grounds, as fur- 
 nished by the words of our Lord's own intercessory 
 prayer, and yet that no mention whatever is made of 
 any desire for union, on the basis of mutual allow- 
 ance of differences, with our Christian brethren in 
 the British islands. 
 
 I have believed it not out of place to treat of 
 these matters in Scotland, because they affect us 
 all, Churchmen and others, alike. It is impossible, 
 with the present rapid transmission of knowledge 
 by the press, but that such movements as are now 
 going on in the Church of England should excite 
 emotions adverse or favourable in every intelligent 
 mind : as it is also impossible but that the effects 
 of any deadening or awakening of the Christian 
 conscience in the Church of England should be felt, 
 for evil or for good, among other religious bodies 
 also. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 69 
 
 Being persuaded of this, I go on to notice one 
 more fact which serves, in my opinion, to show any- 
 thing but a healthy state of the ecclesiastical con- 
 science among ourselves. It is, that in connection 
 wdth the High Church movement of the last thirty 
 years, there has sprung up, and has now become 
 widely prevalent, a sort of dealing with words which 
 I know not how to characterise except, again, by the 
 plain epithet " dishonest." The shortest description 
 of this method is, that it consists in interpreting 
 rules and formularies so as to suit a pre-arranged 
 theory, not in accordance with fair dealing and com- 
 mon sense. In many instances of this which might 
 be given, the data whereby to arrive at the true 
 meaning of the words in question were abundant, 
 and sufficient for all men's common sense : it was 
 well known what the framers.of the words wished to 
 secure, and what they wished to prevent : to any 
 ordinary ear, their words plainly expressed both ; 
 but because those words admit of some far-off and 
 undreamt-of sense, we are called upon to believe that 
 this, and not the meaning which grammar and his- 
 tory alike attach to them, is to be received by us. 
 Simply for the sake of illustrating my meaning, I 
 quote a crucial instance. The framers of the Articles 
 of the Church of England had said that " the Romish 
 doctrine concerning purgatory was a fond, vainly 
 
70 ESSAYS AND ADDEESSES. 
 
 invented thing." No man in his senses need be told 
 that their intention was to condemn the doctrine 
 altogether, and that the epithet " Eomish " was pre- 
 fixed in order to identify the doctrine condemned 
 Avith that commonly known in this country. Not so, 
 said our special pleaders ; we will take the words 
 differently : it is the Eomish doctrine, and no other, 
 which is here stigmatized : therefore if we can find 
 any other doctrine about purgatory which is not 
 Romish, that is not here condemned : and by not 
 being condemned, is left open for English Church- 
 men to hold. As if a man should say that, because 
 the second commandment runs, " Thou shalt not 
 make to thyself any graven image," if a man did not 
 make a graven image to himself, but got another 
 man to make it for him, it would be no breach of 
 the commandment. This, which I have quoted, was 
 one of the earliest specimens of the non-conscientious 
 mode of arguing; it occurred in the famous Tract 
 No. 90 of the ' Tracts for the Times.' But it is only 
 a fair specimen of the interpretations ever since, and 
 noM^, put forth in abundance by the same party. 
 As far as regards the interpretations themselves, 
 they might safely be left to the contempt of man- 
 kind. The only importance attaching to them is, 
 that they form part of the recognised tactics un- 
 blushingly avowed by a powerful body of learned 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 71 
 
 and able men in our land : and I ask whether this 
 nan be the case, without a wide-spreading and bale- 
 ful effect on the Christian conscience of the realm ? 
 AVhen I see the tortuous and disingenuous advances 
 of the party which adopts these practices, and at the 
 same time contemplate the paralysis of the commer- 
 cial conscience already noticed, together with those 
 other indications that we know the good and follow 
 the worse, I cannot help feeling that some among us 
 who think that they are doing God's work, and the 
 Church's work, have, and will have, more to answer 
 for than they suspect. 
 
 There is another matter, one on which the Chris- 
 tian conscience of all the churches in our realm 
 needs awakening. I mean the duty of bringing our 
 Authorised Version of the Holy Scriptures into closer 
 proximity to the text in which those Scriptures were 
 written. This has become a matter of very serious 
 import. It is now well known to most persons of 
 any information and intelligence, that there are very 
 many passages in which our version either represents 
 a text which is not the genuine one, or misrepresents 
 that genuine text in rendering it. We are reading 
 and preaching on, as the word of Grod, sayings 
 which are demonstrably no part of that word : we 
 are giving to its texts meanings which any scholar 
 can see they will not bear. We of the Church of 
 
•72 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 England are using two different versions of the Book 
 of Psalms, in one of which are some verses that yield 
 no assignable sense in themselves, and some, the 
 sense of which flatly contradicts the sense of the 
 corresponding verses in the other version.* And 
 yet both these versions, the one asserting, the other 
 denying, the same fact, are read and preached from 
 indifferently. 
 
 I know it is the custom to depreciate and minimise 
 the importance of these variations and errors. And 
 this is one of the very things of which I complain. 
 I never saw this method of argument followed with- 
 out very great unfairness. Not to mention that in 
 the esteem of those who set the highest possible 
 value on Scripture, no assignable deviation from its 
 actual meaning ought to be a trifle, — it is distinctly 
 not the fact, that the variations and errors are of 
 slight account. In very many parts of St. Paul's 
 Epistles, the inattention, on the part of our trans- 
 lators, to the force of words and the accuracy of 
 constructions, has rendered the Apostle's argument 
 unintelligible to English readers. And the first duty 
 of a faithful expositor is to assure his hearers, on his 
 own authority, that St. Paul does not say what they 
 
 * As an example of the former kind : can any acuteness extract sense 
 from Ps. Iviii. 8 in the Prayer-book version ? As an example of the latter, 
 compare Ps. cv. 28 in the two versions. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 73 
 
 read in their Bibles, nor mean what those EngHsh 
 words would appear to convey. 
 
 Nor can I regard as any more conscientious the 
 miserable argument against touching the Authorised 
 "Version, which is often raised on the ground of ex- 
 pediency. There is danger, we are told, in unsettling 
 the minds of those who simply rely on their English 
 Bibles as the word of Grod. I am amazed at hearing 
 this plea from lips which frequently utter it. For 
 what abuse, for what dereliction of unwelcome duty, 
 may it not be made an apology ? And even if we 
 descend to its own cowardly level, and begin to 
 weigh expediencies, which of the two, think you, is 
 the greater danger — manfully to meet the present 
 unsatisfactory state of things by an authorised revi- 
 sion, or to allow a text which we vaunt as the word 
 of God to be continually either held back because 
 it will not bear examination, or brought into doubt 
 and contempt by being disavowed from our pulpits ? 
 
 And the matter is one not presenting any insuper- 
 able difficulty. Let a Royal Commission (for I see 
 no other way of gaining for the new version the 
 same authority as the old possesses) — let a Royal 
 Commission call together the most capable men out 
 of all reformed denominations, and set them on this 
 work, and (I speak from having been engaged in it 
 with others of diftering views and habits of mind) 
 
74 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 they will be astonished how soon practical terms of 
 agreement will be arranged, and a basis of operations 
 settled. There are few things that I hope and 
 pray for so much as that He who has men's hearts 
 in His hand, would cause the conscience of His 
 Churches to awaken to this their bounden duty. But 
 alas, while I hope and pray, there are few things 
 which I less expect. There seems to have settled 
 down on our Churches such a spirit of secularity and 
 timidity, especially with regard to the treatment of 
 Scripture, that I cannot see the faintest prospect of 
 such a work being undertaken in our time. 
 
 And now, in drawing towards a close, I must say 
 something of the Christian conscience in individuals. 
 Let us remember that, the higher and more delicate 
 the organ, the more liable it is to be strained or de- 
 ranged. And the more so, beyond doubt, if it happen 
 to have been thoroughly put out of order and action 
 before. Now both these are the case with the Chris- 
 tian conscience. It is a limb which has but newly 
 come out of paralysis, but it is a limb which has 
 our whole weight to sustain, and of which the finest 
 and most delicate work is required. No wonder if it 
 be soon enfeebled, soon strained and distorted. It 
 needs training for its work ; it needs careful tending, 
 and strict watching. We are accountable for the 
 healthiness of our consciences, and have no right to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 75 
 
 play tricks with, or to neglect tliem. We are far 
 too apt to forget that conscience is not a vague, ever- 
 shifting thing, but is judged by the fixed rule of 
 Grod's revealed will. One man's conscience, he sup- 
 poses, leads him to persecution ; another man's con- 
 science leads him to charity. In this extreme case, 
 perhaps, few of us would maintain that both were 
 right : but in cases quite as plain if fairly re- 
 garded, we do continually maintain this. We suffer 
 ourselves quite to forget that saying of Scripture, 
 " There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, 
 but the end thereof are the ways of death." And 
 even while we are quoting and urging this fact, we 
 frequently behave as if we thought men's consciences, 
 and especially our own, infallible. It must be plain 
 to all that the general practical issue of this last 
 consideration ranges very wide. But so far as it 
 affects us individually, its lesson is soon stated. And 
 that lesson is, self-distrust, and its two great fruits, 
 modesty and charity. We are very apt to be over 
 confident in matters of conscience. We have been 
 brought up to think this or that ; or, we have for 
 ourselves, independently of our bringing up, arrived 
 at this or that conclusion. Therefore, we say — and 
 the young mind is especially apt to say it — therefore 
 my view is right, and I will make it matter of 
 conscience, and nothing on earth shall stir me from 
 
76 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 it. It is a sore temptation, and a grievous hindrance 
 of usefulness, tliis starting in life with decided 
 opinions. Show me a young man whose views and 
 maxims are all cut and dried, and I will show you 
 one whose years of strength will be spent, at the best, 
 in getting rid bit by bit of his sham wisdom; who 
 will not be ready for Providence's work, till his more 
 modest compeers have half done their allotment of 
 it. Conscience has its duties as well as its rights ; 
 and its first duty is towards itself. It is set to rule 
 us, not despotically, but constitutionally ; not by 
 strong arbitrary commands, but by mature and well- 
 grounded decisions, given according to the laws of 
 our nature, and the leadings of Revelation and Provi- 
 dence. It is just as much trifling with conscience 
 to obey its fitful whispers when it grumbles about 
 trifles, as it is to disregard its voice when it warns us 
 in more serious matters. Its healthiest discipline is to 
 be found in the exercise of plain manly common sense. 
 And as this is true of all times, so is it espe- 
 cially of our time. In many cases our views of 
 men and things are too artificial. I was struck 
 the other day with the parting word of one of the 
 excellent American bishops who have been with us 
 this autumn. My friend is what is called a mis- 
 sionary bishop — one whose work it is to travel for 
 months over the wilds of Arkansas, and set up 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 77 
 
 prayer and preaching where neither was ever heard 
 before. He had been some days my guest, and as 
 we walked to the train which was to take him away, 
 he said, " I'll tell you what would do you a vast deal 
 of good, and that's two thousand miles with me in 
 my buggy. You here are too civilised by half; you 
 want some good honest barbarism put into you, and 
 you would get along a vast deal better." 
 
 Good honest barbarism : that is, I suppose, a way 
 of looking at things themselves direct, and not 
 through the mist of eight centuries of institutions. 
 Well, I believe we do want some of this kind of 
 barbarism ; only we can't get it as barbarism ; we 
 can't put back the historical clock, nor can we make 
 the stream of Providence run upwards to its source. 
 We must get at the result by simple honesty and 
 single purpose ; by a casting off of timidity and time- 
 serving, and being bold for truth ; by ourselves 
 going back, in every social and religious question, 
 past the mere runnel-pipes of sect and precedent, up 
 to the fountain-heads in Grod's everlasting hills. 
 
 I must apologise for having dwelt so much on the 
 more serious, and I fear less generally interesting, 
 portions of my subject. That subject might have 
 been taken in various social aspects, and illustrated 
 by incidents of our daily life. I might have brought 
 before my I'eaders the constant and admitted petty 
 
78 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 breaches of the rule of conscience, in which we Hve, 
 and by which most of us suffer. Which of us, if he 
 thought honestly over the day, could go to bed at 
 night quite clear of having dealt hardly with some 
 neighbour's reputation, of having exaggerated some 
 fault of a friend, or extenuated some fault of his 
 own ? 
 
 Yfe might also have noticed faults which we call 
 by the somewhat milder epithet ^'unconscionable;" 
 and among them, the inroads on time and on good 
 nature daily and relentlessly perpetrated by average 
 men and women : — the case of the " won't detain 
 you a moment" man, who is sure to occujDy half 
 your morning ; the platform speaker, whose " one 
 word more and I have done/' is the sure prelude 
 to a dreary half hour of incoherent platitudes ; the 
 preacher who, though he knows that half an hour 
 would be better for his people, for himself, and for 
 his subject, yet somehow always gives them three- 
 quarters. We might have satirized those numerous 
 little compromises with the thing that is not, which 
 are spread thick over our habits of visiting and 
 greeting one another ; those lies to which I can only 
 concede the epithet " white," inasmuch as they 
 certainly are unblushing. We might have dwelt, 
 one by one, on those pious frauds and one-sided 
 representations prevalent among our religious coteries. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE. 79 
 
 whereby tlie same honest zeal, if it happens to be 
 with us, is made out to be angehc, if against us, 
 diaboHc. 
 
 All these, and many other of our weaknesses and 
 inconsistencies, would have to be touched on in any 
 full treatment of my present subject. I thought it 
 best to put that subject before my hearers in what 
 I believed to be its true position, to give them its 
 definitions and laws, and to illustrate them by a few 
 of the graver examples furnished by passing things. 
 
 Whether what I have spoken be approved or 
 disapproved, if it shall have excited thought and 
 inquiry on so serious a matter, my object will have 
 been gained. 
 
IV. 
 THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 CONSIDEEED IN ITS HOME ASPECT. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE « CONTEMPORARY REVIEW ' 
 OF FEBRUARY, 1868. 
 
II THAT can be more desirable, a consummation 
 
 more to be hoped and prayed -for, than the 
 
 union of Christendom ? So we feel at first sight of 
 
 the words ; so we feel after long pondering on them, 
 
 and appreciating their depths and their difficulties. 
 
 In the interest, then, of the fulfilment of these 
 hopes and prayers, we would place on record some of 
 these our ponderings. We are the more induced to 
 do so, because it seems to us that many in our time 
 have taken up the words without any such pondering, 
 and are striving after their realization in fact, in a 
 manner which may prove rather a hindrance than 
 a help. 
 
 What is Christendom ? What is union ? These 
 are two preliminary questions, without some discus- 
 sion of which it seems to us vain to expatiate on the 
 
 G 2 
 
84 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 subject. We must clearly know with what material 
 it is purposed to deal, and with that material how it 
 is purposed to deal, before we can pronounce the 
 manipulation either 2:)ossible or desirable. 
 
 I. What is Christendom ? Let us face the question 
 at once. Is Christendom the agglomeration of Epis- 
 coj^al Churches throughout the world, or do its limits 
 extend further ? The former view seems to be that 
 of our friends who are professedly working for union 
 at present. In their estimation the sine qua non of a 
 Christian Church is Episcopal government, and Epis- 
 copal government with a traceable succession from 
 the ancient Catholic times. Now, if the question 
 were asked of us, as Churchmen, which of all forms 
 we, in our conscience, believe to be the best one and 
 the right one, our answer would probably be given 
 in these very terms. But let it be carefully observed 
 that that is not the question now at issue. We 
 suppose that the man is hardly to be found who 
 would seriously maintain that a mode of Church 
 government is an essential to salvation. We say, 
 seriously maintain. For that there are those who 
 hold it as their theory, and in argument inflexibly 
 keep to the position, that all grace comes to the indi- 
 vidual soul at the hands of a ministry descending in 
 formal succession from the Ajoostles, and so from our 
 Lord Himself, we are perfectly aware. But there is 
 
THE UNION OF CnRISTENDOM. 85 
 
 an immense difference between what a man inflexibly 
 maintains as liis theory, and that to which he is 
 driven in his serious moments, when his heart is laid 
 open, and Truth looks in on him with her irresistible 
 power. 
 
 It was once the lot of the present writer to intro- 
 duce into a large clerical society, meeting monthly 
 for discussion, the question, whether an orthodox 
 Dissenter (using, of course, the term orthodox in its 
 well-understood sense, as applied to Christian doc- 
 trine) is to be regarded as a member of Christ's Holy 
 Catholic Church ? It seemed to him very necessary 
 that his fellow-members should be " brought to book " 
 respecting this matter. Some of them were very 
 high Churchmen, and were in the habit of speaking 
 on it as the clergy of that school usually do — viz., of 
 designating as " outside the Church " all their Non- 
 conformist countrymen, and all non-Episcopal, and 
 some of the Episcopal, foreign religious bodies. At 
 the same time, it was a patent fact that the families 
 of some of these very men were Dissenters, and 
 equally patent that when any members of those 
 families were spoken of by them, it was always as 
 Christians, as living a Christian life, and dying in 
 Christian hope. 
 
 Here then was an inconsistency which obviously 
 wanted clearing up — which could only be cleared up, 
 
86 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 as it seemed to the j^roposer of the question, in one 
 way — viz., by the abandonment of the high exclusive 
 view in theory, as it was ah'eady abandoned in 
 practice. The debate lasted far into the evening, 
 and was adjourned to a second monthly meeting. 
 At that meeting it was at last carried unanimously 
 in the affirmative, that the Dissenter, holding the 
 articles of the Christian faith, is to be regarded as a 
 member of Christ's Holy Catholic Church. And I 
 may mention that among those affirmative votes was 
 that of one who very shortly afterwards left us for 
 the Church of Rome. Magna erat Veritas, et prcevalehat. 
 When men came once to look this question in the 
 face, and to bring it to the test of their own consci- 
 ences,— of their verdict over the holy hves and 
 hopeful deaths of their friends and neighbours, — the 
 artificial barriers fell, and the righteous nation which 
 keepeth the truth entered in. The only true test 
 triumphed — that propounded for us by Our Master, 
 — By their fruits (not by their hierarchies) shall ye 
 know them. 
 
 This was seventeen years ago. How such a debate 
 might now terminate is, perhaps, doubtful. But any 
 other decision than that at which we arrived is, I 
 submit, impossible to the fair-judging Christian mind. 
 If the term " Christendom " is to be interjDreted by 
 facts, and not by a theory prior to facts, it must 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 87 
 
 include those bodies of professing Christians at home 
 whom we call Nonconformists : it must also include 
 those foreign Churches whose form of government 
 differs from our own. 
 
 I said, if the term is to he interpreted by facts. 
 But many will say, in such a matter we have not to 
 do with facts, but with a traditional belief, and with 
 laws and "canons of the Church. I answer, that with 
 regard to the former of these, the fact of a general 
 traditional belief on such a matter may appear to us 
 a sufficient reason why we ourselves should, in our 
 Church arrangements, conform to it. But by the 
 very conditions which our own branch of the Church 
 sets forth in her Articles, no mere traditional belief, 
 even were it up to a certain time universal among 
 Christians, is to be required of any man as necessary 
 to his salvation, or, which is the same thing, as a 
 requisite of his membership of the Church Catholic. 
 In order to constitute a belief thus necessary, it must 
 be capable of proof out of Holy Scripture ; and how- 
 ever it may be evident as matter of fact, " unto all 
 men diligently reading the Holy Scripture and an- 
 cient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have 
 been these orders of ministers in Christ's Church, 
 bishops, priests, and deacons," * none will, we pre- 
 
 * Preface to the Ordiiiatiou Service, Commou Praj-er Book. 
 
88 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 sume, be bold enoiigb to maintain that such three 
 forms are laid down in Holy Scripture as essential 
 for the Church. So far is this from being the case, 
 that the " bishops " of the later New Testament 
 Epistles have hardlj anything in common with the 
 Church officers which have since borne that name, 
 but were merely presbyters, as is acknowledged by 
 the early Christian fathers. In Acts xx. we read 
 that St. Paul, passing by Miletus, sent for the elders 
 (presbyters) of the Church at Ephesus. In his 
 address to them he admonishes them to take heed to 
 the flock over which the Holy Ghost had made them 
 bishops; for the word " overseers" here found in our 
 English version is one of those pieces of disingenuous- 
 ness by which its text is, though rarely, yet some- 
 times undeniably, disfigured. Again, in Phil. i. 1, 
 St. Paul addresses his Epistle to the saints at Philippi, 
 " with the bishops and deacons," where Theodoret 
 observes, " he calls the presbyters bishops ; for at 
 that time they had both names." There is, it is true, 
 in the pastoral Epistles — probably the latest, except 
 one, of the New Testament writings — an apparently 
 closer approximation to the superintending office of 
 our present bishop ; but not a word, there or any- 
 where, of that or any other particular form of Church 
 arrangement being universally prescribed. If such 
 prescription had been met with, of course it would 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 89 
 
 be binding upon Christendom ; but now that such 
 prescription is not met with, no usage of the Apostles, 
 no subsequent practice, however widespread, can 
 close up or prescribe that which Scripture has left 
 open. It is very probable — we hold it to be certain 
 ■ — that the safeguard of the individual conscience is 
 more effectual for the good government of the 
 Churches than that of the collective conscience ; but 
 to this general rule there might be exceptions, and 
 this widespread opinion might not be held by all. 
 Again, the Apostles made their arrangements for a 
 particular time and condition of things ; we have no 
 right to say that they themselves would have enforced 
 the same arrangements on other ages and in the 
 presence of differing circumstances. Indeed they 
 seem, even during the short period covered by the 
 canonical Epistles, to have departed, at least in some 
 instances, from their first ecclesiastical dispositions. 
 So that we cannot concede any right to either the 
 traditional belief, or the common practice of the 
 Church Catholic, to enforce episcopal government as 
 one essentially requisite. If any portion of the 
 Church, in coming out of the corruptions of .Eorae, 
 or out of subsequent corruptions of faith and practice 
 in any reformed communion, had reason to believe 
 that Episcopacy in that particular case had stood in 
 the way of the work of God's Spirit on mankind, it 
 
90 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 had a perfect right to abandon episcopal for presby- 
 terian government : it was not thereby removed a 
 whit farther from the Scripture model of a Church ; 
 and we, however much we may differ from its con- 
 clusion, and deplore the step it took, have absolutely 
 no right whatever to look depreciatingly on it as a 
 branch of Christ's Church ; still less may we presume 
 to unchurch and unchristianise its members : they are 
 in the direct and legitimate exercise of the sacred 
 rights of the Christian conscience. And let it not be 
 cast in our teeth, or in theirs, that they are guilty of 
 the sin of schism. Whether they are so guilty or 
 not, is a question bearing not on them only, but on 
 us Churchmen also. If in consequence of offence 
 given to them by laxity of life and morals, we drove 
 them to seek Christian purity in separation from us ; 
 if, by ignorance of the first principles of Christian 
 charity, we persecuted them when we ought to have 
 stood rebuked by them, then the sin of schism lay 
 at our doors, not at theirs. To say that now, when 
 they have a succession of ages and a traditional 
 Church-belief of their own, they are schismatics, is a 
 height- of folly and pedantry, which it would be 
 diiiicult to believe any intelligent mind to have 
 arrived at, did we not see it far too often exemplified. 
 And this brings us to the second rule, with which 
 it was supposed that in this matter we have to do. 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 91 
 
 rather than with facts ; viz., the laws and canons of 
 the Church. Here we are met by what we cannot 
 avoid again calhng a pedantic, and at the same time 
 a capricious, view of the subject. The pedantry of 
 the view is found in this — that it insists on applying, 
 to an actual conjuncture of nfanifest gravity, rules 
 enacted with reference to a state of things having 
 nothing in common with the time now present ; 
 rules, the framers of which never contemplated our 
 difficulties, — never heard the call of Grod's Provi- 
 dence which summons us to action. To fall back 
 upon such rules now, by way of discouraging those 
 who would serve God in their own generation, is to 
 be " unwise," not " understanding what the will of 
 the Lord is ; " which conduct, as we believe, is of the 
 very essence of pedantry, and that of the worst kind. 
 But this view of the subject is also one admitting 
 of any unassigned degree of caprice and arbitrariness. 
 Of the particular rules which they who hold it press 
 on us, by far the greater portion has become obsolete 
 and impossible. The burden of them is, " let him be 
 excommunicated." Why is not this done ? Simply 
 because it is impossible. Because, if it were in any 
 one case attempted, the whole land would ring with 
 indignation, and a storm would be raised which might 
 bring down in ruin the outward fabric of the Church. 
 Well then, if the aspect of things, and the pubHc 
 
92 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 opinion of a Christian people, have thus far altered, 
 are we to assume that the Church which once said, 
 " let him he excommunicated," has learnt no wisdom, 
 but remains where she was in spite of this immense 
 change ? What has operated the change ? What, 
 disguise it as we will,»but the conviction, deep as the 
 inward sense of right — real as the daily grounds of 
 thought and life — that Christianity is wider than 
 Church hierarchies and canons ecclesiastical ; that the 
 Church Catholic is made up, not of those bounded 
 by a certain pale of artificial barriers, but of those 
 who, in the language of a well-known definition by 
 the Church herself, " profess and call themselves 
 Christians " ? 
 
 But, besides that the hard canonical view is both 
 pedantic and capricious, it possesses a peculiar demerit 
 of its own, from the circumstances under which it is 
 held. There can be no reasonable doubt that if the 
 Church of England could be assembled in any fairly 
 representative body, lawfully empowered to deal 
 with her canons, the whole of this mass of illiberal 
 rules would be ere long swept away. That the body 
 which assumes to represent her is not so empowered, 
 is fact of which none are ignorant. Few also can be 
 ignorant, that the last thing which Convocation is 
 likely under present circumstances to represent, is 
 the collective public opinion of English Churchmen. 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 93 
 
 That assembly is for tlie most part delivered over to 
 the guidance of the assertors of exclusive sacer- 
 dotalism, against whom the general feeling of the 
 members of the Church is in open rebellion. But it 
 is not sufficiently known that^ if anything like the 
 whole of the members of the Lower House thought it 
 worth while to attend in their places, the minorities 
 which now in vain oppose the dictation of the High 
 Church party would be transformed into triumphant 
 majorities. It is mainly owing to the apathy of the 
 so-called Evangelical party, and to their want of 
 appreciation of the importance, even at present, of 
 the decisions of Convocation, that the priestly move- 
 ment at home and in the colonies is able to cite the 
 official voice of tlie Church of England in its favour. 
 And is this a time, I would ask, to be throwing us 
 back upon canonical rules more than two centuries 
 old, and to be requiring the Church to stamp on 
 herself the brand of folly, and of incapacity to do 
 her duty in that state of life to which it has pleased 
 God to call her ? If in this and in some other respects 
 her position be of necessity a false one ; if at every 
 step she require compromises and charitable interpre- 
 tations to enable her to act, or even to exist at all, 
 why should not those compromises be made for the 
 benefit of her fellow Christians, as well as for her 
 own? Why should not those charitable construe- 
 
9-4 ESSAYS AND ABDIi ESSES. 
 
 tions be yielded to the love of her neighbour, which 
 she is ever eager to accept for the love of herself ? 
 
 I shall assume therefore, that we are called on to 
 deal at the present day, not with theories, nor with 
 traditional beliefs as to Church government, but with 
 facts as we find them. I will proceed then to inquire 
 what those facts are, as far as they concern our 
 present question. 
 
 The Christianity of this our land is made up of the 
 Church of England, comprising perhaps rather the 
 larger half (?) of her inhabitants^ and of many sects 
 of Nonconformists. Among these latter, Roman 
 Catholics are of course included, though, from their 
 peculiar position, they belong to our j^resent inquiry 
 as a foreign rather than as a British denomination. 
 Taking facts again, and not theory, as our index to 
 character, Roman Catholics have really now become 
 an Italian sect, inasmuch as their visible Head must 
 always be an Italian, and, by the newly-proclaimed 
 tenet of Ultramontanism, must rule as a temporal 
 prince over a portion of Italy. They have, by this 
 regulation and this doctrine, for all purposes of strict 
 inquiry as to the limits of Christendom, receded from 
 an oecumenical into a local position. Dwelling in 
 Britain, they must always be the spiritual subjects of 
 an Italian prince ; and the union of Christendom in 
 its home asj^ect does not concern them, or concerns 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 95 
 
 them only remotely. And even were this otherwise, 
 there would be another reason why Roman Catholics 
 cannot in such an inquiry be taken into consideration. 
 With them, union implies absorption. Their position 
 with reference to any accord between Churches differ- 
 ing in government would be simply antagonistic. 
 That this is so as matter of practice at the present 
 time, was clearly shown by the correspondence be- 
 tween the English promoters of what is called the 
 union of Christendom, and the existing authorities at 
 Rome. From these latter they got, as they always 
 will get on every application for recognition, the 
 curtest and severest answer : — " Our arms are open 
 to receive you ; nothing hinders your union with us 
 but your own folly and obstinacy ; other way to the 
 union of Christendom we know not. God bring 
 you to a better mind : " in substance, by the way, the 
 same reply as the nonjurors were favoured with from 
 the " orthodox " Grreek Church, when they made a 
 similar proposal. 
 
 For these reasons we are compelled, not by incli- 
 nation of ours, but by unvarying action of their own, 
 to pass over the Roman Catholics in our present 
 inquiry. 
 
 But as regards the rest, we have a very large por- 
 tion of the Nonconforming bodies divided from us 
 by the thinnest possible partition, as far as theolo- 
 
96 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 gical doctrine is concerned. The Church of England 
 has long used their hymns : their printed sermons 
 and works on divinity rank, in not a few cases, high 
 in our classical theology. In sacred learning and 
 biblical exposition and criticism, it may be ques- 
 tioned whether their present average attainment be 
 not above our own. If we descend from the leaders 
 to the people, none, I suppose, would presume, in 
 the matter of blameless walking in the command- 
 ments and ordinances of the Lord, to set ourselves 
 above them. As to the share wdiich each have 
 borne in moral and social improvements, I imagine 
 all will allow that they have oftener led us than they 
 have been led by us. Their united missionary efforts 
 far exceed our own. In schools, in charities, in 
 good works of every kind, they have been our 
 honourable, and not seldom our successful rivals. 
 Considering the amount of discouragement and dis- 
 paragement which they have had, and still have to 
 undergo, the progress of education and cultivation 
 among Nonconformists is one of the most wonderful, 
 as it is one of the most satisfactory phenomena of our 
 time. 
 
 In estimating then the elements of that Christen- 
 dom for whose union we hope and pray, I submit 
 that we have no right to refuse to include — we have 
 no right to overlook — these vast bodies of Christians 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 97 
 
 who surround us at home. But a question here 
 comes forward, and requires an answer. We have 
 spoken of a very large number of Nonconformists 
 whose doctrinal differences from ourselves are slight. 
 But when we advance beyond that number, we are 
 met by the inquiry, How far are we to carry our 
 inclusion ? 
 
 Now this is evidently a question not to be hastily 
 dismissed, as it would be by the rigid Churchman on 
 the one side, and the Latitudinarian on the other. 
 First of all, we must be careful to ascertain what 
 doctrine is : and then we must also be careful how we 
 proceed in laying down its limits. 
 
 What doctrine is. For there are not a few who 
 would be disposed to make Church government itself 
 into doctrine ; there are more who would charge 
 with doctrinal error those who do not hold Church 
 ordinances, or who, in their view, practise them 
 amiss. The instances easily occurring to all are the 
 Baptists and the Quakers. The former reject Infant 
 Baptism ; the latter reject both Ba^^tism and the 
 Lord's Supper. Now the whole practical system of 
 the Church of England is based on the baptismal 
 covenant, entered by the child, and accepted by the 
 young person at confirmation. In the view of that 
 Church, " regeneration " of necessity accompanies 
 the act of baptism, and from the time of that act 
 
 H 
 
98 ESSAYS AND ADDBESSES. 
 
 passing on any person he or she is regarded as " a 
 
 member of Christ, the child of Grod, and an inheritor 
 
 of the kingdom of heaven." She also holds the 
 
 other Sacrament, in which "the faithful verily and 
 
 indeed partake of the body and blood of Christ," to 
 
 be, like baptism, generally necessary to salvation ; 
 
 and charges all her members to receive it three times 
 
 in the year at the least. Now all this bears strong 
 
 similarity to doctrine ; and yet none of it is doctrine, 
 
 in the strict sense of the word with which we are 
 
 now concerned. We may believe, and we do believe, 
 
 the Baptist and the Quaker to be misguided in their 
 
 judgments, and to be acting inconsistently with the 
 
 implied mind of our Lord and his Apostles, in thus 
 
 setting aside, or in thus wrongly administering, the 
 
 Christian Sacraments. But, notwithstanding this 
 
 error in judgment, notwithstanding this (to us) 
 
 apparent disregard of Scripture, the Baptist and the 
 
 Quaker may hold every article in the Creeds as firmly 
 
 as we do ; the " one baptism for the remission of 
 
 sins " of course receiving at the hands of the latter a 
 
 spiritual meaning, as the text would receive on which 
 
 the article is founded. 
 
 So far, I should conceive, there would — supposing 
 the way cleared of preliminary objections in toto to 
 all differers — be no great difficulty. The extension 
 thus won for our definition of Christendom would 
 
THE UNION OF CHEISTENDOM. 99 
 
 now include all holding the co- equality of the 
 Persons in the Blessed Trinity, the atonement by 
 Christ's death and resurrection, and the action of the 
 sanctifying Spirit on those who believe in Him. 
 
 But here comes the real difficulty — the difficulty at 
 which every attempt at general inclusion has found 
 itself arrested, and has been compelled either to shut 
 the door, or to incur imputations fatal to its accept- 
 ance by the Christian world. And the difficulty is, 
 how to deal in the case of those who deny any of the 
 articles of the faith, in which all hitherto in view are 
 agreed. Of course, this notably bears on one body 
 of religionists — those somewhat curiously known as 
 Unitarians. 
 
 It will be hardly necessary, after what has already 
 been said, for the present writer to guard himself 
 against being supposed for one moment to depreciate 
 the magnitude of the contrast between the Catholic 
 Christian and the denier of the Divinity of our Lord. 
 Nothing less is at issue in this difference than the 
 whole of the Christian faith, as understood by any of 
 those who have been hitherto in our view. But our 
 present inquiry does not concern any discussion of 
 this contrast. It may remain in all its incompa- 
 tibility, unaltered in any man's view by the issue of 
 our inquiry. That issue will be the affirmation or 
 the negation of the question — Is that body of reli- 
 
 H 2 
 
100 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 gionists who, in some sort holding Christ, yet over- 
 step the limits of the creeds which the Church has 
 deduced from Scripture, to he accounted a part of 
 Christendom ? 
 
 It will assist us in this inquiry if we make another, 
 simply of matter of fact ; and it is this : What lati- 
 tude of doctrine are we allowing, at this moment, 
 within the English Church herself? Because it 
 seems to me that this is the proper measure within 
 which, at all events, we have no right to narrow our 
 recognition of Christians without. That liberty 
 which, in spite of articles and canons and ecclesias- 
 tical courts, we permit to Churchmen, we can hardly, 
 in fairness, deny to Dissenters. And, if I am not 
 mistaken, anything like a fair reply to this last 
 inquiry must be such as to cause any honest man to 
 drop the stone which he had lifted to throw at the 
 Unitarian. 
 
 The fact seems to be this, that you cannot bound 
 Christendom by a doctrinal test. You may bound 
 certain Churches, you may limit certain sects, by 
 such a test ; even then, when the power of the test 
 is tried in any really doubtful case, it almost univer- 
 sally fails. We want for Christendom a fact, not a 
 doctrine, as the test of inclusion. And we are thus 
 driven back to the definition before alluded to as 
 furnished us by the Church herself, when slie ex- 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 101 
 
 plains " the good estate of the Catholic Church " to 
 be attained by " all who profess and call themselves 
 Christians, being led into the way of truth." Chris- 
 tendom is as wide as the Christian name ; as wide as 
 the recognition of Christ as Master. Let each por- 
 tion of it, as conscience dictates, defend truth and 
 protest against error ; but no portion of it has right 
 to exclude or to unchurch another. 
 
 II. If this be Christendom, then, secondly, what is 
 union? The answer generally given is, that it is 
 that state of mutual recognition which is symbolized 
 by intercommunion — a word itself, we fancy, coined to 
 serve the purpose of this union movement. But 
 it may be suggested that, though intercommunion 
 may be most desirable as a pledge of union, it must 
 not be considered as the object to be aimed at in 
 striving for union. For it requires both too much 
 and too little ; — too much ; for there may be that in 
 the customs of one Church which may be distasteful 
 to another Church, while yet Christian union may be 
 set up and maintained between them : and too little ; 
 for the rites of two Churches may be almost coinci- 
 dent as mere matter of form, while the attitude and 
 animus of the two may be substantially antagonistic. 
 It is plain that intercommunion will be rather an 
 accident, than the substance, of the union of which 
 we are treating. 
 
102 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 And the same reasoiaing may be carried further, 
 and extended even to all formal acts of recognition. 
 If any such formal act is to be set up as that without 
 which union is not, and that on which union follows 
 as matter of course, we shall have made the same 
 double mistake. A formal recognition may be inad- 
 missible, in cases where union may be easy and 
 obvious ; a formal recognition may be, from concur- 
 rent circumstances, easy and apparently satisfactory, 
 and yet no true union may follow. 
 
 These considerations lead up to the inference, that 
 the union of which we are in search will consist not 
 so much in outward acts, as in the state of feeling 
 and temper of Christian bodies one towards another. 
 It will then have begun to set in here in England, 
 when all disparaging thoughts of a man in conse- 
 quence of his religious denominational position shall 
 have ceased ; when we shall have learned to treat the 
 fact of a man's being an Independent or a Wesleyan 
 as no reason for distrusting him or shunning his 
 company ; when the Dissenter, on the other hand, 
 shall have forborne railing at us by reason of the 
 apparent ground of vantage which we possess in 
 being the Established Church of the nation, and shall 
 surcease from his endeavours to misrepresent and 
 subvert us. 
 
 To expect such a time to arrive, may be thought 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. lO.'i 
 
 somewhat chimerical. But it may not be altogether 
 profitless to have indicated at least a desire for its 
 arrival. At all events, this paper will serve as a 
 protest, in the name of the Christian spirit, and the 
 spirit of fair dealing, against the present attempts 
 at formal union with Churches abroad, while the 
 Christian bodies at home are left entirely out of 
 the question. 
 
 It may be asked, whether it would be possible or 
 desirable to aim at marking the union of Christen- 
 dom at home by any outward symbol ? As we said 
 before, we would not have such symbol to be con- 
 sidered as of the essence of the union itself. It would 
 merely be a sign of its existence, tending to carry its 
 reality to the hearts -and the senses of those who 
 partook in it. 
 
 There can, we think, be very little doubt that any 
 who are prepared to sympathize with what has been 
 said would regard such a symbolical act as desirable. 
 The profession of good feeling, even if genuine, needs 
 some outward occasion on which it may be reduced 
 to a great and tangible fact ; and the habit of kind 
 words and charitable thoughts requires stimulus to 
 prevent it from falling into a mere habit. 
 
 If then an outward symbolic act would be desirable, 
 have we any reason to think that such an act would 
 be possible ? It is obvious that we must not look for 
 
104 ESSAYS AND ADDEESSES. 
 
 an answer to this inquiry in the direction of that 
 which is commonly known as inter-com.jimmon. For 
 we should thus at once come face to face with diffi- 
 culties arising out of the constitutions and liturgical 
 biases of the various Churches ; and a concession, by 
 way of compromise, would have to be made, — a neces- 
 sity which we wish to avoid. 
 
 But though m^er-communion may be out of the 
 question, might not the highest of Christian ordi- 
 nances be so administered, by the abstention of each 
 body from the use of its own liturgical. forms, as to 
 include all who interpret the command of our Lord 
 as the institution of an ordinance at all ? Suppose, 
 at all events, that the commemorative portion of that 
 ordinance were shared by an assembly of various 
 denominations of Christians, — the only words heard 
 being the Scripture narrative of its institution, and 
 then bread and wine being administered in silence. 
 
 Of course such a proposition would meet with no 
 favour from — nay, would probably strike with horror 
 — those who believe the virtue of the sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper to consist in the liturgical form, or, in 
 other words, in the priestly consecration of the ele- 
 ments. But, seeing that such a belief would probably 
 be commensurate with the view of the constitution of 
 the Church which is held by the op23onents of the 
 whole spirit of this paper, it would introduce no new 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 105 
 
 element of opposition, and requires therefore no 
 special notice, except it be to say, that any such view 
 of the efficacy of the Holy Communion is totally un- 
 supported by Scripture, and that, consequently, even 
 should we hold it ourselves, we have no right to 
 require it to be held by another. 
 
 So that, even supposing this to be our view, we 
 might yet find a way to the symbolical act of union. It 
 would be this : that each body, or as many as thought 
 good, might use such previous liturgical service as 
 they might think fit, and that the administration 
 might take place at one time and spot, each, or again, 
 as many as thought fit, using the words belonging to 
 their own liturgical form. 
 
 Either of these, or some other method which might 
 easily be devised, would serve to unite those whose 
 hearts were already predisposed, in a symbolical act 
 of union. It was the fortune of the present writer to 
 witness such an act of union performed in two dif- 
 ferent ways at Berlin, in 1857. The first time, 
 exactly as described above, in silence, and with no 
 words but the reading of the institution by our Lord : 
 the second time, by administration to the members of 
 each Church in the words used by each Church, with- 
 out, however, any previous act of consecration. It 
 then appeared to him that the former method was by 
 far the more effectual as a symbol of union. The 
 
106 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 abstention of all from even the forms which they 
 dearly valued, and their meeting on the common 
 ground of the solemn narrative of Holy Writ, seemed 
 to carry with it the reality of their serious and in- 
 compatible differences, and the reality also of the One 
 Word of truth to which all appealed ; seemed to utter 
 at the same time a confession of the fallibility of the 
 Churches, and the infallibility of God's Word. It 
 might be worth considering, whether the recitation 
 of the Apostles' Creed, or, if thought better, of some 
 declaration of belief made in the words of Scripture 
 itself, might not form part of the act of union. 
 
 It would be matter of further inquiry, whether 
 under any, and if so, then under what circumstances, 
 the pulpits of one Christian body should be opened to 
 teachers of another. It is obvious that such liberty, 
 though it may seem a legitimate corollary from what 
 has gone before, would require the most jealous 
 guarding and watching. It must be strictly confined 
 to its exceptional character, and never allowed to 
 become customary, nor of course in any case to extend 
 beyond exhortation from the pulpit. In the Church 
 of England, the morning sermon is so strictly bound 
 into the Liturgy, as to form part of the Communion 
 office. For this reason, even were the above-men- 
 tioned license given, the morning should be ex- 
 empted, and reserved without exception for her own 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 107 
 
 ordained ministers. It will arise to every mind, but 
 is necessary to be stated, as supplementary to any 
 such proposal, that for every case, as it arises, special 
 license, pro hac vice, should be required from the 
 bishop of the diocese, with whom it would rest to 
 obtain such satisfactory proofs of soundness in doc- 
 trine, and such undertaking to respect the differences 
 between the Churches, as he might think necessary 
 or expedient.* Probably any such admission might 
 be found in practice undesirable. But it may not be 
 amiss to have at least indicated a desire that it should 
 be in some cases given. I have read Nonconformist 
 sermons, which have begotten in me the wish that 
 they could have been delivered to our congregations, 
 and could have served both to stimulate our some- 
 what languid preaching, and to set us an example of 
 earnest, and at the same time careful thought. The 
 practice would not be altogether a new one, even in 
 our own times. I have understood that Mr. Venn 
 and Mr. Simeon were in the habit of preaching in 
 the pulpits of the Established Church of Scotland; 
 and the present writer knows of two occasions on 
 which the offer of the parish pulpit in Scotland has 
 
 * It will be of course understood, but may be stated for fear of mistake, 
 that incompatibility of doctrine, as in the case of the Unitarian, would of 
 necessity prove a bar to such admission. 
 
108 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 been made to, though it was not accepted by, a 
 minister of the Church of England. 
 
 But it may be well to conclude with an indication 
 of a course already and easily practicable. The mani- 
 festation of private social sympathy is in every one's 
 powder. It is in every one's power also, to lay aside 
 all those disparaging epithets and insinuations which 
 inifortunately are now so plentifully cast about in the 
 discourse of Churchmen with reference to Dissenters. 
 It is also in every one's power to banish denomi- 
 national jealousies in commercial dealings. Of course 
 those of the clergy who do these acts of Christian jus- 
 tice, or any of them, must make up their minds to 
 incur the bitterest obloquy at the hands of the ex- 
 clusive High Church party. The agents and the 
 journals of that, as of every other extreme party, are 
 perfectly unscrupulous, and will not hesitate to call 
 in question their Churchmanship and their soundness 
 in the faith. There is nothing in the eyes of that 
 party more unpardonable than the following out, 
 with regard to non-episcopal Christian communities, 
 of the principles of the Church of England. They 
 are well aware how entirely they themselves are in 
 opposition to those principles. They know that the 
 Church of England has again and again, by her 
 Convocations, accorded to those bodies the name of 
 
THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 109 
 
 Churches ; and that the best and most approved of her 
 writers have declared Episcopacy to be not essential 
 to the being of a Church.* Knowing these things, 
 and keeping them in the background, they trust to 
 being able to bluster down those who are more con- 
 sistent Churchmen than themselves. 
 
 But it is at length, we believe, beginning to be 
 felt, that bluster is not proof; and that the advocates 
 of common fairness, and of Christian charity, ought 
 to be granted a hearing. In this belief we have 
 ventured to put together the foregoing remarks. It 
 seemed to us that, while to the superficial observer 
 the Church of England is casting off her moorings, 
 and drifting back to Romanism, there is in the hearts 
 of the great mass of her children the earnest wish to 
 make her faster than ever to the Rock which has for 
 three centuries held her safe. We Churchmen yearn, 
 as much as any can, for the union of Christendom ; 
 but we will not seek it by reaching out the hand to 
 distant Churches, while we are fostering disunion at 
 home. When we can say to them " Look once more 
 at the sects into which you charge us with being 
 split ; behold them, while maintaining the differences 
 incident to freedom of thought, cemented together 
 
 * Some of the most remarkable of these testimonies may be found cited 
 in the telling and authoritative reply of the Archbishop of Armagh to Arch- 
 deacon Denison, inserted iir the ' Guardian ' of January 1, 1808. 
 
110 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 by the unity of the Spirit of our common Master ;" — 
 when we can challenge them to witness our success 
 in having reconciled the rights of conscience with 
 the mind that was in Christ, — then also we may say 
 to them " Unite with us, be followers of us." Then 
 it may be, some of them on their side may be given 
 to reply, " We will go with them, for God is with 
 them of a truth." 
 
V. 
 
 CHARITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 
 
 A SKEMON PREACHED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY ON THE 
 FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, JUNE 14, 1868. 
 
" The end of the Commandment is charity, out 
 of a pure heart, and c>f a good conscience, and of 
 faith unfeigned." — 1 Tim. i. 5. 
 
 ^HE end of the Commandment. These words, 
 ray brethren, fall on us at this time with 
 a peculiar force. The former half of another Chris- 
 tian year has gone by. From the manger at 
 Bethlehem to the cloud that rose from Bethany, from 
 the voices of the prophets in Advent to the crowning 
 doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the whole drama of 
 the glorious history, the whole system of resulting 
 truth, has been once more before us. And all is 
 summed up for us in the one word — " the Command- 
 ment." Grod's voice to man, beginning in Eden, 
 continuing through all the strivings of the Divine 
 Spirit with our spirit, seems to the Apostle as he 
 writes, one Commandment, one great injunction laid 
 upon man by his Maker : the many voices constitut-e 
 but one utterance, the thousands of years are but one 
 moment. 
 
 1 
 
114 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Now it is a blessed thing to be able thus to 
 regard the Divine dealings with man. Grod is one, 
 God's dealings are one, God's words are one. "A 
 covenant," says this same Apostle, " is not a 
 covenant of one,- but God is one."* It is a difficult 
 saying, but we may take it on its easy side, and use 
 it for our purpose. In the great process of God 
 towards us, there are not two kinds of terms, two 
 minds, two propositions. All that has looked like 
 this has been but transitory, has been only for 
 teaching and for symbol : but God is one. His 
 self-manifestation to man is one, not many. The 
 populous outer world, that sets forth to us his handy 
 work — the variously written books that declare to 
 us His will — the many-coloured histories that record 
 for us His Providence, each of these in itself is one, 
 and all of these together are one, proceeding from, 
 declaring, revealing, one consistent and unbroken 
 course of will and action. 
 
 It is not possible always to see this unity, nor is it 
 easy always to believe in it. We live among a 
 thousand breaks and inconsistencies, and our vision 
 cannot reach high enough to perceive the point 
 where these all run into one. And so they who 
 have little faith see nothing but the breaks and 
 
 * Gal. iii. 20. 
 
CHARITY, TEE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 115 
 
 inconsistencies, and believe at random, and despair 
 of anything better. But it was for the very pur- 
 pose of assuring to us men this unity in all His 
 dealings with us, that God revealed Himself by 
 Jesus Christ : that He might gather together in one 
 all things in Him : that in Christ Jesus there might 
 not be many distinctions, but that in Him all might 
 be one. " In Him," says this same Apostle,* " God's 
 promises (which are, as revealed to us, the measure 
 of His purposes) are not yea and nay, but all are 
 yea and amen," all in harmony, and ratified for ever. 
 So that to believe in this absolute unity, this 
 whereby all God's will is to us " the Commandment," 
 is of the essence of our Christian faith. And of all 
 times ought it to dwell on our minds now, when we 
 have again gone through the whole great process of 
 our Redemption. All those events, and all that 
 they brought about, are one, and there is one word 
 that interprets them all. That one word, hardly 
 longer than the name whereby we call Him, is at 
 the root of every act, every word, every revelation 
 of God. " God is love/' in all He does. The bright 
 golden thread is not, again, always apparent to us, 
 looking at his dealings from beneath. And some- 
 times it is hard enough even to believe its presence. 
 
 * 2 Cor. i. 20. 
 
 I 2 
 
116 ESSAYS AND ADDBESSES. 
 
 Stand in the darkness under the cross at Golgotha, 
 behold the Divine Victim bowing to His death of 
 cruelty and shame. Is that love ? Can that be in 
 unity with the acts of Him whose tender mercies are 
 over all His works ? Nay, thus much were a small 
 thing to say. That agony, that yielding up the 
 righteous soul of the Son of God, is the very centre 
 and key of all God's love. Herein, herein chiefly 
 and of all other examples, is love : this was the 
 choicest fruit and the fullest outpouring of the 
 Father's great love to man — the means whereby 
 man, in his waywardness, his rebellion, his guilt, 
 might become reconciled to God. Well, then, in the 
 full consciousness, and in the blessed spirit of this 
 unity, looking at God's law and Christ's Gospel as 
 one Commandment, let us see what is tbe end, the 
 purpose, of that manifestation of God to us. 
 
 " The end of the Commandment is charity^'' " is 
 love" 
 
 Now, taking the declaration in its simplicity, and 
 looking out over the Christian world, we are dis- 
 posed, simply enough on our part perhaps, to say, 
 What a pity it is that people do not oftener ask 
 themselves amidst all their conscientious observance 
 of Christianity, and all their life-long toil to do their 
 duty by it, whereunto it all tends : what is the one 
 general effect which He who ordained Christianity 
 
CHARITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 117 
 
 as a great Commandment for iis, intended it to pro- 
 duce ? For it seems to me that this is not, or at all 
 events is not commonly, done. Look at the lives, 
 listen to the words, of earnest faithful men and 
 women. A noble utterance here, a blessed act of 
 self-denial there, a firm testimony to great doctrines 
 when it was required, these we may find ; but is it 
 not t*ue that the lives of most religious people are 
 but a heap of scattered efforts, the reachings of a 
 hand in the dark, the utterances of thoughts without 
 a centre, the glitterings of unstrung jewels shed 
 upon the ground ? Mark the man as life goes on, 
 and gray hairs gather upon him : follow him into 
 his business, listen to him in society : what has the 
 advancing Christian of our day gained by his Chris- 
 tianity ? Here it has been for years. Blameless at 
 school, blameless in 'prentice life, or in college life, 
 constant at prayer in chamber and at church, having 
 the pure heart, cherishing the good conscience, 
 living by the faith unfeigned, wherein has he grown, 
 whereby can men take ever more and more certain 
 note of him, that he has been all these years with 
 Jesus ? 
 
 Surely this is one of the great faults of our time, 
 that we do not find any given end of the Command- 
 ment notably served in men who have been all their 
 lives in the practice of it : that men and women 
 
118 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 move about among us, of whom we know that tlaey 
 have long been eminent in tlie Church of Christ, 
 who are looked up to as examples and lights of the 
 religious life, and yet«they are none the better for all 
 this, their temper none the sweeter, their words 
 none the gentler, their acts none the more con- 
 siderate to others. 
 
 And one of the chief reasons why Christiaaity is 
 so much called in question in these days, so much 
 pulled to pieces and cavilled at, is, that it is not seen 
 producing effect on society and on the members of 
 society. We talk about our pure and apostolical 
 faith in this land : we call it a high privilege, ever- 
 more to go close up to the fountains themselves and 
 draw : the open Bible, the holy words of the loving 
 One, the fervent sayings of His Apostles, heard in 
 every household, taught to every child, these are the 
 boasts which rise from our pulpits and our platforms. 
 But men are beginning to ask what is the use of 
 this familiarity with the person of Christ, if it does 
 not make us like Christ ? And where is the profit 
 of an apostolical faith, if it takes no note of apos- 
 tolical example ? 
 
 And the eye naturally turns to others than us, 
 who take their Christianity lower down, and who 
 have surrendered to earthly authorities that freedom 
 of judgment which we so jealously guard : and 
 
CHARITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 119 
 
 men see, or they seem to see, more visible effect 
 produced for tlie faith and for the toil ; they think 
 they find tempers more subdued, spirits more calmed, 
 livelier lives, more saintly devotion ; and the con- 
 sequences are, with those who cannot see through 
 nor appreciate the truth of things, error, and 
 perhaps defection ; and with those who can, an 
 indifferent contempt for all forms of that religion 
 which cannot, in its purity, mould a man's life to its 
 image, and which, if it have any effect, is obliged to 
 borrow it from lower motives and meretricious 
 influences. 
 
 My brethren, these things ought not so to be. 
 We have been a land of reformed churches long 
 enough, to have made very visible progress towards 
 the end and purpose of our faith, if it have an end 
 and purpose. If we have not done so, it behoves us 
 to stand and consider our ways. 
 
 And Grod has given us plenty of light in this 
 matter to consider them by. It is not as if all were 
 darkness : it is not as if over the broad world Chris- 
 tianity had failed of its effect. Viewed on the large 
 scale, as an influence over nations, over the great 
 international and supranational maxims which rule 
 mankind, Christianity has, in the ages since the Lord 
 went up from us, notably and visibly served its end. 
 The collective conscience of nations has in more than 
 
120 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 one case yielded to tlie one continued protest against 
 injustice and cruelty which is raised in the Gospel, 
 and the latter of the two great Commandments has 
 become in some measure at least a recognised 
 standard of action. 
 
 And though even here some may be disposed to 
 think the great work of leavening the lump as yet 
 only begun, yet there can be no question that to the 
 leaven we are to trace what good has been done, and 
 that, in however slight a measure, and however 
 slow a progress, the leavening is advancing age by 
 age. 
 
 But, my brethren, when we look at our individual 
 lives and enquire of them, surely the answer must be 
 altogether different. Gentler maxims of conduct, 
 larger heartedness, more words and deeds of love, 
 these are not even so much as thought of in forming 
 an estimate of progress or of character in our 
 Church life. Nay, more, and worse, than this. 
 Such effects of our religion are, if alleged respecting 
 a man, openly and professedly despised, and repu- 
 diated as indicating any eminence or advance. We 
 cast behind us our Lord's rule, " By their fruits ye 
 shall know them." We proclaim that this is a 
 deceptive rule, a lax and latltudlnarian standard, 
 and we take on us to amend it : " By their pro- 
 fessions ye shall know them, by their opinions ye 
 
CHARITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 121 
 
 shall know them, by their words ye shall know 
 them." And so the great men in our Christian 
 world are not the men of eminent Christian action, 
 not the peacemakers, not the heroes of love and self- 
 denial, but the vehement denouncers of differing 
 0|)inion, the strong assertors of some narrow and 
 well-marked line of doctrine in doubtful matters, the 
 very persons who cause, instead of healing, division. 
 I know it is always easy to find excuse and justifi- 
 cation for this. The cry of " the truth in danger" is 
 ever ready on men's lips : the assertion that the 
 present time, be it when it may,- is a great crisis, to 
 be dealt with exceptionally, has I suppose been made 
 in every age of the Church. At all events, those 
 who can look back over the last half century will 
 remember that such things have never ceased to be 
 alleged as temporarily standing in the way of the 
 " end of the Commandment." Love, reconciliation, 
 and reciprocal kindliness, between differing Christian 
 men and difiering Christian bodies, are confessed to 
 be admirable things, if they could but be had ; but 
 this is not the time for them : we live amidst immi- 
 nent perils : talk not of disarming, when the foe is at 
 the door. All my lifetime, good men have been 
 saying this : many have spent their strength in the 
 protest and are passed away, many are running ■ the 
 same course now, champions of division, their hand 
 
122 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 against every man, and every man's hand against 
 them : and to judge by the promise of the younger 
 men who are coming np, such will be more than ever 
 the spirit and practice of the age that is to follow 
 us. Their converse, their speeches, their books and 
 journals, are bristling with tokens of war ; doubtful 
 things more strongly asserted, ill motives more 
 rashly attributed, sweeping condemnations more 
 recklessly pronounced. If the end of the Command- 
 ment is love, we of this Church, my brethren, have 
 somehow missed the path, and are going altogether 
 astray from it. 
 
 Our text not only points out to us the fact that 
 the end of the Commandment is love ; it goes deeper 
 than this, it shows us out of what that love ought to 
 spring. Now if there be a defect of water down the 
 stream, we may expect to find its fountains yielding 
 but scantily. There it will be that the origin of the 
 mischief must be sought, and there that the remedy 
 must be applied. It may appear that the springs 
 are shallow and want deepening ; or are uncared for, 
 and have become choked up ; or both these faults 
 may exist together. The end of the Commaridment is 
 love out of a 2?ure heart, and of a good conscience, and 
 of faith U7ifeigned, 
 
 Doubtless these latter clauses may be regarded as 
 putting a limitation on and conditioning the love 
 
CHARITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 123 
 
 wbich is the end of the Commandment. Its stream 
 is not to receive impure accessions, nor is it to lose 
 its own distinctive character and quality. And this 
 negative meaning of such expressions in Scripture, 
 has ever been the more welcome one in the Church. 
 If admits of being pushed so far as to nullify the 
 real force and stress of the precept or declaration. 
 
 Thus, for instance, when St. James tells us that 
 " the wisdom which is from above is first pure, then 
 peaceable," * there are not wanting persons among us, 
 who persuade themselves that the duty of being 
 peaceable does not begin till the perfection of purity 
 has been reached, and in this way they evade 
 altogether the bearing of the declaration on their 
 own conduct. 
 
 Thus too, when St. Paul concludes his Epistle 
 to the Ephesians with the large-hearted Christian 
 benediction, " Grace be with all them, that love the 
 Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity ^'■\ or " in incorruption," 
 these same persons will narrow down the import of 
 this last word till it comes to include only their own 
 religious body ; nay, within that body only their 
 own set of doctrinal opinions. 
 
 And thus, not in these alone, but in a hundred 
 other instances, we are literally doing that with 
 
 * JaiuGS iii. 17. f Eph. vi. 24. 
 
124 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 which our Lord charged the Scribes and Pharisees, 
 maJcing void the word of God for the sake of, in order to 
 maintain, our tradition. 
 
 But, if these specifications in our text are in some 
 sense limitations, that sense is but a secondary one. 
 They have not only a negative, but also a strong 
 positive and declaratory force, full of instruction to 
 us of this day. Let us see what this is. The 
 phrase, " a pure heart,'' occurs in Holy Scripture 
 sometimes in its most obvious sense of a heart 
 cleansed from defilement, but perhaps oftener in that 
 which it seems to bear here, the sense of a single 
 undivided purpose. Thus we have in the Epistle of 
 St. James, " Purify your hearts, ye double-minded ; " * 
 thus too we read of them that serve the Lord, out of 
 a pure heart ; thus again St. Paul says of himself 
 that he served God from his forefathers with a pwe 
 conscience ; f thus again in Old Testament language 
 we are told that ' ' the fear of the Lord is clean, and 
 endurethfor ever.^l And the pure heart in our text, 
 out of which that charity which is the end of the 
 Commandment is to spring, is plainly of this kind — 
 singleness of purpose, without admixture of side-aims 
 and selfish views. 
 
 And here is one chief root of the evil among our- 
 
 * James iv. 8. f 2 Tim. i. 3. J Vs. xix. 9. 
 
CHARITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 125 
 
 selves, that the stream with us does not run pure. 
 Our hearts are not set, our lives are not devoted, to 
 the simple glorification of God by Christ, but to the 
 furtherance of some certain system of opinions, or 
 some defined set of agencies, which have gathered 
 round, and for us embodied, the great central purpose 
 of Christianity. 
 
 Let us not conceal from ourselves the truth, 
 however unwelcome to a self-satisfied and .boastful 
 Church. Want of singleness of heart in devotion 
 simply to God and God's work, is the cause of the 
 wars and fightings which are so grievously prevailing 
 within our own body, and of the unsympathising 
 spirit which we show towards those who, differing in 
 outward forms, are as much servants of Christ as 
 ourselves. If the Commandment be one, and have 
 one end, then I submit to you that it is impossible 
 that this end can be attained, any more than other 
 ends in life, except by those whose energies are 
 centered towards its attainment. 
 
 But is this so with us ? Is not our judgment of 
 one another, is not our judgment of those without, 
 evermore complicated by considerations over and 
 above the simplicity which is in Christ ? He may be 
 never so devoted a servant of Christ, but if his 
 opinions are not mine, if he take not the same view 
 with myself of that Church of which we both are 
 
126 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 members, I will not love him, I will not sympathise 
 with him, I will judge hardly of his motives, I will 
 look coolly upon and counteract his endeavours for 
 good. This is the language, not which men speak 
 and write — that they are afraid and ashamed to do — 
 but on which they act, each towards his neighbour. 
 And who does not see that this kind of feeling is 
 even becoming systematised and embodied in public 
 action i» the organs of the various Church parties, 
 whose vocation it is to thwart and to vilify one 
 another ? 
 
 Now this singleness of heart is even more con- 
 spicuously wanting in our conduct towards those 
 who serve and love the Lord Jesus Christ, but not 
 with our outward forms. For here we exhibit 
 not only the accretion of secondary aims over the 
 one single aim of the Christian heart, but also a 
 demonstrable doubleness and inconsistency in our 
 words and acts, which is wholly unworthy of earnest 
 or of intelligent men. 
 
 In our graver estimate of these our brethren, we 
 never for a moment deny them the title of Christians, 
 we never presume to doubt their part in Christ, nor 
 their co-operation with us in the work of Grod in the 
 world. In our more serious moments, and when we 
 speak and write before the public, these are our 
 professed sentiments ; but in private, and in social 
 
CHARITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 127 
 
 • 
 
 life, many of us cast sucli thoughts entirely aside. 
 Coldness of behaviour, and disparaging words, take 
 the place of our former generous admissions. Nay, 
 more than this ; many are content to violate the 
 first laws of liberty of conscience, and as far as their 
 influence goes in matter of patronage and support, 
 to make a neighbour suffer for the fact of his 
 belonging to a different Christian body from them- 
 selves. 
 
 It is impossible that this self-contradiction can 
 spring out of the pure heart insisted on in my text. 
 A fountain cannot send forth out of the same place 
 sweet waters and bitter. The fountain must have 
 two sources, not one only, which can thus flow in 
 two streams of a complexion and taste so diverse. 
 
 Nor, again, can such conduct be cleared of guilt 
 of another kind in the sight of Almighty Grod. 
 What is this loving Him and His work a little, and 
 loving our own Church, or our own party in that 
 Church, more, but a setting up in our heart of idols 
 other than Him ? What can a Church expect, which 
 in the main thus approaches Him, but to be answered 
 according to the multitude of its idols ? 
 
 And has it not been so with us, and is it not so 
 now ? Can we say that He has blessed, can we say 
 that He is blessing, our agencies for good at home 
 and abroad ? Ample reason for humble thankfulness 
 
128 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 • 
 
 indeed we have, that He is pleased to use us in any 
 degree for His work in the world ; bnt my question 
 regards the relative condition of that work and its 
 prospects ; and I answer it without fear of contradic- 
 tion, that neither here in England, nor in our 
 colonies, have we as a Church at this time any cause 
 for self-congratulation : that a blight seems to be 
 resting upon us, rather than a blessing. 
 
 And among the reasons for this, I cannot but 
 reckon this our divided heart in God's service, this 
 love of ourselves rather than of Him, this setting 
 up of the idols of our position and our emolu- 
 ments, and the accidents of our ecclesiastical and 
 liturgical traditions, as a bar to our attaining the end 
 of His Commandment, love out of a pure heart. We 
 are verily guilty concerning our brethren : and of 
 that guilt we are reaping the consequences, in 
 coldness, and confusion, and distrust among ourselves, 
 in paralysed action at the present, and dark mis- 
 givings for the future. 
 
 But there is always in those who are furthest 
 from attaining Christian love, a ready answer to 
 such pleadings as these. We must maintain purity 
 of doctrine. Such a course as you are by inference 
 recommending, tends to break down those bulwarks 
 which the Church in her wisdom has set up, and to 
 bring about an indifference to Christian truth. And 
 
CHABITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 129 
 
 therefore we consider it the wiser and safer path, to 
 keep to ourselves, to company only with those of our 
 own views, or at widest with those of our own body, 
 and thus to preserve the deposit of apostolical doc- 
 trine and order unimpaired. 
 
 No answer can be more specious than this ; at the 
 same time, none can be more convenient, nor more 
 calculated to save trouble. And in consequence it 
 is cherished and acted on by a multitude of persons 
 within our Church. 
 
 Of course, like every other self-deceit, it has a real 
 and a true side. No one can deny that there exists 
 for us the danger of indifference towards truth of 
 doctrine, or that it is a mood widely prevalent in our 
 day. But I entirely deny that such danger lies in 
 the path of that love, which is enjoined in our text. 
 For that text carefully guards itself, by its concluding 
 words, against being perverted in this direction. 
 " The end of the Commandment is love out of a 
 pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith 
 unfeigned.'" Thus it precludes, on the one side, that 
 laxity of practice which might issue in carelessness 
 concerning manner of life and testimony of con- 
 science, and on the other that vagueness of belief 
 which might lead to casting down the bulwarks of 
 the faith. 
 
 But these words have also another voice for us. 
 
 K 
 
130 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 The fact of the specification here of a good con- 
 science, and the epithet attached to the word faith, 
 suggest to us an unwelcome, but an unavoidable 
 inference, that there is such a thing among those 
 who hold the Commandment, as an evil conscience; 
 that there is such a thing as a faith which is not 
 unfeigned. We need not thereby mean that con- 
 sciously-sustained hypocrisy is rife among us. The 
 hypocrisy of self-deceit is, though not the more 
 criminal, yet far the more hopeless form : and that, 
 it is to be feared, is always widely prevalent. A 
 man believes himself to be upright in matters of 
 conscience, and sound in the faith, nay, prides him- 
 self in his zeal for correctness of life and of doctrine, 
 but at heart is without any personal apprehension of 
 the Lord whom he serves, lives not in the practice 
 of a good conscience towards God, and simple per- 
 sonal faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. His rule is 
 one not framed directly on the voice of Him that 
 sitteth on the throne : Christ Himself is not present 
 in his thoughts, nor communed with in his prayers. 
 The human system again which has grown up 
 around the facts of redemption, this is his object of 
 reverence, not the Heavenly Father, not the Re- 
 deemer himself. And this kind of life necessarily 
 hinders that charity which is the end of the Com- 
 mandment. The single-hearted servant of an unseen 
 
CHARITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 131 
 
 God looks for those who serve Him Hkewise : the 
 simple believer in the Lord Jesus Christ loves those 
 who love Him. Differences may exist, in opinion, 
 in practice ; but the good conscience, the faith 
 unfeigned, does not dwell on these ; it looks above 
 them ; it regards those who hold the common Master 
 and Head as having common interest, and belonging 
 to a common family. Whereas he who looks and 
 fixes his thought less on the Lord Himself than on 
 His accessories, is sure to find points of difference, 
 causes of alienation and irritation, wherever he 
 turns. And seeing that the good conscience, and 
 faith unfeigned, are the real source of charity, the 
 charity which flows from these is no breaker down 
 of conscietitious conviction, nor of doctrinal purity, 
 no bringer in of indifferentism. That charity which 
 necessitates compromise is of this world, not of 
 Christ. 
 
 Probably no Christians since have ever differed 
 more widely on important matters of Church practice, 
 than did St. Paul and the Apostles who ruled the 
 Church at Jerusalem. Read, with our modern ideas, 
 the 2nd chapter of the Epistle to the Gralatians, read 
 that whole Epistle as compared with the Ejoistle of 
 St. James, and you would wonder how the actors in 
 the scene which that chapter describes, how the 
 writers of those two Epistles, could ever work 
 
 K 2 
 
132 ESSAYS AND ADDBESSES. 
 
 together with a common creed and under a common 
 master. But, notwithstanding, the rigid upholders 
 of the law gave to the great innovator of Tarsus the 
 right hand of fellowship : notwithstanding, they 
 agreed that he should go to the Gentiles, while they 
 ministered to the circumcision : and at the root of the 
 heart, St. Paul and St. James loved and obeyed 
 the same Lord ; the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ the 
 Lord of glory, to he held with no respect of persons 
 enforced by the one,* is the same as the faith 
 working by love, in Him in whom there is no Jew and 
 Gentile, no bond nor free, no male and female, hut we are 
 all one in Him,^ so gloriously set forth by the other. 
 
 Let these be our examples. Let us follow them, 
 as they followed Christ. They could not help differing : 
 no more can we. One of them had grown up into 
 his unfeigned faith in Christ in the midst of his 
 temple worship and his traditional beliefs ; the other 
 had had the traditions of his fathers, all but their 
 root in God, shattered to pieces when the glory of 
 that light shone round him at Damascus. And in 
 like, or in some other fashion, may God's Spirit, 
 dividing to every man severally as He will, bring in 
 differences among ourselves; differences of modes of 
 thought and of cherished associations, differences in 
 
 * James ii. 1. f Gal. iii. 28. 
 
CHARITY, THE END OF THE COMMANDMENT. 133 
 
 our ways of approach to the Father by the same 
 blessed Redeemer. We need not surrender these 
 differences : they are ingrained into the very texture 
 of our conscientious life ; the faith has taken hold on 
 our hearts by their means ; if we surrender them, in 
 many cases, not the differing belief would be our lot, 
 but the intermediate gulf of unbelief. 
 
 Nay, let us evermore cherish them, seeing that 
 with them is bound up the consistency of our inner 
 life, and the unfeignedness of our faith. We love 
 this our Fathers' Church, thus constituted, thus 
 administered : we can give our reasons for her 
 ordinances : our hearts beat high as we read her 
 struggles and triumphs in history : the halls of her 
 worship are these venerable aisles, a very heaven to 
 us of sight and sound : her praise is for us bound up 
 with the varied Psalm and Canticle, and the massive 
 chords of the organ : her liturgy has its appointed 
 place, and its seemly vesture, and its becoming 
 adornment. All this and more, belongs to the out- 
 ward Church life, in the recurrence and under the 
 influence of which our conscience can best be clear, 
 in the process of which the faith unfeigned is for us 
 enshrined. 
 
 And as we have no right to require of another 
 that he should adopt these, so neither ought he to 
 require of us that we should sacrifice them. If he 
 
134 ESSAYS AND ADDBESSE8. 
 
 finds himself nearer to God for the absence of both 
 the historical and the material fabric, let us not 
 depreciate his faith : on the other hand let him not 
 question ours. 
 
 But meantime let neither of us forget the end of 
 the Commandment ; let neither of us, with or without 
 intent, put a bar to its attainment by the substitution 
 of other aims for that which it prescribes, by 
 aggression under the guise of friendliness, or imprac- 
 ticable schemes of unity whose very terms are insult. 
 
 We live in a time in which conflict is rapidly 
 superseding charity ; nay, in which men are ever 
 readier to fight even than to work. Be it ours to 
 remember, that not victory over one another, not 
 victory in this world at all, is the end of the Com- 
 mandment : that every blow struck at a member of 
 Christ, is a loss to the Church, a loss to the stricken, 
 a greater loss to the striker. 
 
 Let us bear in mind, that there may be many stirs 
 among men, many striking displays, many choruses 
 of human applause in the Church, as well as in the 
 world ; but that in the keeping of the Commandment, 
 as indeed in all things, but especially in the keeping 
 of the Commandment, because it is the voice of the 
 eternal One, it is he that looketh to the end who 
 shall never do amiss. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE REQUISITES OF M EDUCATION FOR THE 
 MINISTRY IN THE PRESENT DAY. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVEEED AT THE CENTENARY 
 CELEBRATION, CHESHUNT COLLEGE, JUNE 25, 1868. 
 
rpHE work of the ministry in Christ's Church is 
 -*- in this, as it has been in all times, divided into 
 two principal portions, that of a shepherd and that 
 of a teacher. Not that these two are so distinguished 
 from each other as to be in practice separate occupa- 
 tions. The shepherd never ceases to be a teacher, 
 nor the teacher to be a shepherd. If pastoral lead- 
 ing and feeding be not ever in the mind of the 
 teacher, he teaches but ill ; if that which he has 
 received to teach be not constantly in the thoughts 
 and lips of the shepherd, he feeds but insufficiently, 
 and guides but feebly. The two act and re-act upon 
 each other. But for the convenience of treatment 
 we are obliged to separate them ; and inasmuch as 
 power to lead is more ministered to by power to 
 teach than the converse, we will begin with the 
 latter. 
 
138 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. * 
 
 Power to teach is commonly measured by native 
 aptitude working on acquired material. The former 
 of these it is of course beyond our sphere to furnish. 
 But in confessing this, we often take for granted too 
 much. Perhaps the complex result, power to teach, 
 is far less affected by pure natural genius than we 
 are given to suppose. There is acquired aptitude as 
 well ; and not only is it true that in this race the 
 tortoise may beat the hare, but it is also true that 
 native aptitude to teach is very often latent, and not 
 educed but by a training process. Therefore we 
 frame our practice on the level, and let the excep- 
 tions emerge. We assume that all are equal, until 
 we are obliged to recognise inequality. 
 ■ It is plain that the chief material to be acquired 
 for ministerial teaching is the knowledge of Holy 
 Scripture. Not that it is the only material by any 
 means. Knowledge of man is at least an indis- 
 pensable requisite for putting the other knowledge 
 into use. But so much of the knowledge of man as 
 is matter of acquisition, can only be gained by deal- 
 ing with men. I say, so much as is matter of acqui- 
 sition, because very much which constitutes eminence 
 in the knowledge of man is a matter of natural 
 instinct. Some men who are both able and learned, 
 remain all their lives without any knowledge of their 
 fellow-creatures, while others, like the Cure d'Ars, 
 
REQUISITES OF AN EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY. 139 
 
 neither able nor learned, work wonders for years 
 together by their marvellons insight into men. 
 
 But if we cannot create this insight, we can culti- 
 vate and endow it : and its best endowment is the 
 knowledge of Scripture. Our first enquiry then is, 
 how best in our days to impart the knowledge of 
 Scripture. And here it will be ^Dlain to you that I 
 am speaking, not of that practical and devotional 
 knowledge which any who read and love Scripture 
 may acquire, but of the knowledge required over and 
 above that other to qualify a teacher : knowledge 
 which may enable a man rightly to divide the Word 
 of Truthj and intelligently to dispense its lessons to 
 those who are to learn from him. 
 
 And the first requisite for this is, I conceive, that 
 he should be thoroughly taught the circumstances 
 under which, and the readers to whom, the books of 
 Scripture were written. This involves more than 
 may at first sight be supposed. A few paragraphs 
 in an introduction, describing, for instance, the towr 
 of Colossse, and the habits of its people, and the 
 object of the Apostle in writing to them, would form 
 but a very small contribution to the knowledge of 
 the Epistle. Very much more than this ought to 
 be known. If it were only for our present purpose, 
 the language which these people spoke, and in which 
 the letter was written, must be learned. And it is 
 
140 ESSAYS AND ADDBE88ES. 
 
 impossible to know a language without knowing 
 some of its literature, and of the history of thought 
 as conveyed by it. And so we come to a practical 
 point, which is this : that something of a classical 
 education is required for him who is to teach Holy 
 Scripture. To my mind, looking at things from a 
 Church aspect, it is this which makes the present 
 outcry against classical education so much to be 
 deplored. Of course, we would not deny that it may 
 have been carried too far ; but when we see proposals 
 entertained for dropping out altogether from English 
 education the language in which the New Testament 
 is written, we cannot but fear the effect on the teach- 
 ing power of our clergy, and as a consequence on the 
 Christian intelligence of our country. 
 
 From the trained and qualified teacher I am per- 
 suaded that such an education ought never to be 
 absent. The Epistles of St. Paul, to mention but 
 one portion of his material, deal with great pro- 
 blems of Christian thought and feeling which will 
 last as long as the world lasts. These are discussed 
 after the manner of his time, according to his habits 
 of thought, in the language of the thinkers of his 
 day. Till you go over the work with his tools, you 
 cannot fit that work to the varying wants of our 
 time, and the differing capacities of our language. 
 If you are to teach what St. Paul taught, you must. 
 
REQUISITES OF AN EDUCATION FOB THE MINISTRY. 141 
 
 in your measure, know what St. Paul knew, and feel 
 what St. Paul felt. It seems to me preposterous 
 that any man should be set to teach a congregation, 
 who has never read, and never will read, one word 
 of Holy Scripture as it was given to the world. It 
 is impossible but that such a leader should be con- 
 tinually deceiving himself and them that hear him. 
 And the knowledge of the original tongue should 
 not be confined to the New Testament only. There 
 can hardly be a doubt that the Biblical conflict of 
 the coming age will be over the Old Testament. 
 Very serious questions respecting it have in this land 
 hardly yet been even entered upon by the Church, 
 but are now beginning to present themselves to men's 
 minds. At such a time the teachers of Christianity 
 ought to stand in the first rank of learning and intel- 
 ligence. If any modification in our understanding 
 or our reading of those sacred books is required, they 
 are the persons who ought to lead the way in sug- 
 gesting such modification, and to be foremost in 
 adopting it. 
 
 Next to the acquisition of the language of Scrip- 
 ture, and putting that acquisition to profit by study 
 of the sacred books, care should be taken to ascertain 
 of what those sacred books consist. As we at present 
 possess them, they have come to us in a traditional 
 rather than in a critically adjusted form. In the 
 
142 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 case of the New Testament, a kind of revision of 
 the sacred text was made about the time of the 
 Reformation, by the aid of such ancient authorities 
 as were then accessible. From that time to this, the 
 testimony of those authorities has been continually 
 augmented by discovery, and certified by research. 
 And the result is, that the text which would be now 
 universally agreed on by those qualified to judge 
 in the matter, differs in many particulars, some of 
 them of grave import, from that known as the 
 received text. 
 
 It is plain that if we are to deal faithfully by 
 Scripture, he who is set to teach from it must have 
 an adequate knowledge of what has taken place in 
 this matter, that he may be able to put before his 
 people as nearly as possible what the sacred writers 
 really have delivered to us. I believe it will not 
 be long before a revision of our authorised version 
 must take place. But till this time, and indeed none 
 the less after this time, the Christian teacher ought 
 to be able in all cases to himself, and in the more 
 important cases to those he instructs, to render a 
 reason for the text which he adopts. 
 
 Passing by, as taken for granted, instruction in 
 those collateral matters without which a man cannot 
 even understand Scripture for himself, I come to a 
 very important requisite, more than ever needed in 
 
REQUISITES OF AN EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY. 143 
 
 our time ; I mean training in the use of Scripture 
 for doctrine and for edification. We all know that 
 the plainest public document is of little comparative 
 use to an unskilled person. Some portions of it, 
 indeed, may be so simple as to speak the same lan- 
 guage to all ; but for certainty of inference from 
 it, training in the interpretation of such documents 
 is required. An Act of Parliament may seem to the 
 unskilled to enjoin or prohibit this or that ; but the 
 penetration of a legal mind is reqinred to decide 
 upon its real meaning. Now it may be safely said 
 that the difference between the trained and the un- 
 trained is even greater in the case of Scripture than 
 in the example quoted. While happily the sacred 
 volume has its unmistakeable message for the cottager 
 and for the child, and while the mind of the Holy 
 Spirit is more surely attained by becoming as a little 
 child than by any amount of mere human learning, 
 the Bible of all books requires the greatest amount 
 of careful study from him who is to explain and 
 supply it. There is no more formidable enemy to 
 truth than the rash untaught expounder of Scripture. 
 Up and down in society we find such men, frequently 
 with amazing knowledge of their pocket Bible as to 
 its contents, but without the faintest streak of exege- 
 tical tact or power of intelligent comparison — men 
 of whose expositions any celebrated '' cross reading 
 
144 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 of Scripture texts" is hardly a caricature. Of course 
 such an amount of ignorance can hardly be found in 
 the trained student ; but even he is frequently not 
 exempt from several of their faults in his exposition 
 of Scripture. I will mention one in particular : the 
 fault of inquiring less what Scripture has said, than 
 what it ought to say, and may be made to say. The 
 great majority of our English expository works are 
 tainted throughout with this fault. St. Paul's G-reek 
 sentence looks as if it meant, — would mean, if used by 
 a secular writer, so and so ; but St. Paul could never 
 mean that, because we assume that St. Paul signed 
 the Thirty-nine Articles, and that meaning is, or 
 seems, inconsistent with them. And, therefore, St. 
 Paul must be interpreted by the Articles, not the 
 Articles by St. Paul. Depend on it, a great requisite 
 for our ministerial teaching in England is the " Un- 
 befangenheit" in Scripture exegesis, on which our 
 Grerman neighbours insist, and of which they have 
 given such eminent examples. To pass from English 
 commentators to such works as those of De Wette 
 and Meyer, is to emerge into freer air, and unfettered 
 action. I feel for myself that I cannot adopt, that I 
 have an increasing aversion to, the rationalistic 
 systems of both these writers ; but for all that, I find 
 them by far the most valuable expositors. And that, 
 just because of the almost total absence from their 
 
REQUISITES OF AN EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY. 145 
 
 pages of any wish to bend plain language so as to 
 suit preconceived notions ; because they simply in- 
 quire throughout not "What may it mean?" but 
 " What does it mean ? " The question so constantly 
 and so timidly thrust on us as a bar to this unfettered 
 inquiry, " Whither will it lead us ? " is not one for 
 us to entertain. If the Scripture is to be our rule 
 of faith, it is plain that we must obey the Scripture, 
 not the Scripture us ; we must go to the Scripture 
 to be taught, not to teach. And the higher our 
 estimate of Scripture, the more willing shall we be, 
 if that estimate be a real one, not one adopted 
 conventionally, to follow its teaching, whether it 
 confirm our system or impugn it. How much a 
 change on these points is needed, may be estimated 
 from the fact that the men among us whose language 
 is most high-pitched respecting the authority of 
 Scripture, are the very last to give pains to examine, 
 in any given case, what that authority enjoins, and 
 the most reluctant to submit to it when ascertained. 
 
 But in order to explain Scripture profitably, much 
 more than unfettered action is required. In a great 
 proportion of cases, the erroneous expositor goes 
 astray for want of common sense. All kinds of- 
 outrageous things are said and printed as being- 
 according to Scripture, because men will not use the 
 eyes and ears which God has given them. What 
 
 L 
 
146 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 is called faithful preaching may go on for years in 
 a church, and yet absolutely no effect may be pro- 
 duced by it, because it is addressed not to English 
 men and English women of the nineteenth century, 
 but to some ideal beings, existing only in the imagi- 
 nation of the preacher. The calamitous failure of 
 those who have thus taught, to lead either opinion 
 or practice in our day, may be traced in great measure 
 to this defect in studying the character and wants 
 of the time. They have gone on wearying us with 
 remedies for diseases which we had not, and loading 
 us with abuse for those which we had : unless indeed 
 these latter escaped them altogether. And the result 
 has been that the age, like any other mistreated 
 patient, has shown itself weakest where they encou- 
 raged us to think it strongest ; and in matters where 
 they believed it to have no vigour at all, has fairly 
 broken away from and distanced them. 
 
 And these considerations bring me to the second 
 portion of that which I had to say — the requisites 
 at the present time for education to lead and shep- 
 herd the flock. I am afraid that in this department 
 our present training is very defective, and that in- 
 ability to guide is very general on the part of our 
 ministry. I am sure that this is so in the Established 
 Church of England. The newly-ordained candidate 
 knows no more of the material on which he has to 
 
REQUISITES OF AN EDUCATION FOB THE MINISTRY. 147 
 
 work, than he may have picked up in youth by his 
 own natural observation. Our proceeding in this 
 matter is about as rational as it would be to take a 
 house-surgeon for an hospital by lot among the by- 
 standers. And the result is, that among «s the 
 pastoral office, as such, is almost in abeyance. The 
 last thing that a thinking man will do in spiritual 
 perplexity is to consult his clergyman ; because he 
 knows that his clergyman has never been trained to 
 minister to a mind diseased, because he feels that he 
 shall probably be snubbed for his doubts, and told 
 that difficulties which are to him very real are no 
 difficulties at all. We want among us, not the con- 
 fessional, but some substitute, according to our views, 
 for the admirable training which the Roman Catholic 
 priest receives for his duties in the confessional : 
 some preparation to become the ductor dubitantium 
 and the consolator moerentium among the actual men 
 of our own time. At present I feel that the attitude 
 of our clergy towards the age, and the men of the 
 age, is far too generally a bar against their useful- 
 ness in this matter. There is an almost universal 
 railing at the age, and at its habits of thought and 
 practice. Any manifest want of the day is set down 
 as something which ought to be opposed or ignored, 
 and the mental symptoms of our time are deliberately 
 put aside as not worth attention. General sentences 
 
 L 2 
 
148 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 of condemnation are pronounced against whole schools 
 of thought and opinion, without any pains bestowed 
 to understand them, without any inquiry how far 
 they may represent the influence of Christianity 
 itself, working in unsuspected or hitherto unexampled 
 forms. We need an ever watchful, ever varied 
 training of our candidates for the ministry in the 
 knowledge of the men, and of the thoughts of 
 the men, among whom they are to be cast. That 
 the clergy should ever again assume that kind of 
 lead which they once had, is as impossible as it would 
 be undesirable ; but that they ought to be made 
 acquainted with, and to feel with and for, the mental 
 and spiritual state of their flocks, surely none will 
 deny. Men do not now think, men ough4 not now 
 to think, as any priest prescribes ; but it cannot but 
 be salutary, that men should know and feel that their 
 spiritual pastors are at least their equals in the race 
 of thought, and even their superiors in observation 
 of its tendencies. Whatever this age may be, it is 
 at any rate more worthy of our attention and study 
 than all that have gone before ; for it is our appointed 
 test of responsibility, our prescribed field of labour. 
 If we turn our attention, as we needs must do, to 
 other ages, it is mainly that we may be able to 
 understand this. Historically, they have contributed 
 to its production ; analogically, they may suggest a 
 
REQUISITES OF AN EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY. 149 
 
 solution for its problems. Compared with them, it 
 is probably better, inasmuch as good is ever spread- 
 ing and deepening ; and it is probably worse, as the 
 increase of good ever brings out the antagonism of 
 evil. And not only is it worthy of more study, but 
 it also requires more. For the tangled web of 
 human thought and motive is ever becoming more 
 tangled ; as the scale of the great map enlarges, 
 more minute details are brought into view ; the very 
 edge of wisdom, the very bloom of charity, depend 
 upon humble search for neglected phenomena, upon 
 tracking home superficial appearances. Of course 
 there is, as ever, liability to mistake. At the best, 
 they who are passing through the plain cannot see 
 far round them. And the hedges which fence their 
 path may further bound their vision, or their eye 
 may be fixed in one direction only, and may never 
 have fairly swept the horizon. But, at all events, 
 those who have made the attempt are better leaders 
 than those who have not. Much of its success de- 
 pends on the spirit in which it is made. It is too 
 often forgotten that, of all ages in history, our own 
 deserves at our hands most reverence. Man has 
 written the history of the past, but Grod is writing 
 the history of the present. In the past we heard 
 of Him by the hearing of the ear, but in the present 
 our eye seeth Him : and the result should be recog- 
 
150 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 nition of His presence, reverence for His work amongst 
 us, the hushing down of our own prejudices and 
 hkings, and casting ourselves heartily into that line 
 of action which His Providence points out to us. 
 Such a frame of mind, leading to such a course of 
 action, would tend to remove from among our clergy 
 the unreasoning opponent of Christian progress, the 
 blustering denouncer of innovations, the rigid ad- 
 herent to prescribed human rule. 
 
 Perhaps there never was a time in the history of 
 the Church when there lay before her clergy higher 
 duties, combined with greater opportunities. Higlier 
 duties — for it seems certain that the great recon- 
 struction of the Reformed Church of England is 
 coming rapidly upon us, — a reconstruction on purer 
 grounds of faitli, and larger axioms of charity, than 
 any which the world has hitherto seen : — and greater 
 opportunities — for the old weapons of persecution are 
 broken up ; speech has perfect liberty, persuasion 
 unbounded access. To those who read the course of 
 the venerable Foundress of this your College, how 
 great is the contrast between that day and this ! 
 Then everything tended to obstruct, now everything 
 invites onwards. Obstacles are falling, lacilities are 
 arising, so unexpectedly, so rapidly, that our thank- 
 fulness can hardly .keep pace with our wonder. 
 
 At such a time, my friends, I am sure you will 
 
REQUISITES OF AN EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY, lol 
 
 remember that an Institution like your own occupies 
 a peculiar place, and has laid on it especial duties. 
 You touch the Episcopal ministry on the one side, 
 and that of the great Congregational bodies on the 
 other. You form, as it were, a little colony of that 
 territory of Christian recognition which we hope to 
 see co-extensive with this great empire. On you, as 
 on the liill-tops of the new land, ought to fall the 
 first beams of the better sunlight, in which will live 
 and move the future churches of England ; from you 
 ought those beams to glitter forth, and to gladden 
 the distant but thronging pilgrims of truth. You 
 will not fail to remember that the first requisite of 
 the work which is laid upon you is earnestness and 
 thorough Christian simplicity. This time, of all 
 times, repudiates double purpose and tortuous tactics 
 in the work of God. Where these exist, it is but to 
 counteract themselves by provoking tenfold reaction. 
 Never more tlian now has His hand been visible, 
 who taketh the wise in their own craftiness. Not 
 by scheming men, not by men athirst for power, 
 will the new reformation be brought in, but by men 
 in whose hearts dwells Christ by faith ; by simple 
 earnest men, whom no difficulties in detail will keep 
 back from duty, and no prospect of easy victory will 
 induce to adopt falsehood. If it be too hard a saying, 
 that one requisite of clerical education in the past 
 
152 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 has sometimes been to teach men to tell lies, it is 
 at all events a safe one, that the chief requisite- at 
 present is to teach them to cleave to truth. 
 
 And I doubt not you will also remember that the 
 cause of truth is not now served by violent, or what 
 we have learned to call "sensational" courses. On 
 the progress of public opinion depends, under God, 
 the future of our land. And public opinion, like 
 every other healthy natural growth, cannot be forced 
 on. It will grow at its own j)ace, and will take its 
 own way. The great food of its growth is that 
 quality in us of which the Apostle said. Let your 
 moderation, your reasonableness, your lineiKeia, be 
 known unto all men. When the Christian public 
 find us what they may fairly expect us to be, when 
 they are persuaded of our singleness of principle and 
 moderation of conduct, then it is that they listen 
 and are led. We in England do not love uncertain 
 men, nor startling acts. When public opinion is out- 
 raged, it shrinks back ; and he who thought to achieve 
 years in a moment, finds himself thrown back past 
 where he begun. Therefore must those who would 
 lead public opinion be moderate and reasonable men ; 
 men moreover, alive to the signs of the time ; looking 
 out for and buying up those opportunities which are 
 only found by seekiijg. 
 
 One more i)oint, and but one more, I would urge 
 
. REQUISITES OF AN EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY. 153 
 
 upon you. This is not an age of rhetoric. Great 
 effects are not now produced by great words. We 
 have been a literary people long enough to have 
 used up most of our big phrases. If any rhetoric 
 wants teaching to those who are to lead others, it is 
 tlie rhetoric of simplicity : the art of expressing 
 earnest thoughts in plain words. Not the outer 
 sparkle, but the inner heat, kindles the sympathy of 
 modern hearers. It is true, the day of flocking after 
 great orators is not gone by ; but the day of seeing 
 through them is come. Any man of superior ability 
 can call Tip words and images ; eloquence may 
 be the heart breaking bounds, but it may also be 
 admirable acting ; and the shrewder the age becomes, 
 the more will it be distrusted. Therefore, let our 
 clergy begin by distrusting it: let them cultivate 
 blamelessness of speech, but not display; let them 
 aim at kindling, not the crackling thorns of fine 
 language, but the steady flame of the love of Christ 
 and of the souls of men. 
 
 And this brings us to our close. Whatever else 
 may be doubtful, this at least is certain. We of the 
 ministry shall need, for whatever may be coming 
 upon us, vastly more of that spirit of charity which 
 is the end of the commandment. I sadly fear that 
 for the most part the younger jnen among us are 
 rather conspicuous for its defect ; narrower in their 
 
154 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 views, more made up in tlieir opinioiiB, with less of 
 kindly allowance in tlieir thoughts, and less fear of 
 offending in their words. I am sure I am speaking 
 in a place where, if anywhere, such faults will be 
 guarded against. Your history may abundantly 
 teach you the danger of alienated hearts and chilled 
 affections. There is no saying how much the great 
 movement of the last century might have gained, 
 could but Whiteiield and Wesley have aided, or even 
 tolerated, one another. Over the cradle of your 
 Institution bitter words were spoken, hard blows 
 were struck, which have left their echoes and their 
 scars upon the churches of our day. In the coming 
 strife (for strife is coming) these are sure by many 
 to be renewed. From such renewals let us at least 
 be free : free in our practice as ministers, and in our 
 training for that practice. For we are of those who 
 have nothing to defend but truth, and nothing to 
 practise but love. Side aims require carnal weapons ; 
 but the pure single heart can afford to be true ; the 
 good conscience needs no self-justifying ; the faith 
 unfeigned can leave results with God. 
 
VII. 
 THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 EEPKINTED FKOM THE ' CONTEMPORARY REVIEW 
 FOR OCTOBER, 186S. 
 
TTISTORY, to those wlio read it aright, is the God 
 -^ of truth working out truth. As the ages 
 
 pass on, one great principle after another, by the 
 help of men, or independently of men, or even in 
 spite of men, finds its way to the front, struggles for 
 a time, is borne down and repressed, but breaks out 
 again, and ultimately gains the day. Not unfre- 
 quently the victory is achieved at some totally un- 
 looked-for moment. Those who have stopped their 
 ears to the trumpet are won by the whisper : the 
 barriers that men have been centuries in strengthen- 
 ing fall without a defender. 
 
 And at each such conquest, mankind passes into a 
 higher phase of thought and action. New fields open 
 before the eye, objects of ambition are avowed which 
 had been hitherto unknown : the visions of yesterday 
 
158 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 become the solid hopes of to-day, and the distance 
 teems with airy shapes, which shall take form in 
 their turn to-morrow. 
 
 In the course of this advance, one thing is especi- 
 ally notable. Truth is greater than men. Often it 
 becomes expedient to men to recognise some partial 
 form of a great world-wide principle. " Hitherto," 
 they say, " but no further. Thus much will we have 
 and enact, but what follows upon this, we will not 
 enact, and we will not have." You will not, but 
 there is one greater, and He will. The inexorable 
 logic of consequences rules even Acts of Parliament, 
 which rule all things else. 
 
 And Truth is greater than systems. Every age 
 has had its ideal, to which its best men have clung ; 
 but not one of those ideals has ever become perma- 
 nent fact. The facts which abide, and form the 
 groundwork for action, have come from elsewhere 
 than the human brain. They were the strong yearn- 
 ings of a contemptible class, uttered by vilified names, 
 till the air became full of the sound : they were the 
 exceptions and irregularities, dangerous and sus- 
 pected, but prevailing till they became the rule. 
 
 Sometimes we see this process going on ; sometimes 
 it goes on without our seeing it. There are ages, as 
 there are persons, without self-consciousness : when 
 the life is just lived for the life, and no account is 
 
THE CnURCTT OF THE FUTURE. 159 
 
 taken. And thei'e are ages, which are all self-con- 
 sciousness ; and of those is our own ; every move- 
 ment registered, every symptom watched, nothing 
 done in secret : pamphlets, and books, and speeches, 
 prompting onward or repressing : whether to con- 
 quer in, or perish in, — light enough. 
 
 And what does this light show concerning a matter 
 dear to the hearts of all the best among us ? On 
 that multitude of men of whom Christ is the master, 
 and Christ's Spirit the guide, what rays does it throw, 
 tending to reveal their progress and destiny ? 
 
 The answer may, we conceive, be given thus. 
 Three centuries ago, the Church in this land awoke 
 from a dream of ages. In her re-constitution, certain 
 great principles w'ere asserted. For example, that 
 which is now embodied in her Sixth Article — that 
 nothing is to be required of any man to be believed 
 as necessary to salvation which is not contained in, 
 or may be proved by. Holy Scripture. It will be 
 plain to any reasoning mind, that such an admission 
 is destructive of a prescribed national faith, just in 
 proportion as the intelligence of the nation increases ; 
 unless indeed that increase of intelligence should 
 bring about a general consensus in the interpretation 
 of Scripture as to matters required to be believed. 
 The assertion of liberty of conscience here made was 
 absolutely inconsistent with the coercion of belief, — 
 
160 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 and of worship, the utterance of behef, — assumed in 
 the state constitution of the National Church. The 
 reader need not be reminded that this was ere long- 
 perceived, and that measures were taken in remedy. 
 The political evil was met by Toleration. Freedom 
 of profession and "of worship was, after much sad 
 suffering, and many a conflict, secured by enactment. 
 Thus at least was removed the anomaly of prosecu- 
 tion, by law of the State, for acting on the principle 
 of the Church of the State ; and men appeared con- 
 tented. The dominant party seemed to themselves 
 to have gone quite as far as was consistent with 
 caution and safety ; and the party relieved were too 
 glad to have obtained so much recognition. And 
 there for a while the matter rested. One blow had 
 been given to the wedge. The well-compacted fabric 
 of national conformity, though it might show a crack, 
 was yet safe and unshaken. 
 
 And let the reader note what was done ; for it set 
 the pattern of what should be done hereafter, and of 
 what has been done since. The remedy was applied, 
 not to the Church but to the State. The theory of the 
 Church was left unaltered, and was supposed to be 
 unalterable. And of course the effect at once was, to 
 create a dissidence between that theory and matter of 
 fact. As long as the theory was carried into practice 
 by the crushing out of Nonconformity, the Church 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 161 
 
 was a reality, whether for good or not ; but the pos- 
 sibiHty of such crushing out being removed by law, 
 the Church became at once^ so far as that was con- 
 cerned, an unreality. And notice the effect of this. 
 It was mischievous in two ways. It enabled the 
 advocates of intolerance to entrench themselves 
 behind the ineffective though unabrogated canons, 
 and to maintain in theory an exclusive National 
 Church ; and it enabled Churchmen in general to 
 take credit to themselves for a generous policy to- 
 wards others, which they had never pursued. And 
 besides both these, there was the immense bar to the 
 phurch's usefulness resulting, in her utter incapacity 
 to deal with, or even to recognise, actually existing 
 circumstances. The whole public consciousness of 
 Churchmen became a fiction. The statistics, on 
 which their action on the people was built, were 
 simply false. Population outstripped their efforts, it 
 is true ; but while their churchmanship predicated 
 spiritual destitution of all outside their pale, their 
 common sense compelled them to confess that a con- 
 siderable portion of these were in reality S23iritually 
 provided for. This image of iron and clay had no 
 coherence ; it would yield to the first vigorous blow. 
 Meantime toleration, which at first seemed pay- 
 ment in full, began to be spoken of as a mere in- 
 stalment of what was due. Nothing so common a 
 
 M 
 
162 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 complaint with the votaries of excluslveness, as that 
 every concession leads to fresh demands : and no- 
 thing so true. Till the great principle conceded 
 be In every detail practically recognised, there can 
 be no resting-place. The tolerated religionists began 
 to ask themselves, and to ask the State, what right 
 they had, who proclaimed all Englishmen equal in 
 the eye of the law, and declared that none was to 
 be required to believe except upon proof, to set up 
 a standard of conformity, and to proclaim political 
 disability as the consequence of departure from it ? 
 
 We need not waste time and paper in relating 
 the conflict whereby an answer to this question was 
 wrung from a reluctant legislature. We note the 
 fact that such disabilities were abolished, because 
 that abolition, at first accomplished with a reserve 
 in favour of Christianity, in a very few years became 
 absolute in favour of non-Christians as well. 
 
 Let us remark, that every one of these steps has 
 been a driving further and further of the wedge 
 and that at each one a new and more advanced form 
 of a great truth has been recognised. It was not 
 possible, in the free development of the national con- 
 science, to rest at any one of these points of pro- 
 gress. The next in the series was inevitable, as each 
 was gained. For instance, the lingering anomaly of 
 taxing Nonconformists for church expenses was vir- 
 
THE CnVItCE OF TEE FUTURE. 163 
 
 tiially doomed, when civil disabilities were removed 
 from them. It has taken thirty-five years to ob- 
 literate it : and at any time during that interval, it 
 was plain that the abrogation of the compulsory 
 rate must come. Of late, the only difficulty has been 
 the confessedly formidable one, how it might best be 
 effected. 
 
 And as with the past, so with the future. We 
 have not yet reached the end of the series. There 
 are still terms to come, which the process of time 
 will work out : terms involved in our previous 
 concessions. It may take years to bring them out ; 
 but supposing always that our nation is left free, to 
 develope its onward course, they will one day be 
 brought out ; as certainly as those before them have 
 been. 
 
 And what are they ? What, at all events, is that 
 one of them which " looms larger " before us, and 
 asserts its right next to become a reality ? 
 
 Let the present writer remind his readers that he 
 is not here advocating a theory, but simply dealing 
 with what appears to him to be matter of fact, and 
 expectation founded on that matter of fact. 
 
 We are clearly now at this point. The State is 
 an organized whole, whose units are simply denizens 
 of the realm, without reference to creed. To this, it 
 is true, there are some exceptions ; but these excep- 
 
 M 2 
 
164 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 tions are rather reservations for safety's sake, than 
 infringements of the principle. They spring from 
 the State's instinct of self-preservation, not from her 
 disfavouring any particular creed. 
 
 This on the one hand. On the other, the State 
 still professes, and still maintains, a particular form 
 of faith and worship. That these two facts should 
 subsist, the one over against the other, would be 
 incredible, were we constructing a fictitious republic. 
 That they do so subsist, is a proof of the tenacity of 
 historical tradition as against the reason of things. 
 
 And now let us mark the consequence as it has 
 affected the Church. The Church, in any worthy 
 sense of the word, is a living body, animated by a 
 living spirit. Into whatever organized form it may 
 have gathered, it has its growth and vital action. Its 
 subjective growth is the advance of its consciousness 
 of God and of good ; its objective action is the im- 
 parting of this growing consciousness, and its. combat 
 with evil. Its economic arrangements are the pro- 
 visions of means whereby both these may be best 
 carried on. 
 
 The effect of the present anomaly has of necessity 
 been to crystallize both the growth and action of 
 the Church. It was, of course, impossible that either 
 could be shared by the State in its present form : 
 and yet State sanction was imperative, while State 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 165 
 
 sympathy was impossible. The result could be but 
 one. Church growth and action were minimized. 
 Conservation is less trouble than renovation : and 
 thus the Church of three hundred years ago, with all 
 her dead enactments, and her incongruities with 
 present reality, is of necessity the Church of the 
 present time. It is as if a regiment were to be sent 
 out into nineteenth-century warfare, clad in the cum- 
 brous armour of the ages of chivalry. 
 
 But may not this possibly shew that the State 
 ought to take more trouble in this matter, and 
 thoroughly to reform the constitution of the Church ? 
 Let him who puts this question look well at the 
 agency by which any such reform will have to be 
 accomplished. Let him ask himself, how much is 
 likely to be left of what Churchmen most value, when 
 the reform shall have been by such agency accom- 
 plished ? Besides, where in such a case would be 
 liberty of conscience? Every step would be reac- 
 tionary. We should be working back upon the series, 
 blotting its terms already brought out, instead of 
 bringing out more. The Church of England is not 
 only a State-constituted Church ; it is a body of 
 Christian men, fully persuaded in their own minds : 
 why are their persuasions to be overridden by a body 
 outside their own ? The reformation of the Church 
 by the State is a mere chimera. It might be thrown 
 
166 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 out for lialf a generation to play with, and might 
 thus stop the way of the inevitable for a time ; but 
 to the old complexion things would come again ; the 
 next term in the free national development would 
 yet have to be found. 
 
 II. 
 
 And that next term is, the severance of the Church 
 from the State. Whether years, or decades of years 
 be taken for the accomplishment of this : — however 
 it may be deprecated, and however opposed ; — accom- 
 plished it will certainly be. History has for ages 
 been preparing its way ; in past changes, it has been 
 conceded over and over again ; God's arm is thrust- 
 ing it on, and man's power cannot keep it back. We 
 suppose we are speaking vastly within bounds when 
 we say, that there is hardly a reflecting man among 
 us wbo looks forward to the existence of a State 
 Establishment in this land a century hence. This 
 being so, it may be well to deal with a few pre- 
 liminary considerations before we enter on the main 
 subject of our present paper. 
 
 First, it is unfair to characterize those who fore- 
 warn others of the approach of this change, and 
 endeavour to prepare them for it, as the enemies of 
 the Church. Nothing can be easier than the em- 
 ployment of this kind of weapon. Every petty 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 167 
 
 provincial or party journal can wield it ; and by 
 wielding it, escape the necessity of understanding the 
 matter at issue. Even were the whole question to 
 be considered in the abstract, the most ardent friends 
 of the Church might believe that she is rather ham- 
 pered than aided by State Establishment: might feel 
 with regard to their own Church that which most of 
 us feel respecting another, that the temporal power 
 is a hindrance and not a help. But we are not called 
 on to come to any abstract determination. Were 
 State Establishment all the blessing which its advo- 
 cates maintain that it is, our position would be the 
 same in this matter : for State Establishment is fore- 
 doomed. There is no need, in that which we have 
 to say, that we should exj)ress, or even imply, our 
 views on the abstract question. We deal with the 
 course of facts : we draw inferences from the un- 
 folding of history. 
 
 And this may be the best place to say also a word 
 on the extreme injustice of denouncing all those who 
 are actually fighting against the principle of State 
 Establishment, as leagued for the destruction of the 
 Church of England. Never was a denunciation less 
 borne out bv truth. The most zealous Nonconformist, 
 if he be also a zealous Christian, may ardently wish 
 for the Church of England power to do her work 
 on the population entrusted to her, and may believe 
 
168 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 that the issue of the present system is to withhold 
 that power. And not only may this be so, but, having 
 the privilege of knowing several of the leaders of the 
 " Liberation " movement, I am able to say that it is 
 so. No member of our Church would more firmly 
 withstand any effort to cripple or enfeeble her real 
 usefulness than would these her reputed enemies ; 
 and yet (or rather, from their point of view, and 
 therefore) they believe themselves bound to use every 
 effort to procure her severance from the State. 
 
 The present writer would therefore earnestly beg 
 of his readers to eliminate from their minds the 
 whole of the gratuitous abuse which is, by those 
 who ought to know better, heaped on the heads of 
 persons who presume to advocate, or even to foretell, 
 the disestablishment of the English Church. 
 
 An objection, formidable at first sight, but in itself 
 absolutely chimerical, is frequently urged in these, 
 or in like words : — That the State, in separating off 
 the Church, abandons her profession of religion, 
 and thereby ceases to be Christian. And this is, of 
 course, by the mob of writers whose only power con- 
 sists in strength of words, intensified so as to look 
 frightful, and to carry terror to their readers. The 
 State is represented as thus " casting off Christ," as 
 " apostatizing from God," &c., &c. 
 
 It is little creditable to our intelligence, that such 
 
THE CHUBCH OF THE FUTURE. 109 
 
 a fallacy should find acceptance anywhere. That 
 it should he put forth in high places, and uttered 
 with senatorial gravity, is truly astonishing. For 
 let us consider what it is for a State to profess a 
 religion. It is no less than this, that that particular 
 faith and worship shall be part of the law of the 
 nation, and shall bind all its constituents. Thus 
 much only of toleration is admissible, — that active 
 repression of differing faiths may not be binding : 
 their professors may be allowed to co-exist on the 
 soil ; but that is all. Any, even the slightest parti- 
 cipation of such Nonconformists, as such, in official 
 national life, invalidates the State profession and 
 renders it a fiction. Spain, and the Papal States, 
 occur to us as examples of consistent professions of 
 this kind. Our own realm was not one, even in the 
 days of the Test Act, because she enforced different 
 modes of faith north and south of the Tweed. 
 
 It must surely be plain to every thinking man, 
 that all reality of such profession has long ago been 
 surrendered here in Britain. At the first recognition 
 of Presbyterianism, the State ceased to be Episco- 
 palian : at the first admission of Jews to office, she 
 ceased, in this formal sense, to be Christian. That 
 the fiction of State-Anglicanism continues to be kept 
 up, is nothing to the point. The State is what she is, 
 not what she calls herself. What there can be of 
 
170 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 departure from faith, or of apostasy, in her professing 
 to be that which she really is, it passes lis to compre- 
 hend. Rather does it appear to us the bounden duty 
 of every responsible body of men, as it is of every 
 individual man, to remove from itself all incon- 
 sistency of profession with practice : not to suffer 
 obsolete theories to keep their hold on outward forms, 
 to the hindrance of sound national progress, and the 
 obscuration of the very grounds of political duty. 
 
 And let not this ancillary fallacy survive the 
 principal one ; — that we thus " cease to be a Christian 
 nation." Whatever be the Christianity of the nation^ 
 it is measured, not by any legal enactment or fiction, 
 but by the presence and working of the Christian 
 conscience in the aggregate of its constituents. 
 Christianity is not matter for human law, but for 
 the free spirit of man. This first principle is plainly 
 asserted by at least our branch of the Church, as 
 we have seen above. And the Christianity of our 
 nation is then proved, when her constituent elements 
 act together on the verdict of the Christian con- 
 science : when she performs, by her legislature, acts 
 of plain duty but questionable expediency, such as 
 the liberation of the slaves in her West Indian pos- 
 sessions ; when she succours the oppressed without 
 gain for herself, as in the recent expedition to Abys- 
 sinia. One such act stamps her Christian before God 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 171 
 
 and man, more than all the fictitious survivals of her 
 play-professions of Anglicanism. 
 
 Another formidable array of objections is brought 
 forward by those persons, who find their account in 
 parrying the logic of principle by allegations of 
 difficulty in detail. Every great change for the 
 better has been loudly deprecated by these prophets 
 of evil. " It can never be done : it will never work : 
 the difficulties are too terrible to be contemplated." 
 Sometimes this Cassandra-prophecy springs from pure 
 timidity : more frequently, from inability to compre- 
 hend the true bearing of great principles, and the 
 analogy of history. Oftener still perhaps, from 
 mixed motives, which we are not called upon to 
 characterise. It forms the knock-down unanswerable 
 argument of second-class, otherwise called practical, 
 men. It suits a strong voice and bullying manner, 
 and is compatible with a considerable infusion of sar- 
 casm, and epigrammatic effect. The unhappy tip- 
 holder of high principle who is not prepared with 
 his balance-sheet, stands no chance in society with 
 one such practical man. He has but a single sen- 
 tence to utter : his cause is pleaded in three words 
 and he can but repeat them. Whereas his opponent 
 can summon arguments from all points of the com- 
 pass ; — 
 
 " Unk Eurusquc Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis 
 Africus, et vastos volvunt ad littora fiuctus." 
 
172 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 It would be a poor compliment to the sagacity of our 
 readers to remind tliem, tliat no difficulty in detail 
 can set aside an obligation of duty. We would 
 rather remind them of the true use of these prophets 
 of evil, as correctives to untimely zeal. There can 
 be no doubt that the carrying out of disestablishment 
 will be accompanied by enormous difficulties ; difficul- 
 ties of which only mature consideration, and ample 
 discussion, can possibly bring about the solution. 
 After the principle is conceded by our Legislature, 
 long years may be spent in arranging satisfactorily 
 the conditions of the parting covenant. It is a 
 matter in which nothing should be done hastily or 
 unadvisedly. 
 
 And as nothing should be thus done, so nothing 
 will be. It is very easy, it is the more telling mode 
 of thought and speech, to distrust, to discredit, to 
 instil alarm and apprehension : but we confess to 
 having arrived at the more difficult and less popular 
 mode, that of trusting, and resting tranquil. The 
 course of English history has shewn, that every step 
 in our advancing series has been more for good, and 
 less for evil, than any of us anticipated ; that when 
 we seemed beset with difficulties, and our way hope- 
 lessly intricate, the national conscience struck a clear 
 course, and our apprehended loss became our un- 
 deniable gain. Therefore I believe we may set our 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 173 
 
 minds perfectly at ease, with regard to any fear of 
 injustice towards the Anghcan Church. The nation 
 is not capable of committing it. The legislature, on 
 whatever basis elected, cannot perpetrate it. The 
 sense of justice in the English community is so 
 strong, that we may lay it down as an element safely 
 to be assumed in any coming change, that what we 
 deserve at the hands of the State, we shall have. 
 Not only, I am persuaded, will ample means be left 
 of carrying on our Church work, but all due pro- 
 visions for self-government, and all necessary appeals 
 to law, will be secured for us. We shall, in the 
 language of international commerce, be not less 
 favoured than the most favoured community. 
 
 Believing this, I am content to leave the whole 
 question of property, and legal status, to the con- 
 science and the wisdom of the legislature. If, as the 
 advocates of Establishment are fond of maintaining, 
 our amalgamation with the State is to us Churchmen 
 the chief safeguard of liberty of conscience, and 
 guarantee for our personal rights, — surely, in her 
 greatest transaction with the Church, the State is not 
 likely to forget this guardianship, or to pretermit this 
 warranty. 
 
 These last words bring before us another objection 
 to disestablishment, frequently urged by a certain 
 party in the Church. At present, the full latitude of 
 
174 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 doctrine allowed by our formularies is ensured to us 
 by the action of the State. And the very fact of the 
 dead-lock to which our false position in connection 
 with the State has brought us, acts as a safeguard 
 against those formularies being narrowed. But, it is 
 said, once sever the Church from the State, and this 
 consequence will follow. The priestly party, ever 
 the most vigorous in action, and the least scrupulous 
 as to means, will overbear all opposition : will narrow 
 the basis of churchmanship, and drive all but their 
 own out of the Church. 
 
 That they will do this if they can, no one can 
 doubt, who has watched their proceedings during the 
 last few years. But that they will ever be able to 
 do it, I cannot for a moment believe. In spite of 
 their pertinacious self-assertion, their numbers are 
 but few. Their strength is mainly derived from the 
 vigorous determination of a flock of young curates 
 and incumbents, poured in upon us from extra-uni- 
 versity sources : seminarists, rather than English 
 clergymen. The fact of this influx is mainly due to 
 the anomalies, and unfairnesses, incident to the 
 present state of the Church-ministry as a profession. 
 These have tended to dry up the normal sources of 
 supply for the ranks of our clergy. Remove them, 
 and those sources will again yield. And we surely 
 cannot believe that the educated middle class of 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 175 
 
 England will ever send np to the Bishops men 
 capable of holding or maintaining the disingenuous 
 quibbles on which the aggressive action of the 
 priestly party is founded. 
 
 But more, and safer, than this. The great bulk of 
 English Churchmen are anti-sacerdotal. That large 
 majority, including by far the greater part of the 
 Evangelical clergy, now rest quiet, secure in the pro- 
 tection of the State. Let that protection be removed, 
 and there will start into action a power which the 
 Sacerdotalist never dreamt of in his philosophy. 
 The average sober Churchman, the Evangelical 
 almost wherever found, now looks on Convocation as 
 a mere farce. As to its use in the ventilation of 
 opinion, and the influence of expressed public senti- 
 ment at home and abroad, they both are sadly mis- 
 taken : but as to any enacted results, they are right. 
 Convocation, as at present carried on, is a feeble 
 show of opposition by some moderate and some 
 " extreme " men, to the noisy dictation of a knot of 
 Sacerdotalists. Every resolution to which it comes, 
 will be, and must be, a step in their direction. I 
 have before in this journal expressed deejD regret 
 that this is allowed to be so, by the non-attendance of 
 those who might change it for the better : but so it 
 is, and so it will be ever, I fear, under the present 
 constitution of the Church. 
 
176 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 But once let Convocation become a reality, and no 
 one surely can doubt that the case will be forthwith 
 reversed. In order to become a reality, Convocation 
 must be reformed. And that, not in the sense in 
 which resolutions have already been carried for its 
 reform. A more efficient representation of the clergy 
 would doubtless under the present relations of the 
 Church to the State be an immense improvement. 
 But, while these relations subsist, this must be all. 
 A layman, as such, can no more be admitted into 
 Convocation while it is part of the Constitution, than 
 a foreigner could be admitted to sit in the House of 
 Commons. Convocation, in any constitutional sense, 
 is the representation of the clergy, and of the 
 clergy alone. But sever the Church from the State, 
 and the immediate result will be the thorough reform 
 of Convocation, which will then no longer be bound 
 to represent the clergy alone, but will at once become 
 the representative body of the whole Church, clergy 
 and laity. We are quite aware of all the dust which 
 has been raised on this matter of the admission of 
 the laity into the provincial Council. But we have 
 not a moment's fear on the point. Let the Church 
 awake to her instinct of self-preservation, and it 
 surely requires no prophet to foretell that her very 
 first step will be the full representation of her laity 
 by laymen in her governing Council. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 177 
 
 But then the foreboders of evil say, In such a 
 Council you will have only bickering and wrath, the 
 seeds of dissension and schism. I have no such fear. 
 Ludicrous as the whole subject of Convocation seems 
 to the majority of mankind, I conceive that we 
 already owe to its re-assembling a grave obligation : 
 that it has been designed by God's good Providence 
 to prepare us, by its prolusory and mostly nugatory 
 debates, for the time when we shall be engaged in 
 council to decide immense realities. And how has 
 it tended so to prepare us? Partly by acquainting 
 us with the necessities of debate, and the ordinary 
 forms of business: but mainly, by effectually dissi- 
 pating the above-stated apprehension. It has been 
 abundantly shewn, by several years' experience, and 
 a great variety of examples, that Christian gentlemen 
 of the most antagonistic opinions can meet, and can 
 discuss the very subjects on which they most widely 
 differ, not only without ill-blood, but with the im- 
 mense gain of understanding and appreciating one 
 another. Warmth of feeling has not been repressed: 
 hot words have been uttered again and again ; but 
 I boldly challenge any one who has been present to 
 say, whether the uniform relation to one another 
 of opponents in that chamber has not been that of 
 personal esteem and kindliness. It may be said, that 
 this is partly because a distinguished member of our 
 
178 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 House, who is ever tlie rasliest and hottest in speech, 
 is also the most ready and generous in apology : and 
 that by his example, satisfaction, among ns, is larger 
 than injury. No doubt this is so ; but I cannot 
 question the certainty of a similar friendly relation 
 between all the members of any elective Church- 
 assembly. We have no right to suppose that, when 
 the Church is more fairly and fully represented, her 
 representatives will be less mindful of their Christian 
 duties to one another, than we find them at present. 
 
 III. 
 
 Having now stated, and I hope met, some of the 
 principal preliminary objections to the consideration 
 of coming disestablishment, I will proceed to inquire 
 what in such an event will probably be, in some 
 important particulars, the condition of the Church. 
 
 As to legal competency for self-government and 
 correction of abuse, I have already expressed my 
 conviction that no needful arrangements or securities 
 will be wanting. 
 
 Next, will there be a loss even of outward 
 prestige and precedence? I think not, or at least 
 not for many generations. The "parish church," 
 the "rector," the "vicar," the "parson of the parish," 
 are household words in England: and we do not 
 easily drop our household words. As regards the 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. . 179 
 
 outward semblance of things, I should imagine that 
 it would remain, in the average country or town 
 parish, much the same as now. It would not be in 
 appearances, but in realities, that the change would 
 make itself felt. 
 
 Among those realities, the first to occur to us is, 
 the status and income of the clergy. It is the habit of 
 random writers and speakers to treat the severance 
 of the Church from the State as if it must necessarily 
 be a spoliation of the Church. I have already said 
 that I have no fear in this direction. But be the 
 conditions of the separation what they may, I cannot 
 for a moment believe that ultimately the Anglican 
 clergy will be impoverished by it. Of course it 
 must bring about modifications and adjustments. I 
 should imagine that centralization of some kind will 
 be inevitable : Diocesan, or Provincial, or both. 
 The incomes of the clergy will be made up partly by 
 local payments, and partly from a sustentation fund ; 
 the most probable administration of which will be 
 Diocesan. Startling inequalities must of course 
 be pared down, immensely to the advantage of the 
 Church. She will not then maintain two neigh- 
 bouring rural clergymen, whose right to social posi- 
 tion, and whose work, are equal, the one as a prince, 
 the other as a beggar. Whatever may have become 
 of their original revenues^ their new income will be 
 
 N 2 
 
180 . ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 adjusted according to the work involved in eacli case, 
 and the capacity of the workman to do it. Nor have 
 I the least fear, that funds for this purpose will fail. 
 It has been my lot, as an Ecclesiastical Commis- 
 sioner, to witness the very large and most gratifying 
 offers of benefactions for augmentation of livings, to 
 be met by grants from our Board* This liberal 
 spirit will, I conceive, be evoked in far ampler pro- 
 portions by the great change of which we are 
 treating. The chief hindrance to the liberality of 
 Churchmen for Church purposes now is, the sem- 
 blance of self-sufificience which the Church has put 
 on by reason of her union with the State. Remove 
 this hindrance, and the fountain of private liberality 
 will flow as it has never flowed before. 
 
 I know it is the fashion to quote certain present 
 results of the voluntary system as deterrent from its 
 application to ourselves. But the cases are not 
 parallel. The voluntary organizations which are 
 quoted as examples are for the most part of the 
 
 * The aggregate value -of these offers at the annual distribution of the 
 Common Fund in 1866, 1867, 1868 has been— 
 
 For the year 1866 £280,000 
 
 1867 323,000 
 
 1868 322,000 
 
 It should in fairness be mentioned, that a portion of this sum in each case 
 has been a renewal of previous offers, which our means would not enable us 
 to meet with s;rants in aid. 
 
TEE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 181 
 
 character of adventures, owing their existence to a 
 temporary excitement, and having no permanent 
 bond of union. They are the outlying stations of 
 some "cause," with difficulty kept going, and pro- 
 viding but a miserable pittance for the resident 
 minister. Such results are no doubt highly unsatis- 
 factory, and required the strongly-spiced exhorta- 
 tions, which served the subtlest of our Prelates as 
 telHng arguments. But we might appeal from that 
 Prelate's oratory to his better reason, and ask him, 
 what such cases have in common with that of the 
 Anglican Church, the ancient and usual faith of 
 the land ? 
 
 Of course it is not for a moment denied that 
 failures may be expected to occur ; that there pro- 
 bably will still be, under the disestablishment, 
 parishes ill-provided for, and clergymen inadequately 
 paid. To say this, is to concede, that the present 
 state of things will not be altogether got rid of. 
 But as compared with the present state of things, is 
 there any probability of the number of such cases 
 being increased? Certainly, one may boldly say, 
 the very contrary. The case of the miserably en- 
 dowed small parish is at present little short of 
 desperate. The merits of its claim to augmentation 
 have no chance of being heard. It does not come 
 within the legally prescribed augmentation rules of 
 
182 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners ; and it has no 
 resident squire, who might offer them a benefaction 
 to be met by a grant. It remains, as it has remained 
 time out of mind, tacked on to some neighbouring 
 benefice ; with its one duty a week, and with or 
 without its hour and a half's " Sunday School," as its 
 only means of instruction. Its people may deem 
 themselves fortunate, if they have attracted the 
 notice of some zealous itinerants, and if these have 
 warmed them into anything like religious conscious- 
 ness, or acted as a goad in the sides of their non- 
 resident Vicar. 
 
 We may safely say, that such a case as this could 
 not long subsist under the disestablishment. Among 
 the powers which will have dejoarted from the 
 Church, the "vis inertias" will certainly be one. 
 Church abuses of this kind will have ceased to be 
 driven for exposure to the public papers, at present 
 their only tribunal of possible redress ; they will be 
 amenable to an accessible and effective superinten- 
 dence, which will do all that can be done to remedy 
 the evil. 
 
 And be it remembered, that these words " all that 
 can be done," will then have a meaning widely 
 different from their present one. Any attempt at 
 exertion for good, under our existing State Establish- 
 ment, is made under the greatest possible difficulties. 
 
THE CHUECH OF THE FUTUBE. 183 
 
 We are fettered on all sides. First, the power just 
 mentioned, the " vis inertise," — the tendency of 
 stillness to keep still, — is immense. Whatever be 
 our grounds of action, there is an important, vener- 
 able, and highly respectable set of men, whom we 
 may at once put down as formidable opponents. 
 '' Why should that be touched, which has lasted 
 three hundred years ? " This argument sets aside all 
 merits of a case, and effectually unites the opposition 
 votes. But, powerful as it is, it is not content to 
 stand alone. It summons to its aid the " lion in 
 the streets," to subdue the timid into acquiescence. 
 " Besides, if they be touched, who can tell what may 
 be changed next ? " Not one proposed reform in ten 
 ever struggles past these two guardians of the status 
 quo, the Leo Piger, and the Leo Compitalis. 
 
 But suppose it does, and idly imagines it is about 
 to be put in act. There awaits it a foe, hardly less 
 formidable than those others. It must be fitted into 
 the iron frame of Precedent. Whatever is to be 
 done, must only be done as it always has been done. 
 I remember a time, when the agency of Missionary 
 Societies was vehemently denounced by the then 
 prevailing " High and Dry," because they " de- 
 meamed themselves to ask pennies from women and 
 children." It was a thing unheard of, undignified; 
 there was no precedent for it. And it is a notable 
 
184 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 fact in this obstruction by precedent, that, in each 
 case, it lasts just long enough to do mischief, and 
 then breaks down. Measures wliich were the horror 
 of Bumbledom half a century ago, are its cherished 
 precedents now. But when first proposed, they were 
 kept back by this opposition till their bloom of 
 opportunity was gone by, and others had outstripped 
 us in the race. It has ever been certainly not " the 
 wisdom" of the Church of England, to allow agen- 
 cies, confessed by common sense to be imperative, to 
 be first started by others, and then, when they have 
 become institutions with the rest of the world, 
 laggiugly, feebly, and perfunctorily to imitate them, 
 and take immense credit for the proceeding. 
 
 " What can be done," in the present Church of 
 England, is also fatally hampered by the law. I 
 speak not now of those wholesome restrictions which 
 the law puts on the action of every man and body of 
 men for the public good and safety : but of technical 
 difficulties thrown in the wa}^ of almost every 
 attempt at amelioration. What could be a more 
 notable instance of this, than that which happened 
 to Convocation during this last summer ? We were 
 specially summoned to meet on St. Swithin's Day. 
 It was understood that we were to receive the Royal 
 license for the reform of the Lower House, in order 
 to the more effective representation of the clergy. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 185 
 
 Many were the early breakfasts eaten that sultry 
 morning in far-away parsonages : for we came from 
 all parts of the province in obedience to the sum- 
 mons : great were the expectations, or small, accord- 
 ing to their view of things, of proctors converging, 
 in early trains, on the Jerusalem chamber. We met 
 — but it was to be instantly prorogued, and sent 
 back to the places whence we came. It was under- 
 stood, not by any notification vouchsafed to us, but 
 by public nnnour, that an individual official, whose 
 formal sanction was necessary, had demurred to the 
 general view of the legality of the proposed license. 
 Summum jus summa injuria, never was more aptly 
 illustrated. The members of Convocation, feeling 
 that the representation of the clergy in their House 
 is inadequate and unfair, desire to remove the blot, 
 and take the proper constitutional steps so to do. 
 All is ready, and action is going forward. But the 
 whole is frustrated, and the reform deferred no one 
 knows how long, by a legal scruple. Surely the 
 fetter, on which there is such a strain, cannot be 
 far from breaking. 
 
 These instances have served to shew how our 
 efforts for amendment are weighted and impeded at 
 present ; and how differently they may expect to 
 speed, when these incumbent obstacles shall have 
 been removed. When the whole organism of the 
 
186 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Church shall have started into life and reality, many 
 things may be hoped for, which her present state 
 absolutely precludes. Among them is, something 
 like an effective supervision of clerical work. That 
 this is one of our gravest desiderata, surely none can 
 doubt. It is a shame, that a parish should be handed 
 over to the incapable, or the indolent, or the secular 
 incumbent, for the term of his natural life. Such a 
 person ought to be removeable, not at the caprice of 
 an individual or the dictation of a clique, but by the 
 decision of a fairly chosen governing body. When 
 the Church leans, not on the State and the law of 
 freehold, but on her own demonstrated usefulness, 
 the Bishop's visitations will become realities, and 
 will be genuine inspections of parochial results. 
 Flagrant cases will be referred by the Bishop to his 
 Diocesan Council, and by them gravely and tem- 
 perately dealt with. I would venture even so far as 
 this ; that, short of proved incapacity or delinquency, 
 manifested unfitness for peculiar work might warrant 
 the enforced exchange of benefices, so that we might 
 oftener find the right man in the right place. These 
 last considerations involve, of course, the important 
 and difficult question of patronage. As in other 
 apparent difficulties, so here I believe a way might 
 be found for adjustment, which should be equitable 
 to the present patrons, while it would ensure the 
 
TEE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 187 
 
 appointment of competent persons to benefices. I 
 forbear to indicate it, because in this, as in other 
 departments of my subject, it is not my purpose to 
 enter into matters of detail. 
 
 An interesting question with regard to probable 
 disestablishment is, what will become of our Cathe- 
 drals. And here let me confess that, warmly attached 
 as I am, first by disposition, and then owing to cir- 
 cumstances, to the fabrics and the services of the 
 Cathedrals, I cannot but look on them as the least 
 satisfactory parts of our present Church system. It 
 can hardly be doubted that, in proportion to the 
 amount of the revenues absorbed by them, their help 
 in the national work of the Church is almost as 
 nothing. And I write this, being fully aware of, 
 and being in the habit of urging, the real arguments 
 for their sustentation. Their work might be an im- 
 portant one, but their present constitution eftectually 
 precludes them from doing it. And by this I do not 
 mean tliat any recent changes have hampered or 
 disabled them, or that they might, by ampler endow- 
 ments and restoration of suppressed dignities, be 
 better fitted for their work. Not any cramping of 
 the capitular system, but the capitular system itself, 
 is the great hindrance in their way. And this, in 
 several points of view. 
 
 First of all, the Cathedrals have fallen through 
 
188 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 between two incompatible hypotheses. On the one 
 hand, it is held that they are to be the great centres 
 of Church life for the diocese. Very good ; and no 
 view can be more sound, no state of things more 
 desirable. But, on the other, they are defended as 
 afibrding posts of dignified repose for men who have 
 deserved well of the Church. Now these two theories 
 are exclusive the one of the other. In order to carry 
 out the first, the cathedral authorities must be men 
 of diocesan knowledge and experience, men in vigour 
 of mind and body, sent there to work, and not to 
 rest ; while, in pursuance of the second, they will be 
 composed of the very class of persons least fitted for 
 the former purpose ; they will be, at the best, bookish 
 men, or men broken by parochial toil, but emphati- 
 cally men sent there to rest, and not to work. And 
 the consequence of this incompatibility has been, uni- 
 versal, though often undeserved, dissatisfaction with 
 our capitular bodies as such. Is a cathedral dignity 
 vacant ? The journals teem with reports, associating 
 with the appointment the names of many distin- 
 guished men. The appointment, we will say, is 
 fittingly made. The same journals are full of praise 
 of the person promoted, and of the just grounds of his 
 promotion. But this is the last note of commenda- 
 tion he will ever get. Having become a dignity, he 
 is pulled asunder by their inconsistent theories of his 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 189 
 
 position — the operative, as demanded by his influ- 
 ence ; the non-operative, as required by his dignity. 
 But the matter is far worse than this. I have 
 been writing as if the second theory were normally 
 carried out ; whereas the state of things is far other- 
 wise. Hardly in half the cases occurring is a dean's 
 or a canon's stall the reward of distinction, or of toil 
 in the Church's service. It would be invidious for 
 me to specify the effecting causes of ordiuary cathe- 
 dral promotion ; let the public use their eyes, and 
 they will not fail to discern them. And the result is 
 that we have, as the governing bodies of our mother 
 churches, men certainly blameless, and personally 
 worthy of all esteem, but for any purpose of sub- 
 serving the work of the Church, about the least fitted 
 of any that could be gathered together. And this 
 not from any fault or defect of the men as individuals, 
 but owing to the circumstances of their appointment, 
 and the nature of the bond which connects them. 
 The Cathedral esprit cle corps is ordinarily one of 
 isolation from the diocese, and from common clerical 
 work ; the scrupulous maintenance of certain rights 
 and privileges, as against the invasion of the wants 
 and necessities of the age. And I must with pain 
 confess that eleven years' experience has not re- 
 moved, but has rather strengthened, the impression 
 of former days, that the present influence, as a whole. 
 
190 ESSAYS AND ADDBESSES. 
 
 of a great Cathedral in a town, is rather for evil than 
 for good. This I believe to be mainly owing to our 
 capitular system. The whole body is a phenomenon, 
 in the estimation of the people, quite extraneous to 
 anything which comes home to them in the work or 
 influence of the Church. They see what is in their 
 imaginations a vast sum of the Church's money 
 spent among them without any assignable Church 
 result. They feel that there is a bar set up between 
 them and the Cathedral ; that however generously 
 the dean and canons may individually fill up sub- 
 scription lists, there is not, and cannot be, any real 
 flow and re-flow of sympathy between them and the 
 " Grreat Church." Or if there is, they know it to 
 be exceptional, and owing to some influence which 
 the next appointment may reverse. And it may be 
 added as an elemeut in the consideration, that the 
 contrast, so painful in most cathedral cities, between 
 the needy clergy who minister to them, and the 
 wealthy clergy who do not, tends in any direction 
 rather than that of ensuring respect for the latter. 
 Among the many mistakes, most of them now happily 
 in course of correction, of which our Ecclesiastical 
 Commissioners have been guilty, never was a greater, 
 than the neglect of providing, out of the cathedral 
 revenues, for the pressing wants of the cathedral 
 cities. Their cases ought to have been made a 
 
THE CHUBCH OF THE FUTURE. 191 
 
 special exception, and dealt with at once. But red 
 tape prevailed ; and they were left out in the cold, to 
 await with others their share in the common fund. 
 
 Should the great change which we have been con- 
 templating pass on our Church, it is surely impossible 
 that the capitular system should survive. For first, 
 it is an evil in itself, and must be reformed : secondly, 
 we shall want our Cathedrals for Church purposes : 
 and thirdly, on whatever conditions we are disestab- 
 lished, we shall want their revenues. It will be 
 impossible to devote the same proportion of Church 
 property, be the absolute amount what it may, to the 
 maintenance of dignities. 
 
 The magnificent fabrics themselves, with their 
 beautiful services, need not suffer change or neglect. 
 The Cathedral is the church of the Bishop. Let it 
 become really so in all our dioceses, as it already is 
 at Salisbury, and in some others. Either the Bishop 
 might himself be rector of the cathedral, or a rector 
 might be appointed under him. Perhaps the latter 
 plan would be the better, as the rector of the cathe- 
 dral might be the chief carrier out of the work of the 
 mother church in the diocese. 
 
 I have allowed, perhaps naturally, too much room 
 to this point of the future destination of our Cathe- 
 drals. I only return to it to write the apparent 
 truism, that whatever posts of dignity and repose are 
 
192 mSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 provided by the Church in her freedom, ought to be 
 in connexion with counsel, and not with active work. 
 Dignified position might be reserved for the Bishop's 
 assessors in the Diocesan Council, and the residences 
 of the present cathedral bodies might be available for 
 them ; with stalls indeed in the church, but without 
 a share in its government, which should be vested in 
 the Bishop, or in its rector by the Bishop's appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 I bring this paper to a close, leaving many interest- 
 ing matters untouched. Among these is the modified 
 relation between the Anglican Church and the Non- 
 conformist bodies, which must begin with the lact of 
 disestablishment. What my view on this matter is, 
 may be inferred from my previous paper in this 
 journal, " On the Union of Christendom." Among 
 these is also the probable effect of disestablishment on 
 the doctrine and ritual of the Church. On this I 
 feel that it would be as idle to speculate, as it would 
 be faithless and distrustful to express any foreboding 
 of evil. Believing that the progress of the Faith in 
 the Church is guided by the Spirit, who leads her 
 into all Truth, I have no fear that in her freedom 
 from secular coercion she will have less of His 
 guidance than she had before she acquired it. 
 
 My endeavour has been, to take a calm view of 
 what I believe to be an inevitable change : not to 
 
THE CHUJtCH OF THE FUTURE. 193 
 
 appear as a partizan for or against that change, but 
 simply to treat it as coming upon us, and to enquire 
 what, in some important points, will be our condition 
 in consequence. 
 
 I have not, with my friend Dr. Yaughan,* gone 
 for comfort in such a prospect to the indestructibility 
 of the Church of Christ as united to her living Head. 
 True as that is, it surely does not apply to the ques- 
 tion of the permanence of this or that particular 
 branch of the Church Universal. Lord Harrowby 
 has well pointed out, in his able letter to the ' Times ' 
 on Dr. Yaughan's sermon, that " the Churches of 
 Asia, the birthplace of our religion, and of Africa, 
 the seat of some of its brightest ornaments and 
 highest learning, and the Churches of Italy and 
 Spain," may now be inquired after in vain ; and that 
 " these general assurances of the inextinguishable life 
 of the Church " are not " to make us indifferent to 
 human action and human legislation in regard to its 
 concerns." 
 
 I would earnestly say, in conclusion, that very 
 solemn duties are incumbent upon us as Church- 
 men, in the prospect, or even in the possibility, of 
 such a change. Nothing can less become us, than 
 
 * ' Prospects of the Church of England : a Sermon,' &c. London : Bell 
 and Daldy. 1868. 
 
 
 
194 
 
 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 the attitude and the temper displayed by some of 
 those who deprecate it. The approved weapons 
 among- them seem to be an indiscriminate calHng of 
 foul names, an attributing of motives which those 
 charged with them wonld rather die than entertain, 
 and a studious mystification of tlie great subject at 
 issue by fallacies, which if they do not see through, 
 they are not fit to handle it at all. 
 
 Let ours be a path distinctly and studiedly opposite. 
 We shall most effectually defend our Church, and the 
 truth of which we hold her to be the guardian, by 
 being best prepared for the change, and readiest 
 cheerfully to act on the manifested course of God's 
 providence. Great sacrifices will possibly be required 
 of us. When the change is imminent, it will be 
 most undesirable, in all cases except those which 
 cannot be avoided, that the maintenance of vested 
 rights should protract, for a whole generation, a 
 mixed and impracticable state of things. Very much 
 will depend on the attitude which the Church and its 
 rulers assume towards the legislature when the time 
 shall come. If, as there appears too much reason to 
 fear will be the case, we fight the inevitable inch by 
 inch, entrenching ourselves behind chimerical theories 
 and obsolete precedents, the result will be calamitous 
 indeed. But if we generously advance into the fore- 
 
THE CHUBCH OF THE FUTURE. 195 
 
 front of the change, and show ourselves worthy to 
 guide the Enghsh Church in this crisis of her fortunes, 
 I know of no Church in the world that might win 
 for herself a prouder position : — I know of no oppor- 
 tunity in the history of any Church, so pregnant witli 
 good, and so promising of Christian progress. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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