Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN !
 
 F THE r
 
 THE BETTER PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH 
 
 A C H A R G E 
 
 TO THE CLERGY 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, 
 
 BY JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN W. PARKER. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 J. AND J. J. DEIGHTON. 
 
 1840.
 
 LONDON I 
 
 PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, 
 Bangor Honsc, Shoe Lane.
 
 TO THE CLERGY 
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 
 
 MY DEAR BRETHREN, 
 
 In dedicating these pages to you, I must re- 
 mind you that, when you exprest your wish that I 
 should publish the Charge which I delivered at the 
 Visitation in July, I requested your permission to make 
 certain additions to it, as there were some topics on 
 which I had toucht too slightly, while others, which had 
 seemed to me of importance, I had been compelled 
 wholly to omit. In the Charge itself, as now printed, 
 you will perhaps perceive, the additions have been in- 
 considerable : the further remarks which I wanted to 
 lay before you, have been almost all appended in the 
 shape of notes. And here, you may think, I ought to 
 apologize to you for having so long delayed the pub- 
 lication : but I must plead in my excuse, that the pres- 
 sure of other employments has left me- only a few scanty 
 hours now and then for anything beyond the immediate 
 business of the day : and that excuse you must needs 
 accept, since the chief part of those employments has 
 
 2000489
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 been connected in one way or other with the service I 
 owe to you. 
 
 In the mean time a great change has taken place 
 in our Diocese. God has called away the Bishop, whom 
 He had given to us for a short time to be a true Father 
 in His Church. It was a day of sorrow through the 
 Diocese, when the tidings reacht us : many mourned as 
 for a domestic affliction : many felt almost as though 
 they had indeed lost a father. Of that loss I will not 
 trust myself to speak. Admitted as I was into more 
 frequent personal intercourse with him, I could not 
 but learn to appreciate the graces of his character more 
 fully, and to love them more affectionately. Rather would 
 I speak to you of the blessing that he was to us, while 
 he was allowed to remain amongst us, of the blessing 
 that he still is to us, through the rich legacy he has left 
 us. But of this I have already spoken again and again 
 in the Notes to the Charge. Indeed the whole Charge 
 might almost be regarded as an unintentional panegyric 
 on Bishop Otter. Fo to him, under God, it is mainly 
 owing, that I have been enabled to talk so hopefully 
 of the prospects of the Church in this Diocese. The 
 new institutions, which have risen up amongst us, have 
 been his work: and if a new spirit has been kindled in 
 any of us, it will have proceeded in no small measure 
 from him. When he was first appointed to the Episcopal 
 See, it was said that no one could urge the slightest ob- 
 jection to the appointment, unless on the score of his age,
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 and of his health, which had long been broken. But 
 there are men, whose characters seem to rise far above 
 their former selves, along with their outward elevation : 
 and perhaps this spiritual ennoblement may oftenest be 
 vouchsafed to those who are raised to ecclesiastical dig- 
 nities in critical ages of the Church. Such was the case 
 with Bishop Otter's bosom friend, Reginald Heber, the 
 brother of his heart and spirit, when the Rector of Hod- 
 net became the Bishop of India : and such was the case 
 with Bishop Otter himself. He felt the awful respon- 
 sibility of the high office with which God had entrusted 
 him : he resolved to devote himself with full simplicity 
 and integrity to the duties of that office : and he sought 
 strength where all who truly seek are sure to find. His 
 mind, and even his bodily frame seemed to be new- strung : 
 for this is the true charm, which turns the old young 
 again, love and zeal and the grace of God. Old and 
 infirm as he had been deemed, his labours and his work 
 for the Church during the four short years of his Epi- 
 scopate far exceed what had been done in this Diocese 
 for a whole century before. I do not mean that Bishop 
 Otter was the sole agent in these improvements, that they 
 are wholly referable to his individual merits. Such an 
 assertion he himself would have been the first person to 
 deny. Much is undoubtedly owing to his having been 
 set over us at a time when the Church far and wide has 
 been awakened to a livelier sense of her duties and of 
 her powers. But great has been our blessing in having
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 such a man set over us at such a time. For that which 
 was most admirable about him was not his doing so much, 
 but that, having done so much, he seemed to think he 
 had done nothing. Never have I known a man in whom 
 as in him humility appeared to be almost a part of his 
 nature, not so much a grace acquired by devout medi- 
 tation and prayer, as the spontaneous bearing of a gentle 
 and loving heart. With him it seemed to be wellnigh 
 an instinctive impulse to esteem others above himself: 
 and many a time have I been deeply humbled, by find- 
 ing him defer to my opinions, as though he had been 
 the inferior. Thus did he accomplish his work, or rather 
 win over others to accomplish it, thus and by the irre- 
 sistible sweetness and affectionateness of his character. 
 These are his favorite words, which are perpetually re- 
 curring in his writings ; for by them, after the manner 
 of most writers, he was unconsciously portraying him- 
 self, while he was endeavouring to impress his own image 
 upon others. Few men have ever had more of the spirit 
 of the disciple whom Jesus loved. Whithersoever he 
 came, he said, Little children, love one another ; not in- 
 deed always in so many words ; but all his words seemed 
 to say this. The purport of everything he said was, 
 Little children, love one another. Indeed his very looks 
 seemed to say this. It was scarcely possible to fix one's 
 eyes on his mild, calm, benevolent countenance, without 
 feeling one's own heart softened, without feeling something 
 of an answering kindness, of a like goodwill toward men.
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 God has called him away to his reward. In one of 
 his last letters to me, when speaking of his anxiety about 
 the Ecclesiastical Bill, and of the failure of his health, 
 brought on by that anxiety, he said, / am somewhat de- 
 prest just now by an irritation in the chest ; but I shall 
 do my best in this as in other matters relating to the 
 Diocese, wishing however sometimes that I had wings like 
 a dove. When he wrote these words, he knew not how 
 soon his spirit was to spread out its dovelike wings. 
 Only five weeks after, he did indeed flee away, and 
 entered, we cannot doubt, through the merits of his 
 Saviour, into the rest reserved for the people of God. 
 Of his reward, may we not believe that it would be a 
 part, if he saw the spirit which he was allowed to awaken 
 in his Diocese, spreading and strengthening among all 
 classes, above all among his Clergy ? Let this be our 
 endeavour, my dear brethren : and may Almighty God 
 grant His grace to us all, that we may all seek peace 
 and ensue it ! For myself, may He enable me, in all 
 my dealings with you, to follow the example which has 
 been set me by Bishop Otter ! 
 
 Your affectionate brother and servant 
 
 J. C. HARE.
 
 A CHARGE 
 
 TO THE CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 
 
 MY REVEREND BRETHREN, 
 
 When I cast my thoughts around with the view of 
 ascertaining the subjects on which it will become me to 
 speak to you on this occasion, the first feeling which rises 
 in my heart, is thankfulness to Almighty God for the 
 blessed change which has been wrought during the last 
 few years in the aspect and prospects of our Church. No 
 one, I think, can call to mind, what were his own anticipa- 
 tions with regard to the destinies of the Church, or what 
 was the general tone and the common topics of conversa- 
 tion among her friends, only half a dozen years ago, with- 
 out perceiving that there has in truth been a great change, 
 that we stand more firmly, that we look around us more 
 confidently, and forward more hopefully. Still indeed we 
 are encompast by enemies, who are numerous, strong, and 
 active ; and many among them would gladly snatch at any 
 opportunity to wound or shake us. This however has 
 always been the case, more or less ; and so far as we our- 
 selves are concerned, it is not much to be deplored. Ever 
 since Christ came to send a sword upon earth, there has 
 always been hostility between the World and the Church. 
 The World has hated the Church ; and the Church has 
 waged war against the World. Her spirit however has not
 
 2 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 been that of hatred, so far at least as she has been ani- 
 mated by the spirit of her Lord : for her appointed task 
 has not been to destroy the darkness, except by transfigur- 
 ing it into light, not to destroy the World, but to save the 
 World. The spirit of the World on the other hand has 
 truly been the spirit of hatred : and it has often happened 
 that, in proportion as the light has brightened, the dark- 
 ness has also become thicker ; the more mightily the Lord 
 has set up His Son upon His holy hill of Zion, the more 
 furiously have the nations raged, the more blindly have the 
 people given themselves up to vain imaginations. So far 
 therefore is the enmity of the World from proving that the 
 Church is not fulfilling her mission, it may rather be re- 
 garded as a witness of her activity and zeal, as a witness 
 that she is not allowing the world to lie withering in the 
 deathsleep of its sins, but is rousing and shaking and 
 stirring it, and calling upon the children of Israel to come 
 forth from their Egyptian bondage. But, though the 
 enmity of the World against the Church is as bitter as 
 ever, and though this enmity on the part of the World is 
 the strongest testimony, short of sincere love, which the 
 World can bear to the efficiency of the Church, yet, when 
 we attend to the tone taken by our enemies now, and com- 
 pare it with the common tenour of their language a few 
 years since, we cannot but discern that their hopes have 
 been cast down, that they no longer come against us with 
 the same confident expectation of victory, that for the pre- 
 sent at least they have slackened their attack, and are 
 awaiting a more favorable season to renew it. 
 
 This however, were this the sole evidence of the increast 
 strength and vigour of the Church, would be poor and un- 
 satisfactory. For this might arise from the weakness of
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 3 
 
 our adversaries : or it might be the result of external cir- 
 cumstances : whereas no strength can be real and lasting, 
 unless it be inward and inherent, unless it do not remain 
 without us, like all the gifts of this world, but become 
 one with us, as God's gifts alone can. And this, my 
 brethren, is the great cause I see for thankfulness in 
 the change which has been going on of late years in 
 the condition of our Church : this is the change it especi- 
 ally behoves us to be thankful for, the change which 
 has been wrought, not in our circumstances, but in our- 
 selves, not in the feelings and conduct of our enemies, 
 but in our own spirits and lives, the increase of activity, 
 the increase of zeal, the increase of social energy and 
 union. I say not this boastfully : God forbid ! How can 
 we boast of that which is owing to no merit of ours, which 
 is in no respect our own act, but wholly and solely God's ? 
 When our Church had fallen into a low estate, when the 
 spirit of this world had long been creeping through her with 
 its insidious lethargy and infectious torpour, when too many 
 were seeking their own things, both in the region of action 
 and of speculation, and too few the things of God, then 
 it was, that God arose and had mercy upon Zion : for it was 
 time that He should have mercy upon her, yea, the time was 
 come. Then it was, that He made the wilderness a standing 
 water, and watersprings of the dry ground. So that in this, as 
 in all other instances, the graces we receive, instead of 
 exalting us in our own conceit, ought to fill us with a still 
 more contrite humility, by freshening and strengthening the 
 consciousness of our unworthiness. They ought to awaken 
 us to a still livelier sense of our shortcomings. The more 
 precious the treasure bestowed on us, the more it ought to 
 shame us that we should hold it in such frail earthen vessels. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 Therefore, when I thank God, my brethren, for the 
 merciful change which He has wrought in the condition of 
 our Church, when on my own personal account I bless 
 Him, that He has called me to serve Him in a charge of 
 such honour and such importance, at a moment when so 
 many great births appear to be teeming in the womb of 
 Time, when so much noble energy has been aroused, when 
 the Spirit of good is stirring in the hearts of many people, 
 and calling them forth to war against evil, to fight the 
 good fight of faith and patience and selfdenial and selfsacri- 
 fice in behalf of Christ and His Church, yet these very 
 prospects only deepen my conviction both of your responsi- 
 bilities, and, above all, of my own. They make me feel 
 more strongly how much I need your help, the help of 
 your friendly cordial active cooperation, how much I need 
 the help of your prayers, how much we all need the help of 
 that Spirit whose gifts are vouchsafed to the fervent 
 prayer of faith, in order that, each in his station, we may 
 quit ourselves less unworthily of the blessings vouchsafed 
 to us, and may not waste and throw away the glorious 
 opportunity which appears to be opening for establish- 
 ing the Church more firmly and widely and lastingly than 
 ever in the hearts of the English people. 
 
 For why ? Surely we do not any of us count ourselves 
 to have apprehended, even though we have been appre- 
 hended. We do not, we cannot count that the Church, in 
 her earthly temporary state, as she exists at this day in 
 this land, has apprehended the whole fulness of her divine 
 mission, although she has been apprehended more power- 
 fully than in ordinary seasons by the Spirit of God. Surely 
 this is the very last time for such a delusion to find a way 
 into our hearts. For whithersoever we turn our eyes, what
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 5 
 
 do we see ? Nothing perfect, nothing ripe, nothing full- 
 grown, nothing fulfilling its purpose. But we see wants, 
 defects, imperfections, noble institutions decaying, totter- 
 ing, falling, flocks without, shepherds, shepherds fainting in 
 heart from their inability to count the multitude of their 
 flocks. Indeed this is the chief mark of the better spirit 
 working in us, that we are beginning to have a livelier 
 deeper sense of these wants, that we are acknowledging 
 them to ourselves and to each other, and that we are also 
 acknowledging the duties which they impose on us. Our 
 eyes have been opened, like those of the prophet, and have 
 seen Israel scattered on the hills, as sheep that have no 
 shepherd ; and we have said to ourselves, that we were 
 sent to be the shepherds of Israel, that every soul in Israel 
 ought to have a shepherd, who shall know and love and 
 feed and guide him, and that none of those for whom the 
 chief Shepherd gave His life, should be allowed to stray 
 unwarned into the jaws of the lion. 
 
 This, I say, is the clearest, most distinctive, most pal- 
 pable mark of the better spirit which has been awakened 
 within us. I do not mean that it is the only mark. There 
 has also been, I doubt not, in many instances during the 
 last few years, an increase of activity and zeal in the dis- 
 charge of the pastoral office. Through the working of that 
 principle of growth, which is the only sure witness of spi- 
 ritual, still more than of corporeal life, they who had given 
 up their hearts to God, and devoted their lives to His ser- 
 vice ten years ago, have been enabled, I doubt not, in 
 many cases to love Him more fervently, and to serve Him 
 more faithfully and diligently. On the other hand, that 
 remarkable improvement in seriousness and orderliness, 
 which has been taking place at our Universities, and which
 
 6 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 is such as to fill one's heart with joy, when one revisits 
 them after an absence of a few years, has already borne 
 fruit, I doubt not, in the character and conduct of those 
 who have been recently ordained to the ministry in this as 
 well as in other dioceses. These however are topics on 
 which I may not dwell. It would require too elaborate an 
 induction of particulars, before we could arrive at any satis- 
 factory conclusion. The comparison could not but be invi- 
 dious. And I should have to draw forth into public view, 
 what by its own nature and essence shuns the public view, 
 and can only be genuine and pure while shunning it. For 
 though individually also it beseems each of us to let our 
 light shine before men, this is only within our own parishes. 
 Each of us at best is but a candle, set to give light to all that 
 are in the house. If such a candle comes abroad into the 
 streets to give light to the country round, it is immediately 
 extinguisht. Severally and individually, except in some 
 rare case where a man may have received a peculiar mis- 
 sion of wider range, we are to be content to let our light 
 shine within our own parishes. But collectively the Church 
 should be so filled and starred with innumerable candles 
 inside and out, that it should shine in the eyes of the 
 world, as an image and likeness, however faint and inade- 
 quate, of that heavenly Jerusalem, of which God and the 
 Lamb shall be the Light, burning in eternal glory in the 
 spirits of angels and saints. It was only the other morn- 
 ing, as I was crossing one of the bridges which bear us 
 from our mighty metropolis, that paramount city of the 
 earth, that I was struck, for the thousandth time it may be, 
 by the majesty with which the dome dedicated to the apostle 
 of the Gentiles rises out of the surrounding sea of houses : 
 and I could not but feel what a noble type it is of the city
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 7 
 
 set upon a hill : I could not but acknowledge that thus it 
 behoves the Church to rise out of the world, with her feet 
 amid the world, with her head girt only by the sky. Hence 
 I think I may allow myself to speak to you of those acts 
 of the Church, which betoken the revival of a better spirit 
 than has manifested itself widely for near two hundred 
 years ; more especially as the conviction it will behove me 
 to urge upon you will not be that our work is done, but 
 that it is just begun. We are not standing at the top 
 of the ladder ; we are on one of its lower steps ; only we 
 are indeed mounting, or desiring and endeavouring to 
 mount it. Our walls are just rising above the buildings 
 around us : and long and arduous labour awaits us before 
 we can hope to throw the roof over them, still longer and 
 more arduous before we may presume to think of crowning 
 that roof with spires and pinnacles. 
 
 The first indication of the higher life which, we trust, is 
 awakening in our Church, I have already said, has been 
 the feeling of our wants. This is ever the first symptom 
 that a spiritual life is dawning in individuals ; and so must 
 it needs be in the Church. In proportion as the Church 
 has become conscious of her duties and of her destiny, she 
 could not but perceive with contrite humiliation how miser- 
 ably she had fallen short of those duties, and how she, who 
 had been appointed to be the Queen of all nations, the 
 pure and spotless Bride of the pure and spotless Bride- 
 groom, was sitting a captive under the bondage of the 
 World, with the chains of the World around her heart, and 
 only just able here and there to lift up her head toward 
 heaven. We have cast our eyes through the land, and 
 have seen how even in this country, where she has been 
 allowed to stand so long at the right hand of power, and
 
 8 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 where for a century and a half she has had no formidable 
 enemies to encounter, no searching trial to undergo, she is 
 still very far from having attained to that tranquil univer- 
 sally acknowledged soverainty, which ought of right to be 
 hers. We have seen with shame and sorrow, that in a 
 number of places within the borders of our land multi- 
 tudes were living without a church to worship God in, 
 without the religious instruction and pastoral care, to 
 which they had a most rightful claim. This has been 
 the first, the most crying want, which has forced itself 
 upon us. It had been felt here and there long ago. It 
 had been openly proclaimed by individuals. The State 
 itself had done something to satisfy it. But it had not 
 been felt and acknowledged as a want coming home to 
 every member of the Church, as a want which every 
 member of the Church is bound, so far as in him lies, to 
 relieve. Herein, it seems to me, a considerable change 
 for the better has taken place in the last few years. 
 When we call to mind the character and the result of the 
 discussion on this subject in the House of Commons only 
 last week, it may indeed seem idle presumption to talk of 
 an improvement in our feelings on this score. But sad 
 and humiliating as that debate was, sad as it was to see 
 that a question of such vital moment, a question concerning 
 the moral and spiritual wellbeing of so large a portion of 
 
 the English people, should be evaded by empty benches, 
 
 sad as it was to find, when the nobleminded and zealous 
 mover of that question would not allow his purpose to 
 be thus baffled, that not one of the men who, calling 
 themselves friends of the Church, lay claim to sway 
 the destinies of the country in her behalf, came forward 
 with an open manly declaration of his own views and
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 
 
 purpose (A), sad as it was, after the awful warnings of 
 last autumn, whereby God admonisht the State of the ap- 
 palling dangers which undermine her, in consequence of 
 her having neglected to provide for the moral and religious 
 education of her people, sad as it was to see such warn- 
 ings blindly recklessly slighted, still let us not be dis- 
 heartened. Though the State has refused to fulfill her 
 duty, let us strive to fulfill ours. It would have behoved 
 the State to hallow her wealth, by consecrating a portion 
 of it to the service of God : but let us at least endeavour so 
 to hallow ours : let us each of us excite our neighbours, 
 our friends, our parishioners, so to hallow theirs. The 
 offerings which are made with willing hearts, will be more 
 acceptable to God, and will therefore be productive of more 
 good, than those which might have been doled out grudg- 
 ingly from the coffers of the State. Our recent failure 
 should stimulate us to exert ourselves more actively. For 
 it must teach us that there is a greater necessity for our do- 
 ing so, that there is a necessity for all the members of the 
 Church, lay as well as clerical, to join in supplying the want, 
 which the State refuses to supply. Much has indeed been 
 done of late years by the voluntary exertions of individuals, 
 more especially in the metropolis, and in the diocese of 
 Chester, much, that is to say, when compared with the 
 apathy of the preceding century, though little, when com- 
 pared with the riches of the English people, little, when 
 compared with the urgency and extent of the need. For 
 we must beware of thinking, that, because much has been 
 done, we are therefore releast from the obligation of doing 
 more. Rather does our having been led to do something 
 bind us still more strongly to advance in welldoing. Else 
 our better deeds themselves will appear in the judgement
 
 10 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 against us, as opportunities disregarded and graces frustrated 
 and defeated. 
 
 This diocese, it is true, is not one of the chief seats of 
 religious destitution. We have none of those huge towns, 
 in which hordes of human beings are swept together to 
 drudge in the service of Mammon, and where Mammon 
 has been allowed to make manifest, with too little check on 
 our part, that those who do him service must not and can- 
 not serve God. In those towns in our county, where the 
 increase of population has been the greatest, that increase 
 has arisen mainly from the influx of the higher and edu- 
 cated classes, and, in no small proportion, of those who 
 have been under the fostering tutelage of sickness, ever one 
 of the readiest handmaids of religion. Hence in those 
 towns the building of churches has in some measure kept 
 pace with the increase of the population : and since that 
 godly work was taken in hand, it has been seen, as is 
 wont to happen, that, when men set themselves to serve 
 God in earnest, the prospect expands continually before 
 them, and they are led almost unconsciously to accomplish 
 far more than at first they would have ventured to dream 
 of. For it deserves to be borne in mind, as an encou- 
 ragement in welldoing, that they who bring forth thirtyfold 
 one year, will often be enabled by God's grace to bring 
 forth sixtyfold the next, and a hundredfold the year after. 
 But though we have no such pressing want of churches as 
 is to be found in other parts of England, yet even in this 
 county there are many spots, where hamlets have sprung 
 up or widened since the great age of churchbuilding reacht 
 its close, and which are too remote from any regular place 
 of worship for their inhabitants to be ordinary members of 
 the congregation of the Lord. In some of these places
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 11 
 
 chapels have been built within the last few years : still 
 however there is need of many more : nor may we right- 
 fully pause, so long as we can find a single cluster of houses 
 in the diocese, the inhabitants of which have not the means 
 of attending the services of our Church on every Lord's 
 day. And when there is no longer any such, then will it 
 be our privilege to shew our thankfulness to God for 
 the riches He has poured out upon us, by helping to 
 enrich every other part of the land in the same man- 
 ner. There is indeed a narrow spurious kind of cha- 
 rity, which is rather a secondary selfishness, ashamed of 
 its own deformity, and putting on the mask of charity, 
 and which is ever anxious to limit its range to its own 
 neighbourhood. Thus we often hear people urging that 
 our bounty ought to be confined to our own parishes. 
 Thus again, in the discussions on the Bill now before Par- 
 liament for diverting the revenues of the Chapters from 
 their original purposes, an undue stress has been laid on 
 the argument, that the revenues of each body ought to be 
 expended within its own diocese. So loth are we to recog- 
 nize those ties of churchmembership and brotherhood in 
 Christ, by which the partition-walls of time and space have 
 been abolisht, and they who in the body are far asunder, 
 are brought spiritually together. It is a satisfaction to 
 know that even at present a portion of the funds collected 
 by our Diocesan Association is appropriated to relieving 
 the spiritual wants of other counties. May this portion 
 soon increase (B) ! and with it the feeling that Englishmen 
 are united by a still closer bond than that of country and 
 language and the glory of their name ! 
 
 Much moreover has been done, and much still needs 
 to be done, for enlarging the churches already existing,
 
 12 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 and for enabling them to supply convenient sittings for 
 more numerous congregations. And in proportion as we 
 become more active, and may trust that God's blessing will 
 rest on our activity, it is to be hoped that greater and 
 greater numbers will be led to feel the delight of dwell- 
 ing in the house of the Lord. Here I will take leave to 
 offer a suggestion. When a church overflows, the usual 
 plan taken for accommodating the surplus congregation is 
 by building a gallery. Having myself adopted this method 
 some years ago, I cannot altogether reprehend it. Often 
 however a gallery is a very unsightly disfigurement to the 
 church. If it stands at the west end indeed, it will not be 
 so cumbrous and destructive to the beauty of the arches, as 
 side-galleries are. But even there it hurts the unity of 
 the architectural effect, and often blocks out the west win- 
 dow, which ought to be a main ornament to the build- 
 ing. Therefore I would fain advise that this measure of 
 erecting a gallery should not be resorted to except as a last 
 resource. The first measure which I would recommend, 
 would be to alter the distribution of the seats, by getting rid 
 of those eyesores and heartsores, pews, and substituting 
 open benches with backs in their stead. Many advantages 
 would accrue from such a change, over and above the 
 power of seating a greater number of people. This in- 
 crease in capacity would be very considerable in our coun- 
 try churches, where pews large enough to hold from ten to 
 twenty persons, in the best situations in the church, are 
 often allotted to small families, and may be seen gaping 
 well-nigh empty : for even they who rarely come to church 
 themselves, are not seldom most rigid in asserting what 
 they conceive to be their right of excluding others from 
 their pews. Meanwhile the poor, who, owing to the
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 13 
 
 obtuseness of their senses and perceptions, need to be near to 
 the minister, are thus driven to the outskirts of the church, 
 where only dim broken sounds reach their ears, the con- 
 necting links of which they are unable to supply, and 
 where, if they are not altogether out of sight, they can but 
 imperfectly discern those accompaniments of manner and 
 voice and gesture, in which so much of the force of preach- 
 ing lies, and which are especially requisite to persons less 
 familiar with the power of words, and less easily imprest 
 by them. We all know too how many jealousies and heart- 
 burnings are perpetually springing up from disputes about 
 rights of pews, which would thus be extinguisht at once. 
 At the same time, for the sake of order and regularity, 
 seats might be assigned to each family, according to its 
 numbers ; and one may feel sure that such an arrangement 
 would be generally respected. Besides do we riot all know 
 what facilities and temptations pews afford for irreverent 
 behaviour during divine service, what facilities they afford 
 to the somnolent ? Moreover the eyes of the congregation 
 are not all turned the same way, directed toward the same 
 object : but people sit face to face, and thus are inevitably 
 led to look too much at each other, which interrupts 
 the current of their devotional feelings. Above all, the 
 tendency of pews is to destroy the character of social wor- 
 ship. Instead of our kneeling all side by side, rich and 
 poor, one with another, pews keep up those distinctions of 
 rank, which in the presence of God we should desire to 
 lay aside, each family penning itself up within its high 
 wooden walls, and carefully secluding itself from all contact 
 and communion with its neighbours. Indeed, when one 
 enters a church on a weekday, and sees the strange fashion 
 in which the floor is partitioned out into large shapeless
 
 14 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 lidless boxes, one is involuntarily reminded of one of the 
 ugliest objects on the face of the earth, Smithfield market 
 when empty. 
 
 I am aware that there are many obstacles, which lie in 
 the way of the change I have been urging, and which may 
 for a time prevent its being generally adopted. All our 
 selfish passions will resist it : pride will resist it : indolence 
 will resist it : the baneful love of ease and comfort will 
 resist it. But an excellent example has already been set 
 in the new church of St John at Lewes, where the whole 
 centre of the floor is covered with open benches for the 
 poor, and the pews on each side are so low as to be almost 
 inoffensive to the eye. From various quarters too I hear 
 that efforts are making to throw open the pews in old 
 churches; and I trust that ere long it will have been 
 proved in several parishes, how much more favorable the 
 change is to devotional behaviour in church, how it brings 
 home to our hearts that we are all indeed brethren, all 
 members of the same body, that we are all one before God, 
 all one in Christ. When this has been seen and felt, you 
 will find the less difficulty in persuading your own parishes 
 to follow such examples, inasmuch as the expense of such 
 an alteration would seldom be great. Besides, if assistance 
 be needed for such a purpose, I believe I may assure you 
 that it will be readily granted by the Diocesan Association, 
 whenever a reasonable claim can be made out (c). 
 
 Not however that I would be understood to say a single 
 word implying favour or indulgence to that miserable 
 niggardly spirit, which, during the last three centuries, 
 has generally characterized whatever has been done in 
 England for the worship of God. When our ancestors 
 were poor and few in number, they built churches capable
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 15 
 
 of containing a far larger population than was then to be 
 found in the land ; and they decorated them with all the 
 skill of art, and with everything that was most beautiful 
 and most costly. But since we have become the richest 
 nation upon earth, it has everywhere been seen, for genera- 
 tion after generation, how loth Mammon is, as I have 
 already observed, to part with any portion of his wealth for 
 the service of God. Therefore the gifts, which we had 
 ceast to use, past away from us. The skill in architecture, 
 which had prevailed for above four centuries, among men 
 on whom we have the presumption to look down with inso- 
 lent contempt, past away from us. We became more and 
 more dexterous in all that is merely mechanical, in every- 
 thing designed to pamper and charm the senses, but 
 almost barbarians in the higher regions of art. If there 
 can be anything meaner, more graceless, more spiritless, 
 than the theology of the last century, it is its churches ; 
 which were thus aptly fitted for the doctrines proclaimed 
 in them. And not content with its own inability to pro- 
 duce anything excellent, it was restlessly busy in spoil- 
 ing what it had inherited from its ancestors. One can 
 hardly enter an old church, without being saddened and 
 shamed at seeing how it has been disfigured by the repairs 
 and alterations dictated by the parsimonious ignorance of 
 the eighteenth century. That ignorance in turn has now 
 in some measure past away. We have been learning to 
 understand the principles and the idea of ecclesiastical 
 architecture. There are many who have attained to a high 
 proficiency in that knowledge : the means of acquiring it 
 are procurable by all. God grant that the still worse 
 quality, the parsimony, may pass away likewise ! And 
 here, my friends, you who have been chosen to serve in the
 
 16 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 honorable and important office of churchwarden, let me 
 address a few words more especially to you. Your duty is 
 to take care that the house of God in your parishes shall 
 be such as befits the worship of God. You know how 
 long it was before God would allow His chosen people to 
 build a house for Him. Four hundred years had rolled by 
 since the Israelites had taken possession of Canaan ; and 
 yet, you know, the honour and privilege of building the 
 house of God was withheld even from David. You know 
 too how it was granted to Solomon, how he was endowed 
 with wisdom above other men, that he might accomplish 
 his task worthily, and how the great work of his glorious 
 reign was to build the temple of the Lord. Now the 
 privilege and blessing which God withheld for so many 
 ages from His chosen people, and even from His servant 
 David, is granted to every parish in this land. In every 
 parish God has built Himself a house to dwell in, a house 
 in which all the inhabitants of the parish shall gather toge- 
 ther before Him, and where He will be in the midst of 
 them, a house in which your fathers worshipt Him, in 
 which your children shall worship Him hereafter. Every- 
 thing else in your parishes has changed over and over 
 again, houses, landmarks, the division of property, modes 
 of cultivation, all the garniture of the earth, even the fashion 
 of speech, man, and all his works, and all that belongs to 
 him. God's house alone stands where it stood, still the 
 same after hundreds of years, often bearing witness by its 
 very form and features, that, as century after century have 
 been fed with the bread of life within it, so century after 
 century have delighted to improve and adorn it. Surely 
 then, my friends, you ought to feel that it is a noble 
 charge to take care of that house. It ought to be your
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 17 
 
 ambition, your glory, the wish of your hearts, to see that 
 house pure and perfect and beautiful, to repair whatever 
 injury it may have sustained, to restore it to its ancient in- 
 tegrity. The house of God belongs to every inhabitant in 
 your parishes, to the poor just as much as to the rich : like 
 the air and sky, it is common to all. Man can set up no 
 property in it: and yet it belongs to each one of you more 
 entirely, more lastingly, more unfailingly, than any other 
 property can, to you and to your children's children. All 
 other property may be forfeited, may be lost, may be torn 
 from you by some of the calamities of life : your pro- 
 perty in God's house no earthly power can take away: 
 and if you delight to dwell in it here, death itself will only 
 raise you out of it into another house of God, fairer, and 
 brighter, and more glorious, Therefore should you all de- 
 sire to do your utmost to adorn and beautify this house of 
 God, which is also the house of every member of your 
 parishes : you, and every member of your parishes, should 
 desire this ; but you more especially, seeing that it is your 
 appointed charge. To mention a single point: in almost 
 every old church there are windows spoilt by the substitu- 
 tion of paltry wooden frames for the stone mullions and 
 tracery which originally belonged to them. Sometimes in- 
 deed these window-frames are so mean, that nobody who 
 cares how things look, would allow them to be seen about 
 his own house, unless perchance in the stable. Now it 
 would be a worthy manner of discharging your office, to 
 restore these windows to something like their original 
 form. You will perhaps complain of the difficulty of rais- 
 ing churchrates, and the dissensions which they breed. 
 But works of this kind, which belong to the decora- 
 tion of the church, may well be executed by voluntary
 
 18 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 subscription : only take care that you yourselves are 
 among the chief subscribers. Do not talk of the expense. 
 Make a beginning at least. Restore one window this 
 year: let your successors restore another next year. 
 When the good work is once entered upon, the desire of 
 going on with it will increase rapidly : for you will take 
 more and more interest in that which hitherto you have 
 scarcely thought about: your eyes will open to discern the 
 beauties of your churches, your hearts will open to rejoice 
 in them. And we have money enough in England, to 
 squander on every luxury, on every trifle, on every bauble: 
 we have money for everything except for the house of God. 
 As I was walking in the streets of London last week, my 
 companion often called on me to admire the magnificent 
 windows which have recently been put up in many of the 
 principal shops, pane of glass after pane of glass, each ten 
 or twelve feet high, and each of which must have cost 
 three or fourscore pounds. My own feelings at the sight 
 were shame and sorrow to think that the sum expended 
 upon each of these panes, the only purpose of which is to 
 dazzle men's eyes with the vanities of the world, would 
 have sufficed to put up a fine window in one of our 
 churches, a window through which the light of heaven 
 should shine on the congregation of God's people (D). And 
 whereas these panes of glass might be broken and de- 
 stroyed by a chance blow, the windows in the church would 
 live for centuries. For this is the surest way to make your 
 wealth lasting. When you spend it on the things of this 
 world, you fall under the curse pronounced on Simon, and 
 your money perishes with you: nay, it perishes before 
 you: it will often be gone, or ever you lay hand on it. 
 But when you give it to God, He endows it with something
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 19 
 
 that may serve to shadow forth His own eternity, to 
 remind us of the Ancient of Days. Yea more : so far as 
 your gift is offered up to God in a pure and holy zeal for 
 His service, you will indeed be laying up treasure which 
 neither moth nor rust shall corrupt, and which the wreck 
 of the world shall not destroy. 
 
 In making such alterations however, care should be 
 taken on the one hand that they accord with the general 
 style of the architecture, and on the other hand that they 
 be suited to the great end and idea of the building. In 
 both these respects one often sees much to be regretted, 
 owing to a want of knowledge and judgement, even where 
 everything has been done with the best intentions. When 
 we examine the old parts of any church, we perceive that 
 everything is correct in style, and rightly fitted for its pur- 
 pose: for each age had its own style, in which it was duly 
 instructed, which it understood, and to which it kept. 
 Hence in the buildings of the same age there is a unity 
 like that of an organic growth, a wondrous pervading har- 
 mony : all the parts correspond with each other, and with 
 the whole, even as, for instance, the leaves of every tree 
 present a miniature of the stem and its branches. Whereas 
 in modern churches we rather wonder to find anything that 
 is not faulty : for though a certain superficial admiration 
 for Gothic architecture is pretty widely spread, it is in 
 many cases an ignorant admiration. Features belonging to 
 different ages are jumbled together, along with features 
 which never could have belonged to any age. Wherefore, 
 seeing that such medleys must needs be offensive to every 
 eye of cultivated taste, seeing that what is done to en- 
 dure for centuries ought to be well done, seeing that the 
 beauty and orderly structure of our churches is so important 
 
 c2
 
 20 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 an outward element in the solemnity of public worship, 
 seeing that the contemplation of beauty and order has an 
 aptness to humanize and elevate the minds of the people, 
 
 seeing that man also, like Nature, ought to shew forth 
 the glory of God, by the excellency and perfection of those 
 works which are designed to be the shrines of that glory, 
 
 it is desirable that the study of ecclesiastical archi- 
 tecture should become a branch of clerical education. 
 Meanwhile I trust that, with the view of checking the im- 
 proprieties by which our modern works are mostly defaced, 
 and of rendering them as free from faults as may be, an 
 Architectural Committee will be appointed by the Diocesan 
 Association, to whom all plans for building, enlarging, im- 
 proving, and repairing churches within the Diocese may be 
 submitted, and who shall have sufficient knowledge to point 
 out whatever is erroneous in style, or in any way illsuited 
 to the character of the place. This would afford us a kind 
 of substitute for the architectural schools of the middle 
 ages. Without specifying instances, I will take the liberty 
 of observing, that, in most of the churches which I have 
 visited, where there has been any modern workmanship, I 
 have seen more or less that was objectionable, and that 
 might easily have been avoided with the help of a little in- 
 telligent counsel. When a person is not thoroughly familiar 
 both with the principles and the details of the work he has 
 in hand, so as to overlook the whole steadily with a master 
 glance, it will often happen that, while he is fixing his at- 
 tention on some one end, which he is especially desirous 
 of accomplishing, he will disregard other ends, which may 
 be no less important. For example, the great primary 
 idea of a church is, that it should be a house of prayer : 
 and to this the whole arrangement of the building was in
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 21 
 
 old times subordinate: this was typified by the rising 
 columns and spires. In these days on the other hand, 
 when the age of Solomon, with its universal knowledge, 
 its wealth, its luxury, and its idolatry, has superseded 
 the fervent lyrical piety of David, and when thus, from 
 divers causes, preaching has gained such a high place in 
 general esteem, there is too strong a disposition to regard 
 a church as mainly a house of preaching. Indeed this is 
 the broad distinction between a church and a dissenting 
 meeting-house : a church is a house of prayer ; a meeting- 
 house is a house of preaching. In proportion too as our 
 clergy approach to the confines of the dissenting doctrines, 
 they are in like manner apt to raise preaching to an ex- 
 clusive prominence; and hence, in the arrangement of 
 their churches, they deem the position of the pulpit the 
 main point to be considered. Thus I have seen it placed 
 at times most ostentatiously and indecorously in the very 
 centre, immediately before the Lord's Table, almost entirely 
 excluding that table from the sight of the people; as 
 though the mysteries of religion were still to be hidden 
 from the multitude ; as though the chief object of our com- 
 mission were to keep people dangling in the outer court of 
 the intellect ; as though the great end of preaching were 
 not a living communion with Christ. This thrusting 
 forward of the pulpit has indeed a symbolical meaning, 
 shewing how the intellect, which ought to guide and lead 
 and open the way to Christ, will often bar us out from 
 Him. But, as we desire that the intellect should resume 
 its rightful office in the Church, so let us take care that 
 the preacher do not hide the Lord's Table even from the 
 outward eye, but stand aside while he invites the congrega- 
 tion to it (E). There is also an errour of an opposite kind
 
 22 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 common in modern churches. Indeed it is said to have been 
 often required by the Committee of the Church-building 
 Society, that, in the churches to which they contribute, the 
 pulpit and reading-desk should both be of the same highth. 
 I know not whether this regulation has been dictated by 
 that love of symmetrical correspondence, which is a primary 
 element in our conception of beauty, but which, when 
 allowed to predominate, produces mere lifeless formality; 
 or whether it has resulted from a fear of exalting preaching 
 above praying. If the latter, it indicates a confusion 
 with regard to the character of the two acts : for, as the 
 minister, while praying, is offering up the prayers of the 
 congregation, he should kneel as one of them, only just 
 rising above them ; whereas the didactic purpose of preach- 
 ing implies and requires that he should stand on high over 
 their heads. 
 
 I have been led to say so much on this first topic, that I 
 must pass rapidly over those which remain. Indeed on 
 this first occasion of addressing you, so many thoughts and 
 feelings rush in upon me from every quarter, that I should 
 detain you till sunset, were I to pour them out before you. 
 The first want, the consciousness of which I have been 
 speaking of as betokening the rise of a better spirit amongst 
 us, is the want of churches. Churches however are dumb 
 witnesses : they have no tongue to preach the Gospel : the 
 stones have not yet burst out into Hosannas to the Son of 
 David. Along with the want of churches, we have felt the 
 want of a more numerous ministry ; and efforts have been 
 made in divers places to remedy this want also. Here I 
 must express my gratitude to the Society which first at- 
 tempted to supply this want, the Pastoral Aid Society ; 
 which, for having led the way in so beneficial an
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 23 
 
 undertaking, deserves the thanks of every sincere Chris- 
 tian, even of those who may deem that the most expedient 
 course now would be for it to merge in the other institu- 
 tions since establisht for effecting the same purpose, under 
 a form somewhat more fully consonant to the principles 
 of ecclesiastical order. Perhaps too the employment of 
 salaried laymen, who, as such, would not be subject to 
 ecclesiastical discipline and controll, in offices where the 
 main, if not sole, business is to exercise a certain part of 
 the ministerial functions, may be a measure of question- 
 able policy. For everybody must be aware, that, through 
 the infirmity of our nature, differences will often arise be- 
 tween the lay assistants and their clerical employers, 
 differences which may easily become the more vehement in 
 proportion as the lay assistant is the more zealous in his 
 work. In such a case, should his employer dismiss him, it 
 is by no means improbable that, having already gained a 
 footing in the parish, and exercising a greater influence 
 perhaps from his very extravagances, he may be tempted 
 to set up as a teacher of schism. Indeed, if the differences 
 related to questions of doctrine, he might deem it his duty 
 to do so. Not however that I would blame the Pastoral 
 Aid Society for the course which they adopted. Under 
 the immediate pressing want of a much larger body of 
 ministers, that course was almost inevitable. When the 
 harvest was so plenteous, and required to be housed, before 
 the storm, which was gathering, burst, while no reinforce- 
 ment of regular labourers was to be obtained, what re- 
 mained except to call in the stranger ? At all events we 
 may learn this lesson, how desirable it is that there should 
 be an order of deacons in our Church, who should not con- 
 sist solely of the candidates for the priesthood, but the
 
 24 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 chief part of whom should devote themselves permanently, 
 according to the practice of early ages, to some of the 
 lower ministerial offices. This class might embrace our 
 parochial schoolmasters. Hereby our Church would be 
 relieved from one of its most injurious deficiencies ; inas- 
 much as a sphere of action would thus be opened for those 
 members of the poorer classes, who, feeling spiritual 
 stirrings and intelligence, are now forclosed from exerting 
 them, and condemned to mechanical drudgery, by the 
 institutions and habits of society. 
 
 Although however I cannot but deem that the employ- 
 ment of salaried laymen as permanent professional assist- 
 ants in the ministry is a measure of doubtful promise, and 
 from which serious evils might ensue, there is hardly any- 
 thing I have more at heart, than that our laity as a body 
 should be brought to recognize their duties, their privi- 
 leges, their responsibility, as members of the Church. 
 And in order that they may do so, it behoves us to lead the 
 way, to shew that we too recognize them. Most important 
 is it for the wellbeing of all, both of the clergy and of the 
 laity, that we should utterly get rid of every relic of that 
 false Romish notion, that the Church consists solely or 
 mainly of the clergy, and that there is any essential differ- 
 ence between them and the laity. Such a notion would 
 arise naturally at a time when the Church in a country 
 was made up of a few Christian missionaries, dwelling 
 among a multitude of heathens. It was easily propagated 
 during ages when almost all the learning and knowledge 
 in Europe were confined to the clergy. And having 
 once found credence, it was not readily abandoned: for, 
 through the selfish spirit inherent in human nature, men 
 have always been apt to cling tenaciously to whatsoever
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 25 
 
 offered them a plea for lifting their heads above their 
 neighbours. Yet surely, my brethren, this also is one of 
 the distinctions which have been done away in Christ 
 Jesus. In Him there is no distinction between men, as 
 sacred and profane. We indeed alone, who have been 
 ordained to the ministry, have authority from the Church 
 to preach the word in public : we alone have authority 
 to administer the holy sacraments. But all of us, the laity 
 as well as the clergy, are called to be sacred : we are 
 sealed by the Spirit thereto : we are called away from all 
 profaneness : we are one and all sanctified by the Spirit to 
 become members of that holy priesthood, which is continu- 
 ally to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by 
 Jesus Christ. The ministry, whereby we differ from our 
 brethren, is, that we are more especially called to be their 
 servants, more especially called to fashion ourselves after 
 the pattern of Him who came in the form of a Servant, 
 and to minister the gifts we have received to others, as 
 good stewards of the manifold grace of God. But the 
 laity also are called to minister to others, of the gifts which 
 they have received ; and from this we should not dissuade 
 or discourage them : on the contrary we should encourage, 
 we should persuade, we should diligently exhort them to 
 do so. We should be evermore reminding them, that, as 
 they too are members of Christ's body, so they too are 
 members one of another. One of the most deplorable 
 features in the history of the Church during the last 
 century was the almost total estrangement of the laity from 
 the privileges of the Christian life, their abandonment of 
 their highest duties, their cold heathenish morality grafted 
 upon a nominal Christianity. This did not arise from any 
 inordinate zeal or unapproachable spiritualmindedness on
 
 26 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 the part of the clergy, such as might deter their weaker 
 brethren from attempting to follow them. On the contrary 
 it was the spirit of the world that had overcome the clergy ; 
 and this was the very cause of their isolation. For while 
 spiritual life seeks unity and union, carnal life breeds 
 strife and division. In the centre we are all one : at the 
 circumference we are separate, and can only regain the 
 feeling of our unity by a reference to the common centre. 
 Hence too our weakness. Everybody loves that for which 
 he labours, that to which he devotes his cares and energies. 
 The mother loves her child : the husbandman loves the 
 field he has tilled : the scholar loves his studies. Accord- 
 ingly whenever the laity have been invited to labour in the 
 cause of the Church, when the conviction that they are 
 members of the Church has been brought home to their 
 hearts, and intertwined with their daily thoughts, they too 
 have loved the Church, and have felt that it was their 
 greatest privilege, their highest honour, their dearest bless- 
 ing, to bring their offerings to Christ. When the Cross has 
 been stampt on their garments, they have deemed it a 
 badge of glory, and have rejoiced to quit their home, their 
 family, their friends, their country, if they might but be 
 allowed to fight and die for that Cross. 
 
 On comparing our present condition with that of our 
 Church during the last century, we cannot but perceive 
 that in this respect also we have been greatly strengthened, 
 that the seed which was sown by Wilberforce has sprung 
 up abundantly, that the example which he set, when, along 
 with a few other faithful servants of Christ, he stood forth 
 in the front of public life, openly professing that the law of 
 God should be the rule of his conduct, the love of God its 
 motive, and the glory of God its end, has been followed by
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 27 
 
 many. We cannot but be stirred with joy and thankful- 
 ness at seeing that in all the works of Christian charity 
 laymen are taking a leading and most active part, that 
 some among the rich and noble are shewing that they know 
 the true value of riches by building churches at their own 
 single cost, that in the controversies of the day laymen are 
 stepping forward as the most energetic and devoted cham- 
 pions of the Church. Hitherto however this spirit has been 
 too much confined to the higher classes : and even among 
 them there are still far too many who have pawned their souls 
 to the world, and are unable to extricate themselves from its 
 abject bondage, far too many whose hands are readier to 
 clutch than to open, and who sweep the produce of thou- 
 sands of acres into the ravenous abyss of insatiable self- 
 indulgence, too many who still bear witness how hard it 
 is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, how 
 riches close and harden the heart both against man and 
 against God. Still among the higher classes the army of 
 the Lord appears to be increasing every year : every 
 year new recruits are joining in the great crusade against 
 sin and ignorance and misery. Now that which has been 
 effected in these classes and by them, may teach us what 
 may and ought to be effected in and by the middle classes 
 also. This is a matter which in an especial manner con- 
 cerns us, the rural clergy. Stationed as we are, dotted 
 here and there about the country, we are often opprest by 
 a feeling of our solitariness, and of our inefficiency result- 
 ing from that solitariness. What am I among so many ? is 
 a question which often arises in our hearts. Here the first 
 and highest consolation is the same which cheered the soul 
 of the Saviour, that we too, if we are labouring strenuously 
 for God and His Church, are not alone, but that the
 
 28 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 Father and Son and Spirit is with us. Moreover even on 
 earth we are not alone : or, if we are, why are we so ? We 
 are shepherds, it may be replied ; and the shepherd is alone 
 amid his flock. Our sheep however are not creatures of a 
 different kind. They are of the same kind, of the same 
 flesh and blood, of the same heart and mind and spirit, 
 differing indeed in strength, in knowledge, in divers quali- 
 ties which admit of degrees, and all in need of teaching and 
 help, even as we ourselves are, but all likewise needing 
 that they should have some whom they may teach, some 
 whom they may help, some toward whom they may exer- 
 cise the blessed offices of Christian love. Therefore, if we 
 feel ourselves alone, it must be our own fault: I do not 
 mean, specially the fault of this or that individual : but it 
 is the fault of the erroneous system under which we have 
 grown up, and to which from the indolence of habit we 
 have too unreluctantly conformed. Nor can we personally 
 be exculpated from blame, until we have exerted ourselves 
 diligently and perseveringly to cast down the barriers 
 which exclude any portion of our brethren from the com- 
 munity of labouring in Christ's cause, and to awaken the 
 feeling of churchmembership in them, the conviction of 
 common obligations and privileges. I am aware, it is often 
 said that the middle classes are those over whom the 
 Church has the least power : and doubtless they too have 
 their peculiar difficulties, their peculiar temptations, which 
 hinder their fulfilling the duties of their Christian calling. 
 Far too little regard has been hitherto paid to their educa- 
 tion ; and for this omission the Church must needs be in 
 some degree responsible. Hence they have mostly grown 
 up without any higher interests to balance those belonging to 
 the business of their vocation. Their minds have acquired
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 29 
 
 a strong bent in one direction. Sharpened by the pursuit 
 of gain, which is always a powerful whetstone, and which 
 their daily occupation is constantly enforcing upon them, 
 they often have much of that shrewdness, which prac- 
 tical activity calls forth, but to which religion alone can 
 give a lasting moral value. At the same time their hearts 
 are bound to the world by cares without number or inter- 
 mission ; and nothing less than religion can set them free. 
 And these evils have been grievously aggravated during 
 the course of centuries by the noxious tendency of our 
 Poorlaws to dry up the sources of voluntary charity, to 
 sever the duty of relieving the poor from the moral and 
 spiritual blessings which are its appointed reward, and to 
 set the middle and the poorer classes, especially in country 
 parishes, almost as enemies one against the other, watch- 
 ing each other with the evil eye of covetousness and mutual 
 suspicion. Moreover the habits and forms of society present 
 many obstacles to our maintaining the same familiar, frank 
 intercourse with the middle as with other classes. Yet sure- 
 ly they who live from year's end to year's end under the 
 shadow of the village church, and who continue under it 
 from generation to generation, ought not to be the only class 
 exempt from its salutary influence. The consideration of 
 their many disadvantages should render us patient, indulgent, 
 forbearing: but it should not daunt and deter us: rather 
 should we find comfort, when we are tempted to despond 
 by reason of our slow progress, in the thought that it could 
 not be otherwise. That the habits and circumstances of 
 this body do not by any insuperable necessity deaden all 
 spiritual life in them, we see in our dissenting congrega- 
 tions, the most zealous members of which come out of the 
 very class deemed incapable of feeling an interest in their
 
 30 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 Christian duties. Indeed this has often been the cause which 
 has driven them to enlist under the banners of Dissent, that 
 they have found no field for their activity in the Church ; 
 wherefore the desires and energies which were teeming 
 within them sought a field of action elsewhere. Most 
 thoroughly am I convinced, that, if we were to treat our 
 parishioners as our brethren and fellow-labourers, that, if 
 we were to encourage and exhort them as such, that, if 
 we were to go forth on the enterprises of our Christian war- 
 fare, as Oberlin was wont to go forth at the head of his 
 people, we should find much ready, cordial, thankful as- 
 sistance, especially in that sex whose time is less engrost 
 by the cares and business of the world, and whose charac- 
 ters are more pliant to new impressions. Thus we should 
 be greatly aided in the labours of our charge : tasks which 
 otherwise might be almost oppressively burthensome and 
 cheerless, would become comparatively light and hopeful, 
 when undertaken in consort with our neighbours : the ties 
 of mutual love would weave themselves around all hearts 
 in our parishes, uniting all to each, and each to all : and as 
 the labours of love are ever doubly blest, blessing the giver 
 still more than the receiver, the partners in our toils would 
 continually find themselves happier, and feel an ever-growing 
 delight and an ever-increasing zeal in their godly work (F). 
 Moreover, among many collateral advantages, no method 
 will be found so effectual to stop those petty quarrels 
 and bickerings by which every neighbourhood is often dis- 
 tracted, or to check that tattling and gossiping in which 
 idle tongues seek a resource and a stimulus, as to supply 
 common objects of constant, lively, active interest. 
 
 I ought now to speak to you concerning education : but 
 on that a very few words must suffice. Yet the subject
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 
 
 is one of the utmost moment, and is indeed the vital 
 question of the age; as it is acknowledged to be, not in 
 England alone, but by all the other nations which stand in 
 the van of the human race. It is the question on the decision 
 of which the fate of Europe, and, above all, of England, 
 mainly rests. Hereby, under God's grace, it is to be de- 
 termined, whether we are still to be a Christian people, 
 and to rise upward from strength to strength, and from 
 glory to glory, or to rot amid the dregs of luxury, and to 
 be splintered and shivered to atoms by a heartless and 
 godless civilization. In this respect however, I am per- 
 suaded, you will all feel that we stand more firmly, that we 
 may lift up our heads more hopefully, than we could do a 
 few years ago. The very attempts which have been made 
 to deprive the Church of the conduct of the education of 
 the people, have awakened the Church to a clearer and 
 livelier conviction that she, and she alone, can truly educate 
 the people, that it is her heaven-ordained mission, not 
 only to baptize, but also to teach all nations, that she 
 alone has the means of acting at once on all ranks and 
 classes in every corner of the land, that she alone can 
 train and cultivate all the faculties with which man is 
 endowed, in their rightful harmony and subordination, 
 that she alone can call forth those faculties which constitute 
 the spiritual life of man, and can set their proper objects be- 
 fore them, and that, without these, all carnal life and 
 carnal wisdom are no better than a gaudy mask thrown 
 over the skeleton forms of death and folly. A foreshadow- 
 ing of this conviction had indeed dawned on us some thirty 
 years ago. But then we suffered ourselves to be deluded 
 into putting our trust far too much in means, in mechanical 
 contrivances for dispensing with our own thought and
 
 32 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 labour, and in the influence of vicious stimulants, such as 
 emulation. We have now been taught to discern, in part 
 through the scanty success of our former efforts, that edu- 
 cation is above all others a human work, that it can only be 
 carried on by human influences, by the converse of heart 
 with heart, of mind with mind, of spirit with spirit. Me- 
 chanical contrivances, of whatsoever sort, may be useful, 
 more or less, under the direction of an overruling mind: 
 but they are worthless and utterly inefficient as substitutes 
 for the action of such a mind. Thus we have been brought 
 to recognize our preliminary duty of educating teachers : 
 and institutions are rising up in every diocese for the 
 purpose of training a body of schoolmasters, under the 
 eye of our bishops, and in the neighbourhood of our 
 cathedrals, as a part of the living organization of the 
 Church (G). From these undertakings, if they are car- 
 ried on in faith, the most beneficial results may be antici- 
 pated. But here also it behoves us to remember that our 
 work is only just begun. We have ascertained in some 
 measure what our duty is : we have set about fulfilling it. 
 But we must be careful to guard against the deceitful 
 notion, that our having ascertained our duty will avail to 
 fulfill it. We must keep in mind that education, in all its 
 departments, is a long, laborious, unintermitting, never- 
 ending work, that it is a ceaseless struggle, in which we 
 may not pause or slacken, against the evil tendencies of our 
 nature, and that every day a fresh swarm of souls come into 
 the world with a claim upon us, which we may not gainsay, 
 to be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord. 
 
 The right principles of a national education I cannot al- 
 low myself to discuss (H). But there are two or three points
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 33 
 
 connected with the present condition of education in this 
 Diocese, on which I feel it my duty to offer you a few brief 
 remarks. Several parishes, I grieve to find from the re- 
 ports recently sent in to our Bishop, are still without any 
 regular weekday school under the superintendence of the 
 Church. Wherever such a deficiency exists, I trust it 
 will soon be corrected. Not that it is by any means de- 
 sirable that every parish should set up a weekday national 
 school of its own. None but large parishes would be able 
 to support the expense of paying a good master, or even a 
 good mistress. Smaller parishes however may and ought 
 to unite in establishing a joint school for children of above 
 seven years of age, who may easily come from a distance of 
 two or three miles round. Meanwhile the younger children 
 may be left to the dame-schools, which are to be found in 
 almost every hamlet, and the extinction of which I should 
 much regret, as they exercise a wholesome influence on 
 the character of the teacher, and bind the members of our 
 parishes together by an interchange of good offices. The 
 establishment of joint schools, wherever they are needed, 
 will be a fit subject for consideration at the Rural Chapters ; 
 and many such, I trust, will be found ere long among the 
 first fruits from the revival of that institution. 
 
 Another weighty consideration is prest upon us by the 
 recent change in the Poorlaws. It often happens that the 
 indirect and unlookt for results of measures devised by 
 human legislators are of wider and more lasting importance 
 than those which were foreseen and calculated upon. 
 Thus I conceive that you too must have found, that the 
 necessity now imposed on the agricultural labourer to eke 
 out his scanty subsistence by all the means in his power 
 forces parents to take their boys away from school, if
 
 34 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 they can get any sort of employment for them, at a consi- 
 derably earlier age than before the change, at eleven or 
 twelve, instead of fourteen or fifteen. Hereby the boy 
 loses two or three years of instruction, which, if turned to 
 good account, would have been the most profitable in his 
 life, and quits school just as his mind is opening to receive 
 something beyond the mere elements of knowledge. In 
 order to do what we can to remedy this deplorable disad- 
 vantage, it is very desirable that such lads, after they leave 
 the weekday school, should be induced to be diligent in their 
 attendance at the Sunday school, and that some sort of 
 school should be opened for them on one or two evenings 
 in each week, at least during the winter half-year. Unless 
 something of this kind be done, a great part of what they 
 may have learnt previously, will soon be forgotten, except 
 in those few families where the parents are able and anxious 
 to help their children forward. Too often have we all seen 
 melancholy examples of that universal law, that he who is 
 not advancing falls back. 
 
 The next point which calls for notice, is one to which 
 my attention has been drawn by some recent occurrences. 
 A notion has been entertained, and, I am told, is not un- 
 common, that the Terms of Union required by the National 
 Society prescribe that every child admitted into a national 
 school shall be compelled to attend the Sunday School 
 connected with it, and to come to church on the Lord's 
 day. My own interpretation of the Terms of Union has 
 been different ; and that interpretation has been confirmed 
 in the fullest manner by our excellent Bishop, whom I 
 have consulted on the subject. As the Terms of Union 
 were remodeled in February of last year, the third stands 
 thus : " The children are to be regularly assembled for the
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. OO 
 
 purpose of attending divine service in the parish church, or 
 other place of worship under the Establishment, unless such 
 reason be assigned for their non-attendance as is satisfactory 
 to the managers of the school" By this last clause, it seems 
 to me, the matter is left, and most judiciously, to the 
 managers of the school : and these Terms of Union, I un- 
 derstand, are alone to be deemed binding on the schools 
 previously connected with the National Society, as well as 
 on those which have entered into that connexion since; 
 although with reference to the present point this is 
 immaterial, inasmuch as the stipulation in the prior Terms 
 of Union is exactly the same, with one or two merely 
 verbal differences. From the first it was felt to be indis- 
 pensable in the present state of England to leave a cer- 
 tain degree of freedom to the managers of schools in each 
 particular case ; and this freedom, I believe, has been gene- 
 rally exercised, with much benefit to the Church. That it 
 was wise to allow such a discretion, will, 1 think, be plain, 
 when it is considered that the effect of an opposite pro- 
 cedure must have been at once to exclude the chief part of 
 the children of dissenting parents from our schools. And 
 then how wretched would be the alternative ! Either the 
 children of dissenters would be left altogether without edu- 
 cation ; or dissenting schools would be establisht all over the 
 country ; whereby schism would be widened, embittered, 
 and prolonged: nay, we should often have to see the 
 miserable spectacle of religious jealousy and animosity 
 rankling in the hearts of children. By the present course 
 on the other hand differences must needs be softened ; and 
 they who have listened to our teaching in childhood, will 
 not seldom join us of their own accord, when they come to 
 maturer years. Indeed in many cases it will be found, 
 
 D2
 
 36 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 where the question has not been stirred, and become a 
 subject of angry contention, that the parents will readily 
 allow their children to go along with their schoolfellows to 
 church. This, my brethren, is my own sincere and strong 
 conviction. At the same time I am far from wishing to 
 impose that conviction upon any of you who may differ from 
 me : and they who do adopt it, should be mindful to exer- 
 cise their discretion cautiously and judiciously, lest they 
 foster carelessness and indifference (i). 
 
 With regard to the subjects of instruction I will only 
 make one remark, namely, on the desirableness that the 
 children in our schools, wherever it is practicable, should 
 be taught to sing. So desirable indeed is this, that I trust 
 instruction in singing will be an essential element in the 
 system of education adopted at our Training Schools both 
 for masters and for mistresses. The humanizing power of 
 music, we all know, is celebrated in many ancient legends ; 
 and in the Bible we read how the harp of David drove the 
 evil spirit out of Saul. In like manner it is stated by the 
 governois of a Penitentiary recently establisht near Paris, 
 for boys who have been vagabonds, or who have been de- 
 tected in petty offenses, that they have derived great bene- 
 fit from singing, as a powerful means for softening the heart 
 and unfolding the understanding. Moreover we know 
 what prominence was assigned to music in the Greek 
 system of education, which for the harmonious develop- 
 ment of all the faculties, bodily and intellectual, seems to 
 have been nearly perfect. We know too what importance 
 was ascribed to it by the great philosopher of Athens. Of 
 these things I had long been aware, and believed them as 
 matters of historical and philosophical tradition, with that 
 lifeless assent which we are wont to bestow on notional
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 37 
 
 truths. But they have recently been brought home to me 
 by personal experience, which has given them a very different 
 value and force, and has taught me that music is indeed 
 fitted above other things to awaken the mind. Thus it be- 
 comes a most efficient ally in overcoming that listlessness 
 and torpour, against which we find it so difficult to con- 
 tend. The children who come to our schools, come with 
 no previously acquired disposition to take interest in any 
 thoughts beyond the sphere of their daily life. They have 
 never learnt to discern the connexion between the symbols 
 in books and the realities around them ; and they often 
 continue for years without any distinct consciousness 
 that the words which they read have the same mean- 
 ing as those which they use in their common speech. 
 At every step too they find themselves checkt by the 
 narrow circle of words, to which they have been fami- 
 liarized in the conversation of their parents; instead of 
 having their minds impt every day with new feathers by 
 the unnoticed influences of cultivated language. Hence 
 we should make the most of the means afforded us by sing- 
 ing for giving an interest to words, by associating them with 
 pleasurable feelings, and by arousing the mind through 
 those feelings to the perception of harmony and fitness. 
 Indeed the aptness of music as an instrument of popular 
 education is proved by the fact, that it has been found in 
 so many nations as a national art, and that, alone of the 
 arts, it has often been carried to a high pitch of excellence 
 by the people. Thus may we supply our children with 
 what may prove through life a source of innocent amuse- 
 ment and enjoyment, beneficial both as a preservative from 
 grosser pleasures, and from its tendency to soften and 
 refine the character. Moreover, by teaching them to
 
 38 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 sing, we may train them for joining in our psalmody in 
 church ; and we may hope that this early habit will remain 
 with them, and that we may thus effect the one thing 
 chiefly wanting to the perfection of our public worship, 
 by bringing the whole congregation to hymn the praises 
 of God with united heart and voice. 
 
 I have been speaking of several indications of a more 
 energetic life, which has been manifesting itself during the 
 last few years in our Church, by the establishment of vari- 
 ous institutions for the spiritual edification of God's peo- 
 ple in all parts of the land. These institutions, over 
 and above the immediate benefit contemplated by them, 
 have a twofold value ; in that they tend to awaken every 
 member of our Church to a consciousness of the spiritual 
 wants of his brethren, and of his own duty to minister to 
 those wants ; and because they lead us to act in union, be- 
 cause they lead us to feel our union with the Church, and 
 with each other as members of the Church, because they 
 lead us all, laymen as well as clergymen, to act harmonious- 
 ly together as members of the one great body of Christ (j). 
 In addition to these newly establisht institutions, in this 
 Diocese the ancient institution of Rural Chapters has re- 
 cently been revived, concerning which I feel bound to say 
 a few words. And first I must return my own thanks, and 
 those of our paternal Bishop, to the Rural Deans, and in- 
 deed to all the Clergy, for the kindness with which they 
 have received the suggestions laid before them, and for the 
 prompt cordiality with which they have entered into the 
 proposed plan. It was a delight to witness the pleasure it 
 gave to him, who is so truly our Father in God, when I 
 read him the reports of the various meetings which have 
 been sent to me. The spirit which has pervaded them
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 39 
 
 promises that they will indeed fulfill his earnest wishes for 
 the wellbeing of the Church. What their remoter opera- 
 tion and effects will be, what ulterior measures and institu- 
 tions may arise out of them, what strength and vigour may 
 be infused into the Church by these regularly recurring 
 opportunities of acting in consort, I will not presume to 
 divine: but if they are carried on in anything like the 
 same spirit, with which they have been opened, they can- 
 not fail of producing manifold and very extensive good. I 
 alluded above to the loneliness in which we often find our- 
 selves in the midst of our parishes. In like manner the 
 habitual English reserve, which it is so difficult to break 
 through, has combined with other causes to insulate us 
 one from another. We have rarely acted together. In 
 many districts we seldom meet except in casual society, 
 where, even if the conversation falls upon professional 
 topics, it seldom leads to any definite conclusions or posi- 
 tive results (K). We are scrupulously careful not to intrude 
 into our neighbours province : often we have been kept 
 aloof from them by something of suspicion and jealousy, by 
 difference of views in theology, or on ecclesiastical matters. 
 Now the most effective method of overcoming the feelings 
 which estrange men from each other, has ever been found 
 to be community of action. They who engage heartily in 
 carrying on the same great design, in contending for the 
 same great end, take an interest in each other, and grow to 
 esteem and love each other. The lesser differences vanish 
 in the unity of aim. Indeed it is all the better that some 
 should be led by their predilections, by the bent of their 
 character, or by their acquired qualifications, to undertake 
 and execute one part of the work, others to another ; that, 
 while some have the word of wisdom, others should have
 
 40 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 the word of knowledge, others the energy of faith, others 
 the gift of prophecy, others the discerning of spirits, others 
 the interpretation of tongues. The power which lies in 
 unity of action to produce unity of feeling, is seen for ever 
 in soldiers and sailors ; and so ought it to be in the Church 
 Militant. We too are fellow-soldiers : we too should fight 
 side by side : we too should help, encourage, support, de- 
 fend each other. In such an array our strength would be 
 multiplied. We should gain confidence and hope, from 
 knowing that so many faithful servants of our Lord and 
 Master are labouring along with us in His cause. We should 
 gain understanding and prudence, by receiving the fruits of 
 the experience of others, while we in turn impart our own, 
 enlarging our observation and correcting our judgement by 
 theirs, ready to teach when we can, and equally ready and 
 thankful to learn. For carrying on the great works in 
 which the Church is now engaged, the Rural Chapters 
 may afford the most efficient aid : and they will enable us 
 to come to more satisfactory conclusions concerning all 
 matters of parochial administration and pastoral care. 
 The pleasure I have already received at the Chapters 
 where I have been present, from meeting so many of my 
 brethren whose hearts are evidently in their work, and who 
 desire to shew forth their love for Christ by exerting them- 
 selves in manifold ways for the good of His people, must, I 
 think, have been shared by others ; and so long as God 
 gives me health, I hope to take every opportunity of 
 renewing it. 
 
 Through the help and encouragement which we shall 
 find at the Rural Chapters, all, I trust, will be benefited. 
 They who are already working diligently in God's vine- 
 yard, will be led to work still more diligently, and to
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 41 
 
 better effect. They who as yet may he less diligent, will 
 be stirred by the example of their brethren, and by the 
 peace of heart and mind which they see resulting from 
 greater integrity of purpose, to become more so. And even 
 they, if there be still any such, at all events through 
 God's mercy the number is yearly decreasing, who are 
 idlers and sluggards, will in most cases be shamed into en- 
 deavouring to exert themselves ; and the comfort they will 
 derive from walking in better ways, in company with those 
 whom they must needs esteem, will urge them to continue 
 advancing. Only let us keep in mind, that, if we have any 
 of us received a more plenteous measure of grace, and in 
 proportion as we may have received it, the proof of that 
 grace will be best seen in our bearing with the infirmities 
 of our brethren, that the use and worth of our strength is 
 to uphold and strengthen the weak, and that even they 
 who enter the vineyard at the eleventh hour will receive 
 their reward. This is the lesson to be learnt from that 
 most comfortable parable. They who apply it to themselves 
 may wrest it to their own destruction : but it is a blessed 
 encouragement to us not to faint in exhorting others to 
 come and labour in the vineyard of the Lord. 
 
 What measures may hereafter be laid before the Rural 
 Chapters, it is impossible, I have already said, to foresee. 
 At all events they will find ample employment for the pre- 
 sent in the concerns of their own districts. The providing, 
 as far as may be, for the better religious observance of the 
 Lord's day, and at least of the chief festivals in the Chris- 
 tian year, for the revival of the rubrical practice of bap- 
 tizing during divine service, and for the more frequent ad- 
 ministration of the Holy Communion, the establishment 
 of weekday schools in parishes where there are none at
 
 42 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 present, the improvement of them where they already 
 exist, the discussion of plans which have been found of 
 use in effecting any such improvement, of schemes which 
 have been found to operate beneficially for the assistance 
 and relief of the poor, and of the best means of promoting 
 the objects of the Societies, whether Diocesan or National, 
 which have been establisht for the sake of enlarging, or of 
 bettering the state of Christ's kingdom, these and other 
 kindred topics will afford abundant matter of consideration 
 for some time to come. Besides, as it has been remarkt that 
 the most constant correspondents have the most to say, so 
 doubtless will it prove that, the oftener these meetings 
 assemble, the more they will find to occupy them. Intimacy 
 will inspire confidence. We shall be readier to speak of the 
 concerns of our own parishes, and to take interest in those 
 of our neighbours. Thus may each succeeding meeting 
 fit us for working together more efficiently in the cause of 
 Christ and His Church. 
 
 Never was there a time when such union was more 
 needed. Every year is producing new facilities of commu- 
 nication, not merely those which are mechanical, but such 
 as arise from the diffusion of the elements of knowledge, 
 and from the ever-widening influence of a press, which cir- 
 culates every movement of thought with the rapidity of a 
 pulse from one end of the land to the other. Every year 
 too it becomes more apparent that the name of the prince 
 of this world is Legion. Therefore, if we are to conquer 
 him, we must go forth in like manner as the army of the 
 Lord of Hosts. Nor has there been any time during the 
 last two centuries when a better spirit has been stirring in 
 the Church, to render social action effective of good. 
 Should the example which was first set in the Diocese of
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 43 
 
 St David's under the excellent Bishop Burgess, and which 
 has been recently taken up in that of Salisbury and our 
 own, be followed in the rest of England, the Rural Chap- 
 ters seem to contain the germs of a living organization for 
 the whole Church, beginning, as the organization of a state 
 ought, not from above, but from below, not with parliaments, 
 but with municipal institutions (L). In that case we may 
 hope to see, what has long been the wish of every thoughtful 
 lover of the Church, and what several of our Bishops in the 
 House of Lords a few weeks since declared to be very de- 
 sirable, but apparently impracticable, the formation of a 
 vigorous legislative ecclesiastical government (M). Many as 
 are my causes for thankfulness to God, there are few for 
 which I feel more thankful, than that I have been allowed 
 to bear part in the revival of this ancient and most benefi- 
 cial institution ; which, I trust, through His blessing, may 
 aid me to discharge the arduous and important duties of 
 my present office in such a manner as may not be altogether 
 inefficient for the wellbeing of His Holy Church. 
 
 May He who has given us these outward bonds of union, 
 also draw our hearts to each other by the cords of love. 
 Above all may He draw them to Himself, and to His 
 blessed Son, through whom alone they can be set at one 
 with the Father, or truly and lastingly with each other.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 Note A : p. 9. 
 
 IT was after the delivery of this Charge, that the Duke of 
 Wellington came forward in the House of Lords with his explicit 
 uncompromising declaration, that it is the duty of the State to 
 provide for the adequate religious instruction of the people. On 
 this, as on so many other occasions, the one great man of the age 
 rose above all personal and party considerations, and, without 
 caring whom he might offend or alienate, uttered the truth which 
 he discerned with his characteristic magnanimous simplicity. On 
 a secondary question we may differ from him. We may not 
 deem that for the Legislature to lay its hands on the revenues of 
 the Cathedrals was the most judicious mode of accomplishing our 
 common purpose. But when the persons of highest authority in 
 the Church were so ready to sacrifice the Chapters, it is not to be 
 wondered at that our great captain and statesman, with all his 
 clearsightedness and farsightedness, should have been blind to 
 their value and importance. And most entirely do we concur 
 with him, that it behoves the Clergy to lead the way, as in truth 
 they have ever done, and shame would be their portion if they 
 did not, in every measure designed to promote the spiritual good 
 of the nation. Only we think that the Chapters, had they 
 retained their revenues, would have been able to effect an equiva- 
 lent amount of good, and ultimately a much larger, even without 
 taking account of the moral benefit produced on both sides by 
 voluntary contributions, and the moral injury done by compulsory.
 
 NOTES. 45 
 
 Note B: p. 11. 
 
 According to the present Rules of our Diocesan Association, a 
 sixth of the annual subscriptions, and a tenth of the unrestricted 
 donations are to be transmitted to the Incorporated Society for 
 Building and Enlarging Churches. In the Dioceses of Bath and 
 Wells, Salisbury, Exeter, and Winchester, the sum to be trans- 
 mitted is a fourth of the annual subscriptions, with a varying por- 
 tion of the donations. As our Diocese, through God's blessing, is 
 one in which the need of new or enlarged churches is less pressing 
 than in many others, it would surely become us not to fall short 
 of our neighbours in our contribution to the general fund. 
 
 Note C: p. 14. 
 
 The hope to which I ventured to give utterance in delivering 
 the Charge, has been much strengthened since. From a number 
 of quarters I have heard the warmest expressions of satisfaction at 
 what I had said concerning the evil of pews, and earnest wishes 
 that so great an evil might be done away. It has seemed as if I 
 had just struck a note to which thousands of hearts were ready to 
 respond. And verily it would be a happy day, if the whole body 
 in our churches were to be thrown open to the congregation, and 
 the wooden walls within which selfishness encases and encages 
 itself were to be cast down. One advantage would be, that we 
 should no longer have to blush with shame and indignation, when 
 we read the second chapter of the Epistle of St James. In many 
 parishes, I believe, consent might be obtained to the substitution 
 of benches for the chief part of the pews without much difficulty, 
 unless on account of the expense, which however would not be 
 very heavy. The principal families indeed may often refuse to 
 give up their great pews ; among other reasons, because the sepa- 
 ration between the different ranks of society in England is such a 
 dismal chasm, that many persons in the higher would deem it the 
 prelude of chaos, or at least the first act of a revolution, if a poor
 
 46 NOTES. 
 
 man were to sit down by their side. But though it would be de- 
 sirable to complete the work at once, yet, if we cannot, let us do 
 what we may. Only we, the clergy, must remember that it be- 
 hoves us to set the example, to begin by giving up our own pews, 
 and to seat our families on benches in the chancel. The abuse 
 must no doubt have crept in originally by degrees. First the lord 
 of the manor would have his great pew : then the squire would 
 claim one : the parson enclosed his : in course of time householder 
 after householder protested he could not come to church, and 
 would not, unless he had a pew assigned to him. Therefore we 
 must guard, as far as we can, against allowing any spark of a plea 
 to remain, which might rekindle a like blaze of emulation. Let 
 us endeavour to restore our churches to a likeness of that blessed 
 Communion of Saints, where all are one in the Lord, and all 
 stand round the throne, hand in hand, and heart in heart, hymn- 
 ing the praises of Him who loved them, and who enabled them to 
 love one another : and let us get rid, as far as we may, of all 
 resemblance to that realm of disunion, where every one will be 
 alone, imprisoned in the thick -ribbed ice of his own selfishness. 
 
 When one's heart is set upon anything, one looks round for 
 agreement and support, and rejoices to find it. Thus it has been 
 a great satisfaction to me to learn that the opinion I have exprest 
 concerning pews is sanctioned by the authority of the Bishop of 
 Hereford ; who in his Charge, delivered last year, says : " Among 
 the more important results obtained from the enquiries of the 
 Rural Deans is an acquaintance with the state of the accommoda- 
 tion for the poor in the different churches. That in this respect 
 they are ill arranged, or deficient, and needing correction, there is 
 proof enough before me. It has been too much the practice in all 
 parts of the kingdom to occupy the best portions of the church 
 with close and appropriated pews, an appropriation unknown 
 till after the Reformation, and to drive the poor to distant, 
 damp, and dark situations, far from the minister and the place of 
 his ministration. This should not be. The evil should be 
 remedied where possible ; and the comfort of the poor should be 
 more consulted. They have at least an equal need of instruction,
 
 NOTES. 
 
 47 
 
 of reproof, of consolation, of encouragement. If lower in worldly 
 circumstances, they are not lower in the sight of God ; and their 
 souls are precious in His sight." One cannot but be thankful to 
 see our Bishops writing in this spirit ; and we are forced to confess 
 that the complaints here made by the Bishop of Hereford with re- 
 gard to the state of the churches in his Diocese, are equally appli- 
 cable to far too many in ours. I have further understood on the 
 best authority, that he has recommended the abolition of pews in 
 several cases with success. 
 
 The same point has been well urged by Mr Wallinger, in his 
 Sermon at the Consecration of St John's Church at Lewes. He 
 says, that " to call the parish church the church of the poor man, 
 when the accommodation afforded in it has no reference to the 
 capacity of the hearers, is an insult to the understanding and the 
 feelings. It is like throwing a loaf at a hungry man, without 
 thinking whether it will reach him, or whether he will be able to 
 gather up the crumbs into which it may break. It is like saying, 
 Depart ye ; be ye warmed and filled ; notwithstanding ye give 
 them not those things that are needful" He with good reason 
 blesses God, that, in the church where he was preaching, the best 
 places for hearing were allotted to those " who ought to have that 
 advantage," the poor : and he " anticipates an early day, when 
 the laity and clergy of every town and village in England will 
 take up this godly work in right earnest ; when every parish 
 church will be so enlarged, or re-arranged, or multiplied, as to 
 afford room for all to hear ; and when we shall prove to our 
 poorer brethren that we are not selfish consumers of God's gifts, 
 giving as little as we may to their spiritual wants, but rather 
 that we put a right value on God's mercies to our own souls, by 
 our selfdenial and exertions to communicate them to others." 
 
 Mr Anderson also, in his pretty little book on Ancient Models, 
 has spoken with like reprobation of pews. " Many difficulties 
 (he says, p. 86) occur in the pewing of churches, from the anxiety 
 of the wealthy to have easy and comfortable seats ; and it is 
 owing to this that we see the interiors of churches so grievously 
 disfigured. In the house of God the poor ought to have as much
 
 48 NOTES. 
 
 room as the rich ; and instead of pews made, as those in meeting- 
 houses generally are, like the high boxes in a coffeeroom, or what 
 is called vulgarly the longsaddle in an alehouse, with its high 
 back, to screen the guests from the draught of air from the door, 
 their sides should not be above three feet from the ground : a still 
 lower standard will be sufficient for open seats. The open seats 
 are infinitely preferable to any other. They are of very old 
 standing, are mentioned as early as 1287, and were in use long 
 after the Reformation. These seats have the ends usually orna- 
 mented, sometimes with raised ends, which are called poppy- 
 heads, and are seen in a few old churches, and in most of our 
 cathedrals. They have been restored at Ewelme in Oxfordshire 
 by the late Dr Burton. They are seen also at St Lawrence, 
 Evesham ; Longparish, Hants, &c." 
 
 In our own Diocese, a considerable part of the pews has re- 
 cently been converted into open seats in the church of Kingston 
 by Sea. In that of Graffham, the pews have been removed from 
 the centre of the church, and ranged round the walls, a valuable 
 recognition that the best places for hearing should be given to 
 those who have the greatest need of such an advantage. The 
 same principle has been followed in the new church of Goring, as 
 well as in that of St John at Lewes, mentioned in the Charge, 
 and, I doubt not, in others. In most of the churches built or 
 enlarged within the last few years, a considerable portion of the 
 best space in the body is occupied by open benches ; for instance 
 in that of South wick, in the new church at Chichester, in that at 
 Hadlow Down. In the church of Iping, which has just been re- 
 built, I have learnt with much pleasure that there are not more 
 than four or five pews. May we not hope ere long to see a church 
 without one ? As an example of the manner in which room is 
 wasted by the odious system of large square pews, I will mention 
 that in the beautiful church of New Shoreham, which has re- 
 cently been repewed, with the addition of a small gallery, it is 
 stated that 569 additional sittings have been gained; and of 
 these the gallery does not seem capable of containing a hundred. 
 
 When a nuisance of long standing is to be abated, it is requisite
 
 NOTES. 49 
 
 that many persons should join in lifting up their voices against it. 
 I will therefore further refer to a passage in Mr Perceval's de- 
 lightful Christian Peace-Offering (p. 139), where, after speaking 
 of the churches which he has seen in Romanist countries, " of the 
 largest dimensions, crowded from one end to the other, without 
 distinction of age, or sex, or rank, without regard to personal ac- 
 commodation, all, like one body, on their knees, and all with 
 one voice joining in the responses," he contrasts them with our 
 churches, " into which the pride of the world, instead of being at 
 least left at the threshold, enters openly, and where the ease and 
 comfort of the rich and great is sought to the inconvenience of 
 their poorer brethren, and not to their inconvenience only, but 
 oftentimes to the hindrance of their sight and hearing; nay, 
 where litigious squabbles and miserable jealousies are often car- 
 ried into the house of God, and maintained with personal violence 
 about the possession of this or that pew." 
 
 An intelligent writer in the British Magazine (Vol. xvi. p. 504), 
 after mentioning that Sir Christopher Wren made fruitless efforts 
 to prevent the introduction of pews into his churches, adds : " Pews 
 appear to have existed in England anterior to the Reformation. 
 Sir Thomas More was accustomed to sit in the aisles as a protest 
 against them. The old churches however seem to have been very 
 partially tainted with these practical corruptions : but after the 
 Restoration persons of quality frequented the churches so entirely 
 as resorts of fashion, that they became indispensable." I know 
 not whether this writer is referring to any other story of Sir 
 Thomas More than the following, told in Bacon's 89th Apo- 
 phthegm. " When Sir Thomas More was lord chancellor, he did 
 use at mass to sit in the chancel, and his lady in a pew. And be- 
 cause the pew stood out of sight, his gentleman usher ever after 
 service came to the lady's pew, and said, Madam, my lord is gone. 
 So, when the chancellor's place was taken from him, the next 
 time they went to church, Sir Thomas himself came to his lady's 
 pew, and said, Madam, my lord is gone." In Roper's Life, where 
 the same story is related with a painful addition, it is not stated 
 where More sat. But, glad as I should be to enlist so great a 
 
 E
 
 50 NOTES. 
 
 name among the protesters against pews, this story rather implies 
 that pews were not common enough in those days to be protested 
 against. Sir Thomas More, as chancellor, would of course sit in 
 one of the stalls in the chancel ; and his wife, as the story shews, 
 had a pew somewhere out of sight, probably a raised one, such as 
 are to be seen on the sides of the choirs in cathedrals. This would 
 agree with the etymology of the word, pew, or pue, as it used to 
 be spelt ; which comes, through the French and Dutch puye, from 
 the Latin podium, the name given to the elevated projecting seat 
 where the emperor sat in the circus. Indeed the anecdote seems 
 rather to infer that the body of the church was not pewed, and 
 confirms the statement in Burn, that before the Reformation no 
 seats were allowed, nor any distinct apartment in the church 
 assigned to distinct individuals, except for some very few great 
 persons. How and when the abuse became general, I have not 
 the means of ascertaining. That it was spreading widely in the 
 time of Charles the First, is proved by the Orders and Directions 
 which Bishop Wren issued in the Diocese of Norwich in 1636, 
 and which are printed in Dr Cardwell's Documentary Annals 
 (Vol. ii. pp. 200-207). The 2 1st is, "that the chancels and 
 allies in the church be not encroacht upon by building of seats ; 
 and if any be so built, the same to be removed and taken away ; 
 and that no pews be made overhigh, so that they which be in 
 them cannot be seen how they behave themselves, or the prospect 
 of the church or chancel be hindered ; and therefore that all pews, 
 which within do much exceed a yard in highth, be taken down 
 near to that scantling." The use of the word by Shakspeare, 
 where Edgar says that the foul fiend " hath laid knives under his 
 pillow, and halters in his pew," and where Margaret thanks God 
 that Richard " Preys on the issue of his mother's body, And makes 
 her pewfellow with other's moan," shews that pews, in some 
 sense or other, must already have been common, since they could 
 be alluded to in such proverbial expressions. In a note on the 
 latter passage, Steevens has cited two similar instances of the 
 word pewfettow from Decker. Perhaps the explanation of this ex- 
 pression is to be found in Charpentier's statement, that podium
 
 NOTES. 51 
 
 was the name given -to the seat where the minor canons sat, or to 
 the desk on which they leant. But this is a question which 
 requires a far more learned antiquary to solve it. 
 
 The foregoing remarks on the abolition of pews have been made 
 with reference to our old parish churches. Great difficulties, I am 
 aware, would obstruct such a measure in the new district churches 
 and the chapels, where the stipend of the minister is mainly 
 derived from the rent of the pews. How those difficulties may 
 best be overcome, I cannot confidently say. It is plain how- 
 ever that the whole system is a gross anomaly and corruption, 
 which has resulted from a twofold train of causes. On the one 
 hand there has grown up a large floating body of fundholders, and 
 an enormous population employed in trade, manufactures, and 
 commerce ; and none of these classes contribute anything ap- 
 proaching to a due portion of their wealth toward supplying the 
 spiritual wants of the nation. On the other hand the Church, in- 
 stead of being endowed with additional means for the accomplish- 
 ment of her great work, as she ought to have been according to 
 the increast wealth and numbers of the people, has been subjected 
 for centuries to manifold spoliations. It seems to have been 
 often assumed by individuals, and even by the State, that what- 
 ever could be wrested or purloined from the Church was fair 
 gain, and that robbery, if it were only sacrilegious, became legal 
 and honest. Owing to these spoliations, the Church is utterly 
 unable to multiply her sacred buildings and ministrations out of 
 her own resources in any degree at all proportionate to the in- 
 crease of the population. Will the time never come when the 
 Nation shall arise from its slumber in the lap of Delilah, and 
 indignantly burst the fetters of gold and the silken nets which 
 bind it to the earth ? when it shall arise and swear before 
 God to fulfill its first duty, the duty of providing amply and 
 in every way for the moral and spiritual wellbeing of every 
 soul .that belongs to it ? Will it rise, ere the locks of its 
 strength are shorn off, ere the eyes of its understanding are 
 put out ? 
 
 E 2
 
 52 NOTES. 
 
 Note D: p. 18. 
 
 I am very glad to find that I had considerably overrated the 
 cost of such restorations. In an estimate for a perpendicular 
 eastern window, copied from that at New College, and which is to 
 be fourteen feet high and above eight broad, the stonework is to 
 be under thirty pounds. Side windows, having so much less 
 tracery, will hardly cost half, perhaps not a third, of that sum : 
 and these are the windows which have been most frequently dis- 
 figured by the introduction of shabby wooden frames. Hence I 
 can feel more confidence in exhorting the clergy and the church- 
 wardens of the Archdeaconry to get rid of these disgraceful blots, 
 and to replace stone windows of a style suited to the rest of the 
 church. If an Architectural Committee be establisht, it will be 
 able to supply designs for such purposes; and I earnestly hope 
 that, whenever a work of the kind is undertaken, the care requi- 
 site for its correct execution will not be withheld. Restorations 
 projected with the best intention have often been spoilt by want 
 of a due regard to the character of the architecture. 
 
 Here I will suggest another improvement. In a great number 
 of our churches, windows have been broken through the roof, 
 which commonly seem constructed after no higher model than the 
 garret windows in a cottage, and not seldom are meaner than 
 those in many cottages. The light of them is wanted, some- 
 times for galleries recently erected, sometimes because the pul- 
 pit would otherwise be too dark in winter. Hence, as we may 
 not stop them up again, it is very desirable to have a mode of 
 bringing them into some sort of keeping with the rest of the 
 building. Such a plan has been devised for my own church by 
 my friend, Professor Whewell, who on Gothic architecture, as on 
 most other subjects, knows more than almost any man living. 
 He has recommended the placing of a gable end, with a projecting 
 roof, a pinnacle, and barge-boards, over the dormer window, into 
 which wooden tracery may be introduced, as in the adjoining wood- 
 cut ; such tracery being sanctioned by the beautiful examples at
 
 NOTES. 
 
 53 
 
 Coventry, of which engravings 
 may be found in Mr Pugin's 
 work upon Gables. The 
 sides and ceiling in the in- 
 terior are to be panneled. 
 This alteration will remove 
 an offensive eyesore, and 
 will almost turn it into an 
 ornament, at least on the 
 exterior. Yet the expense 
 must be very slight. 
 
 Our fathers were so inex- 
 haustible in their contriv- 
 ances to spoil their churches, 
 that I have still another very 
 important restoration to re- 
 commend. In Holland and 
 Flanders the churches look 
 as if they were whitewasht 
 anew every year. Thus 
 all distinctness of feature 
 is lost, all the idea of solidity and grandeur associated with 
 the nature of the material ; and they pain the eye with their 
 glare. One cannot understand how in the country of Rubens and 
 Rembrandt the sense of colour should have become so extinct. 
 Still in those who, like the Dutch, have cut off all connexion with 
 antiquity, the rage for whitewashing is in some measure intelligi- 
 ble : by means of it their churches look as if they had been built 
 yesterday. But when did it come into England ? Was it one of 
 the rats that swam over in the train of William the Third ? 
 However it may have originated or immigrated, it spred through 
 the land : high and low were infected by it : and it was yet in 
 full vigour some thirty years ago, when a Rural Dean in this 
 neighbourhood ordered a grand richly decorated monument of 
 Purbeck marble to be whitewasht, and found readier compliance 
 than such official mandates usually gain. There is hardly a
 
 54 NOTES. 
 
 church that has not been defaced by this architectural basting : 
 and most earnestly would I entreat the clergy and church- 
 wardens throughout England to try, wherever it can be done, to 
 strip off this white shroud in which the limbs of our churches 
 have been wrapt up, this white sheet in which they have been 
 constrained to do penance. I am the more anxious on this point, 
 from having recently witnest the effect of such a purification in 
 my own church. I was induced to undertake it by a visit to the 
 beautiful little church of Kingston by Sea, which has recently 
 been restored with the best taste by the excellent rector, and the 
 look of which is now singularly calm and holy. In my own 
 church too the parishioners have been quite surprised by the 
 fine early English arches and columns with rich capitals, which 
 have started back into life, after lying hid for a century or 
 more. They are surprised at the beauty of the building, in 
 which they have met together all their lives without knowing 
 what it was. Verily too one cannot help being amazed that peo- 
 ple should ever have had such a delusive film over their eyes, as 
 to fancy they could improve these stones by whitewashing them ; 
 until one calls to mind how at the same time they also fancied 
 they could improve Shakspeare by whitewashing him, and getting 
 rid, as far as might be, of whatever was most characteristic, how 
 their whole poetry was a whitewash thrown over Nature, nay, 
 how they fancied that even Absalom's hair would not have been 
 fit to be seen, unless it had been whitewasht with powder. At 
 length however this intellectual leprosy has past away ; so let us 
 erase all the traces it has left behind 
 
 Note E: p. 21. 
 
 From the Article on New Churches in the recently publisht 
 Number of the British Critic (the 56th), it appears that this un- 
 seemly protrusion of the pulpit in front of the Lord's Table has 
 not been uncommon of late years. The more needful is it 
 that care should be taken, by those who have influence and 
 authority, to put a stop to such improprieties, and to get rid of
 
 NOTES. 55 
 
 them where they are already introduced. In most cases they 
 will be found to arise from no worse source than ignorance, and an 
 exclusive attention to the one object of placing the pulpit so 
 that all the congregation may hear and see the preacher. That 
 this is desirable, cannot be denied ; yet it should not be the sole, 
 nor even the chief end kept in view. We should bear in mind 
 that " Praying 's the end of Preaching." We should let this be 
 visible in the outward arrangement of our churches. We should 
 beware of turning them into houses of preaching, of fostering the 
 delusion, into which people too readily slide, that Preaching 's the 
 end of Praying ; which, if it be deemed so, it becomes in more 
 senses than one. Indeed, were there no other reason, modesty 
 should make the preacher shrink from setting himself up on high 
 as the central object in the church. In some churches this is 
 done, in a manner scarcely less offensive, by throwing an arch over 
 the passage which leads to the Communion Table, and erecting 
 the pulpit upon that arch, so that the preacher stands percht on 
 high in a very theatrical position. So much licence is taken 
 nowadays in such alterations, that I know not how anything 
 like ecclesiastical order can be preserved, unless the ordinary 
 enforces his right of preventing them without his special per- 
 mission. Unfortunately a Cambridge man may deem himself 
 sanctioned in any licence he may choose to indulge in, by the 
 strangely anomalous arrangement in St Mary's ; where the chancel 
 is excluded from view by the seat in which the heads of houses 
 and professors turn their backs on the Lord's table, where the 
 pulpit stands the central object on which every eye is to be fixt, 
 and where everything betokens, what is in fact the case, that the 
 whole congregation are assembled solely to hear the preacher. 
 Surely a university church ought not to offer such an example of 
 the verkehrte Welt. 
 
 In the Article referred to there is a witty passage on the 
 caprices exhibited in altering the position of pulpits, a passage 
 which I would recommend to all such clergymen as meditate any 
 innovation on this point. It also contains several other useful and 
 judicious remarks, and would be still more valuable, if it were not
 
 56 NOTES. 
 
 disfigured, like many other parts of the same Review, by a 
 querulous antiprotestant bigotry, which seems to take pleasure in 
 sneering at whatever has been done of late years in ecclesiastical 
 architecture. Yet the Article itself bears witness what a vast 
 number of churches have been built during the last twenty years, 
 a number assuredly far exceeding what had ever been built in 
 England during a like period before. And though our new 
 churches are not comparable in grandeur to many of the ancient, 
 yet, when we are thus taunted with their inferiority, we may 
 allowably plead, that the larger ancient churches were the 
 work of many long years, and not seldom of generations, the 
 scantier population of those times finding ample room for their 
 worship in a small portion of the projected building. Whereas in 
 these days our necessities compell us to complete our work as 
 speedily as possible. We had to make amends for the unchristian 
 negligence of a century, during which the increase of population in 
 some parts of the island was beyond all former example. When 
 every parish in England is adequately supplied with churches, 
 then may we set about building minsters and cathedrals. Would 
 the pious men of former ages have acted otherwise ? Would they 
 have left thousands and hundreds of thousands of souls without a 
 place to worship God and to hear His word in, while they 
 expended their means and energies in erecting grand and gorgeous 
 fabrics, far beyond the needs of the congregations that were to 
 assemble in them ? Would there have been any true piety in 
 this? Would it not have been starving the poor, to feast the 
 rich ? Amid much errour, much weakness, much extravagance, 
 we have yet been enabled to lay hold on this one cardinal truth, 
 that our special duty and mission is to preach the Gospel to the 
 poor. This duty had almost been forgotten by the Church, wh n 
 that body of clergy, who are usually designated by the name of 
 evangelical, arose, and reminded us of it, not by words merely, 
 but by labouring diligently to fulfill it. Therefore let honour and 
 praise be theirs, therefore, and for the spiritual life which they 
 infused into our effete and almost extinct theology. If we are led,
 
 NOTES. 57 
 
 as we often may be, to find fault with what was erroneous or 
 narrow or defective in their views, let us never do so without pre- 
 viously refreshing our hearts by the recollection of the blessings we 
 owe to them. It is a goodly work to build noble churches to God, 
 which shall stand before the eyes of men, bearing witness of 
 heaven, from century to century. But these churches also are 
 perishable. The true everlasting Church of God is that which is 
 built of living stones, even of immortal souls. And they who give 
 themselves heartily to the building up of this Church, have chosen 
 the better part, and may justly claim indulgence if they are not so 
 curious as they might be about the beauty and grandeur of the 
 others. This, and not the others, is the Church which the 
 Apostles laboured to build. This, and not the others, is the 
 Church which our Lord Himself came down from heaven to build. 
 
 Note F: p. 30. 
 
 Here I cannot refrain from enforcing what I have said, by 
 reminding my brethren of words, which must already be writ- 
 ten in their hearts, which have now acquired a sanctity, and 
 which, even while the writer of them was amongst us, it was 
 scarcely possible to read without some movement of love. I refer 
 to that beautiful passage in our revered Bishop's Pastoral Letter, 
 where, after expressing his regret at seeing so few persons of the 
 middle classes among the subscribers to the Diocesan Association, 
 he adds, that hereby " the Association loses the benefit of their 
 counsel, and the poor the blessing of their assistance ; but they 
 themselves undergo a sadder loss ; for they are cut off from com- 
 munion with the Church in her labours of piety and charity, and 
 have no share in the benefit of those prevailing prayers and bene- 
 dictions, which rise to heaven from the lips of the poor in favour 
 of their benefactors. The nearer we are drawn by the relations 
 of life to those who stand in need of our assistance, the oftener we 
 come personally in contact with them, the more graceful, healing, 
 and acceptable does our sympathy become, the more offensive and
 
 58 NOTES. 
 
 unnatural our neglect. Indeed this is only one symptom of that 
 moral disorder which prevails through a large portion of our 
 social system, separating those who labour with their hands from 
 their employers, producing selfishness on one side, sullenness and 
 discontent on the other. Nor can any hope be entertained of 
 arresting this disorder, and soothing these distempered feelings, 
 unless by restoring to our society the spirit of Christian charity, 
 unless the sympathies and feelings of Christian brotherhood are 
 acknowledged amongst us in all their strength, unless every 
 rank and order be made to feel for every other as for itself, and all 
 be knit together by the ties of mutual respect, as well as of kind- 
 ness and affection. No device can be imagined so calculated to 
 win the hearts of the lower orders to the love of Christ and of the 
 Gospel, as to let them witness the force of it in those above them, 
 prompting and warning every one to seek, not their own things, 
 but the things of others and of Christ, and to be constantly 
 intent upon improving the condition, and raising the spiritual 
 character of their poorer brethren." 
 
 Above all does it behove us to remember the exhortation 
 which he addresses to us personally on this subject. " Men are 
 wont to deem it sufficient that good has been brought to pass, no 
 matter whether by many or by few : and they are sometimes 
 tempted to please themselves with the thought, that, however 
 others have failed, they at least have not been wanting. But if 
 we kept in mind how the Church is represented in Scripture as 
 one body with many members, of which Christ is the head, we 
 should perceive that no social act of piety or charity can well be 
 complete, either in its design or operation, unless all classes unite 
 in it, each according to the measure of its ability. The hand can- 
 not say to the foot, / have no need of tkee. If it be a privilege, 
 that all who have received the gift, should minister one to an- 
 other, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God, why are any 
 classes to be shut out from the enjoyment of this privilege ? If it 
 be a trust, why are they prevented from fulfilling it ? And why 
 are those classes to be excluded, whose kindness would be most 
 esteemed and valued, because most manifest to those on whom it
 
 NOTES. 59 
 
 was conferred ? It may be urged that it is their own fault that 
 they are excluded. But have we taken sufficient pains to invite, 
 to exhort, and with gentle violence to compell them to come in ? 
 Have we made allowance for their incessant business, and their 
 want of opportunities and information ? Unless we, the ministers 
 of Christ, shall be able to shew that we have never failed to im- 
 press on our brethren their obligation as members of a Christian 
 society, we may be justly considered partakers in other men's 
 sins, and chargeable with other men's miseries." 
 
 Note G: p. 32. 
 
 The acknowledgement of this duty has exprest itself most ap- 
 propriately in the determination to erect a Training School as a 
 monument to the memory of our late beloved Bishop. The 
 moment the thought was suggested, it seemed to strike almost 
 every one that a Training School is exactly the monument which 
 in our days ought to be raised by the affection and reverence of 
 the Diocese to the Father whom we have lost. And surely a 
 more honorable one was never raised to any Bishop, springing as 
 this does from the spontaneous love of his spiritual children. By 
 it, we may feel a confident hope, Bishop Otter's name will be 
 handed down from generation to generation, as the author of the 
 improved system of education in his Diocese : the beneficial 
 influence of his Episcopate will be felt in course of time by every 
 parish, and almost by every family in the County : and long after 
 we are forgotten, many will still bless him, whom we now bless 
 for what he has been, and for what he has done for us. 
 
 In this eastern half of the County a natural and very allowable 
 wish has been entertained by some persons, that the Training 
 School, which we are about to erect, should be fixt at Lewes ; 
 where they would have more frequent opportunities of visiting it, 
 and where it would be of easier access to the pupils from all parts 
 of the County. But notwithstanding the disadvantage in the 
 situation of Chichester at the extremity of the Diocese, it seems to 
 me most desirable that in this, as, I believe, in every other
 
 60 NOTES. 
 
 Diocese, the Training School should be connected with the Episco- 
 pal See. General practice, in matters where there are no selfish 
 feelings to bias it, is in itself a strong reason, or at least an indi- 
 cation that there is one. In no other place would such an institu- 
 tion be so certain of receiving the best superintendence : for, after 
 the stir excited by the Ecclesiastical Commission, we cannot doubt 
 that the cathedral clergy, for some time to come at least, will be 
 chosen out from the ablest and most active men in every diocese : 
 and surely some of them will take an interest in the general pro- 
 gress of education, and will be anxious to introduce such improve- 
 ments in the system and practice of teaching as may have been 
 justified by experience in other parts of England. Even the 
 proximity to the Diocesan College promises mutual benefit to 
 the pupils of each. For great will be the advantage, if our 
 young clergy are already familiarized with the best modes of 
 popular instruction, and thus enter upon the care of their 
 parishes with this preparation for directing and bettering the 
 schools they may find in them. But above all may we hope for 
 good from the feeling of unity and union which will thus be gene- 
 rated. That feeling we have long wanted. We have been left, 
 as many of us are ready to acknowledge, too much to ourselves. 
 We have had no perceptible bond connecting us with the rest of 
 the Church. Each parish has been cut off from its neighbours, 
 jealously penning and pewing itself in, and ever and anon peering 
 over its high walls to see that no intruder was near. But the -last 
 four years have taught us a different lesson. Bishop Otter has 
 taught us that a true bishop, a bishop after the apostolic pattern, 
 is a bond of union and love among his clergy. His constant en- 
 deavour was to draw our hearts toward each other. In so doing 
 he drew them to himself; but I trust he has not failed in that 
 which was his immediate aim. Indeed this is what good bishops 
 have ever done in the best ages of the Church : they have been 
 bonds of union among their brethren. Hence the cathedral is 
 rightly named the mother church of the Diocese; because we 
 there feel as the different branches of the same family, however 
 estranged from each other by the chances of life, cannot but feel
 
 NOTES. 61 
 
 when they meet together in the common home of their ancestors. 
 Therefore,, as the cathedral is the mother church of the Diocese, it 
 is right and fitting that the education of the Diocese should be 
 carried on under her guidance and guardianship. So may we 
 hope that, through the combined influence of their twofold 
 teachers, the poor also may be brought to feel that they too are 
 members of a parish, not merely as having a claim upon the 
 rates, but in a higher sense, as members of a Church, and that 
 this their Church is not confined to their own parish, but extends 
 far and wide, as a great bond of holy brotherhood, in which there 
 are no jarring clashing interests, but all are one, and all have the 
 same interest. Miserably divided as we have been by the un- 
 checkt sway which Mammon has so long been allowed to exercise 
 over us, while the Church almost seemed to have lost her recon- 
 ciling power, it may appear next to impossible that any change in 
 this respect should be rapidly brought about. But let us not de- 
 spond. When the frost breaks up, the jagged lumps of ice, which 
 had lain torpidly side by side, will jostle at first, and dash against 
 each other : yet after a few days of soft sunshine and mild airs 
 they melt and flow on peacefully together. Our late Bishop 
 has shewn us what a power there is in love to win and rule 
 hearts. Encouraged by his example, let us seek the same gift at 
 the Throne of Grace, and endeavour to manifest it as he did 
 in all our dealings with our brethren. If we can awaken Chris- 
 tian love within our own parishes, it will embrace those who are 
 without also. 
 
 For these reasons it seems to me that it would be strangely 
 anomalous, if we, who have just felt the blessed value of episcopal 
 influence, were not to connect our Training School as closely as 
 possible with the Episcopal See. And surely it will not be a 
 worthless advantage, that our schoolmasters should spend the 
 years of their training within the daily sight of our cathedral, 
 instructed, as they doubtless will be by their master, to admire 
 and love it. They will return to their parishes with a better 
 knowledge of what the house of God ought to be : the reverence 
 inspired by the cathedral will be extended to the village church :
 
 62 NOTES. 
 
 they will talk to their pupils, to their neighbours, about the cathe- 
 dral, and will teach them also to share their reverence for the 
 village church. Thus our cathedrals will cease more and more to 
 be, what in the last century they seem almost to have been, 
 splendid lumber in the land, majestic monuments of a nobler age, 
 soaring heavenward out of the midst of a generation incapable 
 even of comprehending them. 
 
 The establishment of a Training School for masters however is 
 not sufficient for the wants of the Diocese. In every parish a mis- 
 tress will be required, at least for the education of the girls : in a 
 great number, perhaps a majority of the country parishes, the 
 whole charge of educating the boys, as well as the girls, must be 
 left to a mistress, from a deficiency of means for paying a master. 
 Now the female mind will receive a certain degree of cultivation 
 much more readily than the male. It would seem too as though 
 women were by nature less gregarious, more exclusively domestic, 
 and less fitted than men for deriving benefit from a wide inter- 
 course with their own sex; whence schools have always been 
 esteemed less beneficial for girls than for boys. Still, in order that 
 our schoolmistresses may be better qualified for the task of in- 
 struction than they have mostly been hitherto, it is exceedingly 
 desirable that they too should have some sort of preparatory train- 
 ing, which may unfold their minds to discern something beyond 
 the mere letter of knowledge, and the narrow circle of their own 
 daily life. For a Training School for mistresses, it seems to me, 
 Brighton would be the most eligible situation, both on account 
 of the excellent body of clergy there, and because I know no 
 place in the Diocese, where there would be so great a certainty of 
 finding a number of sensible and pious ladies, who would gladly 
 devote a portion of their time to the superintendence of such a 
 school. Indeed the necessity would rather be to guard against 
 too promiscuous intrusion and too frequent interruptions, lest the 
 minds of the pupils should be morbidly stimulated and dissi- 
 pated by seeing their school made a scene of fashionable resort. 
 Brighton too, I have been informed, is the town in which our late 
 Bishop designed to fix a Training School for mistresses.
 
 NOTES. 63 
 
 Institutions of this kind, when any general interest is taken in 
 them, must needs operate beneficially on the town in which they 
 are establisht. Hence it would be a matter for regret, if Lewes 
 were to be left without some diocesan institution. Indeed I 
 should greatly wish that every town of any importance in the 
 County should have some such occasion to lift up its thoughts from 
 the counter and the market, and to remind it of its position and 
 obligations as a part of the national Church. Would not Lewes 
 be a convenient situation for a good model school for the middle 
 classes ? Most pressing is the need of thoroughgoing improvement 
 in the education of those classes. At present I am afraid that in 
 most of the schools designed for them it is nearly worthless, little 
 fitted for the post they are to fill in life, still less for expanding 
 and elevating their minds, for giving them a right sense of their 
 duties and privileges as Englishmen, and as members of the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 Note H: p. 32. 
 
 I abstain the more readily from entering into this argument, be- 
 cause the principles of national education have already been dis- 
 cust with more wisdom and judgement than perhaps any other 
 question agitated of late years, more especially by Professor 
 Maurice in his admirable Lectures on Education, and in many of 
 his articles in the Educational Magazine. The fifth Lecture, on 
 the important subject alluded to at the end of the last note, the 
 education of the middle classes, is a masterly sketch, which, I 
 trust, the coming years will do much to fill up and to realize. 
 
 Note I : p. 36. 
 
 These observations on the propriety of receiving the children of 
 dissenters into our schools had the misfortune to excite somewhat 
 vehement opposition. I have been charged with bringing forward 
 a novel and unwarranted interpretation of the Terms of Union, 
 and with recommending a lax and dangerous practice, by which
 
 64 NOTES. 
 
 principle is sacrificed to expediency. On both these points I must 
 allow myself a few remarks. 
 
 To my own mind my interpretation of the Terms of Union had 
 appeared so plain and indubitable, that I had never conceived the 
 slightest scruple about acting according to it. For so strong is 
 my conviction of the evil of a system which would exclude the 
 children of dissenters from our schools, that I could never have 
 placed the school in my own parish in union with the National 
 Society, had I suspected that any restraint would thereby be im- 
 posed on the free exercise of my discretion in this matter. To 
 have mooted the subject publicly may however be deemed injudi- 
 cious. I did it not without consideration, or what appeared to me 
 urgent cause. In a large parish in this Diocese, I was informed, 
 the managers of the National School had fancied themselves com- 
 pelled by the Terms of Union, in opposition to their own judge- 
 ment, to enforce the attendance of all the children at church on 
 the Lord's day. The consequence, as might have been antici- 
 pated, had been the establishment of a large dissenting school in 
 that parish, with the inevitable increase of the bitterness of 
 schism. Moreover it was stated that the same notion concerning 
 the obligation of the Terms of Union prevailed in other parishes, 
 and that similar results were likely to ensue. Hereupon I 
 consulted our late revered Bishop, who concurred entirely in my 
 whole view of the affair, and who repeatedly exhorted me to take 
 all means of clearing up so hurtful a misunderstanding. After 
 this there was no room for hesitation. For it is wisely laid down 
 in the sixth article of the Terms of Union, that, " in case any 
 difference should arise between the parochial clergy and the 
 managers of the schools, in reference to the preceding rules, 
 respecting the religious instruction of scholars, or any regulation 
 connected therewith, an appeal is to be made to the Bishop of the 
 Diocese, whose decision is to be final." Indeed this is the only 
 rule which could have been establisht consistently with a due re- 
 gard for episcopal authority : and it is drawn up in conformity to 
 that framed by the compilers of our Liturgy, who enjoin " for the 
 resolution of all doubts concerning the manner how to understand,
 
 NOTES. 65 
 
 do, and execute the things contained in it," that appeal should be 
 made to the Bishop of the Diocese. 
 
 As to the novelty of the interpretation which I have placed on 
 the Terms of Union, I find the following statement in a letter 
 quoted with general approbation, and without any expression of 
 disagreement, by the Bishop of Chester in the third note to his 
 fourth Charge : " I would particularly state that the children at- 
 tending the national schools here, or anywhere else that I know, 
 are not, as was said in the House of Commons lately, all required 
 to attend church on Sundays. We endeavour to see that they 
 keep holy the Sabbath. Where the parents are decided dissenters, 
 they are expected to go with their parents to the chapel, and to 
 the chapel school. If dissenters are careless about the religious 
 welfare of their children, we then strive to bring them to school on 
 Sundays, and take them twice to church." I can hardly doubt that 
 the practice here described has been common in all parts of England. 
 Indeed in the debate on Education, which took place in the House 
 of Lords in July of last year, as reported in the Mirror of Parlia- 
 ment, the Bishop of London quotes a passage from the Report of a 
 Committee of the House of Commons on Education in 1818, 
 stating that, " in many schools where the National System is 
 adopted, the Church Catechism is only taught, and attendance at 
 the establisht place of worship is only required of those whose parents 
 belong to the Establishment" He himself in the same debate says : 
 " I know that it is practicable to educate the children of Church- 
 men and Dissenters together ; having been president of a very 
 large National School, to which children of every denomination. 
 Jews not excluded, were admitted. I know that it requires very 
 judicious management, to avoid giving offense to Dissenters : yet 
 we have enforced our rules judiciously ; and the Dissenters are 
 content to leave their children in our hands, to receive instruction 
 in what are held by the Church to be the fundamental principles 
 of Christianity." These words plainly imply, though they do not 
 positively assert, that attendance on the Lord's day .was not 
 exacted from all the children. Moreover the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, the President of the National Society, in the speech with 
 
 F
 
 66 NOTES. 
 
 which he opened that debate, when arguing that the National 
 System of Education embraces the orthodox Dissenters, expressly 
 states : " The great object is the giving the Church the means of 
 making the children attend the parish church : but if their parents 
 take them to any other places of worship, they are not refused per- 
 mission. This has been done in some of the large schools in Lon- 
 don ; and at the present moment there is a school in Westminster, 
 where there are upwards of forty Roman Catholic children." 
 
 Still there is another more important question : is this practice 
 wise and right ? The objectors to it will perhaps moderate their 
 language, when they see by what authority it is supported : 
 nevertheless it may be well to examine on what grounds their ob- 
 jections rest. They term the practice a sacrifice of principle to 
 expediency. These are grand words. They serve one to take 
 shelter behind, when one has no more definite argument to bring 
 forward. They enable a man to feel much selfcomplacency, at be- 
 ing the resolute champion of principle, and to look down on his op- 
 ponent as the lacquey of expediency. But often it happens that 
 they who are the forwardest to use these terms, have no notion, or 
 a very confused one, of the meaning of either. They often mistake 
 a maxim for a principle, and fancy that expediency means time- 
 serving. A maxim is a rule generalized from observation and ex- 
 perience : a principle is independent of observation, the source and 
 fountainhead of rules. Maxims may often be at variance with ex- 
 pediency ; principles never can. For maxims, being drawn from 
 one body of circumstances, may be illsuited to a different. To take 
 an example, one often hears the Duke of Wellington censured 
 for sacrificing principle to expediency, when he consented to the 
 emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Yet few statesmen have 
 ever kept such an unswerving eye upon principle, as he has 
 through the whole of his life. I will not argue whether the con- 
 cession was expedient or no. On this point he may have been 
 mistaken. But what principle was violated by it ? A principle 
 is above all circumstances, and applies equally to all governments : 
 a maxim is a specific application of a principle, modified by cir- 
 cumstances : and while great minds, discerning new applications
 
 NOTES. 67 
 
 of principles, draw forth new maxims from them, little minds are 
 enslaved by maxims, and often, through cleaving to them after they 
 have become obsolete, abandon the very principles from which 
 they were derived. They will not let the dead bury their dead. 
 Now is it a universal principle of government, that the members 
 of its legislature must all be of the dominant form of religion ? 
 Surely this cannot be pretended by any one who casts his thoughts 
 for a moment over the component parts of our vast empire. It 
 is desirable beyond a question that they should be so ; as it is 
 likewise desirable that all the members of the state should be of 
 the same form of religion. But so long as this latter desire cannot 
 be accomplisht, the business of statesmanly wisdom is to regulate 
 the distribution of political power according to the exigency of cir- 
 cumstances, and not to withhold the right to it from those who 
 possess it already in fact. 
 
 So, in the case which we are considering, what principle is 
 there that obliges us to compell all the children in our parishes to 
 attend our church-services on the Lord's day ? What principle is 
 there, what is there bearing the remotest semblance of a prin- 
 ciple, that obliges us to give them no instruction, unless they do 
 so ? It were greatly to be wisht that they all did. The state of 
 things would be far happier and better, if they all did. But in 
 the present condition of England this is out of the question. 
 What then is to be done ? Do we desire that a dissenting school 
 should be set up in every parish ? Few can have such an appe- 
 tite for schism and contention as not to shrink from such a conse- 
 quence. Are we then to leave those children, whom their parents 
 will not allow to come to church, altogether without education ? 
 God forbid ! God forbid that we should usurp the awful preroga- 
 tive of making the children suffer in this manner for the fault of 
 their parents ! Let it not be alledged, that the dissenters have 
 gone out from us and that therefore they have no claim upon us, 
 that we may rightfully leave them to themselves. This argument 
 is brought forward so often on like occasions, that I feel bound to 
 enter a solemn protest against it. The scriptural language in 
 which it is clothed, gives it an air of speciousness, which is wholly 
 
 F2
 
 68 NOTES. 
 
 delusive. For there is nothing in the passage whence the words 
 are taken (1 John ii. 19), to warrant us in leaving those who have 
 gone out from us to themselves. The Apostle merely warns us 
 against them, against being deceived and seduced by them. And 
 had not we all gone out from God ? Yet what would have been 
 our doom, had God left us to ourselves ? Besides, when we call 
 to mind what was the character and conduct of so large a portion 
 of our clergy during the last century, the lifelessness of their 
 doctrine, and their neglect of their pastoral duties, how can any- 
 body dare to say, that it is the sin of the dissenters, that they 
 have gone out from us ? The sin is ours : more than half of it is 
 ours. If they have left us, we had almost left them before. It 
 was while we slept, that the enemy sowed his tares. And if we 
 do anything whereby they are excluded, whereby they are checkt 
 and hindered from returning to us, much of the guilt of their 
 schism will still lie at our doors. 
 
 But the practice I have recommended is said to be in opposition 
 to the commands of our Church. What does the Church com- 
 mand ? Deacons are enjoined by the Church " to instruct the youth 
 in the Catechism." And the spirit of this injunction, and of the 
 Canons which relate to the teaching of the young, clearly requires 
 that we should bring up her children in her doctrines and com- 
 munion. Such too would be our duty and our earnest desire, even 
 without any express injunction. But surely the Church does not 
 command us not to give any instruction to the children who are 
 not of her communion. She does not contemplate our doing so, it 
 is true : for in the days when her Formularies and Canons were 
 drawn up, there was no organized, recognized body of dissenters. 
 But neither expressly, nor by implication, does the Church com- 
 mand us not to teach any children, except those who are of her 
 communion. This would indeed be in direct opposition to her 
 Lord's last command. Her charge is to go and teach all nations, 
 not the faithful merely, but the heathens also. Much more is she 
 to teach, and to try to reclaim the erring among believers. And 
 what is she to teach them ? what portion of the divine riches, with 
 which she is endowed, is she to bestow on them ? As much as
 
 NOTES. 69 
 
 they will receive. This is the only measure, the only limit. 
 She is to give them as much as they will receive, and to offer 
 them more. Thus does our gracious Lord deal with man ; and 
 thus should His Church. Thus too she does deal in her public 
 ministry. It is her earnest desire that all her members should en- 
 joy all her privileges, that they should all be communicants at 
 the Table of the Lord. But she does not exclude them from her 
 other services, if they are unwilling to communicate. Though she 
 wishes that all should receive all her gifts, she does not withhold 
 the less from those who will not receive the greater. 
 
 Indeed, if we endeavour to fulfill the true idea of the Church, 
 in its catholic comprehensiveness, shall we not be unwilling to 
 recognize that there is such a thing as dissent ? Shall we not act 
 toward dissenters, whenever and in whatsoever they will allow us, 
 almost as though they were of our own communion ? If they are 
 individually virulent enemies and re viler s of our Church, then it 
 may become our duty to withstand them. But those who have 
 been born and bred up in dissent, those who follow it in simplicity 
 and ignorant sincerity, above all, children . . . shall we not regard 
 them as members of our own body, sickly indeed and diseased, yet 
 for that very reason only needing the more care, the gentler, 
 milder, more healing treatment ? 
 
 To other objections it is needless to make any detailed reply. I 
 have been told that we must not do evil that good may come. 
 Most true. But what is doing evil ? Is teaching a dissenting 
 child his duty to God and to his neighbour, doing evil ? Is teach- 
 ing a dissenting child to read, doing evil ? Would teaching a 
 heathen be doing evil ? Are not all such acts good, so far as they 
 go ? And is it not our duty to do all the good that we can, even 
 though we cannot do all that we should wish ? 
 
 It has also been said, that dissenters will come and learn in our 
 schools, and then may turn their learning against us. If so, the 
 sin will be theirs, not ours. At all events they are much less 
 likely to turn their learning against us, if we have been their 
 teachers, than if they were brought up in a dissenting school. 
 And most heartily do I wish, not that they may turn their
 
 70 NOTES. 
 
 learning against us, but that, if they do, they may do it with the 
 kindly and intelligent regard for us, which, we may trust, they 
 will have acquired under our affectionate and judicious tuition. 
 
 There is a practical difficulty, I am aware, with regard to the 
 Catechism. To certain questions in the Catechism the children 
 of dissenters cannot return the prescribed answers consistently 
 with strict verbal truth ; which should never be compromised, 
 least of all in such momentous matters, by any interpreta- 
 tion evading or slurring over the plain literal meaning of the 
 words. Some dissenting children will have had no sponsors; 
 some may not even be baptized. Now this, I must observe, is 
 not a difficulty peculiar to the practice which I have recom- 
 mended. The same difficulty exists with the same force, whe- 
 ther the dissenting children attend our churches, or no. Yet I 
 have never heard of anybody insane enough to express a wish 
 that all the children of the dissenters were wholly banisht from 
 our schools. On the contrary it has been urged repeatedly, as 
 a most legitimate argument against the ministerial plan, that it 
 was needless, because the children of the dissenters are already 
 comprehended in the existing system of national education, and 
 vast numbers of them have been brought up under it. Thus 
 Archdeacon Wilberforce, who, with the glorious name, inherits the 
 spirit of his father, says in his Letter to Lord Brougham (p. 26) : 
 " The only shadow of fair argument by which this proposition 
 (that the present system of education is insufficient in quantity) is 
 supported, is founded on the assertion that there are multitudes of 
 dissenters who will not receive the education of the Church, and 
 for whom therefore the State must provide another, unless we are 
 content that they should perish through lack of knowledge. Let 
 the multitude of middle- schools and grammar-schools in every 
 town, where, under the teaching of churchmen, the children of 
 dissenters are instructed, give the answer. Let every National 
 School in the country reply." A couple of pages after, he gives a 
 statement, taken from the parliamentary returns of 1833, shewing 
 that, while out of 1,548,890 Sunday scholars, 750,107 are 
 educated in dissenting schools, leaving 798,783 for the Church
 
 NOTES. 7 1 
 
 schools; on the other hand, out of 1,276,947 daily scholars, only 
 51,822 go to dissenting schools, leaving 1,225,125 for those in 
 connexion with the Church. Hence it would appear that, of the 
 scholars who attend the Church daily schools, above 400,000 do not 
 attend the Church Sunday schools ; a most sad, but conclusive 
 proof, that it has not been the universal practice to enforce the at- 
 tendance of our weekday scholars on Sundays. And can anybody, 
 looking at these numbers, be desperate enough to maintain that 
 these four hundred thousand weekday scholars ought to be driven 
 by one sweeping interdict from our schools ? or that the seven 
 hundred and fifty thousand scholars, who attend the dissenting 
 Sunday schools, should be left altogether without any further 
 education ? or that dissenting schools for them ought to be set up 
 in every parish, whereby every parish shall be split in sunder by a 
 broad impassable gulf of rivalry and hatred, stretching from the 
 cradle to the grave, so that in every parish we shall see Judah 
 vexing Ephraim, and Ephraim envying Judah ? In towns, 
 where, in consequence of the greater multitudes crowded toge- 
 ther, neighbours know so much less of each other, opposition 
 schools may indeed coexist without coming into collision : but in 
 country parishes, where the eyes of all are upon every one, a 
 visitation by all the plagues of Egypt at once would be more 
 endurable, seeing that they would pass by, than such a rankling 
 festering gangrene of division. In the numbers just recited, as in 
 all such statements, there are doubtless many inaccuracies : nor do 
 I mean to assert that all, or even the chief part of the scholars, 
 who absent themselves from our Sunday schools, belong to our 
 national schools. But assuredly the inaccuracies cannot be suffi- 
 cient to modify the decision which the present state of England 
 forces upon us : and the principles which should determine that 
 decision must be the same, whether the schools they are applied to 
 be in connexion with the National Society or no. For the de- 
 sire of the National Society, unless its name be a usurpation, 
 must needs be to render its system coextensive with the English 
 Church. 
 
 Archdeacon Wilberforce further shews, from the evidence before
 
 72 NOTES. 
 
 the Committee of the House of Commons, that it is the general 
 practice to teach the Catechism to the dissenting children in our 
 schools, and that this practice is hardly ever objected to. At 
 the same time it is not merely desirable, but our duty, to re- 
 frain from requiring the prescribed answers from any one who is 
 unable to make them with strict literal truth. Doubtless the 
 child may repeat the answers without any conscious falsehood, 
 from repeating them by rote, without attaching any mean- 
 ing to the words. But this is one of the very things which we 
 should most study to avert: we should endeavour to render 
 the Catechism a living, not a dead form of words. In order to 
 this, it is requisite that every word should apply in its plain, 
 full meaning to those who are called upon to declare it of them- 
 selves. Hence it behoves the minister to exercise a careful dis- 
 cretion in this matter. Indeed if we had an ecclesiastical govern- 
 ment authorized to revise the Liturgy, one of the first changes 
 they would make would probably be in that part of the Catechism 
 which relates to sponsors: for there are many cases in which 
 those answers do not apply strictly even to the children of our 
 own communion. It is seldom true of children privately baptized, 
 that- their name was given to them by their godfathers and god- 
 mothers : nor were the promises made for them then, at their 
 baptism, but subsequently, when they were received into the 
 Church. These objections may be termed immaterial, no principle 
 of the Catechism being affected by them. But for that very 
 reason should they be removed, as they so easily might be: for 
 nothing is immaterial, which violates truth, above all in matters 
 of such solemn moment. Nor is any practice more mischievous 
 than that of playing tricks with the conscience, and twisting 
 words to mean what we know they do not mean, and were never 
 intended to mean. He who does this is slipping down into 
 Jesuitry, and may soon reach the bottom. And hurtful as such 
 a practice is to a man, to a child it is deadly poison. 
 
 At present therefore it is incumbent on each individual minister 
 to exercise his own judgement in teaching the Catechism, and to 
 take care that every answer in it may be applicable in its strict
 
 NOTES. 73 
 
 sense to each child by whom it is uttered ; whether he deem it 
 most advisable to omit putting some of the questions to the 
 children to whom they are inapplicable, or whether he allow him- 
 self so to modify the answer that the inapplicableness shall cease. 
 Nor does this obligation lie on him merely with reference to the 
 children of dissenters, but also, whenever he is aware of the fact, 
 in regard to those of our own communion whose baptism preceded 
 their reception into the Church. Indeed such a discretion is 
 assigned to him in the Answer of the Bishops at the Savoy 
 Conference ; where one of the Exceptions against the Catechism 
 had naturally been the unsuitableness of the answers which speak 
 of sponsors, to numerous members of the Church. On this point, 
 had the Bishops been actuated by a wiser and more conciliatory 
 spirit, they would assuredly have conceded what was so plainly 
 reasonable and right. Their reply however, as given in Dr Card- 
 well's History of Conferences on the Book of Common Prayer 
 (p. 356), is : " Though divers have been of late baptized without 
 godfathers, yet many have been baptized with them : and those 
 may answer the questions as they are ; the rest must answer ac- 
 cording to truth." As to the dissenting children, a conscientious 
 minister, whose heart is animated by Christian love, may easily 
 shew, even while he scrupulously avoids casting any reproach on 
 their parents, that the distinction made in their behalf is no 
 privilege, but the contrary. Thus the children of the Church, 
 instead of being rendered careless about the blessings which 
 they have received at her hands, as it has been argued that 
 they would be, may even have the value of those blessings 
 imprest more forcibly upon them. We all know how far too 
 general a property of human nature it is, to prize whatever is 
 singular and distinctive, and to underrate what is common ; a 
 tendency of which the very words, common, ordinary, vulgar, in 
 their depreciatory signification bear witness. We need a reaction, 
 ere we can act : we must have a check, to keep us in our 
 place: and few say Yes, with the same emphasis with which 
 they say No. 
 
 Thus every way our question is not one between principle
 
 74 NOTES. 
 
 and expediency, but one in which principle and expediency 
 coincide. It is a question in which it behoves us not to shackle 
 ourselves by absolute maxims, which may have been appropriate 
 to a different combination of circumstances, but which, now that 
 the state of the Church is so greatly altered, are for that very 
 reason no longer appropriate. It behoves us to look well at 
 the state of the Church and of the world, and, according to the 
 precept and practice of the great Apostle, to follow that which is 
 expedient, that by which peace and love may be promoted, that 
 which makes for the profit of many, that by which souls may be 
 saved. This is the high prerogative of Love, whereby it is above 
 the Law, above it both as fulfilling it, and as knowing when the 
 best way of fulfilling its spirit is to violate the letter ; even as our 
 blessed Lord Himself fulfilled the Law of the Sabbath by healing 
 on the Sabbath-day. And it is in order that we may discern 
 when such deviations from maxims are expedient, that our Lord 
 requires of His Church that she should have the wisdom of the 
 serpent, along with the harmlessness of the dove. 
 
 In concluding this note, which has been drawn out to so great 
 length in consequence of the pressing importance of the subject, I 
 will repeat that I do not wish any one to adopt my view of it, 
 any further than he may be induced by the arguments to do so. 
 If a clergyman thinks it expedient to restrict the admission of 
 dissenting children into his school, let him exercise his own dis- 
 cretion. But most earnestly would I deprecate all attempts to 
 impose the same restrictions on us, who deem them utterly 
 inexpedient, unwise, and pernicious. 
 
 Note J : p. 38. 
 
 With the view of further promoting this union, and of enliven- 
 ing our own feeling of it, and of its only true source, it seems to 
 me very desirable that the Annual Meeting of our Diocesan Asso- 
 ciation should be hallowed by a religious service. Indeed it is 
 somewhat anomalous that an assembly convened for such purposes 
 of high moment to the State and to the Church should not open
 
 NOTES. 75 
 
 its proceedings by going to the house of God to call down His 
 blessing upon them. There should at least be the ordinary morn- 
 ing service and a sermon ; and a collection might be made for the 
 purposes of the Association. But moreover, as this is the only 
 gathering of the whole Diocese, the only occasion on which the 
 Clergy of the two Archdeaconries meet together in the presence of 
 their Bishop, would it not be right to solemnize this reunion, after 
 the apostolic example, by the breaking of bread together ? Should 
 we not proceed in a worthier spirit, with more of zeal and more of 
 love, to the practical business of the day, if we came to it 
 strengthened and set at one by having partaken in the Holy 
 Communion ? 
 
 There might be some difficulty indeed in effecting this, accord- 
 ing to the present arrangements, whereby the whole of the morn- 
 ing is taken up by the previous meeting of the Committee. But 
 this might easily be obviated by a transfer of this meeting to the 
 preceding afternoon. 
 
 Note K: p. 39. 
 
 The wish for closer union and more frequent intercourse among 
 the clergy has led in many parts of England to the establishment 
 of Clerical Societies. Objections have been raised against such 
 Societies on the ground of their not being subject to ecclesiastical 
 controll ; and the objections would doubtless be valid, if the pur- 
 pose for which these Societies met were to exercise any ecclesiasti- 
 cal authority. But I cannot see why a body of clergymen should 
 not assemble for the sake of reading the Scriptures together, and 
 for the discussion of religious and theological questions, without 
 having the express sanction of the ordinary to their doing so. In 
 all ages of the Church there has been a tendency, which seems 
 spreading widely in these days, to assume that a clergyman, by 
 taking orders, forfeits and loses all discretion, and becomes incapa- 
 citated for stirring a thought or exercising an act of volition, except 
 according to rules prescribed by those who are in authority over 
 him. This relapse into a Romanizing strictness is a natural
 
 76 NOTES. 
 
 consequence of the reaction against the laxity and carelessness into 
 which the Protestant principle of individual faith had resolved 
 itself. Both systems have their mischiefs; both have their ad- 
 vantages. But may we not find a middle course between Phari- 
 saic formalism and Sadducean indifference ? Is it impossible to 
 take the good, which has been so much perverted in each system, 
 and to leave the evil ? It is desirable that we should be living 
 members of the Church, and that the spirit which animates us 
 should issue from and circulate through the whole. But in order 
 to this we should have life in ourselves. We are to be members 
 of a living body, not of a machine : and in exact proportion to the 
 strength of the spiritual life in each individual, will he be fitted for 
 acting efficiently in combination and subordination. 
 
 It is true, that Clerical Societies have often taken a peculiar 
 tone ; and then they may easily become exclusive and censorious, 
 may foster party-spirit, may foment antipathies, and thus in many 
 ways be hurtful. But the best mode of obviating this is for all 
 who live in the same neighbourhood to take part in them, without 
 regard to particular shades of opinion. For we are all sub- 
 stantially one, not merely on the ground of our common evange- 
 lical faith, but as commissioned ministers of the same Church. 
 The reason why a certain tone has become too predominant in 
 such associations, is because those who differed from it would not 
 join them. The base kept away : the tenor had other occupa- 
 tions : the contratenor did not care about such things : so the 
 shrill trebles were left alone ; and the harmony was marred. The 
 opinions which have gained the ascendency at such meetings, have 
 naturally been those held by that portion of the clergy who have 
 been the most in earnest, and who have felt the greatest longing 
 for social intercourse with their brethren. But we ought all to 
 wish for such intercourse; and it would be beneficial to us all. 
 In general we are poorly supplied with, if not wholly debarred 
 from intellectual society ; and where we are fortunate enough to find 
 such among the laity, it will mostly be of a secular character. 
 Owing to the deficiencies of our theological education, many of the 
 clergy enter upon their cures with a scanty stock of theological
 
 NOTES. 77 
 
 knowledge. Their time thenceforward is so taken up by their 
 pastoral duties, and by the composition of the weekly sermon or 
 sermons, that they have little leisure for increasing that stock : 
 and what they might otherwise have is almost swallowed up by 
 that great devourer of time and dissipater of thought, the periodi- 
 cal literature of the day. Or they who can get a few hours for 
 study, will give them mainly to the expositors and devotional writers 
 of their own school ; by whom they are confirmed in their narrow 
 views, and encouraged to deem them irrefragable. Under such 
 circumstances it is of much value to have an occasional excitement 
 for examining questions with reference to their speculative truth, 
 and for studying Scripture with an eye to something beside its 
 practical application. To the young such meetings are especially 
 useful, as leading and helping them to pursue studies, which they 
 might otherwise be tempted to drop. And as we should never be 
 too old to learn, those of maturer years will find occasion to re- 
 examine the grounds of their doctrinal tenets ; whereby what had 
 dwindled into a mere notion may often resume its place in an 
 organic system of truth. Those who are richer in learning will 
 communicate the stores of their learning to their brethren ; and 
 the less learned will not seldom be able to correct the errours into 
 which speculative studies are apt to run, by the lessons of their 
 practical experience ; which, important as it is in all knowledge, is 
 above all essential to religious. Meanwhile the spirit which must 
 needs preside at such meetings, and which all will on the main be 
 anxious to uphold, will keep discussion from roughening into con- 
 troversy. Every one may learn much at them ; almost every one 
 will have something to teach. And reasonably may we hope, 
 that, when a body of ministers are engaged in seeking the truth 
 candidly and devoutly in the word of God, the Spirit that leads to 
 all truth will prosper and bless their enquiries. 
 
 It might be thought indeed, that the revival of the Rural 
 Chapters will render Clerical Societies needless. This however is 
 by no means the case. The purposes of the two assemblies are 
 totally different. The Rural Chapters are held for the considera- 
 tion of ecclesiastical matters, a field into which Clerical Societies
 
 78 NOTES. 
 
 have no authority to enter. Their province on the other hand is 
 theology, doctrinal, exegetical, and practical ; and these are topics 
 which it would be inexpedient to discuss at the Rural Chapters, as 
 they would engross far too much time, and would divert attention 
 from the immediate objects of their meeting. Thus, instead of in- 
 terfering with each other, each may be of use in keeping the other 
 from passing out of its appropriate sphere. The Clerical Society 
 will no longer have the same temptations to deliberate on ecclesi- 
 astical matters, which, while there was no other body for the 
 clergy to consult, they were naturally desirous, whenever occasion 
 arose, to lay before an assembly of their brethren. Nor does it 
 seem to me at all desirable that the Clerical Society should consist 
 of the selfsame members as the Rural Chapter. For the history 
 of the Church, as well as of all other bodies, shews, how easily 
 party-spirit is generated, how apt men are, whenever they are 
 united in any permanent peculiar association, to look almost solely 
 at their own things, to the disregard and disparagement of others. 
 Thus the Rural Chapter offers a remedy for another evil which 
 has sometimes been found to result from the exclusiveness of 
 Clerical Societies. And a spirit of friendly brotherly cordiality is 
 much more likely to prevail generally through the Diocese, if the 
 two meetings are kept entirely distinct, so that they who might 
 be separated by the one system shall be brought together by the 
 other. 
 
 Note L : p. 43. 
 
 From Mr Dansey's Letter to the Archdeacon of Sarum (p. 9), 
 it appears that a partial revival of Rural Chapters took place some 
 years ago in the Diocese of St David's during the episcopate of 
 Bishop Burgess. Whether they have been maintained and ex- 
 tended since in that Diocese, he does not state. At all events 
 I trust that the new Bishop of that See, who has evinced such a 
 power of understanding the principles and the workings of organic 
 institutions in the ancient world, will prove that the wisdom 
 learnt from history is indeed practical wisdom, by fostering this
 
 NOTES. 79 
 
 and every other institution fitted to promote organic life and 
 united action in the Church. In the summer of 1 839,, as we further 
 learn from Mr Dansey, Archdeacon Lear, under the sanction of 
 the Bishop of Salisbury, revived these Chapters in the Arch- 
 deaconry of Sarum. How far that example may have been 
 followed as yet in the rest of that Diocese, or in any other, I know 
 not, but hope that, with God's blessing, it may be so ere long in 
 all. In our own, this is one of the great benefits for which we shall 
 long bless the memory of Bishop Otter. As soon as he became 
 acquainted with the nature of this institution, he perceived that it 
 was one just after his own heart, one which promist, so far as any 
 institution can, to bring about the very objects he was most anxi- 
 ous to effect. His ambition was not to do great things himself: 
 his was that higher and purer aim, to make others do great things, 
 to lead his clergy to act together cordially, zealously, affectionately, 
 as true brethren, and faithful fellow-servants of Christ. This was 
 the chief purpose he had in view, when he called upon us to hold 
 these regular periodical meetings ; and it was to this end that he 
 addrest us in his beautiful Pastoral Letter, which, I trust, will 
 soon be publisht, that its healing influence may spread beyond the 
 clergy of his own immediate family. Under the grief for his loss, 
 it is a consolation to me to think that our first Chapters were held 
 before he was taken from us, and that his heart was gladdened by 
 the promise they seemed to hold out of manifold good to the 
 Church. 
 
 I cannot quit this subject without expressing my gratitude to 
 Mr Dansey for his very learned and elaborate treatise on the 
 office of Rural Dean, and the institution of Rural Chapters. Few 
 authors have rendered a greater service to the Church, than he has 
 been allowed to do by that work. Wherever Rural Chapters are 
 revived, their revival will be in great measure owing to Mr 
 Dansey *s representation of their value and importance.
 
 80 NOTES. 
 
 Note M : p. 43. 
 
 Had not my Charge been already stretcht to the utmost length 
 for which I could venture to claim the indulgence of my hearers, I 
 had meant to introduce a few remarks on the Bill then before 
 Parliament for the suppression of the chief part of the Stalls in our 
 Cathedrals, and for the appropriation of their revenues to other 
 purposes. For, as my first official act had been to invite the 
 Clergy of the Archdeaconry to petition against that Bill, I might 
 naturally be expected to say something on the probable fate which 
 awaited it. And this same reason seems to enjoin upon me that 
 I should not pass it over altogether now. Of the Clergy of this 
 Archdeaconry, 111, out of about 150, signed the petition, a 
 very large majority, when we consider that of the remainder 
 several would be absent from home; while several, as always 
 happens, would probably be withheld by indifference from taking any 
 part in a controversy, on which they had spent no thought, and in 
 which they felt no immediate concern. Indeed I heard but of two 
 clergymen in the whole Archdeaconry, who exprest anything like 
 approbation of the measure. When there was such an agreement 
 even among the Rural Clergy in condemning the principles of the 
 Bill, it would not have excited much surprise to find a violent and un- 
 scrupulous party advocate speaking contemptuously of the petitions 
 of the Clergy. But that one of our own body, one of our Bishops, 
 one so high in station, and so generally esteemed and admired as 
 the Bishop of London, should do so, this in truth could not but 
 cause exceeding wonder and pain. Among other things his Lord- 
 ship thought fit to find fault with the mode adopted for obtaining 
 signatures, by the Archdeacon's circulating forms of petition 
 amongst the Rural Deans, which the Rural Deans carry to the 
 parochial Clergy ; and he adds, that " he must be a bold, or a 
 very well-informed man, who refuses to sign a petition so recom- 
 mended by his immediate ecclesiastical superiors." Now, in my 
 ignorance, being new in my office, I took a course very like the 
 one here reprehended. I sent a printed copy of the petition to
 
 NOTES. 81 
 
 every officiating clergyman in the Archdeaconry, and requested 
 the Rural Deans to collect signatures at their Chapters, which 
 were then on the point of meeting. But my motive was not 
 to exercise any undue influence on the opinions of the Clergy ; 
 which, as a stranger to more than three fourths of them, I could 
 nowise possess. I merely wisht to spare them the trouble and 
 expense and waste of time, which would have been incurred, 
 had a general meeting been summoned to consider the propriety 
 of petitioning ; and I thought that each of them would thus 
 be enabled to weigh the petition calmly and deliberately, both 
 in its general purport and in its details. Still too I know 
 not of any plan better fitted for procuring a fair unbiast ex- 
 pression of opinion. This is a question of some importance, not 
 merely as bearing on the past, but also with reference to the right 
 procedure on like occasions hereafter. Moreover I feel bound, in 
 the name of my brother Clergy, humbly, but gravely and earnestly 
 to remonstrate, that it is scarcely becoming in one, who is set to 
 be a father in the Church, to speak disparagingly and scornfully of 
 our petitions, to say of us that " our fears had been alarmed by 
 the most extraordinary assertions and the most extraordinary 
 arguments ; " that we had " been under a delusion ; " that we 
 " had been induced by the authority or persuasion of others to 
 sign petitions without clearly understanding the real bearings of 
 the case." It is scarcely becoming in any of our prelates, how- 
 ever confident in his own wisdom and power, to declare in parlia- 
 ment, that he " can easily get three thousand clergymen to 
 petition upon any subject connected with the Church." When 
 truth and right and the welfare of the Church bid us petition, we 
 will ; but not at the beck of any individual. These expressions, 
 which stigmatize the opinions of the whole body of Clergy as 
 almost worthless, because they happen not to concur with one 
 of our bishops, are the more to be deplored, seeing that they 
 were not merely uttered in the heat and contention of debate, but 
 have been sanctioned by an authentic publication of the speech 
 containing them. Doubtless in every case there will be many, 
 perhaps the majority, among the subscribers to a petition, who 
 
 G
 
 82 NOTES. 
 
 will not fully comprehend all the bearings of the measure in con- 
 templation ; though , it may be, quite as fully as the majority of the 
 legislators who are to decide upon it. If a person understands the 
 general purport and tendency of a proposition, and perceives what 
 principles it contravenes or carries into effect, he is reasonably fitted 
 for forming an opinion. That our Petition did not indicate any such 
 ignorance as disqualified us for expressing such an opinion, will, I 
 think, be apparent on the face of it : and for the sake of vindicat- 
 ing my brother Clergy from such sweeping censures, I will here 
 insert it. 
 
 It shews, that " the Petitioners have seen with very deep con- 
 cern, that a Bill to carry into effect, with certain modifications, 
 ' The Fourth Report of the Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Duties 
 and Revenues,' containing enactments for the suppression of all 
 Residentiary Stalls above Four in each Chapter, as well as of all 
 Dignities and Non-residentiary Stalls, and also for the dissolution 
 of all Corporations of Minor Canons, has been read in the Houses 
 of Parliament. 
 
 " That, while they abstain from expressing an opinion on the 
 legality of diverting the Revenues of the Cathedrals from the pur- 
 poses contemplated by the Founders, they cannot refrain from 
 urging the importance of preserving the reverence for property 
 inviolate, above all, for that property which has been specially de- 
 voted to God ; and that they are convinced that, while every act 
 by which the intentions of pious benefactors are contravened must 
 tend to check the spirit of munificence, a due regard for the sanc- 
 tity of such bequests may encourage men, even in these days, to 
 imitate their forefathers in consecrating some portion of their riches 
 to the service of God, and to the relief of the grievous spiritual 
 wants of their brethren. 
 
 " That the Petitioners, acknowledging and deploring those 
 wants, feel called on to remind Parliament, that it is the duty 
 of the State to provide for them ; and that a due portion of the 
 wealth which the State has derived from the vast masses of po- 
 pulation collected in our manufacturing districts ought long ago 
 to have been employed in the spiritual instruction of those from
 
 NOTES. 83 
 
 whose labour it was drawn ; more especially as the utter inability 
 of the Church to supply that instruction has resulted in great 
 measure from the lay impropriations, and the other losses which it 
 suffered at the time of the Reformation. 
 
 " That the Petitioners however would by no means be under- 
 stood to imply, that the Church should shrink from bearing her 
 part in the exertions and sacrifices required for this most important 
 object ; but they conceive it has been shewn, that funds equivalent 
 to those expected from the confiscation of the revenues of the Ca- 
 thedrals might be gained, without any suppression of Stalls or in- 
 fringement of existing institutions, by voluntary measures, after 
 the example which has already been set in the diocese of Durham 
 and elsewhere, according to the provisions of the Act of 1 and 2 
 Will. IV. ' for confirming and perpetuating Augmentations made 
 by Ecclesiastical Persons to small Vicarages,' and in other ways 
 already suggested by the Cathedral bodies ; and that such voluntary 
 augmentations, as acts of grace, would exercise a far more beneficial 
 influence on the receivers, would strengthen the bonds of union in 
 the Church, and would probably excite others to a liberal and 
 laudable imitation. 
 
 " That, even if such a diversion of the revenues of the Cathedrals 
 were unavoidable, the Petitioners deem that no sufficient reason 
 has hitherto appeared, why the whole framework of the Cathedral 
 bodies should be broken up by the suppression of the Stalls ; but 
 that, on the contrary, it has been proved, by the declaration of the 
 Chapter of Carlisle, (one of the three English Chapters which at 
 present contain no more than four Residentiary Canons,) that diffi- 
 culty is often found in maintaining the daily public worship of 
 God, according to the due order of the Cathedral church, because 
 there does not exist in that Chapter, as in the other two, of York 
 and Chichester, a body of Non-residentiary Canons, to give 
 attendance in the frequent cases of necessity. 
 
 " That, for the fulfilment of the manifold functions of the Church 
 in each diocese, and for the promotion of theological learning, which 
 can seldom flourish amid the labours of the parochial ministry, it 
 is expedient that each cathedral city should be the residence of a
 
 84 NOTES. 
 
 body of tried and experienced clergy ; who may be entrusted with 
 the discharge of the various diocesan offices, which are yearly 
 becoming more numerous and important; especially those con- 
 nected with the superintendence of education, such as the manage- 
 ment of a diocesan college to prepare candidates for holy orders, 
 and of a training school ; both which institutions exist at Chichester, 
 and, it is to be hoped, will be found ere long in every cathedral 
 city. 
 
 " That, if it be deemed that the cathedral bodies have not hitherto 
 been as efficient as they ought to have been in furthering these high 
 objects, the blame which may therefore seem attributable to them, 
 is shared by every other branch of the Church and State ; that, 
 whatever may have been their fallings short, these afford no rea- 
 sonable ground for their destruction, but rather for taking measures 
 to infuse new vigour and energy into them ; and that no measure 
 can be better calculated for accomplishing this, than a right high- 
 principled disposal of the patronage by which the character of the 
 cathedral bodies is determined. 
 
 " That the Petitioners, for these reasons, earnestly pray Par- 
 liament not to assent to such enactments of the said Bill as 
 prescribe a reduction of the number of the existing Stalls ; but 
 to preserve the framework of our cathedral bodies in their present 
 integrity ; and even if it should be finally determined to alter the 
 disposition of their revenues by an act of the Legislature, they 
 would still entreat that all the Stalls, Residentiary and Non- 
 residentiary, and all existing Dignities, may be maintained, with 
 whatsoever revenue or emolument, so that their functions may still 
 be discharged, for the moral and spiritual welfare of the Church." 
 
 Such was our Petition : nor can I doubt that most of the others, 
 if not all, must in like manner have proved that the petitioners had 
 a tolerable notion of the nature and tendencies of the measures pro- 
 posed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. For rarely has a cause 
 been maintained with so much learning, such statesmanly and 
 churchmanly wisdom, in a nobler spirit, and with such a prepon- 
 derance, I might almost say a monopoly, of arguments, as that of 
 the Cathedral Chapters. There have indeed been interlopers on
 
 NOTES. 85 
 
 our side, who have disgraced the cause, and brought shame on the 
 Church, by the sordid grounds on which they rested her defense. 
 But our true and trusty champions, from Dr Pusey to Mr Hope, 
 whose speech is one of the most admirable ever delivered by an 
 English lawyer, have been no less lofty in their tone, than power- 
 ful from the weight of knowledge and of reasoning, and from the 
 noble idea they had formed of the office and relations of the Church. 
 Whereas the main argument, and wellnigh the only one, which 
 was urged for cutting down the Chapters to a uniform minimum, 
 namely, the necessity of employing their revenues to relieve the 
 wants^of the parochial ministry, dwindled into a mere shadow, 
 when it was shewn that nearly the same sum might be ob- 
 tained, without any infringement of ancient rights, in a manner far 
 more conducive to the edification of all parties ; inasmuch as every 
 gift bears a twofold blessing with it ; while that which is wrested 
 from one to be bestowed on another, leaves bitterness behind, and 
 breeds no grace where it comes. It is a singular instance of the 
 powerlessness of truth, that this one sophism should have deter- 
 mined the voices of so large a majority of the Legislature ; which, 
 so far as it had any plausible grounds for its decision, was clearly 
 influenced by the notion, that the alternative lay between obtain- 
 ing a large sum by compulsion from the Chapters, and obtaining 
 nothing. Whereas the true alternative, even with reference to this 
 point, was between obtaining a certain sum by compulsion, and a 
 sum not greatly, if at all, inferior by voluntary acts ; while, if we 
 take in higher considerations, to prefer the former is as though a 
 man were to seize on the arm which was stretcht out to help 
 him, and to fancy he should get more help by wrenching it off. 
 And what would be the worth of such an argument in a parallel 
 case ? if a person were to pick out the ten richest men among our 
 aristocracy, and to declaim about their rolling in wealth and revel- 
 ing in luxury, and were then to portray the miserable destitution 
 of the lower orders, and to urge how slightly the riches of the ten 
 peers would be curtailed, if Parliament were to abstract thirty or 
 fifty thousand pounds a year from each, yet how incalculable would 
 be the good produced, so far as bare money can produce good, by
 
 86 NOTES. 
 
 three or five hundred thousand pounds applied yearly to relieving 
 the spiritual wants of the people ? What would be the worth of 
 such an argument ? I do not mean morally : morally, if it were 
 really taken to heart, it might well drive some of our noblemen to 
 give up fifty thousand a year, and more, for such a holy and 
 blessed purpose, for a purpose which then would be truly holy, 
 and therefore would be truly blessed. But what would be the worth 
 of such an argument as the ground for a legislative enactment ? 
 How would it be received ? With sneers and scoffs and all the 
 weapons of angry derision. 
 
 It is surely remarkable, that, at the very time when attempts 
 have been made to revive the ancient institution of Rural Chapters, 
 with the view of promoting life and power and united orderly 
 action in the Church, a Bill was passing through the Legislature, 
 with the sanction of high ecclesiastical authority, the purpose of 
 which was so to curtail, as must needs greatly weaken and impair, 
 the Cathedral Chapters, the most ancient and venerable of all our 
 ecclesiastical institutions. This is another instance how institu- 
 tions, like individuals, are often startled out of a long benumbing 
 sleep by the ticking of the death watch ; whereafter a hard struggle 
 ensues between the newly awakened energy of life and the com- 
 bination of surrounding powers to sweep away what was regarded 
 as worn out and extinct. In days of old, when men, " who 
 dreamt not of a perishable house," built our cathedrals, they also 
 deemed it right and wise to attach a large body of ministers to 
 each of them, for the full efficient discharge of the manifold duties 
 which belong to the mother church of the diocese. They did not 
 do this, because they thought lightly of the parochial and pastoral 
 functions of the Church : but while they provided for the due per- 
 formance of these, they bore in mind that she had other functions 
 likewise. They did not forget the village church, while they built 
 the cathedral : nor on the other hand did they fancy that, when 
 they had built a church in every village, their work was fulfilled. 
 The same spirit which made them diligent and indefatigable in 
 building village churches, made them also enterprising and zealous 
 in building cathedrals. They knew that energetic life in a large
 
 NOTES. 87 
 
 body requires manifold members, and a diversity of structure, 
 that the type of strength is not to be found in the uniform mass of 
 the whale, but in the infinitely diversified organization of the 
 human frame. This was the principle which they followed in their 
 Statebuilding : and this was the principle which they followed in 
 their Churchbuilding also, aisle within aisle, pier beyond pier, an 
 ever-varying maze of pillars, nave, transepts, choir. Whereas 
 nowadays we have almost lost the faculty not merely of erecting, 
 but even of comprehending such edifices. We marvel and are 
 shockt at the labour, at the money, at the materials wasted upon 
 them. We are shockt that all these things should be withdrawn 
 from the service of self and of this fair delightful world, to the service 
 of that which stimulates no sense, which pampers no appetite, which 
 flatters no passion. If we hear of a banquet which costs thousands 
 of pounds, we admire such an example of splendid munificence : if 
 we hear of the same sum expended on the enlargement or decora- 
 tion of a church, we cry out against such unmeaning silly prodi- 
 gality. We marvel at our cathedrals, because they were the work 
 of faith, because their very conception implies a lively and reverent 
 and stedfast assurance of Him who was to be worshipt in them, and 
 a trust that what was begun in this assurance would in like manner 
 be carried on by after ages. We marvel, because we ourselves can- 
 not work either by faith or upon faith, because we cannot bring 
 ourselves to work for any other than an immediate, calculable, 
 practical end, and because, working thus for ourselves and for our 
 own generation solely, we cannot rely on coming generations to 
 continue and finish our work. Indeed there doubtless are many 
 persons, who, if shame did not withhold them, would pull down our 
 cathedrals altogether, and that too, as they would fancy, out of 
 pure love to the Church. For look you ! can we not build two or 
 three, or half a dozen churches out of each ? ay, a dozen out of 
 some ? Are there no materials then to be dug any longer out of 
 the quarries of the earth ? or must all her huge bones be employed 
 in making macadamized pavements ? Is there no longer any gold 
 in Ophir ? no longer any cedars on Lebanon ? Have Agriculture 
 and the Arts and Commerce been suddenly blighted and stricken
 
 88 NOTES. 
 
 with barrenness, so that all their stores will not yield us any offer- 
 ing for God, but that we must perforce rob the temple, in order 
 that we may have a gift to bring to the temple ? Moreover in these 
 things also there is a party who count it the only wisdom to seek 
 out the juste milieu. He who has ever been at Llandaff will under- 
 stand the proceedings of these persons. He will have seen the out- 
 ward walls of a large and beautiful cathedral : but he will also have 
 seen with shame and sorrow and indignation, how the roof of the 
 chief part has fallen in, and how the men of these latter days have 
 been too feeble and inert and selfish to repair it, and how they have 
 thrown up a wall at the end of the choir, deeming this the only 
 useful part of the building. This seems to be the pattern after 
 which the Ecclesiastical Commissioners framed their Bill. They 
 resolved not to destroy the Cathedral Chapters, but to preserve 
 what they conceived to be the only useful part of them, and to get 
 rid of the remainder. 
 
 In dealing with ancient institutions, which seem to have lost 
 their efficacy, there are two courses. The narrowminded, the men 
 of mere practical understanding, without imagination to call up 
 those manifold relations which lie beyond the span of the under- 
 standing, they who see one thing clearly and distinctly, and who 
 straightway conclude that it is the only thing to be seen, who walk 
 between two high walls, and suppose that the whole world is 
 included between them, they who have no reverence for antiquity, 
 no faith in a higher spirit guiding and shaping the actions of men, 
 and pervading their institutions, they who trust in their own 
 wisdom and in their own will, and who desire to see that wisdom 
 and that will reflected in everything around them, will destroy 
 the decayed institution as worthless, to set up some creation of their 
 own in its stead. They on the other hand who have learnt to dis- 
 trust their own wisdom, and to suspect their will, who have dis- 
 covered the limits of their faculties, and how narrow they are, 
 who have perceived how far the largest part of what is valuable in 
 their minds is owing to the unnoticed influences of the thoughts 
 and principles and institutions amid which they have grown up. 
 they who have discerned that in nations also, and in other bodies
 
 NOTES. 89 
 
 corporate, there is a kind of instinct, whereby they seek and assi- 
 milate what is suitable and healthful, rejecting what is noxious, 
 who have discerned that in nations also " the child is father of the 
 man," and that the only sure progress of national life lies in ex- 
 pansion and transfiguration, not in transmigration, will always 
 be anxious to preserve the institutions which their fathers have 
 left them, not however in their worn out dilapidated state, but re- 
 stored to completeness and vigour, with a new spirit of life kindled 
 in them. In desiring to preserve the Cathedral Chapters, our wish 
 was not to keep a number of rich sinecures in the Church, to infect 
 it with the taint of Mammon. But we conceived, that, while it 
 has long been matter of deep regret, that the bonds of unity and 
 order in the Church have been so loosened as almost to be dissolved, 
 the Chapters, if their offices were rightly distributed and adminis- 
 tered, would afford the best means for connecting the whole 
 Clergy of the Diocese by manifold links with the Episcopal See ; 
 that through them the Cathedral might, as it were, stretch out 
 her arms through the Diocese, embracing every part of it; and 
 moreover that there are divers functions of the Church, some of 
 which are specified in the Petition, while the need of others will be 
 suggested as our activity increases and widens its field, which 
 could in no way be discharged so easily and beneficially as by 
 members of the Cathedral Chapters. This has not been the case 
 hitherto, we grant. But nothing has been as it ought to have been, 
 and perhaps least of all in the Church, for many generations. 
 Nevertheless we hoped that what had not been might be, finding 
 encouragement to hope this in the improvements which have already 
 taken place in divers things : and still we dare hope that this may 
 be so. For, thanks to our noble defenders in the House of Lords ! 
 the Chapters have not been cut down, according to the niggardly 
 measure which had been deemed to befit the Queen of nations in 
 the fulness of her riches and her power. Not a single Stall has 
 been destroyed. The revenues have been taken away ; but the 
 offices still remain. That their revenues should be taken from 
 them, is a punishment which perhaps we deserved. We deserved
 
 90 NOTES. 
 
 it, on account of the worldlymindedness, which has too long been 
 allowed to exercise a baneful influence in our Church. We deserved 
 it, on account of the base spirit in which certain persons, calling 
 themselves our champions, advocated our cause. We deserved it, 
 because we did not with one voice reject and cast out those self- 
 constituted champions who disgraced us. We deserved it, because 
 too many of our body suffered themselves to be deluded by the 
 miserable cant of the world, and by the hollow notions of a false 
 empirical philosophy, into declaring that the Stalls were needful as 
 prizes to stimulate our activity in our parochial ministrations ; as if 
 they who were regardless of the many high motives which ought 
 to animate us, the love of God and of Christ, care for the souls of 
 our brethren, the promptings of duty, the stirrings of conscience, 
 the joy found in peace of heart, and those better among earthly 
 motives, the interest which the healthyminded take in their work, 
 and the wish to gain the esteem and affection of our neighbours, 
 as if they who were reckless of such high and puissant motives, 
 could be roused to diligent exertions by the dim problematical hope 
 of a Stall in a Cathedral ! or as if exertions springing from such a 
 source could effect any real good ! as if this were the way in which 
 the Church is to strengthen herself by the Mammon of unrighte- 
 ousness, by binding him to the altar of God, as the only lure that 
 can draw men to come and worship before it ! Yet many of us 
 did unthinkingly utter this slander against themselves and their 
 brethren. Even truly pious and zealous men did so, without re- 
 flecting that nothing like the hope of such an earthly reward had 
 ever occurred to themselves among the incitements to the discharge 
 of their duty. In truth, when we call to mind how the Cathedral 
 dignities were generally distributed during the last century, we may 
 at least derive this comfortable assurance from the retrospect, that 
 there could scarcely have been a vainer, more groundless expectation, 
 than that of earning such an honour by diligence in the parochial 
 ministry. 
 
 Hence, by reason of these various infirmities and errours, we 
 have justly incurred the punishment, that a large part of the
 
 NOTES. 91 
 
 revenues of our Cathedrals should be wrested from them. But why 
 do I call it a punishment ? Because it is so regarded by the world, 
 and as such brings shame upon us : because it is a sign of our de- 
 merit, in that, if our Cathedral bodies had been fulfilling their vo- 
 cation worthily during these latter years, no plan of reducing them 
 would ever have been entertained: because it would have been 
 right and expedient that such diocesan offices as the aforementioned, 
 which are incompatible with the charge of a parish, should be 
 salaried by the revenues of a stall : in fine because whatever is 
 subtracted from what has been termed the Nationalty, and what- 
 ever checks its legitimate increase, is a national detriment, as less- 
 ening that part of the national income, of which a far larger portion 
 than of any other is spent in beneficent and godly works. Yet, if 
 this punishment, such as it is, tends in any degree to withdraw our 
 hearts from the dross of this world, and to give us a clearer insight 
 into the spiritual nature of our office and powers, we may well be 
 heartily thankful for it. And so does it behove us to give thanks 
 that the Canonries have been preserved, although their revenues 
 have been taken from them. In this Diocese more especially 
 should we be thankful that the chief prayer of our Petition has 
 been granted. For this was our Petition, " that all the Stalls might 
 be maintained, with whatsoever revenue or emolument." This 
 was the Petition sent up by the Archdeaconry of Chichester, " that 
 all the Stalls might be maintained, even without revenue or emo- 
 lument." This was the object so strongly urged in Mr Manning's 
 noble Letter On the Preservation of Unendowed Canonries. This 
 too was the special object on which our beloved Bishop had set his 
 heart, and for the attainment of which his life was in a manner 
 sacrificed. For this, I believe, is certain, that the illness which 
 closed his earthly life was caused by his anxiety about the Ecclesias- 
 tical Bill. And so too have I been informed on good authority, that, 
 though the coming on of his last illness prevented his being present 
 at the discussion in the Committee of the House of Lords, yet his 
 zealous exhortations were mainly instrumental in prevailing on his 
 friends to use those vigorous exertions, to which the preservation of
 
 92 NOTES. 
 
 the unendowed Canonries is owing. Therefore in this respect also 
 it behoves us to feel that a high duty rests specially on this 
 Diocese, that of worthily fulfilling the rich bequest of Bishop Otter, 
 in a spirit like that which enabled him to accomplish so much for 
 the Church. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, 
 Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
 
 PRIVILEGES IMPLY DUTIES: 
 
 A CHARGE 
 
 TO THE CLERGY 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE ORDINARY VISITATION IN 1841, 
 
 BY JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN W. PARKER. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 J. AND J. J. DEIGHTON. 
 
 1842.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, 
 Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
 
 TO THE CLERGY 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 
 
 MY DEAR BRETHREN, 
 
 IN transcribing this Charge for the Press, I have 
 made considerable additions to the parts in which I spoke 
 on Education, and on the working of our Rural Chapters. 
 With regard to the latter, it behoves us to feel that an 
 important experiment is going on in this Diocese, on the 
 result of which will in great measure depend, whether the 
 Institution, revived amongst us by the paternal wisdom and 
 love of Bishop Otter, will be adopted by the rest of our 
 Church. Probably too you will yourselves be glad to learn 
 what conclusions I have been led to form, on overlooking 
 the Reports of the last year, as to our objects and the 
 best methods of attaining them. Hence, although this 
 Charge is publisht in compliance with your wishes, it 
 must not be assumed that you have given your sanction to 
 all the opinions exprest in it. For the main principles 
 however which I have attempted to urge, and for the spirit
 
 iv DEDICATION. 
 
 in which I have exhorted you to look on the present con- 
 dition of our Church, I trust I may claim your approval. 
 To you therefore I dedicate this little offering. From the 
 first it was yours ; and you have chosen to have it in a 
 more permanent form. May this and every act of our in- 
 tercourse draw us more closely together, and stir us up to 
 greater diligence and concord in the service of our common 
 Master ! 
 
 Your affectionate brother and servant, 
 
 J. C. HARE. 
 
 FEBRUARY 18th, 1842.
 
 PRIVILEGES IMPLY DUTIES: 
 A CHARGE 
 
 TO THE CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 
 
 MY REVEREND BRETHREN, 
 
 When I addrest you on this occasion last year, I ven- 
 tured to speak somewhat hopefully of the prospects of our 
 Church. It may perhaps have been an unusual sound. 
 Of late years at least the voices heard in our Church 
 have rather been those of fear and lamentation, and almost 
 of despondency. Nor would it be a favorable sign, if these 
 voices were altogether changed into notes of joy and exul- 
 tation and congratulation. For such notes would betoken 
 that the Church was unmindful of her widowhood, that 
 she had forgotten how her heavenly Bridegroom is still 
 absent from her. I do not mean that joy and exultation are 
 wholly unbecoming a Christian in this life. We are called 
 to rejoice; that is to say, whenever we are delivered from 
 the burthen of our selfish nature, and are enabled to feel 
 our union with Christ: for it is in the Lord that we are 
 called to rejoice ; and if we could feel our union with Him 
 always, then we should rejoice always. Yet even with the 
 individual Christian such joy must needs be transient, beam- 
 ing forth, it may be, again and again, and with increasing 
 brightness, but still too often interrupted and beclouded. 
 When his faith for a moment beholds how his sins have 
 been blotted out by the atoning mercy of his Saviour, 
 
 B
 
 when his carnal mind is subdued and quelled for a moment 
 by that spiritual mind, which is life and peace, then he will 
 rejoice. Too often however sin will again fling its dark 
 chill shadow over him ; the carnal mind will again heave 
 and struggle against the spiritual mind ; and as long as this 
 struggle continues, his joy must still be broken by fears 
 and anxieties, by self-reproach and shame. So too must 
 it be, whenever he fixes his thoughts meditatively and 
 searchingly on the world around him, whenever he calls 
 to mind how feebly and faintly the kingdom of heaven 
 has yet come upon earth, whenever he bethinks himself 
 of the terrible sway that sin is still exercising over man- 
 kind, and almost over every heart. And how can it be 
 otherwise with the Church, when she contemplates her 
 situation in the world, when she remembers how often 
 she would have gathered the children of the world under 
 her motherly wings, and yet they would not come? Surely, 
 if she thinks of her own frailties and infirmities, if she 
 recollects how many are without her, and how the portion 
 of those who are without her is desolate, her ordinary voice 
 must be one of mourning, much rather than of joy. It is 
 to do honour to the idols set up by the prince of this 
 world, that the cornet and flute and harp and sackbut and 
 psaltery and dulcimer still pour forth their music. T.he 
 mission of the Church is to reprove and convince the world 
 of sin and of righteousness and of judgement : and she 
 who is charged with such an awful task must herself be 
 grave and severe. Who, on reading the account of the eve 
 before that battle by which the fate of England was de- 
 cided on the coast of this our county, has not felt that the 
 revelry and wassail in the camp of the Saxons was a prog- 
 nostic of their destruction, and that the penitential litanies
 
 of the Normans were the rightful preparation for victory ? 
 There can hardly be an apter emblem of the contrast which 
 should always prevail between the Church and the World 
 in their warfare. If the Church forgets her penitential 
 litanies, the World will overpower and crush her. 
 
 Nevertheless, while the spirit of vain joy and vain glory 
 is utterly alien from the spirit which ought to prevail in the 
 Church, yet, though sad, she is not to be fearful, though 
 sorrowing, she should always be undaunted. Else how can 
 she hold fast the conviction that He who is with her is 
 mightier than they who are against her? If her heart is 
 troubled, where is her faith? When the cares of this 
 world and the deceitfulness of riches are swaying her 
 heart, then indeed she will be distracted above all others 
 with harrowing disquietudes. For being destitute of the 
 strength of this world, through her position, which is not 
 of this world, if she is bereft of her heavenly strength, 
 she is indeed bereft, and lies exposed without defense to 
 the spoiler. Hence it is an evil sign, when we find 
 the clergy in any country disturbed by alarms for the 
 prosperity and permanence of the Church. In most cases 
 such alarms relate mainly to that outward temporal 
 prosperity, on which she should never waste a thought. 
 At all events they prove that those who give way to 
 them are looking, in their anticipations of the future, 
 to earthly means, and human auxiliaries and adversaries, 
 and have lost sight of Him in whose strength five 
 shall chase a hundred, and a hundred shall put ten 
 thousand to flight. On the other hand, as it has always 
 been the characteristic of every noble nation to deem 
 itself in a manner invincible, and to feel an undoubting 
 assurance that, with right on its side, it can face and 
 
 B 2
 
 conquer far more numerous hosts of its foes, so, on incom- 
 parably better grounds, may the Church feel assured, that, 
 in her war with the World, she can never be overcome 
 even for a moment, except through her own fainthearted- 
 ness and treachery : and whenever the Church is truly 
 strong, strong from the consciousness of her heavenly 
 Strengthener, she will also be bold, bold to speak, and 
 bold to act. 
 
 It may perhaps have been unusual of late years, I said, 
 to speak with anything like hope of the prospects of the 
 Church. Indeed during a long and dreary period she was 
 weak, miserably weak, and not in England alone, but in 
 every part of the earth, weak too without any due convic- 
 tion of her weakness, blind to its extent, and still more 
 blind to its sources. For it was not that the arm of her 
 Lord had been shortened, so that He could no longer up- 
 hold her. Her weakness arose from her having turned 
 away from His strength, and sought other strength, in the 
 devices of the carnal understanding, and in those sinews of 
 earthly might, iron and gold, which, powerful as they may 
 be in the fields of human warfare, cumber and paralyse the 
 arm, if any would wield such weapons in fighting the 
 battles of heaven. And when we were at length awakened 
 to discern our weakness and its causes, behold, we were so 
 weak, and the world was holding us in such thraldom, 
 having set up the abomination of desolation in the heart of 
 the temple itself, that many doubted whether our weak- 
 ness could ever be remedied, whether the rightful order, 
 which had been so entirely subverted, could ever be re- 
 stored. Moreover the whole spirit of the age led the per- 
 sons who came forward as the revivers of a deeper religious 
 feeling in the last century, to fix their attention almost
 
 exclusively on the relation between the individual soul and 
 the Saviour. The manner in which the spiritual life of 
 Christendom had been stifled and crusht during the ascen- 
 dency of the Papacy, had taught men, ever since the Re- 
 formation, to believe, with more or less distinctness, that, 
 as the visible Church had been so fatally tainted with 
 worldlymindedness, the only true Church was the invisible : 
 and seeing that in this country the Church had been so 
 degraded by a long train of circumstances, as hardly to be 
 considered in any other light than as the creature and 
 pensionary of the State, it was not unnatural for many to 
 fancy that, if the love of the State should be weaned from 
 her, and its support withdrawn, she would hardly be able 
 to maintain her ground. Hence, when a truer insight into 
 the office and dignity of the Church, into the glorious 
 charge committed to her, and the powers with which she is 
 entrusted for its due and efficient execution, arose a few 
 years ago, the tone with which the present condition of the 
 world, and that of the Church as existing in the midst of 
 an alien and hostile world, was spoken of, could hardly be 
 any other than of dismay. The first assailants of a fortress 
 of errour, which had long been deemed impregnable, would 
 naturally be regarded both by themselves and by others as 
 a forlorn hope. 
 
 However, thanks be, under God, to those who led the 
 way with a devotedness worthy of their sacred cause, the 
 aspect of things is now greatly changed. The Church, 
 through God's mercy, has lifted up her head again. She 
 has called to mind that she is a Queen, that her portion 
 is indeed to sit in ashes, until all her children are redeemed 
 from the Evil One, but that still, amid her ashes, she is a 
 Queen, the royal Bride of the heavenly Bridegroom. Her
 
 voice is now heard in every part of the land, calling her 
 children to her arras, exhorting, admonishing, warning, 
 reproving. She feels that she is invested with authority, 
 and that it is her bounden duty to exercise it. Let us give 
 thanks to God that this is so. At the same time, remem- 
 bering how prone man ever is to run from one extreme 
 into the opposite, let us, the ministers of the Church, 
 beware, lest the honour which is rightfully due to the 
 Church, swell and degenerate into idolatry. We know 
 how in one corrupt branch of the Church the worship of 
 the Virgin Mother obscured, and in numberless cases 
 almost eclipst, the worship of her Divine Son. Let us 
 beware, lest the idea of Christ be in like manner obscured 
 and eclipst from our eyes by that of the Church. For in 
 our deplorable inability to raise ourselves to purely spi- 
 ritual contemplations, we snatch at every occasion of 
 enshrining some portion of the divine idea in an earthly 
 form, and, instead of transpiritualizing the elements, tran- 
 substantiate the spirit. This caution is the more needful, 
 because, when the idea of the Church is taken out of its 
 proper subordination to that of her Lord, the blaze of glory 
 which we shed upon the Church falls immediately on our- 
 selves. This has led in all ages to a superstitious magni- 
 fying of the priestly character and office : for it is only 
 when we magnify Christ, that our feeling of union with 
 that which we magnify does not delude us into magnifying 
 ourselves, but rather deepens our self-abasement, by re- 
 minding us more vividly of His. I will not enter into any 
 discussion of those signs in these days, which may seem to 
 shew that the danger I have been speaking of is indeed 
 threatening us, if not already at hand. Controversy would 
 be out of place in this chair. But even without reference
 
 to actual occurrences, we may not count ourselves safe 
 from a temptation, through which so many in former ages 
 have fallen. You will not deem that we in our age have 
 attained to such a highth of spirituality, that there is no 
 chance of our merging the essence in the form. We are 
 worshipers of the world, both in its grossest sensuality, and 
 in its most exhausted abstractions; but we are every whit 
 as incapable as our fathers were of pure reverence for an 
 idea. As the Head of the Church is invisible, we are 
 too likely to forget the invisible Head, while gazing on 
 the visible body; although the body has no life, ex- 
 cept what is poured into it by the Head, -so that, when 
 severed from the Head, it sinks into a corpse. Moreover 
 let us never allow it to slip from our thoughts for a mo- 
 ment, that the Church is a mother, and that, though a 
 mother may be constrained to reprove and to punish, 
 love, even while she is punishing, must be the uppermost 
 feeling in her heart ; nay then most of all must be so, 
 to support her in that which is so contrary to her nature, 
 lest her nature be in any degree tainted by that which is 
 contrary to it. Let us beware lest we ever furnish any one 
 with a reasonable ground for complaining that his mother 
 is turned into a stepmother. 
 
 With these cautions, we may with full right rejoice at 
 whatever improvement has taken place of late years in 
 the aspect and prospects of the Church. That there has 
 been such an improvement to a certain extent, I believe, 
 you are all convinced, far as that improvement may still 
 fall short of your wishes. I believe that what I said on 
 this subject to you a twelvemonth since met in the main 
 with your concurrence. But if this be so, and if the im- 
 provement in the condition of the Church, such as it is,
 
 8 
 
 be a legitimate ground for rejoicing and thankfulness in 
 all her members, it should also awaken all her members, 
 and us, her ministers more especially, to a deeper and 
 livelier sense of our own personal duties and responsi- 
 bilities. For how could we rejoice in the increast dignity 
 and energy of the Church, if we ourselves were to continue 
 in the torpour and carelessness of an age now happily gone 
 by? Surely shame must prevent our doing so. Surely 
 we must feel that, as our privileges, our means, our op- 
 portunities are greater, so will our sin be. When war 
 is openly declared, and the army is marching against the 
 enemy, every soldier is called upon for redoubled exertions 
 and selfdenial; and a life of self-indulgence, which in a 
 garrison- town might have been visited with little censure, 
 would now be infamous. Half a century ago an indolent 
 and worldlyminded clergyman might have excused him- 
 self, vain and hollow as such excuses are, by the example 
 of so many among his brethren. But now the example, 
 at least in this Diocese, God be praised and thankt for 
 the mercy He has shewn to us ! is the other way : the 
 indolent and worldlyminded clergyman cannot even plead 
 that he is following the multitude in evil. Half a century 
 ago he might have tried to stupefy his own conscience 
 by arguing that, when the Church was so feeble and voice- 
 less, when the majority of her ministers were so inert, 
 the efforts of a single individual would be as inefficient 
 as the influx of a little brook to freshen the Dead 
 Sea. But now, on all sides, in every part of the land, 
 we see proofs how much may be effected even by a single 
 man, working in unison with his brethren, as a member 
 of the Church, and under the guidance of the Spirit of 
 God. I do not mean that we have many men in these
 
 9 
 
 days holier and more zealous than those who were raised 
 up to bear witness of the truth in the last century, that 
 we have many men holier and more zealous than Venn, 
 and Fletcher, and Newton, and Scott. Such men have 
 always been rare, and still are so. But the number 
 of those who, according to the gifts bestowed on them, 
 labour diligently in their calling, is far greater : the aver- 
 age standard of ministerial activity is considerably higher : 
 profaneness has diminisht ; secularity has diminisht ; holi- 
 ness and piety, may I not say so? have increast. Above 
 all, they who are striving to fulfill their sacred duties 
 have the happiness of knowing that their brethren on all 
 sides are helping them onward, not pulling them back: 
 nor do they wander forth singly like knight errants among 
 the heathens, but as soldiers in the army of the Church. 
 Everywhere too we may find many of the laity ready and 
 anxious to aid us and work along with us. How then 
 can we, any of us, behold the Church thus putting on 
 her glorious apparel, and going forth to Zion, yet linger 
 ourselves behind sordidly and slothfully in Babylon ? 
 
 Indeed what is the improvement in the condition of 
 our Church for which we rejoice and are thankful? Not 
 for any change in her institutions : not for what has 
 been effected by any of the recent Acts of the Legisla- 
 ture. Some of these we may regret : others may to a 
 certain extent be beneficial with reference to the out- 
 ward circumstances of the Church. But no act of the 
 State can confer any essential benefit on the Church, 
 except so far as it is met by an answering spirit already 
 existing in the Church. The acts of the State are merely 
 negative, preventive or punitive : positive good must come 
 from a higher source, even from Him who is the only
 
 10 
 
 Source of all good. The improvement in the Church for 
 which we have real reason to be thankful, the one im- 
 provement without which all others would be as unavailing 
 as the garlands on a maypole to breathe life into it, nay 
 without which, fair as they might seem, they would only 
 hang and wither, is the improvement in the character 
 and conduct of her ministers and her other members. 
 Even politically, institutions and legislative enactments 
 do little good, unless where the spirit of a nation is 
 strong and healthy. Some of you will perhaps remember 
 the noble line of the Greek lyric poet: avSpsj TTO'^JJOJ Ttupyoi 
 apvfio^ men are the warlike towers of a city, men are its 
 real bulwarks. Such too must needs be the case still 
 more in the Church, still more, though not exactly in 
 the same manner. For the Greek poet did not mean 
 to set up human strength in contradistinction to divine. 
 History as well as legendary tradition records the persua- 
 sion of antiquity, that no city was safe, except so long as 
 it was guarded by its tutelary gods. His purpose was to 
 declare that among earthly powers man is the paramount, 
 man in the whole complex of his nature, with his living 
 heart and soul, not the machinery of warfare offensive 
 or defensive, not the mechanical craftwork of the under- 
 standing. In like manner the bulwarks of the Church 
 are her Apostles, her Martyrs, her Confessors, her Saints, 
 her Preachers of Righteousness ; not indeed through any 
 might of their own, through any electrifying or magne- 
 tizing power of their intellects, through any energy of 
 their will, but through the Spirit of God working in them. 
 And among these bulwarks every one may be, however 
 lowly his station, who lives a life of holiness and love, 
 and labours diligently in his appointed field of duty.
 
 11 
 
 When God decrees that Goliath shall be overthrown, He 
 does not raise up a Samson to overthrow him : He takes 
 a David from the sheepfold. Nor does David go forth 
 in the armour of Saul, and with the sword of Saul, but 
 with that faith in the living God, by reason of which he 
 was called the man after God's own heart. Saul with 
 his armour was dismayed : all Israel was dismayed : none 
 but the soldier of faith had courage for the fight; and 
 he alone could prevail. 
 
 Now these, it seems to me, my brethren, are the feel- 
 ings with which we, all of us, ought to be deeply imprest. 
 The Church has mighty enemies to contend against, huge 
 earthborn giants, whose mouths stream with blasphemies ; 
 and we are called above all others to this great warfare. 
 Nor is this warfare become easy, although the Church 
 has been increasing in strength. For the World also 
 has been increasing in strength, and not merely during 
 the last few years, but with enormous and unprecedented 
 rapidity for a century and a half before, in all manner 
 of ways, in swarming multitudes, and the pestilences they 
 breed, in wealth, with its tyranny and its slavery, in luxury, 
 in the manifold exercises of the understanding, in the rest- 
 lessness of conscious force and will. And though every 
 earthly power may be taught to bend its neck to the yoke 
 of Law, and may be sanctified into an instrument for 
 spreading the kingdom of God, yet of itself such power 
 tends to become lawless and godless. When the sons of 
 God give up their hearts to the daughters of men, their 
 offspring are apt to be giants. Against these giants, the 
 hateful progeny of sin, of the adultery between a heaven- 
 born spirit and the deceitful phantoms of the flesh, we, 
 my brethren, are every one of us especially called to
 
 12 
 
 contend. If we do contend against them strenuously, pa- 
 tiently, perseveringly, in God's strength, we shall be vic- 
 torious. But if we do not so contend, we shall perish : 
 and alas, we cannot perish alone ; many will perish with 
 us. Each of us has not merely to fight against sin and 
 the world in his own heart ; though this itself is a struggle 
 surpassing the powers of man; and unless we fight the 
 battle in our own hearts, we shall be ill able to fight it 
 for others : each of us has also to head and lead on and 
 encourage his parishioners in the same never-ending con- 
 flict. And in proportion as the prospects of the Church 
 have brightened, in proportion as there is a greater like- 
 lihood that our exertions will be successful, in the same 
 proportion are we under a greater obligation to exert 
 ourselves. This is the view of the present state of the 
 Church, to which I feel especially anxious to call your 
 attention. The improvement in the state of the Church 
 has afforded us greater advantages, greater means of la- 
 bouring to good purpose. God has given us these advan- 
 tages ; and we are responsible for the use of them. On the 
 manner in which we make use of them, the condition of 
 our Church for generations must in great measure depend. 
 Whatever we may do, unworthy, careless, supine, self- 
 seeking as we may be, whatever visitation of wrath we may 
 bring down on ourselves and on our country, Christ, we 
 know, will still be glorified, and His Church will now and 
 ever prevail against the gates of hell : but we ourselves, if 
 we betray our charge, shall have no part in the victory ; 
 and England, it may be, will be stript of her share in its 
 glory and in its rewards. 
 
 What then ! Do I mean to say that you are wanting in 
 energy and activity ? Yes, my brethren ! all . . every one
 
 13 
 
 of you . . I myself most of all ; unless indeed there should 
 be some one amongst you who can fancy he is not wanting. 
 They who are least wanting will only feel the more acutely, 
 and be the readier to acknowledge, how much they are so 
 still, and that too in all manner of ways in every one of 
 the manifold duties belonging to their sacred office. Con- 
 cerning a large portion, the highest and most important, of 
 these duties, concerning the duty of preaching the Gospel 
 with diligence, faithfulness, and simplicity, and concerning 
 the other chief provinces of the pastoral care, I shall not 
 venture to speak. For, were I to enter upon these topics, 
 they would occupy all the time I can presume to demand 
 of you : and they seem to me to belong rather to an 
 address such as you have just heard from the pulpit, 
 or to an episcopal admonition, than to my own pe- 
 culiar office, which relates mainly to the externals of the 
 Church ; but which I trust I shall not stretch too far, if 
 I make a few observations on certain practical measures 
 for increasing the moral power of the Church, and our 
 own efficiency in our ministry. Even among the subjects 
 which seem to lie more nearly within my own sphere, I 
 must be content to select a few : and on these few I shall 
 be constrained to touch very rapidly and superficially. 
 
 Here let me begin with a matter which presses heavily 
 on my own heart, and on which I am most anxious to 
 consult with you. For I fear there can be no one among 
 you, whose heart has not often to quake beneath the same 
 crushing burthen. Of what burthen do I speak ? Would 
 that I could believe you are ignorant of it ! Would that I 
 could believe that my own parish, and the many others I 
 have heard of as afflicted with the same plaguespot, are 
 merely insulated blots on the face of England ! Would that I
 
 14 
 
 could believe that it is only in these parishes, which, many 
 though they be, make up but a small part of England, 
 that numbers of brides from among the lower orders, when 
 they come to plight their vows at the altar, do not come in 
 virgin maidenhood, that it is only in these parishes that 
 they are wont to come with the offspring of unhallowed 
 lust lying beneath their bosoms ! But alas ! every account 
 I have received leads me to fear that this must be a 
 case of appalling frequency from one end of the land 
 to the other. What a terrible state of things does this 
 imply ! that now, in this nineteenth century of the Church, 
 after the Spirit of God has been moving for eighteen 
 centuries on the face of the earth, has been striving for 
 eighteen centuries to purify the hearts of mankind, this 
 sin, which even in heathen nations was accounted foul 
 and shameful, should still be so dismally prevalent. What 
 can be the power of the Gospel among us, when it is not 
 able to check this gross and scandalous abomination ? 
 How feeble must our Christian education be, when our 
 youths and maidens, so soon after they leave our schools, 
 give themselves up body and soul to those lusts of the flesh, 
 which they have just solemnly promist before God at their 
 confirmation to renounce ? How can our women be fitted 
 for the sacred duties of motherhood, when their entrance 
 into the holy state of marriage has been through this dark 
 cavern of sin? And what must be the effect of the 
 example on the younger boys and girls in our parishes, 
 when they see so many of their elders walking without 
 shame, and often with scarcely any reproach or reproof, in 
 these godless ways ? For I am not speaking, as you will 
 be aware, of those who are notorious evil-livers, and who 
 make a profession of iniquity. If the sin I am referring
 
 15 
 
 to were confined to these, in our country parishes it would 
 be comparatively rare. The cases which seem to me still 
 more deplorable, inasmuch as they betoken a far more 
 general corruption, tainting the lifeblood of every other 
 family, and poisoning the sources of every domestic virtue, 
 are those of girls who have previously born unblemisht 
 characters, yet who fall with scarcely a struggle, and who 
 hardly seem to think that there is any disgrace or sin 
 in having fallen. 
 
 Why have I spoken to you on this subject? Not as- 
 suredly from any fondness for talking about that which is 
 so painful and loathsome. Nor from any desire to lay bare 
 the nakedness of our country. But if a wound is to be 
 healed, it must be laid bare. If a sin is to be rooted 
 out, we must confess it as such, in its length and breadth 
 and depth, to God, and to ourselves. Did I not con- 
 ceive that we, the clergy of the Church of England, have, 
 or at least ought to have, much power for repressing this 
 evil, I should not have toucht upon it. But it seems to 
 belong in great measure to our peculiar province ; and if we 
 do not endeavour to repress it, no one will. The State takes 
 no cognizance, except of offenses against law. Offenses 
 against morals are left to be condemned by the opinion of 
 society, which is a poor wayward guide, unless where it is 
 determined by the voice of the Church. Now in this as in 
 all other respects the one effectual lifegiving principle of 
 holiness is faith in Christ and the sanctification of the 
 Spirit. This faith therefore, and the exercises whereby the 
 heart is prepared for the reception of that sanctifying in- 
 fluence, it should be our first care to foster in our parishes 
 by diligence in all the labours of spiritual husbandry. 
 These means however, we know too well, in the present
 
 16 
 
 corrupt state of human nature, would be utterly inefficient 
 even to prevent crimes of violence, unless they were en- 
 forced by that arm of law, which is ordained as a terrour 
 to evil works. Nor are they better able by themselves to 
 repress those sins of the flesh, which men in every, state and 
 stage of social, intellectual, and moral life have found it so 
 hard to quell. Hence, in the best ages of the Church, 
 although the power of the Gospel brought home to the 
 heart by the Spirit of God was acknowledged to be the 
 only source of true Christian holiness, it was felt that 
 something more was needed, in order to contend against 
 the evil propensities of mankind; and to this end the 
 Church was wont to exercise a godly discipline, apply- 
 ing more especially to those vices which did not come 
 under the immediate notice of the laws. But unhappily 
 in the course of ages this godly discipline fell into 
 decay. The World gained power, first within the Church, 
 and then against her, so that the Church scarcely dared 
 any longer to condemn, beyond the capricious measure 
 of the World's censure. This decay of godly disci- 
 pline is deplored by our Church in her Commination 
 Service ; where she declares that its restoration is much 
 to be wisht. We have gone on repeating this wish year 
 by year, as the first day of Lent has come round, for near 
 three centuries; and many individual voices have exprest 
 their concurrence in it. Yet what has been done, what 
 has ever been attempted, for its accomplishment? On 
 the contrary such portions of ancient discipline as were 
 still retained or revived at the Reformation have gra- 
 dually fallen into disuse. This has been partly owing 
 to the manner in which the ordinances of the Church were 
 rendered subservient to the purposes of the State, and
 
 17 
 
 partly, in no slight degree, to the deplorable relaxation of 
 sound moral feeling in the people. Now surely it is a 
 sad confession of weakness, that generation after genera- 
 tion should annually declare a measure to be greatly de- 
 sirable for the wellbeing of the Church and nation, and yet 
 that not a single step should be taken to carry it into effect. 
 I am far from intending to assert that the exact form of 
 discipline, which was exercised in the primitive Church, is 
 altogether appropriate in these days. As manners and 
 relative feelings and sentiments change, so in some part 
 must institutions. Institutions change; but principles 
 abide, and, unless we betray and desert them, give birth 
 to new institutions. I cannot doubt that, if the Church, 
 individually and collectively, were to take this matter into 
 serious consideration, some form of godly discipline suit- 
 able to our age might be devised, whereby this terrible evil 
 might at least in some degree be abated. 
 
 This is a question which I am anxious to recommend 
 to your most earnest thoughts ; nor can there be any sub- 
 ject more important or appropriate for discussion at your 
 Rural Chapters. Greatly shall I rejoice to confer with 
 you upon it, to receive and weigh any suggestions you 
 may offer me, and to propose such plans as I may myself 
 have heard or thought of for your deliberation. Certain 
 plans, I have been informed, have been adopted for this 
 purpose in particular parishes by men eminent for their 
 energy and piety, and have been attended with the hap- 
 piest results. Not that such results are to be expected 
 from any measure or course of measures, however judi- 
 cious in themselves. They can only be brought about, 
 under God's blessing, by holy zeal in our labours to carry 
 our measures, whatever they may be, into effect. We 
 
 c
 
 18 
 
 must endeavour to revive that feeling of shame, which is 
 so grievously weakened and almost extinguisht in the 
 hearts of parents, as well as of their children ; and which 
 yet by nature is endowed with such wonderful power, 
 as though it were designed to be the main prop of our 
 feeble and vacillating virtue. If the Church shews openly 
 and authoritatively that she condemns this sin, if she is 
 not afraid of fulfilling the apostolic injunction to reprove, 
 rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering and teaching, the 
 great body of the people will join in the condemnation. 
 At the same time we must keep in mind that whatever 
 we do must be done with all longsuffering. We must make 
 it manifest, in the whole spirit of our conduct, that our 
 aim and wish is not to punish the sinners, as though we 
 were ministers of the law, but, as ministers of Christ, to 
 redeem them from their sins, not to judge the world, 
 but to save the world. 
 
 I do not mean that it will be easy to accomplish these 
 things : I do not mean that it will not be very difficult. 
 This however is no reason for shrinking from the attempt. 
 Nothing great was ever done without more or less of diffi- 
 culty ; and mostly the greater the act, the greater has also 
 been the difficulty. Difficulties encompass us, hem us 
 in, try us, train us, by the conquest of the less, for the 
 conquest of the greater. It is difficult for an infant to 
 learn to speak: it is difficult for a little child to learn to 
 walk. It is difficult to be meek, to be gentle, to be 
 patient, to be humble. It is difficult to wrestle against 
 evil, whether in ourselves or in others. But what should 
 we be, if we did not wrestle against it, in spite of the 
 difficulty? We all know to whom the sop was given, 
 and what was the effect of it. We know who said
 
 19 
 
 to his soul, Take thine ease., and how his ease ended. 
 On the other hand we know of what cup the children 
 of the kingdom are to drink, and with what baptism they 
 are to be baptized. Even humanly speaking, difficulties 
 act as spurs to the stronghearted and minded, and startle 
 and check the feeble only. The unwillingness to en- 
 counter them, the want of energy, to which so many 
 things in our habits and circumstances incline us, have 
 ever been among the chief sources of mischief in the 
 Church. Hence the decay of godly discipline ; and hence 
 the unresisted onrush of sin, flooding the nation. When 
 the evil is so wide-spread, we must make up our minds 
 to meet with many obstacles, with many scruples, with 
 murmurs, it may be, and with reproach. But the prize 
 is worth the struggle. Let us fix our eyes on that, not 
 indeed so as to overlook the hindrances which lie in our 
 way, but so as to count all hindrances, all sacrifices light, 
 if we can but attain to it. And may we not feel assured 
 that, in this holy and righteous cause, if we do indeed 
 exert ourselves diligently to guard the chastity of our 
 maidens from the lust of the spoiler, and to revive 
 the purity and sanctity of wifehood and motherhood, a 
 Higher Power will aid and strengthen us? Moreover 
 the hearts of all the better-disposed among our brethren, 
 in the laity, as well as in the clergy, will go cordially 
 along with us. Many of the laity will gladly come for- 
 ward to help us with their counsel, and to support us 
 with their authority and influence among their neigh- 
 bours. And this assistance we must earnestly seek to 
 gain : for without it our efforts would be of little avail. 
 The evil is one in which they must feel almost as deep 
 a concern as we do : and by cooperating with us to check 
 
 c 2
 
 20 
 
 it, they will resume their proper place, as active members 
 of the Church (A). 
 
 In the passage just cited from St Paul, we are admo- 
 nisht that our rebukes and reproofs must be combined with 
 teaching. This great and main duty of our office will not 
 be fulfilled by the utmost activity in preaching to the 
 elder members of our parishes. Ever since children were 
 received into the Church, the pastoral duty of teaching has 
 comprised a course of instruction especially adapted to 
 them. It is a principal part of our charge, to take the 
 lead in providing that the children in our parishes shall be 
 brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 
 Even with reference to the sin I am speaking of, we must 
 call in both branches of this twofold teaching to aid us in 
 our contest against it. We must endeavour on the one 
 hand to awaken and foster a general reverence for chastity, 
 and a hatred and abhorrence of all unchastity : for however 
 wisely and godly the young may be taught, the lessons they 
 receive at school will have little force, unless they are 
 strengthened by the examples and words which they see 
 and hear at home ; and their feeble morality will soon give 
 way, if they find a laxity of principle prevailing among 
 their elders. On the other hand, whether with a view to 
 this, or to whatever other good we may desire to effect in 
 our parishes, we should do our utmost to improve the 
 moral and religious character of our education. To this 
 end much still remains to be done. Not that we ought to 
 render our instruction more entirely religious in its out- 
 ward form and material than it is already. Rather may 
 we fear that in these respects it is too exclusively reli- 
 gious ; whereby the power of the very lessons which we 
 are striving to impress must needs be impaired. For
 
 it cannot but weaken the awe of sacred words, to employ 
 them as the words whereby a child is taught to read. 
 Many as are the fond and reverent recollections of our 
 childhood, few persons retain any love or reverence for 
 their hornbook. And if emulation be allowable in any 
 case, as a stimulant which, owing to the want of sounder 
 motives and impulses, we can hardly dispense with, loth 
 as I am to concede this, at all events it is a desecration of 
 religious truths to make them the subjects of emulous 
 contention. But, though I would not increase the quan- 
 tity of our religious teaching, if every lesson, of which the 
 subject matter is sacred words, when its object is merely 
 to teach the art of spelling or of reading, can be called 
 by that name, yet greatly do we need that its quality 
 should be improved, that more life and earnestness should 
 be infused into it. This, I believe, would be easier, if 
 such instruction were only given occasionally, than if it be 
 the one chief subject of almost every lesson. When a path 
 is trodden to and fro day by day with constant iteration, 
 its verdure perishes : and how can words, which we have 
 thumbed and pored over for the sake of learning to read, 
 preserve their moral value and significance ? Power is ever 
 increast by condensation, lessened by expansion. What 
 we want is, not to make our children read the Bible, but 
 to make them read it understandingly and devoutly (B). 
 Now it has been ascertained by the Inspectors, who have 
 recently visited our schools, that, as many of us must 
 already have been aware, a great proportion of the teachers 
 in them are poorly qualified for the task they have under- 
 taken ; whence, among other evils, has resulted the ne- 
 cessity of employing emulation as a substitute to make up 
 for the deficiency of moral power. I do not mention this
 
 22 
 
 as a matter of reproach. So long as there was no body 
 of teachers duly trained for the work of instructing the 
 children of the lower orders, we were compelled to take 
 such as we could get; while the smallness of the funds 
 hitherto raised in most parishes for the education of the 
 poor has prevented our holding out adequate, inducements 
 for intelligent persons to prepare themselves for an office 
 so scantily remunerated. My motive for touching on 
 this point is to remind you how important it is that we 
 should all exert ourselves in support of the two insti- 
 tutions for the training of teachers, one of which has 
 already been in operation for more than a twelvemonth 
 at Chichester, while the other, for schoolmistresses, I 
 trust, with God's blessing, will be establisht before the 
 end of the present year at Brighton. The pupils of the 
 former, we are told in the Report of our Diocesan 
 Association, had made great progress in learning: in- 
 deed I have heard some of the persons who examined 
 them express themselves as having been quite astonisht, 
 considering that the school had not been opened nine 
 months before the examination took place. Still more 
 cheering is the testimony of the Principal, " that no un- 
 pleasant exercise of his authority had yet been called for, 
 that no one instance of impropriety had occurred in the 
 school, but that the habits of the pupils had invariably 
 been those of order, diligence, meekness, docility, and 
 attention." Small as the number of pupils had been, such 
 a fact might be deemed almost incredible by those who, 
 not being familiar with the children of the lower orders, 
 have not observed how much sooner habits of order and 
 selfcontroll are formed amongst them, how much earlier 
 they ripen into men, in part from having to depend so
 
 23 
 
 much earlier on their own exertions, and thus acquiring a 
 sense of responsibility, and partly from not being exposed 
 to the manifold stimulants, animal and moral, by which the 
 young of the higher classes are beset. The foregoing 
 statement shews with what judgement the first pupils sent 
 to the school had been selected. Among those more 
 recently admitted, one or two, I was grieved to hear, have 
 shewn by their conduct that they were not equally well 
 qualified for it. Hence, as no pupil can be received 
 without a certificate from the minister of his parish, I 
 deem it my duty to remind you, that this is not a case in 
 which it is allowable to indulge a weak goodnature, as we 
 are so apt to do, by giving testimonials to any boy whom 
 we have not good ground for knowing to be thoroughly 
 fitted by his character, industry, and intelligence, for the 
 post he is designed for. We too, like all men in respon- 
 sible situations, are bound to learn the difficult and un- 
 pleasant art of saying No. By means of this institution, 
 and of similar ones in other dioceses, we may hope that 
 the most highly gifted boys among the lower classes in 
 England will now receive an excellent education : and, as 
 in old times the noblest ornaments and pillars of the 
 Church sprang out of those classes, so, if these schools are 
 wisely conducted, may it be again. But it would be a 
 perversion of these institutions to employ them for the 
 education of any except choice spirits. No boy should 
 be sent to the Training School, unless he has the qua- 
 lities requisite in a schoolmaster, a considerable degree 
 of intelligence, that is to say, clearness and soundness 
 rather than quickness and brilliancy of mind, diligence, 
 selfcommand, above all unless he be of a serious spirit, and 
 orderly in his conduct. For our great want, the want
 
 24 
 
 which these institutions are designed to supply, is a body 
 of moral and religious teachers, who will enter heartily into 
 the great work committed to them, and make it their first 
 object to train up the children under their care in the love 
 and service of God. 
 
 By some persons it has been feared that the good effects 
 of the Training School at Chichester will hardly be felt 
 in our smaller parishes, where the funds now raised are 
 totally inadequate to defray the salary of a schoolmaster. 
 Nor would they, I allow, immediately. Not that this is any 
 reason for our being less anxious to support an institution 
 by which the larger parishes will be so greatly benefited : 
 and if any considerable improvement in education takes 
 place in these, we may trust that some portion of it 
 will overflow upon their neighbours. Nor can I at all 
 admit, that, in our efforts for the improvement of edu- 
 cation, we are to limit our views by a reference to our 
 present means. Nothing great was ever accomplisht, 
 except by those who attempted what to the purblind 
 understandings of such as cannot look beyond the first 
 hedge of circumstances appeared to be impossible. To 
 unbelief impossibilities continue impossible ; to faith they 
 are ever becoming possible. Fifty years ago it would 
 no doubt have been accounted an utter impossibility, 
 that what is now done for the education of the poor 
 should ever be achieved. Yet after all how little is it ! 
 The other day I was reading a journal of some travels in 
 the Crimea at the close of the last century. The traveler, 
 the wellknown Dr Clarke, says in one place, "I rarely 
 entered a Tartar village in the daytime, without seeing the 
 children assembled in some public place, receiving instruc- 
 tion from persons appointed to superintend their education,
 
 25 
 
 reciting with audible voices passages from the Koran, or 
 busied in copying manuscript lessons set before them." He 
 says, " a Tartar village," strange as it may seem ; and he was 
 traveling among Tartars, whom we are wont to regard as 
 little better than savages. Had a Tartar been traveling in 
 England at the same time,' would he have been able to make 
 as favorable a report of the state of our national education? 
 Alas ! when I read the passage, I could not help blushing 
 for shame, that we, with our plethory of riches, we who 
 pride ourselves on being the foremost nation of the earth, 
 in knowledge, religious knowledge too, and religious feel- 
 ing, as well as in all other things, should have lagged 
 behind the Tartars in our care for the education of the 
 poor; that we should have been less diligent to in- 
 struct our children in the Gospel, than the Tartars to 
 instruct theirs in the Koran. Even now, after the gigan- 
 tic exertions, as many deem them, which have been 
 made during the last thirty years for the diffusion of 
 education, are there not many parishes in England still 
 destitute of what Dr Clarke says he found in almost 
 every Tartar village? and do we not need public meet- 
 ings, and the excitement of annual sermons, and all 
 the paraphernalia of ostentatious charity, in order to 
 accomplish little more than the simple instruction here 
 described ? O let us feel assured, my brethren, that we 
 are only at the beginning of a better state of things, that 
 we are only just lifting our heads out of the mire. Let 
 us strive onward with a confident trust that the next fifty 
 years will vastly surpass the last fifty, that the next twenty 
 will surpass the last twenty. Let us feel assured that this 
 will be so, if it be the will of God, and that it is the will 
 of God, if the English Church be not wanting to her duty.
 
 26 
 
 Scanty as our means may now be in many places for the 
 support of education, they may, they must, they shall 
 increase. Our farmers, I speak especially of our rural 
 parishes, as being better acquainted with their economy, 
 and because in them the state of education is most defi- 
 cient ; but what is said of them may be applied, with slight 
 modifications, to towns, our farmers must be taught that 
 the least they can do for the men by whose labour they 
 till their lands is to provide that the children of their 
 labourers shall be carefully brought up and instructed. 
 Our landowners must be taught that their possessions are 
 not given to them by God to be squandered in reckless 
 selfindulgence and luxury, but that they are specially set to 
 be the benefactors and guardians of all the poor on their 
 estates, and that the wealth which has been drawn from the 
 sweat of their brows is to be poured down plenteously upon 
 them. This is a duty inseparable from the possession of 
 land, and, as such, is equajly incumbent upon resident and 
 non-resident proprietors; although many of the latter are 
 over-ready to forget that any duties devolve upon them 
 from estates on which they do not reside. If they sub- 
 scribe to the schools and the other charities where they 
 live, they think this is all they are bound, all that any 
 one can in conscience expect them to do. With such 
 ragged sophisms does selfishness blindfold its victims. If 
 they cannot find it in their hearts to give anything to 
 God and His poor in the parishes where they do not reside, 
 let them cease to draw any rents from those parishes ; and 
 then we shall have no claim except upon their Christian 
 liberality. If they will not give, let them give up. For 
 surely, according to all principles of equity, a non-resident 
 proprietor, being unable to contribute his share toward the
 
 27 
 
 petty charities of daily occurrence, should rather give more 
 largely than others where he can, to subscriptions for ge- 
 neral purposes. Surely no man can be deemed to fulfill 
 the duties which landed property brings with it, unless he 
 devotes a tenth, or at least, to take a very low estimate, 
 a twentieth, of the receits to eleemosynary works on the 
 spot from which his income is drawn. This is a consi- 
 deration which ought to be strongly urged, and repeatedly, 
 no less for the sake of redeeming the rich from the heavy 
 sin of neglected duties, than in order to gain funds for the 
 support of our schools, which, if non-resident landlords 
 were mindful of their obligations, would seldom be wanting. 
 We in this county have the blessing of knowing that among 
 the highest aristocracy there are men who feel and acknow- 
 ledge these responsibilities and duties, and the main busi- 
 ness of whose lives is to discharge them. May we not hope 
 that in this age, when emulation is the order of the day, 
 others will be spurred to a generous emulation by these 
 noble examples, and that a like feeling of our Christian 
 obligations will spread, as indeed it is spreading, through 
 every class ? Shame be the portion of those who shrink 
 and skulk from this honorable race ! of those who swamp 
 their own souls with that, which, if wisely and liberally 
 distributed, would fertilize thousands (c) ! 
 
 Not however that it is to be expected, I know not 
 whether it is even to be desired, that in every parish 
 there should be an able and efficient schoolmaster. For 
 wherever there is a schoolmaster, some kind of female 
 assistant would be wanted for the girls, at least to instruct 
 them in the works pertaining to their sex. But the most 
 sanguine will hardly anticipate that any except the largest 
 among our rural parishes, unless they are peculiarly
 
 28 
 
 favoured by the residence of bountiful gentry, or through 
 some endowment, will be able, for some time to come, to 
 raise salaries for more than one teacher. In the chief part 
 of these parishes a sensible schoolmistress, with the help of 
 the minister, and of such visitors as may be found among 
 the laity, will be fully adequate to supply all needful 
 instruction for the boys as well as the girls. In truth 
 women seem almost to have an instinctive aptitude for 
 teaching, not perhaps for the higher branches of it, but for 
 those which belong to their province as mothers . Their 
 minds are more familiar with the ways and workings of 
 thought in the young, whereas ours are carried into a 
 different sphere by our studies and the practical business 
 of life : and sobermindedness and simple trustful piety are 
 so much commoner in their sex than in ours, that a parish 
 may almost be deemed fortunate, when it requires nothing 
 more than a good schoolmistress to conduct the education 
 of its children. For girls, of whatever age, a mistress, I 
 conceive, will always be better than a master ; if not for all 
 the direct processes of teaching, yet at all events for the 
 formation of a staid, gentle, feminine character. And the 
 age at which the boys in our rural parishes are taken away 
 from school, is unfortunately so early, that they have 
 scarcely time to pass beyond the limits of female tuition. 
 
 In this respect, as I had occasion to remark last year, 
 a considerable change has been going on of late, which is 
 generally attributed, and apparently not without reason, to 
 the recent alteration in the Poorlaws. For though one of 
 the chief objects contemplated in that alteration was to 
 better the condition of the well-conducted poor, this object 
 has scarcely been attained hitherto in our agricultural 
 parishes. As destructive operations are ever rapider than
 
 29 
 
 constructive ones, it has been found a far easier measure to 
 cut off parochial relief, than to raise wages. Hence pa- 
 rents, being deprived of the aid on which they used to 
 reckon, have sought to make up for this loss in whatsoever 
 manner and at whatsoever cost. From all quarters I am 
 informed that it becomes more and more difficult every 
 year to keep boys regularly at school after they have reacht 
 an age when they are able to earn anything. Instead of 
 staying, as many of them would a few years back, till 
 fourteen and fifteen, they are taken away at twelve, at 
 eleven, at ten, in some parishes at nine, or even at eight. 
 For sixpence a day, for fourpence a day, for twopence, nay, 
 for a penny a day, parents will not scruple to curtail the 
 time, brief and scanty at the utmost, allowed to their 
 children for laying in their whole stock of knowledge 
 against a life to be spent in unintermitting leisureless toil. 
 This again is an evil which it behoves us to discern in its 
 full length and breadth, in order that we may set ourselves 
 in earnest to devise a remedy. I am not intending to 
 throw blame on the authors of the new Poorlaw, or on the 
 persons who have been charged with the painful and in- 
 vidious task of carrying it into effect. This consequence 
 of the Bill is directly contrary to their wishes, and might 
 easily have been overlookt by longersighted men than 
 modern legislators are wont to be. So great caution 
 ought we to exercise in meddling with institutions of long 
 standing, even when they are acknowledgedly mischievous. 
 For in states, as in individuals, the vital processes will draw 
 nourishment out of that which in itself may be noxious : 
 and in course of time they will assimilate themselves to 
 it, so that, if the noxious aliment be suddenly withdrawn, 
 none can tell what will happen.
 
 30 
 
 The state of things just described threatens to barbarize 
 the great body of our husbandmen, and to frustrate all our 
 efforts to improve their education. For how narrow and 
 rudimentary must instruction be, how little consistency and 
 fixedness can it gain, how can it strike root in the mind, 
 when it is to terminate before a boy gets into his teens ! 
 It would seem as if the curse of labour were becoming 
 heavier every year, as if its whirling wheel were every year 
 clutching up younger and tenderer victims. The main 
 instrument of our outward aggrandizement is turned, by 
 a righteous judgement on our thankless perversion of our 
 manifold blessings, into the instrument of our inward 
 debasement. In what way we shall contend the most 
 effectually against this aggravated hindrance to the moral 
 improvement of the people, I confess myself unable to 
 point out. But though we do not see our way clearly, 
 this must not deter us from seeking it. Difficult as it may 
 be to perceive how this evil is to be overcome, we know 
 how it will not be overcome, not, if we yield to it, not, 
 at least by us, if we do not exert ourselves vigorously 
 against it. Wide-spreading as it is, desolating as it 
 threatens to be, it may well engage the serious thoughts 
 of every lover of his country, above all, of those who are 
 the appointed shepherds and guardians of Christ's chosen 
 flock, the poor. This therefore is also a question which I 
 would recommend to your earnest consideration, both indi- 
 vidually, and when you assemble in chapter. How are we 
 to counteract the mischief that must ensue from the early 
 removal of the boys from our schools? How, when we 
 have trained up a more intelligent body of teachers, are 
 we to ensure that the children in our parishes shall derive 
 the utmost benefit from their teaching ? By comparing
 
 31 
 
 your several observations, and the schemes that may have 
 suggested themselves to your thoughts, you will doubtless 
 be enabled to devise some useful plans of operation. 
 
 For no one, I trust, will argue that this fresh obstacle 
 in our path proves the futility of projects to improve the 
 education of the people. Although it must needs damp 
 our spirits to find ourselves thus thwarted at the outset, 
 we must remember that no spring ever passes without its 
 portion of blight ; but the tree does not shed all its fruit, 
 because a part has been withered. In truth a spring with- 
 out its checks is seldom the harbinger of a fruitful summer. 
 By struggling with difficulties at first, we are strengthened, 
 and learn to proceed more steadily and earnestly, with less 
 liability to carelessness and presumption. It is indeed a 
 sad loss, to have our most promising boys taken away just 
 as their understandings are unfolding, just as they are 
 beginning to take an interest in knowledge, to feel that 
 words and books have a meaning and a purpose, and that 
 there is something in themselves, and in the persons and 
 things around them, answering thereto. It is sad to lose 
 these, the pleasantest rewards of our labours : but even 
 without these rewards it behoves us to do what we can out 
 of love to Christ and to His little ones. 
 
 Concerning the measures whereby the evil I am speaking 
 of may in some degree be lessened, let me offer you a 
 couple of brief suggestions. 
 
 " We should impress on the teachers in our schools, how 
 important it is that greater pains should be taken with the 
 instruction of the younger children. The Inspectors have 
 remarkt, that, even in the schools where one or two classes 
 at the top appear to have been well taught, there is mostly 
 a great falling off below, so that they often could find no
 
 32 
 
 perceptible difference between the third class and the 
 lowest. Now in all schools many reasons lead the master 
 to give the largest portion of his attention to the uppermost 
 class ; which indeed he will mostly regard as his own espe- 
 cial charge, while in teaching the other classes he is com- 
 pelled to have recourse to monitors and other assistants. 
 The studies of the highest class are more congenial to his 
 own, allowing a freer range to his thoughts. The know- 
 ledge he has to communicate, being less elementary, 
 seems more valuable. His instruction produces quicker, 
 more tangible results. Besides, as they are to leave him 
 soon, he is anxious to make the most of the time that 
 remains, and to send them out well equipt for the business 
 of life. Yet, had he bestowed greater care on them earlier, 
 they would now have profited far more from less. And 
 the duty of bestowing this care from the first is become 
 more urgent, since the stay of the boys has been so much 
 shortened. 
 
 At the same time it is desirable that we should try to 
 render our Sunday Schools more efficient, with especial 
 reference to the boys who have left the weekday schools ; 
 and moreover, as I suggested last year, that, wherever it is 
 possible, an evening school should be opened for them on 
 one or two evenings in the week, during those parts of the 
 year when field-labour does not preclude their attendance. 
 This however will be an undertaking requiring patience and 
 firmness and discretion. You must be prepared beforehand 
 to expect that such a school will hardly be carried on without 
 many difficulties and disheartening struggles. For when 
 boys are sent out to work in the field so early, their minds 
 run wild ; the little knowledge they may have gained is 
 soon overrun and stifled ; and they lose the habits of order
 
 33 
 
 and obedience and respectful deference to their teachers, 
 habits which are of such incalculable moral value, and 
 without which no school can be a wholesome discipline 
 for the character. Hence it will be no easy matter to 
 preserve a beneficial controll over such a school: indeed 
 it will be almost impossible, unless certain restrictions are 
 imposed on the lads admitted into it. For loth as one 
 should ever be to exclude any from a place where they may 
 be bettered, above all to exclude such as need it the most, 
 still it becomes necessary not to receive those into the 
 school, whose presence there would prevent its fulfilling its 
 end. If the bad fish are tainting the good, they must 
 be cast out. In proportion as it is less practicable to 
 uphold discipline by compulsion, it becomes indispensable 
 that the pupils should submit to it voluntarily. This they 
 are likely to do more readily, if they are bred in a habit 
 of attending the evening school from the very moment of 
 their leaving the regular weekday school; whereby more- 
 over they will be kept from losing ground, as else they are 
 sure to do (D). 
 
 On the other hand we should endeavour by frequent 
 exhortations, public and private, to lead parents to a juster 
 sense of their duties toward their children as moral beings. 
 We should warn them again and again of the debasement 
 and misery to which they doom their children by suffering 
 them to grow up in ignorance. The lessons which the calen- 
 dars of all our gaols afford, should be urged upon the care- 
 less, in proof how ignorance prepares the way for crime and 
 for ruin. We should point out to them how their sin in 
 neglecting the education of their children is aggravated, in 
 proportion as the means of a good education are set before 
 them, how to them also every privilege, every fresh advantage
 
 34 
 
 and opportunity brings its attendant duty. It is true 
 that, as the character of our schools improves, as the bene- 
 fits of the education obtained there become more imme- 
 diately apparent, this itself will tend to render them more 
 attractive. Such motives however are not likely to operate 
 much except in towns, where book-knowledge and intelli- 
 gence find readier occasions of exercising themselves, than 
 in the common labours of husbandry. Here again, as in 
 all other cases, interested motives fail us just where we 
 need their help most. They will not induce parents to 
 make sacrifices, to practise selfdenial, for an unseen remote 
 good. Love alone and faith will do this. 
 
 Moreover, while we admonish the peasantry of their 
 duties to do what in them lies to the end that their chil- 
 dren may receive the best education within their reach, 
 let us not omit to admonish our farmers, and those who 
 employ the labour of the poor, of theirs. As it is a sin in 
 parents, when, instead of feeding their children with know- 
 ledge, they grind them down into money for the sake 
 of eking out their wages, so is it a sin in their superiors, 
 when they tempt their poorer neighbours to this moral and 
 spiritual infanticide. This moral and spiritual infanticide is 
 one of the terrible sins of our age, which seems to be spread- 
 ing throughout Europe, but in which England takes the 
 shameful lead. It is the desperate effort of Mammon to frus- 
 trate the efforts which Christian principle is at length mak- 
 ing to elevate the poor to their rightful station as reasonable 
 members of the body of Christ. In this sin all are partakers 
 who employ children in such wise as to prevent their 
 attaining to that station. What has been said above shews 
 that the practice of employing children in agricultural 
 labours has increast much in the last few years ; and this
 
 -35 
 
 is perhaps the chief reason why so many of our ablebodied 
 labourers are still unable to find regular employment. For 
 the serpent, with all his cunning, is ever gnawing his own 
 tail, and often preying upon his own entrails. I will not 
 enter into the question how far it may be right for the 
 State to interpose its authority, so as to rescue the child 
 from the joint cupidity of its parents and its master (E). 
 But at all events it behoves the Church to interpose her 
 exhortations and warnings. And surely, although a few 
 shillings may be gained by the employment of young 
 children, instead of elder, we are not to assume that the 
 whole body of our farmers are so irretrievably sold into the 
 bondage of Mammon, that they cannot be moved to desist 
 from a practice which is baffling every attempt to improve 
 the rising generation. 
 
 Still, owing to the early withdrawal of the boys from 
 our schools, it is plain, as I have already remarkt, that, for 
 the present at least, in the chief part of our rural parishes, 
 a sensible and intelligent schoolmistress, with the assistance 
 above spoken of, will be fully competent to conduct the 
 whole business of education. Only she should be both 
 sensible and intelligent, better qualified and prepared for 
 her task than the majority of schoolmistresses now are. 
 Such persons may now be rare ; but they might be abun- 
 dant. For the natural gifts required are common enough, 
 if they were rightly cultivated. Hence I doubt not you all 
 join with me in rejoicing that our Diocesan Association has 
 resolved to establish a Training School for Schoolmistresses 
 at Brighton, which, we trust, will open before the end of 
 the present year. This is an institution in which every 
 parish throughout the Diocese ought to feel a lively in- 
 terest. For every parish, we hope, will be benefited by it, 
 
 D 2
 
 36 
 
 sooner or later. Should our purpose be prospered, it is 
 probable that, before many years are gone by, in almost 
 every parish a teacher trained in this school will be en- 
 gaged in the work of instruction. Thus it is quite impos- 
 sible to estimate the good which, under God's blessing, 
 may not unreasonably be expected to arise from this insti- 
 tution. On these grounds I have recommended it to you 
 all as deserving of especial support, and have exhorted 
 you to call on your parishioners to support it. Here 
 let me say a few words concerning the repeated demands 
 which have been made in the last few years on the 
 purses of this Diocese. As I myself appealed to you only 
 last autumn on occasion of the School to be built as a 
 monument to our late revered Bishop, and have now this 
 spring been urging anqther application in behalf of this 
 second Training School, it may be thought that I ought to 
 make you some apology for being so importunate. And 
 yet I do not. In truth if the measures were my own, if I 
 were anything else than the instrument of the Association 
 which our late Bishop establisht to be the purveyor for the 
 moral and spiritual wants of the Diocese, I should rather 
 claim your thanks for affording you the opportunity of 
 aiding in such beneficial works. Surely, brethren, when 
 the wants of our people are so many and grievous, we 
 should all rejoice and give thanks for every fresh attempt 
 to relieve them. I have been told indeed that some per- 
 sons have complained that we come too often, have remarkt 
 that the fullest purse will at length be exhausted. But 
 your observation will doubtless have coincided with mine, 
 that persons who speak after this fashion are never those 
 who have exhausted their own purses by their munificence 
 on former occasions, but mostly such as, when previously
 
 37 
 
 applied to, gave little or nothing. When a man gives 
 nothing, it vexes him to be under the necessity of confess- 
 ing his niggardliness time after time both to himself and to 
 others. When his bounty is very shallow, it will soon dry 
 up. But when it is deep, it is fed by living springs: a 
 heart full of charity cannot be drained: and they who 
 give the most largely on every occasion are the first to 
 welcome every fresh occasion of giving. They know that 
 it is truly more blessed to give than to receive. They 
 rejoice to spend and to be spent in the service of God and 
 of His people. Or if their means fall short of their wishes, 
 they are at least glad to give such as they have : they are 
 glad that good works are going on : they are glad that 
 their neighbours are taking part in them, and that the 
 Spirit of God is stirring His servants to offer their gifts 
 to His glory. 
 
 That there are persons in this Diocese who are richly 
 endowed with this spirit, we cannot doubt. Most of us 
 will perhaps know some such. But most of us will also 
 know many whose portion of this spirit is small, many 
 who have none of it. And these are the very persons at 
 whose hearts it behoves us to knock continually, if so be 
 by our importunity they may be aroused, and brought to 
 taste the pleasure of giving to others what is care and 
 heaviness when wasted on ourselves. Besides it is a part 
 of the education which we owe to our people, that we 
 should enlarge their minds to feel an interest in something 
 beyond the sphere of their own eyesight. Hemmed in as 
 the chief part of our parishioners are by their ignorance of 
 whatever lies out of that sphere, shackled and crampt by 
 the cares and toils of their daily life, they require to be 
 taught to understand the ties by which they are bound, not
 
 38 
 
 merely to their own neighbourhood, but to all the other 
 members of Christ's Church : they require to be taught to 
 perceive and feel what is meant by our being members of 
 the same body : and you can hardly confer a greater bless- 
 ing upon them than by teaching them to perceive and to 
 feel this. So that it is not merely for the sake of the cha- 
 ritable institutions which we are desirous of supporting, 
 but still more for the sake of our parishioners themselves, 
 that we ought to be instant in exhorting them to contri- 
 bute, according to their means, yea, and above their means, 
 to the manifold works in which the Church is now en- 
 gaged, whether for the better cultivation, or for the exten- 
 sion of the Kingdom of God upon earth. What a beautiful 
 spectacle is it in the first age of Christianity, to see how 
 every Church rejoiced in relieving the necessities of the 
 saints, even in countries of which till then they had scarcely 
 heard ! Nor can our religion be said to be in a healthy 
 state, until we too are ready to feel and to act for the 
 temporal and spiritual welfare of all our brethren, far 
 and near. 
 
 For this reason I was glad to have an occasion of request- 
 ing you to call on your parishioners to petition Parliament 
 for a grant to relieve the spiritual destitution, which is still 
 so dismally prevalent in many parts of England. For 
 though of course it was not to be expected, that they would 
 of themselves care much about anything so remote from 
 their everyday life, this petition seemed to furnish a good 
 opportunity for you to awaken such an interest in their 
 minds. Therefore next year, if I am alive, I shall probably 
 take leave to call on you again for the same purpose. Nor 
 must you complain, my brethren, of having too heavy la- 
 bours imposed on you, when your labours may be beneficial
 
 39 
 
 both to your own parishes and to the Church at large. 
 For though I look far more to individual liberality and 
 Christian charity than to any parliamentary grant for an 
 effectual remedy to this appalling evil, still it is right and 
 fitting that the State should publicly acknowledge its 
 obligation of providing for the spiritual wants of its peo- 
 ple, and should not excommunicate itself from the duties 
 of Christian love. So long as the spiritual destitution of 
 our brethren does not cease, surely our poor efforts to 
 relieve it should not cease : and we have the highest 
 authority to admonish us that we are not to be content 
 with petitioning once, but to press forward again and again, 
 until our petitions are granted. This however will hardly 
 be the case, until the petitions pouring in from all parts of 
 the land convince the Legislature that our prayer is indeed 
 the earnest prayer of the great body of the people. 
 
 I must not encroach too far upon your patience; and 
 therefore I must hurry over the remaining subjects, im- 
 portant and deeply interesting as some of them are, to 
 which I would fain have called your attention. Else I had 
 purpost to speak to you somewhat at large on what may 
 justly be regarded as the great event of the past year in 
 the history of the Church, the determination to establish 
 episcopal sees in all our principal colonies. Convinced as 
 you are of the inestimable value of episcopacy for the 
 full development of the idea of the Church, for the preser- 
 vation and transmission of its unity, integrity, and purity, 
 for the maintaining and upholding of the truth, for the 
 suppression of ever-multiplying errour and schism, and for 
 the rightful administration of all the ordinances of religion, 
 you cannot require any arguments to persuade you that 
 it is right and fitting, that the same form of government,
 
 40 
 
 which has been found so beneficial in all ancient Churches, 
 should be extended to every new Church springing up in 
 hitherto unchristianized regions of the globe. Rather 
 might we wonder, if any instances of spiritual torpour 
 and negligence in the last century could excite wonder, 
 that this has not been done long since, that we did not 
 from the first, along with the enlargement of our empire, 
 recognize the sacred duty of stretching out the lines of our 
 Church with the fulness of its institutions. For it is plain 
 that in a new country, remote from the salutary discipline 
 of long-establisht habit and usage and opinion, there must 
 be a far greater want of a paternal government near at 
 hand, to exercise a vigilant superintendence and controll, 
 to direct and support the ignorant and inexperienced amid 
 the difficulties and temptations of untried modes of life, 
 to check the waywardness and contentiousness of the 
 human will, whereby missionaries, as being ordinarily men 
 of sanguine, enthusiastic temperaments, may the more 
 readily go astray, and to combine and prolong those 
 efforts of individual zeal, which, however admirable in 
 themselves, yet, if left insulated, must at all events termi- 
 nate with the individual, and can produce no lasting 
 results. When we dwell at home under national laws and 
 the manifold bonds of social and family life, we may be 
 left in great measure to our own discretion in following 
 whatever path we may make choice of. But when we go 
 out to conquer and establish a settlement in a forein land, 
 we need to be under a chief. There is no occasion how- 
 ever for my bringing forward any arguments in support of 
 a cause, which was enforced with so much eloquence and 
 cogency at the Meeting called by our venerable Primate 
 for the commencement of this godly work. I will merely
 
 41 
 
 mention, for the sake of those who may not be acquainted 
 with the fact, that a full Report of the Proceedings at that 
 Meeting, which promises to be the beginning of a new, 
 more vigorous, and more united era in the history of our 
 Church, has been publisht by the Society for the Pro- 
 motion of Christian Knowledge : and it is desirable that 
 this Report should be circulated as widely as possible, in 
 order that all classes may be led to take an active interest 
 in furthering the great work on which the Church has now 
 entered, tardily indeed, but, I trust, in such a spirit as God 
 will vouchsafe to bless. At your ensuing Chapters it will 
 become you to consider in what manner the great body of 
 the people in this Diocese may be brought to lend their aid 
 most efficiently, whether by the establishment of a distinct 
 branch of the Diocesan Association, which shall relate 
 especially to the missionary undertakings of the Church, or 
 whether by endeavours to establish, or to infuse new vigour 
 into, district and parochial associations, in union with the 
 two great Societies by which the labours of our Church in 
 forein countries are conducted (F). 
 
 Among the many causes for Christian joy afforded by 
 the Meeting I have been speaking of, there is another to 
 which I cannot refrain from alluding : I mean the prospect 
 held out that a union will ere long take place between the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Forein Parts, 
 and the Church Missionary Society, so that the two Socie- 
 ties shall act in friendly unity and consort, as organs of the 
 Church for the extension of Christ's kingdom, the one in 
 our colonies, the other among the heathens. Thus hence- 
 forward, when the unseemly jealousies and animosities, by 
 which the operations of these Societies have been too 
 much hindered and disturbed, shall have past away, and
 
 42 
 
 when they are both toiling side by side in one cause and 
 with one spirit, may we hope that our Church will at 
 length apply herself with greater vigour and success to the 
 work for which the English nation appears to be especially 
 markt out, as well by the extent of its empire, with its 
 colonies sprouting up on every coast of the globe, as by its 
 wonderful power of communication with every region of the 
 earth, the work of calling the heathens into the kingdom 
 of Christ, of sending out the inestimable riches of the 
 Gospel to every country from which we draw the materials 
 of our temporal wealth and greatness. 
 
 Moreover the prospect just mentioned is a gladdening 
 sign, as the promise of a better spirit than has often pre- 
 vailed in the Church. Strange as it is in a Church whose 
 fundamental principle is the law of brotherly love, uttered 
 with every most holy sanction by the dying breath of her 
 Lord, in a Church that is nothing except as the one body 
 of her Lord, and whose only true life flows from a partici- 
 pation of the same Spirit, it has rarely happened that the 
 divisions and jealousies, by which she has perpetually been 
 torn, have been closed by a cordial union on the ground of 
 mutual selfsacrifice, and on a frank recognition of one life 
 pervading a diversity of members, and manifesting itself in 
 a diversity of forms. When two differing bodies of Chris- 
 tians have coalesced, it has mostly been either on the 
 worldly principle of hostility to a common foe, or else from 
 a lax disregard of truth, and a readiness to compromise it 
 for the sake of gaining an outward show of peace. Hardly 
 once and again in the course of eighteen centuries has such 
 a result proceeded, as we may trust it does in this case, 
 from a sincere and earnest desire of union. There was 
 something peculiarly cheering in this event, amid the
 
 43 
 
 painful din of controversy, the violent ebullitions of party- 
 spirit, by which our Church during the last spring has 
 been so calamitously agitated. How fervent then should 
 be our gratitude to the Divine Head of the Church, that at 
 such a moment He should have called us to a work in 
 which we may all lovingly join, and should have poured 
 down such a spirit of unity upon us to heal our rankling 
 divisions ! 
 
 Long as I have already detained you, you would feel 
 with me, I am sure, that there would be an impropriety if 
 I were to end this address without saying something on the 
 subject of the Rural Chapters, which have now been in 
 action for more than a twelvemonth in this Diocese, and 
 from the institution of which I ventured last year to anti- 
 cipate such happy results. Have those anticipations been 
 fulfilled? I know not what your verdict would be, my 
 brethren. Perhaps it would be a variable one. Those 
 who have borne their part in them dutifully will acknow- 
 ledge the benefit they have received. Those who have 
 been remiss will tax the institution with the inefficiency 
 which in fact is their own. For myself, if you ask my 
 opinion, my expectations have not been disappointed. I 
 do not mean that the Rural Chapters have done all the 
 good they might have done. Far, very far from it. But 
 who amongst us has done all the good he might have done 
 in the course of the last year? Of what institution, of 
 what man can it be said, that either of them ever did all 
 the good they might have done ? Of one Man indeed it 
 may be said truly ; but only because that Man was God, 
 in this as in all things differing from all other men. Nor 
 can we say it even of Him, except with reference to the 
 ceaseless outflowing of His love from its inexhaustible
 
 44 
 
 fountains. When His love came into contact with the will 
 of sinful man, its operations were immediately impeded. 
 And plenteously as His Spirit has ever been poured down 
 upon His Church, at no period of her history can it be 
 said of her that she has done all the good she might have 
 done. The human element has always been too powerful 
 in her, thwarting and intercepting the divine. Hence it 
 behoves us to moderate our expectations with regard to 
 the advantage which is to accrue from any institution. 
 For wisely devised and wholesomely constituted as it may 
 be, the men who are to give effect to it will always be 
 frail, sometimes rash and headstrong, sometimes jealous 
 and contentious, often careless, indolent, and supine. 
 
 The chief benefit which I lookt for, at least in the first 
 instance, from the Rural Chapters, the chief benefit anti- 
 cipated from them by our late revered Bishop, to whom we 
 owe their institution, lies in their aptness to promote 
 union and energy among the Clergy, to rouse us to be 
 more active, and to act more in consort. And though we 
 may all take shame to ourselves that the improvement has 
 not been far greater, most of you, I believe, will admit 
 that in these respects there has been some improvement ; 
 not a few have exprest their thankfulness that it has 
 been so great. My brethren, in this, as in the other 
 matters I have spoken of, it rests with ourselves to make 
 a right use of the advantages afforded us. That our 
 Rural Chapters do furnish us with the means of strength- 
 ening and steadying our own hands, as well as the hands 
 of the whole Church, in this Diocese, seems to me in- 
 disputable. They are a great privilege granted to us 
 here, and which as yet is only shared by a small portion of 
 our Church. They furnish us with the means of much
 
 45 
 
 good; but they will not do it for us. If we desire that they 
 should bring forth the fruits which they are designed and 
 well fitted to bring forth, we must come to the Meetings 
 with seriousness and openness of mind, with a purpose to 
 deliberate gravely and candidly for the good of the Church, 
 and of our several parishes, to seek the counsel of our 
 brethren, and to give them such counsel as we can. And 
 we must beware lest we too be like the man who beholds 
 his face in a glass, and then goes his way and forgets what 
 manner of man he was. For this is a danger to which we 
 are all exposed : indeed we are all far too like such a man ; 
 though some may be more, and some less so. Hence it 
 is much to be feared that, even after we have come to the 
 soundest resolutions at our Rural Chapters for the im- 
 provement of our conduct in the various functions of our 
 ministry, we may allow natural sloth and habitual negli- 
 gence to creep over us again, and to cast our better reso- 
 lutions into oblivion. 
 
 I have made these remarks without any specific refer- 
 ence, as a warning called for by the infirmities of our 
 nature, manifold experience teaching us that the best mea- 
 sures and institutions are for ever marred and frustrated by 
 these very causes. And having made them, I will repeat, 
 that, so far as I can judge, the working of the Chapters in 
 the past year has justified my anticipations ; more especially 
 in the growth of a friendlier spirit among many who had 
 previously been strangers, or who had eyed each other with 
 suspicion. To some it has doubtless been a satisfaction 
 and advantage to hear the opinions of their brethren on the 
 difficulties they may have met with in the administration of 
 their parishes. Some must have been comforted and en- 
 couraged by finding that their neighbours would cooperate
 
 46 
 
 with them in introducing improvements, which they had 
 already been wishing to introduce, but from which they 
 had refrained through fear of giving offense and provoking 
 opposition. Such fears have often too great an influence 
 over us, mainly because they find a response in our own 
 indifference and indolence. To a certain extent indeed 
 they are wholesome, so far as they withhold us from rash 
 changes. In like manner there is something salutary in 
 that vis inertiae, which is ever so strong in an agricultural 
 population, and which has always stoutly withstood inno- 
 vations, especially in matters pertaining to religion. It is 
 well that we should be ballasted with this force, so that we 
 may not drift before every puff of wind : but we must not 
 let it crush all motive power within us. For it is undis- 
 criminating, and equally resists all change, for the better, 
 no less than for the worse. It holds that whatever is, is 
 right, a maxim less dangerous perhaps, but scarcely truer 
 than the opposite, that whatever is, is wrong. Now .in 
 such things as belong to the body politic, wisdom will 
 ever allow a presumption in favour of that which is esta- 
 blisht ; for in the relations of this world men's understand- 
 ings have much discernment and skill, either to adapt their 
 institutions to themselves, or themselves to their institu- 
 tions. But in moral and spiritual things the presumption 
 is the reverse, against whatever is not plainly upheld by 
 some higher authority than custom. For our carnal nature 
 is unceasingly dragging us downward. Whether in a 
 Church, a parish, a single family, or an individual soul, 
 even though everything be set in perfect order today, no- 
 thing less than constant vigilance will keep evil from 
 creeping in on the morrow. Hence it is more than pro- 
 bable, especially when we consider the listlessness and
 
 47 
 
 laxity which have prevailed for generations, that a cler- 
 gyman, on entering upon the care of a parish, will find 
 divers abuses establisht there. He will find much that he 
 will think objectionable. Fortunately however we are not 
 left to our own judgement, which is so apt to be deluded by 
 all manner of causes, either in determining what is wrong, 
 or what ought to be substituted in its stead. We have the 
 Rubrics and Canons of the Church to guide us: and 
 though certain regulations in the Canons are so repugnant 
 to the present state of manners, that no discreet man 
 would think of enforcing them, yet, whenever our consi- 
 derate reflexion assures us that the revival of a disused 
 rule would be practically beneficial, and that the chief 
 obstacle to its revival lies in the prevalence of an opposite 
 practice, we ought to keep it before us as an object of 
 direct steady aim, even if we do not deem that prudence 
 will warrant us in carrying it immediately into effect. 
 Should the fear of man rise up to daunt us, we must 
 strengthen ourselves against it by the fear of God. But 
 in truth the difficulties, in this as in most other cases, lose 
 much of their formidableness, when we approach and lay 
 hand on them. If the rule of the Church be with us, and 
 there be nothing in that rule incompatible with the present 
 order of society, the goodwill of the best part of our pa- 
 rishioners will be on our side, when we try to, restore it in 
 the place of irregular and abusive practices, which mostly 
 are of no remote origin : and even though there be a little 
 growling opposition at first, it will soon blow over, and the 
 sky become clearer and brighter than before. For on 
 this we may rely, that energy and dutiful activity, if com- 
 bined with patience and gentleness and kindness, are the 
 surest arts by which a minister can win the affection of his 
 people.
 
 48 
 
 Now whenever we are attempting to revive wholesome 
 usages which have become obsolete, or whatsoever we may 
 be desirous of doing for the improvement of our parishes, 
 it must needs strengthen our hands and our hearts, to know 
 that our brethren all round us are engaged in the same 
 undertaking. This knowledge will be afforded by the 
 Chapters ; one of the effects of which, I cannot doubt, will 
 be to give an increasing influence to the best and most 
 active among the clergy. They will gradually lift up their 
 neighbours more and more toward the same pitch of 
 activity, and, while they are lifting up others, will be lifted 
 up still higher themselves ; and even the indolent will 
 hardly remain wholly unstirred. To the Rural Deans 
 more especially, if they are wise and pious, great power is 
 thus afforded for good : indeed their office is now become 
 a living part in the spiritual organization of the Church. 
 Nor do I foresee any likelihood that the Meetings will be 
 disturbed by party- spirit, although so many apples of strife 
 have recently been scattered through the Church. For the 
 subjects of discussion are almost exclusively practical, with 
 regard to which there is little controversy. Should dis- 
 puted points of doctrine emerge, as they may now and 
 then, it will be the business of the Rural Dean to prevent 
 their leading to protracted argumentations ; in doing which 
 he will be supported by the chief part of his Chapter, and 
 may count on any help I can give him. But in fact the 
 small numbers in each Chapter yield no facilities for the 
 formation of parties: and few things operate so strongly 
 to heal divisions and to produce union, as working together 
 in the same cause and with the same end in view, even 
 though some of us may be seeking it by one path, others 
 by another.
 
 49 
 
 These benefits, it seems to me, can hardly fail to spring 
 from our Rural Chapters : if they do, it must be through 
 our own fault. Already they have arisen to a certain ex- 
 tent from the Meetings during the past year ; and they are 
 likely to increase, as we gain more experience in the con- 
 duct of our discussions, and as, becoming more intimate, 
 we learn to open our hearts, and to feel greater confi- 
 dence in each other. Since many persons however like 
 to be paid with the hard cash of definite results, I will 
 pick out two or three, which may serve as samples of 
 the advantages to be expected from the resuscitation of 
 this ancient institution. 
 
 The measures which have been taken for promoting a 
 better observance of the Lord's day, are reported to have 
 been successful in many parishes, in some signally so, even 
 to the entire suppression of Sunday trading, where it had 
 previously been common. This illustrates how power 
 is increast by unity of action. The remonstrances of 
 the individual ministers have been regarded as of greater 
 force, when strengthened by the authority of their brethren 
 round about. Indeed in this matter, if we set to work 
 rightly, in our rural parishes we can hardly fail. Only we 
 must begin by persuading the employers of the poor to 
 pay their labourers early enough in the week for them 
 to make their purchases before the Saturday night ; and 
 we must induce the higher classes to take care that their 
 servants shall never call on the shopkeepers to open their 
 shops on a Sunday. It is due to the poor to preserve them 
 from these temptations; nor are we likely to find much 
 difficulty in doing so. 
 
 Another result of our Chapters has been, that the admi- 
 nistration of Baptism during Divine Service, according to 
 
 E
 
 50 
 
 the directions of the Rubric, is become much commoner 
 than it was, a twelvemonth ago : and though many persons 
 are still withheld by the fears I have been speaking of from 
 correcting the corrupt practice, which a short time since 
 was almost universal, but which in most cases, I believe, is 
 of recent introduction, I trust they will cast away those 
 fears, when they see how easily the change may be brought 
 about, and with what unmixt advantage. I will not take upon 
 me to pronounce what course may be most expedient in 
 the enormous parishes of our large towns. Those parishes 
 are altogether monstrous anomalies in our parochial system ; 
 which can never be carried into effect in them, until they 
 are broken up into a number of parts. But in rural pa- 
 rishes there can be no valid reason for our refraining from 
 fulfilling our duty: and in all these, I trust, the rubrical 
 practice will ere long be reestablish^ and Baptism admi- 
 nistered at the proper time, at least on one Sunday in each 
 month ; such a mode of administering it having been 
 recommended by our Bishop to the priests and deacons 
 recently ordained at Chichester. That the irregular prac- 
 tice is of no long standing in many parishes, my own recol- 
 lection convinces me. In my boyhood Baptism used to be 
 administered during the service in churches where that rite 
 has since been transferred to the end of it. Other persons 
 too of my own age remember the same change ; for which 
 I know not what can have been the motive, unless the 
 unwillingness to keep people too long in church. With 
 the view of indulging the miserable apathy and slothfulness 
 of the congregation, this holy service was thrust out of its 
 right place, into one where it is wholly inappropriate. No 
 wonder that parents and sponsors grew to look on the 
 words as an empty form, when the minister himself allowed
 
 51 
 
 the congregation to leave the church just before he received 
 the child into the congregation. From the first ages it 
 has been thought desirable that this reception should take 
 place on grand and solemn occasions, when the great 
 congregation is assembled. Such too is the principle of 
 our own Church. Yet, in spite of principle, in spite of 
 canonical order, we have turned the service into a kind of 
 contradiction, lest people should grow weary, if they had 
 to stay a quarter of an hour longer in church. No one, I 
 think, can have witnest the effect of this most beautiful 
 and impressive ceremony, when performed in the midst of 
 a numerous congregation, no minister assuredly can have 
 so performed it, without feeling that it is endowed with 
 new life and power. The reception of the child into the 
 Church becomes a reality. The congregation pray for the 
 child, call upon God to wash and sanctify it, and give 
 thanks to God for having regenerated it, thus testifying 
 the interest which a body of Christians ought to feel 
 in every fresh neophyte added to their number. By the 
 abusive practice, which is so deplorably common, we rob 
 the child of the prayers of the congregation. Some persons 
 may indeed think that, constituted as our congregations 
 are, they seldom join heartily in these prayers, and that 
 consequently it is better to be surrounded only by those 
 who do so join. This however is an exclusive sectarian 
 feeling, exaggerating the evil, which it tends to increase, 
 and would almost destroy all manner of public worship. 
 It is one of the forms of the Donatist heresy, into which 
 serious-minded persons are so apt to fall, until they attain 
 to a true idea of the Church, and of the presence of the 
 Holy Spirit in the Church. Most salutary moreover is it 
 for us all to be often reminded of our baptismal vows, most 
 
 E 2
 
 52 
 
 salutary to be reminded of that Infinite Grace, through 
 which we become the children of God (o). 
 
 Again, it has been resolved at the Chapters, that the 
 administration of the Holy Communion shall be more fre- 
 quent than it was in many of our parishes. Here too, as 
 I said above, we are only at the beginning of a better state 
 of things : but even this is matter for thankfulness ; and 
 having begun, if we do not fall back, we shall continue 
 advancing. This increast frequency is not only desirable 
 for the sake of those who long to be nourisht again and 
 again with the blessed food ordained by our Lord for 
 the sustenance of our souls. It has also been found, I 
 believe invariably, that the effect of more frequent Commu- 
 nions is to augment the number of communicants, and to 
 lessen those superstitious fears with which so many regard 
 this Sacrament, and which are fostered by the rarity 
 of its celebration (H). Every way indeed this rarity pam- 
 pers our natural proneness to look upon a religious rite 
 as an opus operatum, and will hardly allow us to believe 
 that we are called to a perpetual living communion with 
 Christ. Here let me recommend you to exhort all such 
 among the candidates for the approaching Confirmation as 
 you deem qualified by their seriousness of mind, to become 
 communicants immediately. To this end it seems to me 
 expedient that the Lord's Supper should be celebrated on 
 the Sunday after the Confirmation. Thus a good habit 
 may be begun at a time when the youthful mind is under 
 your immediate influence: the serious impressions pro- 
 duced by your preparatory instruction, and deepened by 
 the Confirmation itself, will be still more inwrought by a 
 devout participation of the food appointed for the strength- 
 ening and refreshing of our souls : and many of the parents
 
 53 
 
 also may perhaps be induced to come, even those who have 
 never come before, with their children to* the Lord's Table, 
 and to partake along with them of that Holy Body and 
 Blood, which was given for the salvation of mankind. 
 
 Another benefit conferred on the Archdeaconry through 
 the means of the Rural Chapters, and this is the last 
 I will mention, though the list might easily be swelled, 
 is the complete abolition, such, I believe, it has been, 
 of the practice of requiring a fee for administering the 
 sacrament of Baptism, and of that of making a distinction, 
 in reading the Burial Service, between those who pay a 
 fee, and those who do not. The former practice, while it 
 savours of something approaching to simony, and seems 
 strangely at variance with the declaration that the Gospel 
 is given without money and without price, presses hardly 
 upon the poor at a time when they are ill able to meet 
 their other inevitable expenses, and thus has often driven 
 them to take their children to be baptized at some dis- 
 senting meeting-house : at present it might lead many to 
 be content with having their children named by the Regis- 
 trar. The other practice, of excluding a corpse from the 
 church, of denying the mourners the consolation of hearing 
 the blessed words in which the Apostle sets forth our 
 Lord's victory over death, unless they will pay us for read- 
 ing them, this practice, at a time too when we are in the 
 immediate presence of that power which levels all dis- 
 tinctions, and when our lips are declaring the transitori- 
 ness of all earthly possessions, is shocking to every right 
 feeling, cruel to the mourners, and must needs bring re- 
 proach on the Church. Contrary as these practices are 
 to all ecclesiastical principle, they are not uncommon, I 
 am told, in some places : in this Archdeaconry they were
 
 54 
 
 very rare, and now, I trust, are wholly extinct; as, I pray 
 God, they soon may be throughout every Diocese in 
 England (i). 
 
 This enumeration of the benefits which have accrued 
 from the Rural Chapters would be very incomplete, if I 
 were to omit that which I myself have derived from 
 them. That too, I am conscious, might and ought to 
 have been greater: but even as it is, I cannot be other- 
 wise than thankful for the advantages they have afforded 
 me toward a less inadequate discharge of the duties of 
 my office. They have enabled me to acquire a knowledge 
 of the Clergy in the Archdeaconry in the course of the 
 last year, which I should else have been many years in 
 gaining. They have enabled me to hold regular periodical 
 communications with you all, on every matter on which it 
 has appeared to me expedient to advise and consult with 
 you : and the foregoing statements may shew that the 
 intercourse between us has not been altogether barren 
 of beneficial results. From the Reports of some of the 
 Rural Deans I have derived encouragement and instruc- 
 tion. Indeed the experience of the last year has abun- 
 dantly confirmed my conviction that these Chapters are 
 powerful means for improving the organization of the 
 Church, for increasing its energy, unity, and order. They 
 give us, what is wanting at the Visitation, an oppor- 
 tunity of taking counsel together on subjects of general 
 interest. Greatly therefore shall I rejoice if other Dioceses 
 follow our example: for I know no institution by means 
 of which persons invested with ecclesiastical authority will 
 be so well able to exercise an invigorating influence on 
 the clergy committed to their charge (j). 
 
 Here let me offer you a suggestion, with the view of
 
 55 
 
 adding to the utility of our Chapters. As one main pur- 
 pose of the Meetings will be to discuss all manner of ques- 
 tions connected with the offices of our Church, and as 
 questions of Ecclesiastical Law will be often occurring, it 
 seems to me desirable that at every Chapter-house there 
 should be a collection of books treating on the history 
 of our Church, and more especially on the Liturgy, the 
 Articles, and the Canons, as well as of books on Ecclesias- 
 tical Law. On these subjects every clergyman ought to 
 be competently informed. Indeed, if it be disgraceful for 
 the members of other professions to be ignorant of the 
 general principles of the art which they practise, if 
 such persons are ordinarily stigmatized as empirics and 
 quacks, still more disgraceful ought it to be deemed in 
 us, to whom clerkly acquirements especially pertain, 
 and one main business of whose lives is to administer 
 the various services of our Common Prayer, if we are 
 not thoroughly acquainted with their meaning and pur- 
 pose : and these in many cases cannot be understood, with- 
 out, a historical knowledge of the circumstances under which 
 our Liturgy was compiled, and of the controversies which 
 particular expressions have excited, or which they were de- 
 signed to decide or allay. The collection I have mentioned 
 might soon be made by means of a small annual subscrip- 
 tion from each member of the Chapter. If the plan were 
 enlarged, so as to become the groundwork of theological 
 libraries, to be attacht to each Chapter, and to pass from 
 one Rural Dean to his successor, such libraries would in 
 course of time offer inestimable advantages to the Clergy, 
 and might help to do away that ignorance of theology, which 
 has long been among the scandals of our Church. I mere- 
 ly throw out this hint, without entering into details, which
 
 56 
 
 indeed I have by no means digested. But if any Chapter 
 approves of the suggestion, I shall be very glad to discuss 
 the details with you, and to render you every assistance in 
 my power. The only observations I will allow myself to 
 make are, that such libraries, it seems to me, ought to 
 consist of standard theological works, to the exclusion 
 of works of the day, of which we see too much already, 
 and which would else engross all the funds ; and that the 
 present time, when the Library of the Fathers, the Library 
 of the Reformers, and the Library of Anglocatholic Theo- 
 logy are in course of publication, is peculiarly fitted for 
 the forming of such collections. 
 
 And now, before I close this Charge, I must address a 
 few words to you also, my friends, who are come, according 
 to ancient practice, to attend this Visitation, in order to 
 make a solemn declaration that you will perform the duties 
 of the office of Churchwarden, which you have been elected 
 to fill. Your office too is an honorable one, and, if you dis- 
 charge its duties rightly, would scarcely be inferior in im- 
 portance to any, except that of the Minister, in your several 
 Parishes (K). To you therefore also I say, as I said to my 
 brother Clergy, that you are called to your office at a time 
 when a better and more vigorous spirit is stirring in the 
 Church, and that therefore it behoves you also to be better 
 and more active than those who went before you. They 
 might alledge that they did not know their duties : you 
 shall not be able to plead this excuse. They may have 
 had no one to urge them to do their duty : if you neglect 
 yours, it shall be against knowledge, and in spite of exhort- 
 ation. Remember too that your solemn declaration is, that 
 you will " faithfully and diligently perform the duties of 
 your office, according to the best of your skill and
 
 57 
 
 knowledge." These are not empty words; and none of 
 you, I trust, will so regard them. When you make this 
 solemn declaration, you should do so with a hearty pur- 
 pose to abide by it ; and of that purpose you should never 
 lose sight so long as you continue in office. 
 
 On one most important part of your duties indeed, that 
 which relates to the preservation of good order and dis- 
 cipline in your parishes, I will not speak today. For 
 this is a subject involved in so many difficulties, through 
 the vast changes which have taken place during the last 
 two hundred years, and in part through divers Statutes 
 at variance with the obligations which were originally 
 incumbent upon you, that far more knowledge is re- 
 quisite than I yet possess, and far more consideration than 
 I have been able to give to matters so intricate and per- 
 plext, before I can venture to pronounce a positive opinion 
 as to what it would be right and expedient for you to do, 
 in the present state of the laws, and of manners and feel- 
 ings in England. Another time I may possibly be enabled 
 by the counsel of my wiser friends to point out to you in 
 what way you may and ought to help your Minister in 
 upholding order and morality. For the present I will turn 
 to that which has long been the prominent part of your 
 office, from which too you derive your name, the duty of 
 taking care of the house of God, of seeing that it be in 
 good substantial repair throughout, that it be clean and 
 well- aired, and stored with all the furniture belonging to 
 it. In order that you may better understand how to dis- 
 charge this portion of your office, I have requested the 
 Registrar to give each of you a copy of some Hints designed 
 for your especial use, written in plain good English, and 
 abounding in sensible intelligent remarks. If you read
 
 58 
 
 these Hints through with attention, and compare the condi- 
 tion of your own churches with the description of what they 
 ought to be, most of you will discover much that needs to 
 be amended. What then will your duty be ? Why, to 
 set about amending it forthwith. I do not mean that all 
 that is now wrong must be put to rights at once, in a 
 single year. After our fathers and forefathers have been 
 doing everything for a couple of centuries to spoil our 
 churches, when through all that time they seem hardly 
 ever to have dreamt of making the house of God look 
 grand and beautiful, but merely of making themselves com- 
 fortable in it at the least expense, it cannot be required 
 of you that you should undo all this mischief, that you 
 should restore whatever has been let fall into decay, that 
 you should get rid of everything which is now disfiguring 
 your churches, and substitute what will be more in accord 
 with their purpose and character, at once, in a single year. 
 This cannot be required of you, I say : can it be expected ? 
 I am afraid, not of many of you. There is a Churchwarden 
 indeed in the Archdeaconry, who has done this, and more. 
 His church was originally a very fine one, among the 
 earliest in the County; but it was in a ruinous state. One 
 whole transept had fallen in : the earth in places had accu- 
 mulated above the top of the original doorway, which was 
 blockt up, and almost hid : all the old windows had been 
 taken out, and replaced, according to custom, by others 
 which were a deformity to the building. Yet this excellent 
 Churchwarden, though he is only a tenant from year to 
 year in the parish, began, of his own accord, to restore 
 the windows: then, being encouraged by the success of 
 his first undertaking, he proceeded, as men are wont, from 
 one good work to a better, and engaged in restoring the
 
 59 
 
 transept, which will soon be completed : many other im- 
 portant repairs have been executed: and his church will 
 ere long be an ornament, not merely to his parish, but to 
 the whole County. My friends, this good work has been 
 effected in the last year by one of your own order, a farmer, 
 as most of you are, in a small parish, where he himself is 
 the principal ratepayer. May I not exhort you then to fol- 
 low so good an example ? You have not so much to do. 
 Go then and do your less work with the same spirit with 
 which he has done his greater. 
 
 At all events do something. Make a beginning in im- 
 proving your churches. But be on your guard to let the 
 improvement be a real one. To this end let your plan be 
 laid before the Rural Dean, and have his approbation, 
 before you set about it. Or if you will ask my advice, I 
 will gladly give you the best I can. For many church- 
 wardens in past days have been desirous of doing some- 
 thing in their churches : they have wisht to improve them, 
 according to their own notions of improvements : and 
 yet they have only hurt and disfigured them. You will 
 easily see that they could hardly do otherwise. For in 
 the architecture and arrangement of churches everything 
 has a place, a purpose, and a fitness ; all the parts are 
 connected by manifold relations; and the knowledge of 
 these matters does not come of itself: it requires obser- 
 vation and comparison, study and thought. Now these 
 things will mostly lie out of your beat : you have far dif- 
 ferent pursuits and occupations : but the man who meddles 
 with what he does not understand is pretty sure to make 
 mistakes. 
 
 Besides there is another reason why the alterations 
 in our churches are often anything but improvements.
 
 60 
 
 They are not made on a right principle, from a right 
 motive. They are not made with any reference to the 
 glory of God. They are not made with the view of 
 enabling the multitude of His people to fall down and 
 worship Him. But they are often made with a twofold 
 end, one more paltry than the other, bodily comfort, as it 
 is called, and cheapness. I regret to say that some of the 
 novelties in our churches, which have been prompted by 
 a regard to these two ends, are very recent. In several 
 of those which I have visited during the year I have been 
 in office, the first object that has struck my eye has 
 been a hideous black pipe, rising perpendicularly through 
 the centre of the church, and piercing through the roof. 
 We are grown so chilly nowadays, that we cannot sit in 
 church, unless we have a stove to warm it. Our fathers 
 were hardier. But no matter : I will not object to a 
 stove, if it be so placed as not to be unsightly. This 
 however is never thought of. We think about nothing 
 save our own comfort. We go to church to be warm, and 
 to loll at our ease ; and provided these ends are gained, 
 what reck we how the thing looks? Nay, some will 
 doubtless boast of their spirituality, that they care only 
 for substance, not for appearance. My friends, would any 
 of you allow such a piece of ugliness to rise up in the 
 middle of your parlour? Would the gentry in your 
 parishes allow it to rise up in the middle of their drawing- 
 rooms? In old times people thought that the house of 
 God ought to be the most beautiful building in the parish, 
 and that everything about it ought to be rich and choice. 
 We on the other hand are anxious to have our own houses, 
 and everything in them and about them, handsome and 
 costly : and the refuse of the parish we give to God. How
 
 61 
 
 can you look up at those fine pillars and arches which our 
 ancestors raised, at those windows which they adorned with 
 carved tracery, unless indeed you have hidden or defaced 
 them, how can you look up at these, and then cast your 
 eyes on your black monster thrust up into the midst of 
 them, without feeling them cry Shame upon you ? And 
 humiliating as the contrast is, when we think merely of 
 the outward appearance, it is still more so when we con- 
 sider that, in the noble works of our ancestors, nothing 
 was done for themselves, for any personal convenience of 
 their own ; while our pitiful deformities are stuck up mere- 
 ly for our own sakes, worthy offerings for such a shrine. 
 Let these black pipes, I entreat you, be removed; and 
 place your stoves where they will not offend the eye. 
 Many as are the contrivances of modern mechanism for 
 the diffusion of heat, a church may easily be warmed in 
 these days without any such disfigurement : and if your 
 parishioners are urgent for warmth, they must not grudge 
 to pay for a seemly manner of obtaining it (L). 
 
 This request, I trust, applies only to a few among you. 
 But all of you may easily find plenty of work for the year 
 that you are in office. Indeed it is far more difficult to 
 know where to end, than where to begin. I seldom enter 
 an old church, but a wish arises to sweep away almost 
 everything that is in it, and leave little except the bare 
 walls, to be fitted up anew in a manner more becoming 
 the purpose of the place: for hardly anything has been 
 put up in such churches during the last two hundred 
 years, which is not objectionable in taste, and few 
 things which are not reprehensible in spirit. In my 
 Charge last year, and in the notes appended to it, I 
 recommended several improvements, one or more of which
 
 62 
 
 are needed in almost every parish church in the Arch- 
 deaconry, and which therefore may supply you all with 
 employment. I will not enlarge upon them now. I will 
 merely advise you briefly to restore stone mullions of an 
 appropriate form in your windows, wherever they have 
 been supplanted by wooden ones, and to remove the white- 
 wash from all the stonework and woodwork in your 
 churches. You cannot conceive, until you have seen, what 
 an improvement this will make in the look of the whole 
 building. Above all, I would earnestly exhort you to get 
 rid of the pews in your churches, whenever you have an 
 opportunity. Get rid of them all, if you can : if not, get 
 rid of as many as you can. Whenever a pew wants re- 
 pairing, substitute an open bench for it. If you will write 
 to me on the subject, I will gladly supply you with de- 
 signs for such benches. This change is not merely most 
 beneficial with reference to the beauty of the building; 
 but it has a high moral and religious value. Few things 
 have been more hurtful than pews to the character and 
 spirit of our worship. They are a monument and type 
 of the torpour and selfishness which have for ages dead- 
 ened the Church. They shew how we had lost every spark 
 of congregational feeling, all notion of the Communion of 
 Saints. Besides, you all know what a source of jealousies 
 and quarrels they are in your parishes. Of the disputes, 
 in which I have been called to interpose since I held my 
 present office, more than half have been about pews (M). 
 
 Into the question of Churchrates, and the difficulties it 
 is at present involved in, I will not enter. For all ne- 
 cessary repairs, and for such things as are requisite for 
 the canonical furniture of a church, I feel confident, you 
 are justified in raising a rate at all events : and should you
 
 63 
 
 meet with any difficulty, I shall readily do what lies 
 in my power to support you. For extraordinary works, 
 which belong rather to the beautifying than to the re- 
 pair of the church, I would not raise a very large rate, 
 unless it met with the approbation of the great body of 
 the parish. Let such works be done by voluntary con- 
 tributions. Freewill offerings are ever the most ac- 
 ceptable to God. When the ark of the Lord was to be 
 made, Moses commanded that whosoever was of a willing 
 heart should bring an offering to the Lord. And they came, 
 every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his 
 spirit made willing ; and they brought the Lord's offering to 
 the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all the 
 service, and for the holy garments. Nay, they brought more 
 than enough; so that Moses was forced to restrain them 
 from bringing. Now shall we never see anything like this 
 in our Church, in the Church of the Saviour ? If they did 
 thus much for the service of the ministration of condemna- 
 tion, in the feeling that even that was glorious, shall not 
 we do as much, say rather far more, for the service of 
 the ministration of righteousness, which greatly exceeds 
 in glory? Yes surely, my brethren, if the Spirit of 
 God stirs us, we shall : and there are signs that He is 
 stirring us ; there are persons, and not a few, of a 
 willing heart, who are bringing their offerings largely 
 to the temple. It is noteworthy too, that the very peo- 
 ple who brought their gifts so abundantly that Moses 
 was obliged to restrain them, had a short time be- 
 fore brought their jewels as offerings for the setting up 
 of the golden calf. The mercy of God, in giving them 
 back the tables of the Law, moved them to repentance, 
 and roused them to a zealous love. Shall it not then be
 
 64 
 
 the same with us ? We have been worshiping ourselves, 
 bringing our offerings to ourselves, to those meanest idols, 
 our own comfort and luxury. Yet God has had mercy on 
 us, and has called us anew with a mighty voice to worship 
 Him, to bring our gifts to Him. So let us all do, one and 
 all, Clergy and Laity, high and low, let us bring all our 
 gifts, our best and most precious gifts, the richest gifts of 
 our substance, the gifts of our bodies, the gifts of our 
 hearts and souls and minds, and lay them humbly before 
 His throne : and may He graciously accept our gifts, and 
 send His Spirit to hallow them, and to build them up into 
 a holy temple to His everlasting glory !
 
 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE A : p. 20. 
 
 DB ARNOLD, in the Preface to his recently publisht Sermons on 
 Christian Life, has said : " To revive Christ's Church is to restore 
 its disfranchist members, the Laity, to the discharge of their 
 proper duties in it, and to the consciousness of their paramount 
 importance. All who value the inestimable blessings of Christ's 
 Church should labour in arousing the Laity to a sense of their 
 great share in them. In particular, that discipline, which is one 
 of the greatest of these blessings, never can, and indeed never 
 ought to be restored, till the Church resumes its lawful authority, 
 and puts an end to the usurpation of its powers by the Clergy. 
 There is a feeling now awakened among the lay members of 
 our Church, which, if it can but be rightly directed, may, by 
 God's blessing, really arrive at something truer and deeper than 
 satisfied the last century, or than satisfied the last seventeen 
 centuries. Otherwise, whatever else may be improved, the Laity 
 will take care that church -discipline shall continue to slumber; 
 and they will best serve the Church by doing so." (pp. lii. liii.) 
 
 This is strong, but scarcely too strong. My excellent friend 
 has done a good service to the Church, by taking such high ground 
 in speaking of the rights of the Laity, as integral members of the 
 Church, whose conscious, active, efficient churchmembership is 
 indispensable to the health of the Church, and to the fulness of 
 its life. Most truly too does Coleridge lay down, in the passage 
 prefixt by Dr Arnold to his Preface, that the great pervading 
 errour and corruption in the history of the Church of Christ is
 
 66 NOTE A. 
 
 not so much the usurpation of the Papacy, as that by which 
 the rights and privileges of the Church were narrowed and re- 
 stricted to the Clergy. If we take a' political point of view, 
 looking, not at the power of the Spirit in the hearts of individuals, 
 but at the working of institutions, this is plainly the source of 
 the great weakness of the Church, of her inefficiency through so many 
 ages. This is the reason why now, in the nineteenth century of 
 Christianity, the primeval forest of heathenism is still spread over 
 so large a part even of the Christianized world, why the stumps 
 and stubs of that forest rise up in almost every field, in almost 
 every heart. For the Laity were told that it was not their business 
 to root them out ; and the Clergy, without the aid of the Laity, 
 were quite unequal to the task. This division of the Church 
 has fatally narrowed and crippled the Kingdom of Christ. It 
 has led the opposite parties to eye each other with jealousy, 
 to keep watch and guard against each other, instead of working 
 together as brethren in the same divine task of love. It has 
 rendered the Laity profane, by telling them that they were so, 
 by telling them that they had no duties as members of the Church, 
 except silence and submission ; wherefore the faculties which they 
 felt teeming within them, and craving to be employed, sought 
 employment in the service of the world. It has rendered the 
 Clergy secular, by busying them in enlarging and fencing in and 
 protecting their own dominion, instead of Christ's. It has dead- 
 ened the corporate life of the Church; inasmuch as the Laity, 
 being debarred from a share in that life, were fain to suppress 
 it, and refused to recognize an authority, which, they justly felt, 
 was founded on usurpation. Nor will a vigorous ecclesiastical 
 government ever be formed, until, after the excellent example set 
 by the American Episcopal Church, we return to the practice of 
 the Apostolic age, as evinced in the first Council of Jerusalem, by 
 calling in the Laity to occupy their appropriate place in our 
 ecclesiastical synods. 
 
 These questions, whether we look to the past, or to the present 
 and the future, are so vast, and encompast with so many diffi- 
 culties, that it is impossible to do more than glance at them in
 
 NOTE A. 67 
 
 this Note. In these days more especially are they of pressing 
 urgency, since a sense of the dignity of the Church has been 
 revived, and is expressing itself so loudly, and almost vociferously, 
 with more or less of indistinctness and confusedness, from one 
 end of the land to the other. If the Church which we magnify 
 be kept in due subordination to its Divine Head, and if, while 
 we magnify it, we do not substitute a part for the whole, but 
 contemplate it in all the fulness of its members, as the visible 
 Communion of Saints, the body of Christ, with all the diversities 
 of its organization and functions, then the renewed reverence 
 for the Church will be full of blessings. But if, as from the 
 exaggeration and partial tendencies of human nature is ever hap- 
 pening, the Church be set up as an object of worship so as to 
 conceal its Lord, or if we, the ministers of the Church, forgetting 
 that our calling is to be the least therein, aspire to be the greatest, 
 nay, would fain be the whole Church, or if we allow that carnal 
 spirit among the Laity, which shrinks from privileges, because 
 they involve duties, to throw all the responsibilities and privileges 
 of Christianity upon us, by which spirit the assumptions of the 
 Clergy have in all ages been facilitated and forwarded, then 
 the present religious movement will only terminate in new forms 
 of hierarchal ecclesiolatry and factitious asceticism on the one side, 
 and in bolder profaneness and infidelity on the other. 
 
 With reference to the immediate argument of the text, Dr 
 Arnold, I believe, is quite justified in conceiving that the decay 
 and extinction of godly discipline in the Church has been 
 mainly owing to this primary corruption, whereby the functions, 
 which ought to have been exercised by the whole Church, were 
 exercised almost exclusively by the Clergy. This gave a partial 
 character to all measures of discipline. They no longer came down 
 with the authority which they would have borne, had they been 
 determined by the voice of the whole congregation. The Laity, 
 having no concern in passing the sentence, none of the conscious 
 thoughtful responsibility which such a charge would have awa- 
 kened, none of the feelings of right and duty, which in well-con- 
 stituted minds attend upon the possession of moral privileges,
 
 68 NOTE A. 
 
 revolted against penalties, which they were merely called on to 
 endure : and thus the censures, which found no sanction in public 
 opinion, no response in the consciences of the congregation, became 
 some of them objects of ridicule, and all lost their power, and 
 fell into disuse. Nor assuredly will any measures be effectual 
 to restore a vigorous discipline, until the Laity regain their full 
 Christian franchise in the Church. Meanwhile, with a view of 
 preparing the way for this great end, no less than of doing what 
 we can, in the present maimed and divided state of the Church, 
 for the purification of morals, we should endeavour, each in his 
 own sphere, to obtain the active cooperation of the Laity in 
 whatever we may attempt for this purpose, as well as in all 
 our other labours, which do not pertain exclusively to our mi- 
 nisterial office. For we have a twofold work, on the one 
 hand to divest ourselves of the long-cherisht notion that we 
 are the only persons qualified to exercise authority in the 
 Church, on the other hand to awaken the Laity to a conviction 
 that they have rights and privileges and duties, that they are 
 no longer in a state of infancy under the bondage of ordinances 
 imposed by others, but that they too have received the adoption 
 of sons, and are called as well as we to be members of the same 
 royal Priesthood. 
 
 On the measures whereby the evil spoken of in the Charge 
 may best be checkt, I do not feel competent to speak with any- 
 thing of confidence. When the Clergy have deliberated seriously 
 in their Chapters on the subject, and have endeavoured, in their 
 several parishes, to carry those measures, which may appear the 
 most promising, and which they may consider themselves warrant- 
 ed in .adopting, into effect, we may be enabled to come to more 
 satisfactory conclusions. For myself I incline to believe that even 
 a very slight measure, by which a mark of shame should be 
 stampt on the sin of antenuptial concubinage, by which it should 
 be shewn that this sin is deemed a sin, and is offensive as such 
 in the eyes of man as well as of God, would operate very bene- 
 ficially, and would greatly diminish the frequency of the offense. 
 For such a moral delusion is spread over the minds of the lower
 
 NOTE A. 69 
 
 orders in many parts of England, that fornication, which is to 
 be followed by marriage, is scarcely esteemed a sin, or held to 
 deserve any reproach or shame. Hence in one parish, I have 
 been assured, much good has been done by merely debar- 
 ring the mothers of children born within too short a period of 
 their marriage, from certain benefits granted to others at the 
 time of lying in. A minister too, I should hold, would be fully 
 justified in making a distinction in churching such mothers, where 
 it is the ordinary practice for women to be churcht in the middle 
 of the service, by requiring that these, whose presence ought 
 to be a scandal in the eyes of the congregation, should not come 
 forward till after the congregation has left the church. In like 
 manner, as one main purpose why the Rubric enjoins that Baptism 
 should be administered before the congregation, is, that this tends 
 to edification, we might surely make a distinction in this case 
 also, and refuse to baptize children evidently begotten, as well 
 as those born out of wedlock, until the service was over ; whence 
 the collateral advantage would accrue, that the public adminis- 
 tration of Baptism would be regarded as an honorable privilege. 
 
 These suggestions, to which I do not perceive any objection 
 of moment, are however merely thrown out for the consideration 
 of the Clergy ; in the hope that we shall at least endeavour to 
 do something to check the crying evil by which the character 
 of our lower orders is so dismally degraded. In the present state 
 of the Church, bereft as we are of the power of self-government, 
 precluded from adapting our canons to our needs, and from legis- 
 lating to meet new emergencies as they arise, it is impossible 
 to take any vigorous measures for the restoration of discipline; 
 and, as I said above, so long as the Laity are excluded from 
 their rightful position, no vigorous measures can be effective. But 
 let us at least do what we can toward upholding purity of morals. 
 Although Dr Arnold says that discipline " never ought to be 
 restored, till the Church puts an end to the usurpation of its powers 
 by the Clergy," he surely does not mean thereby, that we are 
 to fold our hands and do nothing, until that time arrives. He 
 cannot mean that it is wrong to do what we can even at present.
 
 70 NOTE B. 
 
 I am very thankful that my brother Archdeacon has spoken on 
 this subject with his usual wisdom in his Charge to the 
 Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Chichester. Let those who love 
 God, and desire to forward the work of the Spirit in the purifi- 
 cation of His people, apply themselves to the task with earnest 
 hearts; and something will be effected. At the same time I 
 must repeat that the good results which we desire are not to 
 be anticipated so much from this measure or from that, as from 
 the zeal tempered with love, wherewith we shall labour to win 
 and draw x>ur people to holiness of life. 
 
 NOTE B : p. 2 1 . 
 
 Some of the evils which result from the exclusive use of the 
 Bible in schools, are pointed out in a Letter in the Educational 
 Magazine for 1840 (vol. i. pp. 111-^115). Mr Field too, in 
 his valuable Report on the State of Education in the Diocese of 
 Salisbury (p. 136), says; " I found an increasing conviction that 
 it is right and necessary to introduce more books of secular and 
 general knowledge into our schools, if only for the purpose of 
 elucidating and applying the Holy Scriptures. And I observed 
 that, where such books and subjects had actually been introduced, 
 there was no apparent deficiency of instruction or knowledge in 
 religious truths. I also heard doubts sometimes exprest about 
 the expediency and propriety of using the Bible, or portions of 
 it, for instructing children to read and spell." 
 
 This is a matter of no slight importance. I cannot but believe 
 that one of the causes which have kept our National Schools hither- 
 to from being as efficient as they ought to have been for the 
 religious no less than for the intellectual education of the people, 
 has been the common practice of using the Bible as the one class- 
 book for every lesson. Being rightfully resolved to withstand 
 those pseudo-philosophers, who maintained that religious know- 
 ledge lies beyond the reach of a child's mind, we ran into the 
 opposite extreme. We did not duly consider that the course 
 of nature, which also is God's ordinance, is to train and unfold
 
 NOTE B. 71 
 
 our minds in the first instance by the training and unfolding of 
 our senses, and to lead them through the knowledge of outward 
 things to the knowledge of inward, through the things which 
 come home to the understanding and heart of the natural man, 
 to those things which can only be apprehended by the higher 
 exercises of reason, of imagination, and of faith. Hence, while we 
 sin against the child, if we confine ourselves to the development 
 of its lower faculties, we cannot fulfill our duty to it, if, neglecting 
 and overleaping the lower, we only give heed to the higher. 
 Knowledge thus communicated, though its objects may be spi- 
 ritual, will not be spiritual knowledge, but shadowy. A sense 
 of unreality easily attaches itself to words in books, unless 
 we are accustomed from the first to connect them with what 
 we know and see and feel and understand. We, in the educated 
 classes, have always found it difficult to put life into words in 
 a forein tongue, or to catch the life that is in them, any other 
 life at least than that which we have discerned in the counterparts 
 of those words in our own tongue : and how difficult it is to feel 
 the meaning and power even of the words in our own tongue, 
 nine tenths of literature bear witness. Now when the Bible is 
 the only book put into the hands of children, they are by no 
 means duly supplied with the requisite help for perceiving the 
 fibres which connect the world of books with the living world 
 around them, and through which these worlds act reciprocally 
 on each other. For though the Bible is of all books the most 
 living, though it has a universal life in it, addressing itself to all 
 that is deep and high and lasting in man, though it is the only 
 book which comes home to all times and nations, to all classes 
 and ages, and to every stage of education and knowledge, still 
 there is much in its circumstances and details remote from or- 
 dinary observation : and even of that which speaks to all, much 
 does not speak to ears which are open in all, and to that in all 
 which is ready to answer, but mostly to that which is latent, 
 dormant, which requires to be drawn out and developt, and which 
 often on the contrary has rather been crusht and stifled, or at least 
 allowed to wither and starve. There are children indeed, whose
 
 72 NOTE B. 
 
 spiritual life unfolds itself with such wonderful precocity, some- 
 times too under circumstances apparently the most unfavorable, 
 that, even in very early years, they are enabled to feel the 
 reality and truth of what they read in the Bible. For thus out 
 of the mouth of babes and sucklings God still perfects praise. 
 These instances however are rare ; and it is not for such chil- 
 dren that a system of education is to be framed. In many the 
 germs of spiritual life pine and dwindle for want of parental 
 culture : in many they are stunted by all manner of hostile in- 
 fluences, by the daily sights and sounds of worldliness, or, it 
 may be, of vice. In many those germs will in themselves be 
 very feeble, whether from a general sluggishness . of nature, or 
 from being outgrown and overshadowed by other impulses and 
 tendencies, which find readier aliment and fosterage. Owing to 
 these and other causes, if we make the Bible the one manual 
 of instruction, a vast number of words in it will be without mean- 
 ing to the children who are thus taught. Still less will they 
 discern the meaning of those words as combined into sentences, 
 even the logical meaning, not to speak of the moral and spiritual. 
 And what must be the case, when, as not seldom happens, 
 children of twelve or thirteen are called up in class to read a 
 chapter of St Paul ? Having no other book, the teacher, when 
 the historical books have been read through again and again, 
 thinks it behoves him, for the sake of variety, to drag the children 
 through the Epistles. This should be absolutely prohibited. The 
 mischief of such practices is not 'merely that the time is wasted, 
 and the lesson thrown away. In all negative evils there is a 
 worse side, on which they are positive evils. The habit of reading 
 without thought, without meaning, deadens the understanding. 
 Instead of producing that love for reading, which arises when 
 the mind feels its eyes opened and its view expanded thereby, 
 we excite a dislike for such a dull and painful mockery of signs 
 which ought to mean something, but from which only now and 
 then peeps out a faint glimmer of what they ought to mean. The 
 lesson becomes a mere taskwork, which must be done because 
 it is ordered, but which is gone through without interest, and, when
 
 NOTE B. 73 
 
 laid aside, is straightway forgotten. And when so many words 
 are unmeaning, it is readily assumed that the rest are so, even 
 those with the sound of which the child has been accustomed 
 to connect a corresponding reality. In these things also the letter 
 killeth. For example, I have known a boy of ten, not re- 
 markable for stupidity, who, when questioned by his teacher what 
 trees were, persisted that he did not know, and was astonisht 
 when he was taken to the door, and told that the bookword 
 trees meant the trees which grow in the fields. This may be 
 deemed an extreme instance, though I do not believe it to be 
 so : but it may serve to shew how important it is that a main 
 part of a child's instruction should relate to things with some 
 aspect of which he is familiar, and that his mind should be opened 
 to see and understand what his senses and feelings present to him, 
 before he is summoned away to remote regions. The right course 
 of education is stepwise, not leapwise, with open eyes, not blind- 
 fold. To remedy these evils, and to render our national education 
 more efficient, it were greatly to be desired that a set of books 
 treating of such subjects as the children of the poor are familiar 
 with, of such as lie within the reach of their observation, and 
 containing stories suited to their comprehension, and fitted to 
 awaken their sympathy, should be publisht by the Society for the 
 Promotion of Christian Knowledge. At least I am not aware 
 that any successful attempt has yet been made to supply this 
 great want. He who does supply it will be a national benefactor. 
 Mr Field further remarks : " The practice of having the Collect 
 for the Second Sunday in Advent repeated, before reading the 
 Bible, either by one child in the class or by all collectively, is 
 commonly observed in the Schools of this Diocese." The use 
 of this, or perhaps of some shorter simple prayer, as a preparation 
 for every lesson in the Scriptures, is becoming, and likely to be 
 beneficial, as teaching the children both that the word of God 
 should never be taken in hand without special reverence and 
 thankfulness, and that it cannot be read profitably, unless the 
 reading be accompanied by prayer. At the same time we must 
 be on our guard in this, as in all things, lest that which is
 
 74 NOTE C. 
 
 habitual dwindle, as it is so apt to do, into a mere form, which is 
 always emptier and more hurtful, in proportion as the reality 
 is holy and mighty. Hence, in order to awaken a reverent feeling 
 in the pupils, it is above all things requisite that reverence should 
 be manifested by the teacher. For this and other reasons it is 
 important that, as the writer in the Educational Magazine recom- 
 mends, " when a class is under monitors, the Bible should never 
 be used." 
 
 Having to quote the Educational Magazine, I cannot refrain 
 from expressing my regret, in which many partake in America 
 as well as in England, that that excellent Journal should have 
 been discontinued. At a time when there is so much wellmean- 
 ing activity astir in the work of education, but when people 
 are so at sea from the want of first principles to guide them, 
 and when there is so much plausible empiricism and so much 
 mechanical knicknackery to puzzle those who, after the common 
 fashion of human nature, look mainly to the immediate effect, 
 it was a good for the Church and Nation that there should be 
 a Journal in which the highest principles were urged with life 
 and power. In its minor details it might certainly have been 
 improved and rendered more useful: but, if I may judge from 
 myself, many must be thankful for the instruction they have 
 derived from it : and it was a real comfort, amid the trivialities 
 and flippancies, the ignorance and shallowness, which the first 
 day of the month pours forth with ever-increasing profusion, to 
 be refresht even by a few sentences from one whose slightest 
 words betoken a master in Christian philosophy. 
 
 NOTE C : p. 27. 
 
 It is a pity that there is no full record of the admirable speech, 
 in which Archdeacon Manning, at the Anniversary Meeting of 
 our Diocesan Association in 1840, set forth the duties attendant 
 and incumbent upon the possession of land, with special reference 
 to the paramount duty of providing for the education of the poor. 
 For it has been so much out of fashion during several generations
 
 NOTE C. 75 
 
 to speak of duties as pertaining to the rich, that it may not im- 
 probably never have entered the heads of a large part of our 
 great landed proprietors, that they have anything to do with 
 the estates on which they do not reside, except to receive their 
 rents. Moreover the common adage, which declares that to be 
 out of a person's sight is equivalent to being out of his mind, 
 proves that all, even those who are bountiful in their own 
 neighbourhood, must be apt to forget what they owe to the poor 
 on distant estates, which perhaps they may never have visited. 
 Hence there is great need that they should be reminded of these 
 duties : and very many, I hope and trust, when so reminded, 
 will not be slow to fulfill them. 
 
 This is a matter of urgent importance with reference to the 
 object spoken of in the text. For if the owners of land do their 
 duty, we shall have no difficulty in raising the funds requisite 
 for the support of our schools : if they do not, in many parishes 
 it will be impossible. Nor is the importance less for the sake 
 of our landed proprietors themselves, even with a view to the 
 political welfare and permanence of our aristocracy, and still 
 more to their moral wellbeing. I have been told indeed, that 
 certain good men have complained of my last Charge, because I 
 ventured to speak with censure of those among the rich who 
 squander their riches in self-indulgence. This is a notable proof 
 how low our Church had fallen, how neglectful she had become 
 of her prophetic office. It was deemed for a long time to be 
 our business to teach the poor, to lecture the poor, to reprove 
 the poor, so as to make them humble and faithful and obedient ; 
 and we were to tell the poor how good the rich are to them : 
 a most welcome office, where it is consistent with truth, but 
 an ignominious and mischievous one where it is not, and far 
 more mischievous to the rich than to the poor. How strangely 
 was such a mode of preaching at variance with the example of 
 Him, who cried, Wo to you that are rich / and whose Apostle 
 bids the rich weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon 
 them. Surely the camel has not yet contracted himself, so that 
 he can pass through the eye of the needle ; and they who would
 
 76 NOTE D, E. 
 
 lead him into the kingdom of heaven through any wider gate, 
 are only mocking and deceiving him. Surely we have not yet 
 attained to a condition in which the first verses of the fifth chapter 
 of St James have totally lost their meaning. They who melt 
 down these denunciations into flatteries and blandishments, are 
 speeding their fulfilment. Our truest friends are ever those who 
 admonish us of our duties, and rouse us, in spite of ourselves, to 
 discharge them. 
 
 NOTE D : p. 33. 
 
 The Bishop of Salisbury in his Charge in 1839 says (p. 22): 
 " It has been some disappointment to me to learn, that in several 
 instances clergymen, who have tried the experiment of evening 
 schools for an older class of pupils, have not found them altogether 
 satisfactory in their results. But for this I should have ven- 
 tured more confidently to name these as another means suited 
 for meeting the evils of the state of society in which we live : 
 and if some have been disappointed, the experience of others 
 would still lead me to hope that I should not be wrong in doing 
 so." I have quoted this passage, because most of us are too 
 easily disheartened by unforeseen hindrances, crossing us in any 
 beneficial undertaking. We may attribute our want of success 
 to our own incompetence, or to some peculiar disadvantages in 
 our situation : either way we are apt to flag, and to relinquish 
 our enterprise as hopeless. Whereas, if we look for the hind- 
 rances beforehand, we are better prepared to resist and to 
 overcome them. 
 
 NOTE E : p. 35. 
 
 The limits of a note will not allow me to discuss the important 
 question, how far it is the duty of the State to provide for, and 
 its right to insist upon the education of all its members. That 
 the State has such a right, and a correlative duty, was recognized 
 of yore in England ; and the recognition was manifested by public
 
 NOTE E. 77 
 
 acts in the first reigns after the Reformation. But this too, 
 like almost every other higher duty, was neglected, and, like 
 most other higher rights, was lost sight of, during the self- 
 seeking and self-pampering torpour of the last century. Hence 
 in these days we have no determinate authoritative principles to 
 guide us ; and even where there is a real desire of doing what 
 ought to be done, the desire is strangely puzzled and baffled 
 by ignorance what that is. Perhaps too we, the clergy, in our 
 righteous zeal to assert that we ought to have the direction of 
 our national education, have not always been anxious enough 
 to urge that there shall be a national education, an education, 
 of which every child born in England shall partake, even as 'every 
 child breathes the common air, and sees the common light. I 
 do not forget the great exertions which have been made in the 
 last few years, and mainly by the Clergy, the Boards of Educa- 
 tion, the Training Schools, which have been establisht in so many 
 dioceses. All these things are to be acknowledged, with thank- 
 fulness to Him by whom they were prompted. But still the 
 nation is not educated. Nor does there seem any likelihood that 
 by the measures at present employed the nation ever will be 
 educated, at least until something is done to remove the obstacles 
 by which they are counteracted and thwarted. In a vast number 
 of parishes no funds are forthcoming for the establishment and 
 maintenance of an efficient school : and from one end of England 
 to the other we hear complaints that the great body of the boys 
 are taken away at so early an age, that the efforts to give them 
 anything deserving the name of education are utterly frustrated. 
 
 These are dismal evils. We cannot remedy them, it may be 
 said ; and so we must leave them to Time and an improved state 
 of feeling to remedy. But though it is right that we should 
 always work in a firm faith that Time will work with us, we 
 must not leave it to Time to work for us. The former, Time 
 will do ; the latter, never. In the present case too we must bear 
 in mind, that every three or four years a fresh growth of boys 
 passes out of the reach of our tuition, and is swept away into 
 the abyss of ignorance. Yet surely for evils of this kind there
 
 78 NOTE E. 
 
 may and must exist a remedy. Nay, we are not left to theory 
 and speculation to devise one. We have only to look abroad; 
 and we find that, while in no country are these evils of any- 
 thing like the same magnitude as in England, in many countries 
 an efficient and sufficient remedy has long since been enacted 
 by the government. 
 
 In Prussia, for instance, as is generally known, parents are 
 compelled by the law to send their children to school, unless 
 they can shew that they are giving them a proper education at 
 home, by the time they are six years old, and to keep them 
 at school till they have completed their fourteenth year. Regu- 
 lations more or less similar to this are said to prevail over a 
 large part of the continent of Europe. Now few persons, I should 
 conceive, who take an interest in our parish schools, can think 
 of such a state of things without something like envy. And 
 surely what is here enjoined by the law is just what ought 
 to be. It is no more than every child, born as a moral being, 
 as a member of a Christian nation, of a Christian Church, might 
 rightfully expect, in order that it may be trained and fitted for 
 the toil and struggle of life. Thus much will readily be granted. 
 Every child ought to have eight years of instruction at the least : 
 the parents ought to give this to every child : where the parents 
 are unable to do so at their own cost, the means of doing it should 
 be supplied by the community. But when the schools exist, 
 and the parents will not send their children to them, how can 
 we help it ? what more can we do ? If we estimated evils by 
 their moral significence, we should not reason in this way. 
 We acknowledge that there is a right to compell parents to pro- 
 vide bodily nourishment for their children ; that there is a right 
 to prevent them from wasting their children's inheritance. So 
 is there a right to compell them to provide nourishment for their 
 children as intellectual and moral beings, and to prevent their 
 defrauding their children of their inheritance in the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 It has been said, indeed, and the argument is mostly ascribed 
 to Lord Brougham, as though he were its original inventor, that
 
 NOTE E. 79 
 
 the people of England would never submit to have education 
 made compulsory. This saying has been repeated so often, as 
 if it settled the question, that one might be tempted to fancy 
 there must be some force in it, unless one remembered that the 
 sounds, of which Echo is the fondest, are empty. Such an 
 argument seems scarcely worthy of a statesman. When the 
 Will of a people is one with its Reason and its Conscience, when 
 the vox populi is thus vox Dei, a wise man will yield to it ; but 
 not when it is unreasonable, not when it is against conscience. 
 Let him take these as his allies, and Will must give way. 
 Never should he doubt that, provided a law can be shewn to 
 be right and beneficent, the people, if the legislature enacts it, 
 will submit, ay, and be thankful for it. Courage indeed is 
 always requisite for a conflict against evil, courage and faith. 
 The grosser too the evil, the more terrific it will seem : for that 
 which finds no support in the affections, seeks it in the passions. 
 But strike a stout blow at it, and it falls. It should be remem- 
 bered by all those who are called upon to fight against moral evil, 
 that, when the first missionaries began to preach the Gospel in 
 Tahiti, one of the most formidable obstacles they had to encounter 
 was the horrible practice of childmurder. The natives received 
 them kindly, were willing to learn much from them ; only they 
 must not try to prevent parents from murdering their children. 
 After some perseverance however this accursed practice was 
 abolisht: and now every father and mother, as they look at 
 their children, must bless the teachers to whom they owe it that 
 they have children to look upon. So will it be, we may rely 
 upon it, when the children in our factories are redeemed from 
 their present calamitous condition: so will it be, when parents 
 throughout England are compelled to have their children brought 
 up in the knowledge of their duty, moral and religious. 
 
 It is not the fear of trenching upon parental authority that 
 keeps us from legislating in this matter. Nor is it the fear of 
 violating freedom. Numberless difficulties and perplexities, meta- 
 physical, moral, and political, have arisen from the notion that 
 it is essential to freedom to have scope for doing wrong. The
 
 80 NOTE E. 
 
 laws do not encroach on a man's freedom, by forbidding his 
 picking his neighbour's pocket : on the contrary it is by taking 
 away the chains of evil that we are to make men freer. The 
 real obstacle is of another kind. It is the very same spirit, 
 which has been resisting the attempts to deliver the children in 
 our factories from their debasing bondage, the spirit of Commerce, 
 the spirit of Mammon. England has been trying with all her 
 might for the last hundred years to shew that it is possible to 
 serve God and Mammon : but the result has been a swarm of 
 proofs, that, what God has severed, man cannot join together. 
 Sooner might he tow America across the Atlantic, and tack her 
 on to the Old World. The yoke of Mammon is on our necks : 
 it is on the necks of the whole nation : but it presses most gall- 
 ingly on the poor. It is not their own free choice, that leads 
 them to withdraw their children from school, and to employ them 
 in premature toil : it is a hard, crushing necessity : and to remove 
 this necessity is to set them free, and will enable them to fulfill 
 the wishes of their hearts in giving their children a good educa- 
 tion. The blessings of generations await the statesman, who 
 shall have the courage to muzzle Mammon, and prevent him 
 from preying upon the little ones, whom Christ came to redeem. 
 Even with reference to the political greatness of his country, what 
 ought to be his paramount object ? Should it not be to train up 
 a moral and religious people ? or at least to give all such aid as a 
 statesman can give toward effecting this ? 
 
 In former times an obligation of a similar kind was imposed 
 by the Church. By the 59th Canon all fathers, mothers, masters 
 and mistresses, children, servants, and apprentices, who neglected 
 their duties, the former in not sending their dependents, the 
 latter in not coming to be catechized, were to be excommunicated, 
 if they persisted. In these days excommunication has fallen into 
 disuse. Were there no other reason, its effect would be destroyed 
 by the deplorable schisms in the Church ; for the person excom- 
 municated would merely betake himelf to some dissenting con- 
 gregation, where he would find a ready welcome. But it is 
 very hard upon the poor, that they should no longer have any
 
 NOTE E. 81 
 
 force constraining them to fulfill their duty to their children, and 
 protecting them from the forces which impell them to neglect 
 it, and which of themselves they have no power of resisting. The 
 need is infinitely greater now, from the enormous increase in the 
 demand for child-labour : nor is there any country where the need 
 is so urgent as in England. 
 
 Let it not be said, as it may be by some of our shortsighted 
 philanthropists, who never look beyond animal comforts, that 
 there would be cruelty to the poor in depriving them of the earn- 
 ings of their children. The work, which the children would no 
 longer perform, would fall to their elders; and higher wages would 
 be paid for it. Nor, if we were to be disabled thereby from un- 
 derselling the other nations of Europe, let that scare us. Rather 
 perhaps ought we to be thankful for the termination of a state 
 of things, which keeps us perpetually alternating between a high 
 fever and an ague, and through which we are now disturbed every 
 other year by the ominous sound of a national crisis. At all events 
 let us be persuaded that men, under God, are the true wealth, 
 as well as the true strength of a nation. 
 
 No doubt some difficulties would occur in the settling of the 
 special provisions of such a law. But a judicious man, who took 
 the matter earnestly in hand, would be able to overcome them. 
 The only really formidable opponent he would have to encounter 
 is the spirit of commerce. Some persons indeed may con- 
 tend, that, in the present divided state of religion in England, the 
 objections to a law making education compulsory are insuperable. 
 Of course a law, which compelled men to violate their conscience, 
 would be a crime. The Prussian law however does not require 
 that a child shall be sent to any specific school, but merely 
 that he shall be receiving instruction during the appointed term 
 of years. As to our country parishes, in which there is nothing 
 but a national school, if a system something like that which I 
 have endeavoured to recommend in Note L to my former charge 
 were adopted, no reasonable scruple could be entertained against 
 sending a child to such a school.
 
 82 NOTE F. 
 
 NOTE F: p. 41. 
 
 This question has in some measure been settled by the Meetings 
 held in the month of September at several of the principal places 
 in the Archdeaconry ; at all which Meetings it was resolved, with 
 scarcely the expression of a difference, that Missionary Associa- 
 tions should be establisht in every parish. A large portion of 
 the Parishes in the Archdeaconry were represented at those Meet- 
 ings; and I trust that the resolutions which were then entered 
 into will soon be carried into effect, wherever they have not been 
 so already. I would fain hope too that this example will be . 
 followed before long by the remaining Parishes in the Arch- 
 deaconry; so that from one end of it to the other there shall 
 not be a single parish unawakene,d to a consciousness of the great 
 duty, which presses so peculiarly on the English Nation and 
 Church, of preaching the Gospel to the whole world. Never will 
 England take the post of honour appointed for her among the 
 nations, until she has devoted herself with all her energies to 
 the fulfilment of this her sacred ministry, until she has recog- 
 nized her special calling to be the apostolical nation of the earth. 
 They who minister to the earthly wants of others, if it be for 
 their own gain, occupy the lowest place ; they who minister to 
 the moral and spiritual wants of others, the highest. The former 
 is the office of hirelings and irrational beasts ; the latter, of angels. 
 What a blessed day would it be for the whole world, above all 
 for England herself, if every Englishman were to remember that 
 among all his privileges this is the most glorious ! 
 
 Doubtless we shall have to contend with many, who will 
 exclaim that it is cruel to take anything from the scanty pittance 
 of the poor, seeing that pittance is already scarcely sufficient for 
 their daily support. There are numbers of persons in these days, 
 who have a good deal of benevolence, but whose benevolence 
 does not grasp anything beyond the relief of temporal wants, 
 who are thoroughly persuaded that bread is the one thing needful. 
 What would these persons have said, if they had seen the widow
 
 NOTE F. 83 
 
 throwing her two mites into the treasury ? Would they not have 
 cried out to her, at least to keep one, lest she should have to 
 go to the workhouse ? It is sadly true, the poor have too little, 
 too little in every kind. But even the heathen poet found out 
 that the way to increase our riches is to share them with others. 
 He who can give, is no longer utterly poor. If you wish to 
 enrich a man, bring him to believe this. Enlarge his heart : 
 widen the range of his feelings. Every fresh interest you give 
 him in anything out of himself, enriches him ; the more so, the 
 deeper it is. To the poor more especially, hemmed in and crusht 
 as they are by the narrow cares and heavy drudgery of their 
 daily life, it is a blessing to be brought to feel that Christ has 
 cast down the walls of this their prison for them, and that in 
 Him they are united by a bond of brotherhood to those who 
 dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth. And will they not 
 be amply repaid for their little offerings, by the frugality, the 
 carefulness, the constant watchful self-denial, which they will 
 be constrained to exercise, in order that they may have their 
 little offerings to bring? Surely the richest parish in England, 
 and the richest nation in the whole earth, will be that in which 
 these graces are found in the highest perfection. 
 
 With regard to the best mode of conducting our Associa- 
 tions, various opinions will be held, and various schemes may 
 perhaps be adopted. Hitherto, where they have existed, they 
 have mostly been in union either with the Society for the Pro- 
 pagation of the Gospel, or with the Church Missionary Society. 
 At present, since the objections entertained by some to the ecclesi- 
 astical constitution of the latter have been removed, and since 
 almost all the heads of our Church have joined it, the most de- 
 sirable plan seems to me to be that our Parochial Associations 
 should be in union with both. For while our special national 
 duty of providing for the religious instruction of our Colonies is 
 discharged by the former, the universal Christian duty of preach- 
 ing the Gospel to the heathens devolves mainly on the latter: 
 and it is probable that this twofold work will now be portioned 
 out more definitely between them. Meanwhile the people ought 
 
 o 2
 
 84 NOTE F. 
 
 to be reminded of both duties, and aroused to fulfill them both. 
 Now that emigrants are going forth from all parts of the country, 
 it were well both for them and for those who remain behind to 
 be admonisht in this manner that the separation is not to be 
 entire, and that this most sacred tie at least will continue. It 
 would be well that those who send their kindred over the wide 
 waters, should from time to time send their alms as well as 
 their prayers after them. On the other hand there is something 
 so wonderful and stirring in the first dawning of Christianity 
 amid a heathen people, in the struggle between the light and 
 the darkness, the contemplation is so well fitted to enliven 
 our thankfulness for our own blessings, and to make us more 
 desirous of realizing them, while the spiritual change in the 
 converts comes home so touchingly to the heart of the simplest, 
 that few measures seem better calculated for exciting our parish- 
 ioners to take a deeper interest in their own spiritual welfare, than 
 if they were led to feel a deep interest in that of the heathens. 
 
 Another reason, which makes me earnestly desire that our 
 Parochial Associations should be in union with both our great 
 Missionary Societies, is, that the jealousies and rivalries, which 
 have hitherto prevailed too much between the partisans of the 
 one and the other, will hereby be extinguisht. Hitherto the two 
 names have often served as the symbols of opposite parties, which 
 have not always lookt with cordial complacency on each other. 
 But now, when, in spite of the provocations to division which 
 are perpetually starting up from one disastrous quarter, there 
 seems to be such a desire of unity in the rest of the Church, 
 when, along with the improvement in religious zeal on the one 
 side, there has been an answering improvement in churchmanly 
 feeling on the other, I trust that we shall all be ready to take 
 away whatever formed a wall of separation, and that, while we 
 relax our own exclusive partialities, we shall open our arms to 
 embrace the objects our neighbours are more especially attacht to, 
 remembering that we have all one common interest, one common 
 duty, and are all members one of another. Surely, for the attain- 
 ment of unity, we should be eager to give up our prejudices,
 
 NOTE F. 85 
 
 whether in favour of the one Society, or against the other. If 
 we retain our prejudices, we almost drive those who differ from 
 us into retaining theirs. Therefore though many might think 
 that it cannot matter whether they individually support this So- 
 ciety or that, let us be persuaded that it is a serious evil to 
 keep up what may serve to prolong and propagate any kind of 
 division. 
 
 As to the details of the management of our Associations, 
 I will merely suggest that the monies collected, in whatsoever 
 manner, should be divided equally between the two Societies; 
 except where the donor, from having friends, it may be, in the 
 colonies, or from feeling a deeper interest in the conversion of 
 the heathens, wishes that his contribution should be specific- 
 ally assigned to one or the other. Some persons will indeed be 
 afraid that they shall not be able to send as much as they have 
 hitherto to their favorite Society, if they divide their funds 
 between the two. And doubtless this will often be the case. 
 But their neighbours will make up for their shortcomings. Should 
 Associations of the same kind be generally establisht throughout 
 England, or at least should measures be taken, as it is to be hoped 
 they will before long, for arousing every parish in England to 
 bear its part in the missionary work of the Church, the funds 
 collected for the support of each Society would increase vastly. 
 They would be doubled and tripled; nay, might we not hope 
 to see them decupled? When one thinks of the millions upon 
 millions that have been expended of late years in making railways 
 through the country, is it too much to expect that the people 
 of England will consecrate a million a year for the work of pre- 
 paring the way of the Lord through the desert, and casting across 
 the wide ocean a highway for our God ? 
 
 It may perhaps be argued, that the emulation and rivalry 
 between the two Societies is useful in upholding the spirit of each, 
 and stimulating them to greater exertions. Competition, being 
 one of the ruling idols of the day, it is thought, will work wonders 
 in the service of religion. For even good men, unless they are 
 more than ordinarily clearsighted or simplehearted, will not keep
 
 86 NOTE F. 
 
 themselves untainted by the errours of their age : and people have 
 seldom been willing to recognize that every offering to God ought to 
 be without spot or blemish. They have thought the main thing 
 was, that the offerings should be large ; and they have measured 
 that largeness on the narrowest momentary scale, not on that of 
 nations and ages. They have not been able to fathom the truth, 
 that the widow's mites were more, not merely relatively to her, 
 but positively, in their power and efficacy, than all the offerings 
 of the rich. The exertions produced by strife and contention are 
 ever transient, and seldom vigorous, unless they are accompanied 
 by much bitterness of feeling. It is to principle and to love that 
 we are to look for steady unrelaxing activity. They will both 
 run to the sepulcre ; and Love will arrive there first ; but when 
 there, Love will wait, ashamed of being first, and let its companion 
 go in first. 
 
 Certain objections have indeed been made of late years to the 
 whole system of our Religious Societies. Now it may readily 
 be admitted that their constitution and organization are by no 
 means faultless. Instead of being institutions of the Church, 
 they have been too much creations of individuals. Not that this 
 can reasonably be urged as a ground of censure. For why are 
 they so ? Immediately, because the Church, in her corporate 
 capacity, did not fulfill her duty of organizing her own Societies 
 for the same purposes. Hence it was left to benevolent and pious 
 individuals to do what she ought to have done. Among the 
 occasions of her neglect was doubtless the intermission of her 
 national synods, which has tended so much to keep her in a state of 
 suspended animation. But this again has arisen in great measure 
 from that deplorable primary schism, by which the Laity were 
 excluded from their due share in the government and administra- 
 tion of the Church. For though purely clerical synods might 
 be allowed to rule the Church during the ages when all the 
 intellect and learning in the Church centred in the Clergy, this 
 could no longer be the case when the Laity had made good their 
 intellectual franchise. Thus, according to that judicial order 
 which runs through all history, they who had usurpt what did
 
 NOTE F. . 87 
 
 not belong to them, forfeited what would rightfully have been 
 theirs : and the government of our Church during the last century 
 and a half has rested far too much with a Legislature in which 
 the Clergy have not been adequately represented. Now our 
 Religious Societies seem to be among the means, whereby the 
 Church, in conformity to the law of all organic systems, has 
 devised a sort of compensation for that which was defective in 
 its organization. Our Diocesan Associations are another recent 
 and more regular effort of the same kind. On these grounds, 
 over and above the good which our Religious Societies have effected 
 with reference to their specific purposes, they seem to me to have 
 been an inestimable blessing to the Church, as affording means, 
 however disproportionate to the wants of the case, for the Laity 
 to find opportunities of acting in the service of the Church, so 
 as to employ their various gifts, intellectual, moral, and material, 
 in promoting the glory of God, and the extension of His Kingdom. 
 Therefore, whatever faults may be discerned in the present con- 
 dition of our Religious Societies, however desirable it may be 
 that they should have emanated in the first instance from a 
 rightly constituted national synod, any attempts to reconstruct 
 them upon a different system would be greatly to be deplored, 
 unless care were taken to render the Laity a powerful element 
 in the new constitution. 
 
 Should any person be alarmed by recent indications of unwar- 
 rantable interference on the part of the Laity in ecclesiastical 
 matters, let him remember that the best way of checking the 
 morbid and irregular action of any organ is to restore its health- 
 ful and regular action. This is infinitely preferable to amputa- 
 tion, even where amputation is possible; although few statesmen 
 have been wise enough to recognize the truth of this maxim 
 in its application to the body politic, few churchmen to the body 
 ecclesiastic.
 
 88 NOTE G. 
 
 NOTE G : p. 52. 
 
 THE occasional public administration of Baptism has also been 
 recommended by the Bishop of Salisbury in his Charge in 1839. 
 " I am glad to believe (he says, p. 11), that a high standard of 
 feeling with regard to Baptism is now more general than formerly. 
 Several of the Clergy have lately returned to the old and correct 
 practice of administering Baptism in the presence of the congre- 
 gation during Divine Service. But in the great majority of 
 parishes this is not the case ; and I wish you to consider whether 
 some alteration may not be made with advantage. I would not 
 counsel a sudden change, especially in large parishes : but even 
 in such cases an occasional public celebration of the rite at stated 
 periods might prove very advantageous, and tend to restore this 
 Sacrament to the honour which belongs to it." 
 
 The Bishop of Ripon too, in his Charge this year, speaks strongly 
 of the evils which have resulted from the prevalent abuse. He 
 urges (p. 16) " the loss, to which the infant is exposed, in not 
 being brought, at the moment of its solemn dedication to God, 
 into the midst of the assembled worshipers, there to benefit by 
 their united prayers, that he may lead the rest of his life according 
 to this beginning." And he states, that " in some instances the 
 revival of the regular practice had been attended with very bene- 
 ficial results, inducing many young persons, as well as adults, as 
 yet unbaptized, to seek admission into the Church." 
 
 Hence we may hope that the right practice will be revived 
 ere long in all parts of England. Until it is, we shall never 
 persuade our people to have a right conception of the dignity 
 and importance of Baptism. A rite performed in the midst of 
 Divine Service, before the eyes of the whole congregation, just 
 after the word of God has been read, and which is followed 
 so beautifully by the Nunc dimittis, must needs be accounted 
 sacred and solemn. Whereas what can be more calculated to 
 destroy reverence, than that it should be kept till the Service is 
 ended, when the faculty of attention is exhausted, and when the
 
 NOTE G. 89 
 
 congregation are hurrying out of church ? What impression must 
 such a celebration of Baptism produce, unless that it is a matter 
 m which the congregation are no way concerned ? wherefore they 
 pass by on the other side, bearing witness that the feeling of 
 Christian communion is almost extinct in their hearts. It is not 
 surprising, that, when this was universal, many should have 
 fancied that the chief purpose of Baptism was to give a child 
 a name, which should be entered in the Register, and a claim 
 to Christian burial. Indeed, if children are not baptized in the 
 presence of the congregation on a Sunday, it would be more con- 
 ducive to reverence that they should be brought to church on a 
 weekday. Perhaps the best mode of escaping from the diffi- 
 culties which stand in the way of Baptisms during the Sunday 
 service in large town parishes, would be to hold a general adminis- 
 tration of the rite at the rubrical time on every saint's day. 
 
 For who can estimate the evils which are occasioned, the bless- 
 ings which are forfeited, by a want of reverence for the baptismal 
 covenant? I am not referring merely to the manner in which 
 the grace itself may be impaired through want of faith and de- 
 votion in those who bring the child to the font ; although this 
 assuredly is the reason why our Saviour is still so often unable 
 to do any mighty work amongst us, because of our unbelief. 
 But surely, if anything could make parents look with awe on 
 the charge committed to them in the education of their children, 
 it would be the conviction that those children are become members 
 of Christ, and children of God, and heirs of heaven. Therefore 
 we must not think lightly of anything that may tend to strengthen 
 that conviction. They who are imprest with it cannot but desire 
 to train up their children for that inheritance; and they will 
 be encouraged in doing so by the assurance that a higher Power 
 will work along with them. On the other hand they who are 
 destitute of this conviction, will leave their children to run wild, 
 or bring them up with no view beyond their inheritance in this 
 world. 
 
 By some it has been questioned whether the rubrical practice 
 can ever have been generally observed. So apt are we to assume
 
 90 NOTE G. 
 
 that the customs we are familiar with must have prevailed from 
 the beginning. I cannot find the slightest ground for such a 
 doubt. Our present Rubric is taken from the Liturgies of Ed- 
 ward the Sixth ; where it is preceded by a statement that the 
 practice of the primitive Church was " not commonly to minister 
 Baptism, but at two times in the year, at Easter and Whitsun- 
 tide; at which times it was openly ministered in the presence 
 of all the congregation ; which custom now being grown out of 
 use, although it cannot for many considerations be well restored 
 again, yet it is thought good to follow the same as near as con- 
 veniently may be." One of the demands of the Devonshire Rebels 
 in 1549 was, that " the curates should minister the Sacrament 
 of Baptism at all times, as well in the weekday as on the holiday." 
 To which Cranmer replies, that " it is more convenient that Bap- 
 tism should not be ministered, but upon the holiday, when the 
 most number of people be together; as well for that the whole 
 Church of Christ there present may rejoice together of the receiving 
 of new members of Christ into the same Church; as also, that 
 all men being present may remember and the better know what 
 they promist themselves by their godfathers and godmothers in 
 their own Baptism, and be the more earnestly stirred in their 
 hearts to perform the same ; and also may altogether pray for 
 them that be baptized, that they may have grace to perform 
 their profession." He adds, that " divers Councils and Decrees 
 had forbidden Baptism to be ministered at any other time than 
 Easter and Whitsuntide, except in case of necessity. And there 
 remained lately divers signs and tokens thereof. For every Easter 
 and Whitsun-even, until this time, the fonts were hallowed in 
 every church; and many collects and other prayers were read 
 for them that were baptized, (relics of which custom are still 
 preserved in the Collect and Epistle for Easter-even.) But all 
 was in vain, and as it were a mocking with God. For none were 
 baptized at those times, except it were by chance ; but all were 
 baptized before. For as Vigils, otherwise called watchings, re- 
 mained in the calendars upon certain saint's evens, because in 
 old times the people watcht all those nights ; but now these many
 
 NOTE G. 91 
 
 years those Vigils remained in vain in the books, for no man 
 did watch ; even so until this day the order and form of christ- 
 ening was read and kept every year at Easter and Whitsuntide, 
 but none was then christened." (Works, n. p. 223.) Hence it is 
 plain that the change was not allowed to lie a dead letter. A 
 like rule touching the public administration of Baptism was 
 laid down by the Protestant Churches in Germany, which assigned 
 the same reasons for it, as may be seen in Augusti's Christian 
 Archeology, vol. vn. p. 183. 
 
 No allusion to any irregularity of practice on this score occurs 
 in Bishop Montague's Articles of Inquiry, full and strict as they 
 are: and though one of Bishop Wren's Orders (in 1636) is, 
 " That the parishioners be warned by the minister and church- 
 wardens to bring their children to the church for Baptism in due 
 time ; and if any child be not brought before the second lesson, 
 that then the parents be presented for that default," this merely 
 infers negligence in the parents, not irregularity in the minister. 
 Nor has Sparrow any allusion to such irregularities ; nor is there 
 any at the Savoy Conference. On the contrary the prevalence 
 of the regular practice is implied in the request of the Exceptors, 
 that the font " may be so placed as all the congregation may 
 best see and hear the whole administration." This had previously 
 been enjoined in the Directory, where it is ordered that Baptism 
 shall be administered " in the face of the Congregation." Occasion- 
 ally indeed in the sermons of those days, for instance in the 
 85th and 87th of Donne's, the preacher speaks of the baptismal 
 rite as about to be administered : but we must not conclude from 
 this that the practice in such cases was like ours. Such sermons 
 were probably afternoon sermons, which were preacht before the 
 Evening Prayer, as we see in the Reformat Legum Ecclesiasti- 
 carum, De Divinis qfficiis, cap. 12. " Principalis minister, quern 
 parochum dicimus, post conclusum Catechismum statim ad popu- 
 lum concionabitur ; et ilia finita preces vespertinae succedant." 
 Indeed the sermons themselves betoken that the Baptism was 
 to be administered before the hearers. In the former of the two 
 cited, Donne speaks of some, " who had rather their children
 
 92 NOTE G. 
 
 died unbaptized, than have them baptized without a sermon:" 
 and he himself allows " a convenience little less than necessary 
 (in a kind) that this administration of the sacrament be accom- 
 panied with preaching;" grounding this opinion on what appears 
 to be a misinterpretation of St Augustin's celebrated saying, 
 Accedat verbum, etfiat sacramentum. 
 
 Wheatly on the other hand, writing at the beginning of the 
 last century, speaks of " the irregularity, which prevails much 
 in some churches, of putting off christenings till the whole service 
 is over, and so reducing them, by the departure of the congre- 
 gation, to almost private baptisms." This abuse, it would seem, 
 must then have been of recent introduction, and was probably 
 confined to town parishes. In rural parishes, as I have stated 
 in the text, I hardly think it can have been general before 
 the end of the last, or the beginning of the present century. 
 
 It has been suggested that the removal of Baptisms to the 
 end of the Service originated in the unwillingness of a certain 
 party in the Church to recognize the doctrine of baptismal re- 
 generation, who therefore were fain to do in private, what they 
 would still more gladly have avoided doing altogether. But 
 this is no way borne out by the facts. There is an illnatured 
 spirit nowadays, which is fond of imputing whatever has been 
 faulty in the recent administration of our Church to the miscon- 
 duct of the body commonly denominated the evangelical clergy. 
 But illnature is judicially blind, far blinder than love is fabled 
 to be. The real cause of this and the other similar evils lay, 
 not with the pious and zealous portion of the clergy, but with 
 the careless and indolent and worldly-minded; although the 
 former may not have been sufficiently anxious to revive ecclesi- 
 astical practices, the benefits of which were imperceptible, and 
 which scarcely found a champion, except here and there a form- 
 alist. And yet I suspect that thirty years ago, if the rubrical 
 administration of Baptism prevailed anywhere in these parts of 
 England, it must have been in parishes where the ministers were 
 of the evangelical clergy. A just view on these matters is not 
 merely desirable for its own sake, but also because, if the opposite
 
 NOTE G. 93 
 
 parties in the Church recognize what is good in each other, they 
 may correct each other's faults, and both work together in the 
 same great work, which affords ample room for the exertions of 
 both ; whereas, when they fix their eyes on each other's defects, 
 the sad result, as we see daily, is exaggeration, bitterness, rancour, 
 and every form of division. 
 
 I do not mean that the errours in our practice were uncon- 
 nected with errours of doctrine. The two always go together. 
 Truth alone can uphold us in the right; and truth will do so: 
 whereas, if we abide not in the truth, it will not abide in us. 
 But the main errour was one of low views, resulting from a 
 meagre dearth of faith, in persons who regarded Baptism as little 
 more than a mere form, and who had lost the idea and. the 
 feeling of a living Communion in the Church. Owing to these 
 same causes the administration of Baptism during Divine Service 
 has also fallen into disuse in the Protestant Churches of Germany, 
 as we learn from Augusti in the passage already referred to. 
 Indeed Marheineke, in his Practical Theology ( 253), argues 
 against making Baptism a part of the public service, on the ground 
 that it is " an act relating only to the individual, which has no 
 claim to the interest of such as do not take part in it, but 
 leaves them in inaction, and thus introduces a dead element into 
 the service." This is a natural view, when we have lost sight 
 of the great truth, which is the principle of all Christian fellow- 
 ship, that, as members of the body of Christ, we are every one 
 members one of another. Harms on the other hand, in his 
 Pastoral Theology (n. 227), expresses his regret that his practice 
 at Kiel is not to baptize till after the service is over, when the 
 last note of the organ has died away. " But (he adds) " one 
 can't always do what one wishes;" an excuse which has some 
 force, but behind which we should not too readily take shelter. 
 Strengthen the wish ; and the power comes. The objection that 
 the body of the congregation have no immediate concern in the 
 baptismal service is obviated in Baxter's Scheme of a Reformed 
 Liturgy; where the service is wound up with an exhortation, 
 reminding the congregation of their own baptismal vows, and
 
 94 NOTE G. 
 
 of the duties imposed on them thereby. In like manner the 
 Directory enjoined that the Minister shall admonish all present 
 " to look back to their Baptism, to repent of their sins against 
 their covenant with God, to stir up their faith, to improve and 
 make the right use of their Baptism, and of the covenant sealed 
 thereby betwixt God and their souls." Certainly it seems that 
 our Service would be improved, more especially with reference 
 to its public celebration, if it were concluded, like the Marriage- 
 Service, by an exhortation, bringing the marvellous grace and 
 the manifold truths signified in Baptism, directly home to the 
 hearts of all who are present. 
 
 To one consequence, which must needs accompany the rubrical 
 administration of Baptism, I will only just allude. It will im- 
 pose a necessity upon us of exercising more strictness with regard 
 to the persons whom we admit as sponsors. Indeed it cannot 
 well be carried into effect, unless at the same time we enforce, 
 or at least prepare the way for enforcing, the Canon that none 
 but communicants shall be received as sponsors. This Canon 
 however is of such great importance both in itself, in order 
 that the sacrament of Baptism may be held in due reverence, 
 and that the charge undertaken by the sponsors may stand some 
 chance of being fulfilled, and also as one of the first steps 
 toward the establishment of something like parochial discipline, 
 that it will be a great additional advantage, if the public ad- 
 ministration of Baptism lead us to carry it into effect. 
 
 The arguments I have been urging may be thought to require 
 something more than the occasional administration of Baptism 
 during Divine Service, as recommended at the beginning of this 
 Note, and to make it imperative upon us that we should so 
 administer it invariably. This is true of some of them, but not 
 of all. For if the reverence for Baptism were upheld in a parish 
 by a solemn public administration of it on one afternoon in each 
 month, this reverence in that case might not be impaired by 
 occasional deviations from the more orderly practice. It would 
 be desirable indeed, and in many parishes might not be difficult, 
 to prevail upon the parents to bring their children to the monthly
 
 NOTE G. 95 
 
 public Baptisms, so that the less public administration should 
 be regarded as the exception. By such a solemn monthly ad- 
 ministration, we should approximate to that practice of primitive 
 times, which in the earlier Liturgy, as we have seen, is declared 
 to be worthy of imitation. We should indeed be acting in oppo- 
 sition to the Rubric prefixt to the office of Private Baptism, in 
 which the Curates of every parish are desired " to admonish 
 the people often that they defer not the Baptism of their children 
 longer than the first or second Sunday next after their birth, 
 or other holiday falling between, unless upon a great and reason- 
 able cause." But the grounds of this Rubric are very obscure : 
 it is directly at variance with the wish just referred to : it is 
 never acted upon: in very many cases it could not be without 
 danger to the child : and while I cannot see any possible benefit 
 from complying with it, for, if a child is suddenly taken sick, 
 it is baptized at home, it would almost always preclude the 
 mother's being present at the Baptism of her child. Yet she 
 might often be wanted to feed the child: and surely she ought 
 to be a witness of this to her most deeply interesting rite. The 
 child ought to be brought in her arms, as the holy Child Jesus 
 Himself was, when it is presented to the Lord. Can it be that 
 illness consequent upon childbearing, which among rude tribes 
 passes away rapidly, and which, as though in token of its origin, 
 increases with the increase of civilization, can have been so much 
 shorter among the lower orders in England three centuries ago 
 than it is now ? 
 
 The suggestions in this Note, as in the others, are merely 
 offered to the consideration of the Church. Had we a Convo- 
 cation, or other better constituted ecclesiastical synod, all these 
 questions would be settled by authority. When we look at the 
 Canons of the American Church, and see how in every triennial 
 Session the Ecclesiastical Legislature exercises its wisdom to meet 
 ' the exigencies of the Church, sadness comes over us to think of 
 our own Church with the rules and ordinances of centuries ago 
 hanging about her, many of them outgrown, many threadbare, 
 many torn to rags, and scarcely covering her nakedness: and
 
 90 NOTE H. 
 
 yet she has no power to alter, to amend, to renew: slie can 
 scarcely so much as patch her tattered garments together. Num- 
 bers of her laws are habitually violated ; and she must bear this 
 scandal: for the letter of them cannot be enforced. And when 
 so many are broken with impunity, people are puzzled to know 
 whether any are to be obeyed. 
 
 NOTE H: p. 52. 
 
 Bishop Horsley, in a Charge in 1800, when recommending a 
 more frequent administration of the Lord's Supper, says, " Four 
 celebrations in the year are the very fewest that ought to be 
 allowed in the very smallest parishes. It were to be wisht that 
 it were in all more frequent. I am confident that, the oftener 
 it is administered, the more numerous the communicants will be." 
 Nay, should not the number here laid down as the minimum 
 be at least doubled, even with the view of enabling all the 
 paiishioners to communicate four times a year ? For among the 
 poor, in families where there are young children, the husband 
 and wife can seldom leave their homes together ; so that, if there 
 are only four Communions, neither of them would be able to 
 communicate more than twice in the year. 
 
 An interesting testimony of Beveridge's on the advantages of 
 frequent Communion is quoted by Archdeacon Manning in his 
 preface to the reprint of that good Bishop's treatise on the subject. 
 It strongly confirms Horsley's remark, which indeed is borne 
 out by almost uniform experience ; so that we should not hesitate 
 to act accordingly. For, in addition to the personal benefits 
 vouchsafed to every worthy recipient, the strength of our flocks, 
 we all know, lies in the body of communicants. Many persons 
 indeed, who are not without seriousness of mind, are kept away 
 from the Lord's Table by over-timid scruples and fears. But it 
 is a noxious errour, which we ought to be continually striving 
 against, to suppose that the privilege of communicating belongs 
 only to a select few. We should try to make all feel that they 
 are called to a participation in that privilege, not indeed while
 
 NOTE H. 97 
 
 they continue in obstinate unbelief and wilful sin, but even as 
 they desire to be delivered from unbelief and from sin. 
 
 Pharisaism in all its forms is so delusive, that, even among 
 the Clergy, many may need to be reminded that the principle 
 of our Church is not to restrict the privilege of communicating 
 to those who have made a considerable advance in their spiritual 
 life. Her rule is, that all her members should partake of this 
 blessed Sacrament thrice a year, with no exception save that 
 of notorious evil-livers and wrong-doers. She orders that " every 
 parishioner shall communicate at the least three times in the 
 year." This was not designed to be the highest privilege of 
 the most devout ; although in many parishes nowadays this 
 is nearly the utmost that anybody has an opportunity of en- 
 joying. According to the purpose of the Church, all who were 
 not living in open sin were not merely exhorted, but command- 
 ed to present themselves thus before the Lord thrice a year. 
 Jeremy Taylor, in his Worthy Communicant (c. v. . 4), after 
 speaking of those who are " discernibly in, and discernibly out 
 of a state of grace," adds : "But there are many who are in 
 the confines of both states; and neither themselves, nor their 
 guides can tell to what dominion they belong. Concerning such, 
 they are, by all means, to be thrust or invited forward, and told 
 of the danger of a real or seeming neutrality in the service of 
 God, of the hatefulness of tepidity, of the uncomfortableness of 
 such an indifference. For the Communions of any such person, 
 I can give no other advice, than that he take his measures of 
 frequency by the laws of his Church, and add what he please 
 to his numbers by the advice of a spiritual guide ; who may 
 consider whether his penitent, by his conjugation of preparatory 
 actions, and heaps of holy duties, at that time usually conjoined, 
 do, or is likely to receive any spiritual progress. For this will 
 be his best indication of life, and declare his uncertain state, 
 if he thrive upon this spiritual nourishment. If it prove other- 
 wise, all that can be said of such persons is, that they are mem- 
 bers of the visible Church: they are in that net where there 
 are fishes good and bad : they stand among the wheat and the 
 
 H
 
 98 NOTE H. 
 
 tares : they are part of the lump, but whether leavened or un- 
 leavened God only knows : therefore they are such to whom the 
 Church denies not the bread of children ; but whether it does them 
 good or hurt, the day only will declare. For such persons the 
 Church has made laws for the set time of their communicating. 
 Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide were appointed for all Chris- 
 tians that were not scandalous and openly criminal by Pope 
 Fabianus (A. D. 236) : and this constitution is imitated by the 
 best constituted Church in the world, our dear mother, the Church 
 of England : and they who do not at these times, or so frequently, 
 communicate, are censured by the Council of Agathon, as unfit 
 to be reckoned among Christians, or members of the Catholic 
 Church. By these laws of the Church, it is intended that all 
 men should be called upon to discuss and shake off the yoke 
 of their sins, and enter into the salutary state of repentance: 
 and next to the perpetual sermons of the Church, she had no 
 better means to engage them to returns of piety ; hoping that, 
 by the grace of God, and the blessings of the Sacrament, the 
 repentance, which at these times solemnly begins, may at one 
 time or other fix and abide ; these little institutions and disciplines 
 being like the sudden heats in the body, which sometimes fix 
 into a burning ; though most commonly they go away without 
 any further change. The Church in this case does the best 
 she can, but does not presume that things are well : and indeed 
 as yet they are not : therefore such persons must pass further ; 
 or else their hopes may become illusions, and make the men 
 ashamed." 
 
 To the same effect, Bishop Beveridge, in his Treatise on Fre- 
 quent Communion, observes that the Church " wisely considers 
 that, being a national Church, made up of all sorts of persons, 
 it is necessary that her general rules and orders should be accom- 
 modated as much as possible to the several conditions and cir- 
 cumstances that many of them may be in. Therefore, although 
 she exhorts all her members to frequent Communion, yet she 
 does not think fit to command them all under pain of excom- 
 munication to receive oftener than three times a year, lest some
 
 NOTE r. 99 
 
 might be thereby tempted to come sometimes without that pre- 
 paration of mind that is requisite to the worthy partaking of 
 so great a mystery. I say, under pain of excommunication : for 
 that is the meaning and the effect of this law, that they who 
 do not communicate at least three times in a year, may and 
 ought to be cast out of the communion of Christ's Church." 
 
 I have quoted these passages, because I doubt not many clergy- 
 men conceive that, in administering the Communion three or 
 four times a year, they are complying with the wishes of the 
 Church, as indicated in the Rubric referred to. 
 
 NOTE I : p. 54. 
 
 In a Pastoral Letter addrest to his Clergy three years ago, 
 the Bishop of Norwich speaks as follows, concerning the latter 
 of the two irregularities mentioned in the text. " The omission 
 of the Psalms and Lessons in the Funeral Service is in violation 
 of the Rubric. It deprives the mourners of the consolation and 
 benefit of hearing a most solemn and appropriate portion of 
 Scripture under circumstances calculated to give it an impressive 
 effect : and there seems a peculiar impropriety in making any 
 distinction between rich and poor, at the moment of all others 
 when such distinctions should be forgotten." 
 
 The Bishop adds, that he " believes this omission has been 
 painfully felt by many of the Clergy, and that the authority of 
 their Diocesan will be welcomed by them as the means of breaking 
 through a bad custom, and of returning to establisht regulations." 
 My own experience fully bears out this last remark. Many 
 persons are withheld by natural timidity, by over-scrupulousness, 
 by humility and self-distrust, by an unwillingness to be thought 
 presumptuous, from correcting abuses the evil of which they 
 may feel even painfully; and such persons rejoice when they 
 can accomplish their wishes, without incurring too great a load 
 of personal responsibility. Indeed everything that I have seen 
 in my intercourse with my brethren enables me to feel an un- 
 doubting confidence in assuring our ecclesiastical Rulers, that, 
 
 H 2
 
 100 NOTE J. 
 
 the more they call upon us to fulfill our duties, and to labour 
 along with them for the purification and extension of Christ's 
 Kingdom, the more we shall love them, the more thankful we 
 shall be to them. 
 
 NOTE J : p. 54. 
 
 It has been conceived by many persons, both in our own 
 Diocese and out of it, that the Rural Chapters must soon come 
 to a standstill from the lack of subjects for discussion. Such 
 anticipations however prove that they who entertain them cannot 
 have spent much thought on the subject. Enough, I think, has 
 been said in the Charge to shew that there is no valid ground 
 for them. For what wide fields have there been spoken of as 
 lying open to the most serious and earnest deliberation of the 
 Chapters ! 
 
 First there is the wide field of ecclesiastical and parochial dis- 
 cipline. What a number of questions will spring up here ! We 
 all know and deplore the decay of everything like discipline. 
 But there is no profit in mourning over an evil, unless we en- 
 deavour to correct it. Let us consider what may and ought to 
 be done for improving the moral condition of our parishes. Let 
 us discuss these questions solemnly, as matters of vital interest, 
 with a view to what is practicable in the present state of things, 
 but without being too ready to assume that what is not now 
 in use is impracticable. Surely the united experience and re- 
 flexion of the Clergy in the Diocese might offer some valuable 
 suggestions ; and these, we may not doubt, would meet with 
 due attention from our ecclesiastical Rulers. Indeed these very 
 matters pertained originally to the jurisdiction of the Rural Chap- 
 ters, as may be seen in Mr Dansey's Work, Part v. n. cc. in. 
 iv. v. And though it is no way desirable that our Chapters 
 in these days should have such a jurisdiction committed to them, 
 they might safely and beneficially debate what measures can 
 be adopted most expediently in the present state of the Church, 
 so that the poor and simple may not be exposed without some
 
 NOTE J. 101 
 
 sort of defense to the demoralizing influences of the world. In 
 the higher classes chastity is protected by the ignominy which fol- 
 lows on the breach of it ; nor should it be left without protection 
 in the lower. 
 
 Again, what a multitude of questions are supplied by the one 
 vast, inexhaustible topic of Education I Let us suppose that 
 we have succeeded in establishing a school for every parish ; 
 still this is only the beginning of our work. How shall we raise 
 funds for the annual support of our schools ? What are the best 
 means of securing the regular attendance of the children ? What 
 can be done to remove or alleviate the evils resulting from the 
 early withdrawal of the boys ? What can be done in the way 
 of establishing evening schools ? adult schools ? Then how many 
 questions will arise concerning the best modes of teaching, and 
 of maintaining order and moral discipline in schools. To what 
 extent should the Bible be made the subject of instruction ? What 
 other books may be combined with it ? What kind and quantity 
 of secular instruction shall we give to the children? How far 
 shall practical instruction be combined with that from books ? 
 What are the effects of the monitorial system ? of that called 
 of mutual instruction ? How far may emulation be introduced 
 without moral injury? Is it allowable at all? Is it justified 
 by any necessity ? What is the influence of prizes and rewards ? 
 What are the most effective punishments? Many other like 
 questions will be arising continually ; and may we not hope that, 
 if we compare the several results of our observation and experience, 
 we shall be enabled to render our schools more efficacious than 
 they have hitherto been for the moral education of the people ? 
 Perhaps it might be useful if the Chapters were occasionally to 
 vary their place of meeting, so that the Clergy might visit each 
 other's schools, and hold an examination in them. 
 
 Our Parochial Missionary Associations too, or whatever other 
 plan may be adopted for forwarding the missionary work of the 
 Church, will furnish a store of employment for the Chapters. 
 It would tend to the perfecting of our ecclesiastical system, if every 
 Rural Deanery were to form a cluster of such Associations. At
 
 102 NOTE J. 
 
 present much is still to be done in order to their establishment 
 in every parish. And after they are establisht, we shall still 
 find no little occupation in considering how they are to be managed 
 and rendered the most efficient. It might be well if statements 
 of the results were to be laid half-yearly before the Chapters. 
 At times, should there be a dearth of other business, the Rural 
 Dean, having previously given notice to the neighbourhood, might 
 adjourn his Chapter to a schoolroom, or some other larger place 
 of meeting, where the Clergy present might endeavour to awaken 
 more activity and zeal in behalf of the spreading of Christ's 
 Kingdom. 
 
 Another wide field is opened for us in the consideration of the 
 various schemes which have been devised of late years by bene- 
 volent men for improving the economical condition of the poor. 
 Cottage allotments, Friendly and Benefit Societies, Medical Clubs, 
 and other like plans of a general nature, having the same end 
 in view, will furnish copious topics for the Chapters, when dis- 
 cussing the best modes of establishing and conducting them. In 
 the majority of parishes perhaps, the clergyman must come for- 
 ward as the chief promoter and director of such measures : 
 and it will often happen that one or two members of a Chapter 
 will be men of more practical habits, and thus will be able to 
 afford valuable information on such subjects to their brethren. 
 All however will take an interest in them: for through God's 
 blessing there are very few instances now of clergymen who do 
 not rejoice to look upon themselves as the appointed friends 
 and guardians of the poor. 
 
 Hitherto, as will be seen from the sketch of the proceedings 
 given in the Charge, the discussions of the Chapters have turned 
 mainly on the Services of the Church. Certain prominent irre- 
 gularities have been brought forward, and discust over and over 
 again; and hence some have thought that, when these irregu- 
 larities have been corrected, we shall have nothing else to talk 
 of. But in this matter also we ought to proceed more system- 
 atically and painstakingly. A judicious determination has been 
 formed by one or two Chapters to read through the Prayer-book
 
 NOTE J. 103 
 
 regularly, with a careful examination of all the Rubrics, and 
 a consideration of their grounds, each member of the Chapter 
 reporting his own practice on every point. If this be accom- 
 panied by a diligent comparison of the older Liturgies, especially 
 those under Edward the Sixth, and a consultation of the best 
 liturgical works, we should feel the benefits of this study our 
 whole lives through. This is an enquiry in which we must all 
 feel an interest, and might all bear part ; and we should 
 all desire to understand everything that can be known concern- 
 ing a book, which is the subject of our continual solemn minis- 
 trations. One consequence of such an enquiry would be, that 
 many of the irregularities, which still prevail, and of which 
 some of us are perhaps scarcely conscious, would gradually be 
 removed. This might form a running subject, to be taken up 
 after the occasional business of the day is concluded. When 
 this task is brought to an end, it might be followed by a diligent 
 study of the Articles. Or we might examine the Canons in like 
 manner, considering their grounds and reasons, and the reasons 
 why so many of them have fallen into disuse, as well as how 
 far it might be practicable and expedient to revive them. For 
 these purposes it would be requisite, as I have urged in the 
 Charge, to lay the foundation of a Chapter Library. I should 
 much rejoice to hear that any Chapter had determined upon 
 doing so. It would be a sign that they were about to buckle 
 in earnest to their work. 
 
 With the view of rendering the discussions at the Chapters 
 more profitable, it would be well if the Rural Dean, when he 
 sends his summons, would give notice of certain special subjects 
 for discussion, that the members might meditate upon them before- 
 hand. Or questions might now and then be appointed at one 
 Chapter for consideration at the next ensuing. For again and 
 again I must repeat, that, if the Chapters are to produce the 
 good, which they were designed, and which I believe them well 
 calculated to produce, we the Clergy, collectively and individually, 
 the Rural Deans above all, and every other member of them also, 
 must do what in us lies to give a grave and practical character
 
 104 NOTE J. 
 
 to our deliberations. If we think of the deplorable condition 
 of the Church throughout England, and almost in every parish, 
 deplorable, when compared with that unity and authority 
 and sanctity which ought to belong to it, we must needs be 
 smitten with shame, that, when fifteen thousand of the best 
 educated men in England have solemnly devoted their lives to 
 the ministry of Christ, the Kingdom of Christ in England should 
 still be so unlike what it ought to be. I do not mean, that this 
 number is sufficient for the wants of our present population : 
 perhaps it should be doubled, in order that we may have a suffi- 
 ciency of labourers for the over- abundant harvest : but this num- 
 ber ought to have effected far more than it has effected. Among 
 the causes of our shortcomings, a main one has doubtless been 
 the want of a centre of union, and indeed of any means for united 
 deliberation and action. The centre of united action is not yet 
 restored to us. Many think that, in our present state of division 
 and contention, we should be ill fitted to derive any advantage 
 from the meeting of an ecclesiastical synod. For my own part, 
 I believe that, if we were brought together, under the soothing 
 influence of those peace-loving spirits, many of whom would as- 
 suredly be found in any assembly of the Clergy, contention would 
 lose much of its bitterness and fierceness. And though all power 
 is attended with danger, it does not therefore behove us to eschew 
 power: for weakness too has dangers of its own. Nor, because 
 governments may err and sin, is anarchy therefore preferable to 
 orderly rule. At all events, while we look forward with hope 
 to the time when our Convocation, whether under its present or a 
 better constitution, shall be allowed to meet for the discussion of the 
 many questions which require the deliberation of the Church, let 
 us in this Diocese thankfully make use of the institution which 
 we have received from the wisdom of our beloved Father, Bishop 
 Otter. And let us feel assured that all history confirms the 
 divine truth, as no less applicable to communities than to indi- 
 viduals, that to him who hath shall be given, while from him 
 who hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth 
 to have.
 
 NOTES K, L. 105 
 
 NOTE K : p. 56. 
 
 Hence it is desirable that the office of Churchwarden should 
 be filled by persons, whose station in their parishes will enable 
 them to render it efficient, with a view to the maintenance 
 of discipline, as well as for the repair and restoration of the 
 churches. Thus I cannot but deem it a matter of congratu- 
 lation, that several of the principal gentlemen in the Archdea- 
 conry, for instance, our two County Members, one at least of 
 the Members for our Boroughs, and others from among the Magis- 
 tracy, should have been willing to accept the office for the pre- 
 sent year. At the same time it is one of such practical importance 
 for the preservation of good order, that no one should undertake it, 
 except with the purpose of discharging its duties faithfully : and this 
 cannot be done, unless by a person who is resident in his parish 
 at least during the largest part of the year, and who is a regular 
 attendant at church. With regard to the other main branch of 
 their calling, if we have any right to expect that Churchwardens 
 should act with a liberal spirit in restoring and beautifying their 
 churches, above all, I trust, may we look for this from those whose 
 education should lead them to take a livelier interest in architec- 
 tural propriety, and who are beyond the reach of those motives 
 for parsimony, whereby a labouring farmer may often be withheld 
 from venturing on an expensive work. 
 
 NOTE L: p. 61. 
 
 The practice of putting up stoves in churches used to be con- 
 fined to towns, but has lately been spreading through our country 
 parishes. Thus Dr Arnott's valuable invention has tended greatly 
 to disfigure our churches. In every other parish it is now thought 
 indispensable to .have a stove ; and reckless self-indulgence is 
 not to be checkt by any regard to beauty or seemliness. The 
 more luxurious habits of modem life, our carpets and curtains, 
 the stoves in our passages, and our other contrivances to keep
 
 106 NOTE L. 
 
 ourselves unscathed by a breath of cold air, render us more 
 sensitive to cold than our ancestors were; and, such being the 
 case, it may perhaps be requisite to defer in some measure to 
 this sensitiveness. Only, since the increase of comforts, as they 
 are miscalled, is confined to the higher classes, there are few 
 persons in our country parishes, for whom such consideration 
 is needed. 
 
 There is another reason however, which makes us want some 
 method of warming our churches, or at least of keeping them 
 dry, in the increast frequency of organs. These in themselves 
 are very desirable, both as supplying the best accompaniment 
 for the voices of the children and of the congregation, and as 
 superseding that troublesome unmanageable body, a village choir ; 
 whose privilege of taking such a prominent part in the service, 
 without being under any sort of discipline, was mostly found 
 to pamper a feeling of self-importance; and whose familiarity 
 with sacred words, as objects of art and of personal dis- 
 play, seemed to deaden the sense of their power. Now for 
 the sake of the organ we need a remedy against the damp in 
 our churches. Thus much however might be effected by char- 
 coal or coke fires twice or thrice a week in wet weather, and 
 by regular ventilation. To produce a sensible warmth in build- 
 ings of such a size is not so easy, but, if they are kept dry, 
 far less important. Sometimes a stove may be so placed as 
 to be inoffensive to the eye ; and the occasion for the pipes may 
 be obviated by flues, either under-ground, or in the wall, great 
 care being taken not to let them approach any ignitible materials. 
 But the best mode of warming churches seems to be by means 
 of water-pipes ; which cannot indeed be put up without a con- 
 siderable outlay at first, but of which the subsequent cost is 
 trifling. These too will be the safest. Unless great vigilance 
 is exercised by those who are in authority in every parish, after 
 all the perils which our churches have had to go through, from 
 the bigotry of the puritans in the seventeenth century, and from 
 the torpour and niggardliness of all classes in the eighteenth, 
 the effeminate self-indulgence of the nineteenth will prove still 
 more destructive.
 
 NOTE M. 107 
 
 Among the most offensive violations of beauty and propriety 
 for the sake of personal comfort, are the chimnies which are now 
 and then stuck on the outside of our churches, sometimes of 
 glaring red brick. I have seen two or three of these chimnies 
 in a line on the same church, as though they were set there 
 in wantonness for the sake of outraging every kind of decorum. 
 All these, I hope, will be removed ^forthwith. I was thankful 
 to learn that, on the very evening of the day on which my Charge 
 was delivered, one of the black monsters reprehended in it was 
 taken away. Surely when attention has once been called to such 
 scandals, people must feel impatient to get rid of them. 
 
 i, NOTE M : p. 62. 
 
 A formidable obstacle to a satisfactory disposition of the seats 
 in our churches is opposed by faculty pews, and by prescriptive 
 rights to pews. Both these are gross abuses, which should never 
 have been allowed to exist in the house of God. Yet, where 
 such rights exist, they cannot be taken away : they must 
 be surrendered voluntarily. But this too, we may not doubt, 
 many will do gladly. An excellent example has been set in 
 the parish of Hurstpierrepoint, where Mr Campion has given 
 up his private chancel' and the faculty pews attacht to his house, 
 in order that the new church, which is to be built there, may 
 be, as a church ought to be, without a single pew, so that all 
 who assemble to worship God in it may form one united con- 
 gregation. In the Notes to the second Edition of my former 
 Charge, I mentioned that the Earl of Chichester had already 
 done the same in Stanmer and Falmer Churches, in the latter 
 of which three or four pews have been retained for farmers who 
 were unwilling to part with them. In like manner the Earl 
 De La Warr, I understand, is desirous of giving up his pews in 
 Withyham Church, and of taking his seat on a bench along with 
 the rest of the congregation. So, I am informed, is the Earl of 
 Burlington in Eastbourne Church, and Viscount Gage in that 
 of Westfirle. When the reluctance of some of the farmers is
 
 108 NOTE M. 
 
 overcome, these wishes, it is to be hoped, will be carried into 
 effect. And the time will come ere long, when the example 
 set by such true members of our aristocracy will be catching, 
 when the pens and styes, by which our churches have so long 
 been disfigured, will be swept away, when people will become 
 ashamed of sitting imprisoned in their lonely cells, and will feel 
 that the noblest and most blessed position for the high as well 
 as the low is that of a member of the congregation of the Lord. 
 
 In the mean time it is to be hoped, that they who have the 
 authority will prevent the issuing of any more faculties attaching 
 pews to houses. In doing so they will be following out the re- 
 commendation of the Commissioners appointed in the late Reign 
 to inquire into the Practice and Jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical 
 Courts; who, in their Report in 1832, advise "that in future 
 no faculties shall be granted permanently annexing to any mes- 
 suage a pew in the church or chancel." As the list of these 
 Commissioners contains the names of the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, the Bishops of London, Durham, Lincoln, St Asaph, and 
 Bangor,. Lords Tenterden and Wynford, Sir Nicholas Tindal, 
 Sir John Nicholl, Sir Christopher Robinson, Sir Herbert Jenner, 
 and Sir Stephen Lushington ; it may be thought surprising 
 that, in the teeth of this recommendation, new faculties should 
 since then have been granted. Yet such, alas, is the case. The 
 Report of the Commissioners did not excite much attention at 
 the time. Other ecclesiastical questions of more pressing interest 
 started up, and drew men's minds away. And so tainted is 
 the English people with the spirit of barter, so accustomed are 
 we to require a quid pro quo on every occasion, that, even in the 
 churches which have been built or enlarged of late years, the 
 parishioners who have contributed liberally have mostly thought 
 it a matter of course that they should receive a compensation 
 for their contribution in the shape of a faculty pew. So hard a 
 lesson is it to learn, that we are to give, hoping for nothing again. 
 
 I know not whether the Bill, which has just been announced, 
 as designed to carry some of the recommendations of these Com- 
 missioners into effect, will touch upon these points. It would also
 
 NOTE M. 109 
 
 be a useful measure, if the Commission suggested by them were 
 to be issued in every Diocese, for the sake of investigating all 
 rights of pews, registering such as could be substantiated, and 
 extinguishing such as could not. The next recommendation too, 
 that the ultimate authority of regulating the disposition of pews 
 and seats in churches should be vested in the Archdeacon, seems 
 expedient, at least in our present enormous Dioceses. And 
 perhaps altogether it might be advantageous that the Bishops 
 should be relieved of these minor cares, in order that they may 
 devote themselves with undivided energy to the spiritual con- 
 cerns of their Dioceses and of the whole Church. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEV, 
 Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
 
 LATELY PUBLISH! 
 By the same AUTHOR : 
 
 THE BETTER PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH: 
 
 A CHARGE DELIVERED AT THE VISITATION IN 1840, 
 
 Second Edition. 
 
 THE VICTORY OF FAITH, 
 
 AND OTHER SERMONS. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHT IN HERSTMONCEUX CHURCH. 
 PORTIONS OF THE PSALMS, 
 
 IN ENGLISH VERSE, 
 
 Selected for Public Worship. 
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH, 
 BY TWO BROTHERS: 
 
 Second Edition, with large Additions. First Series.
 
 ..^l. U ..!" N ..?. EGIONAl - LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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