THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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 \ Churchman 
 
 To Churchmen 
 
 Rev. a. E. BARNES-t_AWKtr>n;fc, m.a. 
 
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 w^ EIGHTH THOUSAND. ^Jf 
 
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 A CHURCHMAN 
 
 TO 
 
 CHURCHMEN. 
 
 y4 SERIES OF LECTURES ON MATTERS OF 
 CONTROVERSY AT THE PRESENT DAY. 
 
 BY 
 
 A. E. /BARNES-LAWRENCEj M.A., 
 
 Late E.xhibittoner of Worcester College, Oxford. 
 Vicar of St. Michael and All Angels, Blackheath Park, S.E. 
 
 WITH PREFACE BY 
 
 H. C. G. MOULE, M.A., 
 
 Principal of Ridley Hall, and late Fellow of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, 
 
 " r<p fi'fv yap oKrjGit truvTCi (Tvv(fSei rd virdpxovTa." 
 "With the tnith all facts and realities agree." 
 
 Aristotle. 
 
 HENRY BURNSIDE. 
 
 London : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & Co. 
 1894. 
 
 V
 
 
 A 
 
 30 QGT.1B2:U 
 
 Ail Rights Reserved, 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall. 

 
 3X 
 
 ro37 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 >2 The responsibility of publishing these Lec- 
 ^ tures must rest with my Congregation rather 
 than myself. Delivered in Lent, at a time of 
 cc much pressure, they were wrung from me by 
 cc a sense of their need. It is indisputable that 
 £ a large number of the most spiritual, active, 
 and intelligent members of the Church of 
 England are slowly drifting from her Com- 
 munion, and are merely held together where 
 they can enjoy a simple ritual in worship and 
 Scriptural teaching. The reason is not far to 
 §[ seek. On all sides they observe practices 
 2» tolerated, and doctrines avowed, from which 
 '^ this country was purged at the Reformation, 
 and which they have been hitherto accustomed 
 UJ to associate with the Church of Rome. A deep 
 ^ distrust of the Bishops, and, in many cases, of 
 the position of their own Church, has, beyond 
 question, taken possession of their inmost 
 i souls. What is the consequence ? They 
 [withhold their money from Diocesan objects, 
 ! while they give splendidly to societies in 
 'which they have confidence ; they are often 
 ■forced to attend chapel because they have 
 
 i5UU7l7
 
 4 Preface. 
 
 been driven out of their parish church ; they 
 even contemplate Disestabhshment as a pos- 
 sible escape from a state of things which has 
 become intolerable. These Lectures are an 
 honest attempt to reassure such disheartened 
 Churchmen of the real teaching of their own 
 historic Church. They are not exhaustive, 
 they do not pretend to original research, they 
 are simply designed as a help to those who 
 cannot study large and expensive works ; and 
 already I have had the gratification of hearing 
 some say that they are better Churchmen than 
 they thought they were. 
 
 I have purposely made free use of Hooker ; 
 for Hooker, a very few years ago, was a final 
 court of appeal to most High Churchmen. 
 I must express my indebtedness for several 
 quotations to Mr. Odom's excellent little 
 volume, "The Church of England," and to 
 Canon Fausset's " Scripture and Prayer-Book 
 in Harmony " — now, I regret to hear, out of 
 print. For the first part of the Lecture on 
 the Lord's Supper I owe much to a careful 
 analysis of Vogan by my friend the Hon. 
 and Rev. W. T. Rice ; other debts are, I 
 think, acknowledged in their place. These 
 addresses were taken down by a shorthand- 
 writer, and I have not cared to alter their 
 direct and personal character. 
 
 In conclusion, I will merely say that, while 
 I have spoken plainly and unhesitatingly, I 
 have endeavoured to do so in the spirit of 
 our Collect for Quinquagesima Sunday : — 
 
 " O Lord, who hast taught us that all our 
 doings without charity are nothing worth ;
 
 Preface to the Second Edition. 5 
 
 send Thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our 
 hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the 
 very bond of peace and of all virtues, without 
 which whosoever liveth is counted dead be- 
 fore Thee : Grant this for Thine onl}- Son 
 Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." 
 
 A. E. B-L. 
 
 Blackheath, 
 
 Whitsuntide, 1893. 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 I REJOICE in the publication of "A Church- 
 man to Churchmen." The book is valuable 
 for its own sake ; and then, as a sign of the 
 times, full of encouragement to those who love 
 the Church of England as she really is. It is 
 excellent in itself. Within its modest compass 
 lies a mass of facts, arranged, discussed, and 
 illustrated with great accuracy and ability ; 
 and the facts are, too many of them, just those 
 which have been either dropped out of sight, 
 or carefully put out of sight, of recent years in 
 quarters supposed to be specially true to .the 
 Church. I for one thank God for this restate- 
 ment, equally careful and popular, temperate 
 and distinct, of what the English Church 
 really says and really does not say, about 
 Church, Ministry, and Sacraments. Not one 
 sentence violates Christian kindliness and 
 fairness. But the writer has found out how, 
 all the more effectually, to' speak unpopular 
 truth, and to contrast it with popular error,
 
 6 Preface to the Second Edition. 
 
 so that his words will be remembered. I think 
 highly of all the lectures, and not least of the 
 last. It brings the whole discussion to a 
 practical issue in a way most stirring and 
 suggestive, and not a day too soon. 
 
 The work is, moreover, a hopeful sign of the 
 times. It is one of the many noteworthy 
 symptoms of the right sort of Protestant 
 revival in the Church. It betokens a renewed 
 attention to our great Reformed Theologians 
 on the part of cultivated parochial clergymen 
 of a generation still in its prime. It shows 
 how much such men are growingly alive to 
 the impossibility of neglecting the distinctive 
 doctrinal information of their people ; and 
 then it puts all this in living contact with the 
 question of personal conversion to God, per- 
 sonal consecration of self to His service, and 
 personal holiness and righteousness of life in 
 Christ. 
 
 May the Lord of the Word and of the 
 Church bless the message of this book. 
 
 H. C. G. MOULE. 
 
 Cambridge, 
 
 June 24, 1893.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE CHURCH 9 
 
 II. THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY . . .25 
 
 III. THE SACRAMENT OF HOLY BAPTISM . 42 
 
 IV. THE SACRAMENT OF THE lord's SUPPER 62 
 
 V. THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER . 82 
 
 VI. THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF THE 
 
 DIFFERENT MEANS OF GRACE . 95
 
 "The house of God, which is the Church of the living 
 God."— I Tim. iii. 15. 
 
 The Church — What is it ? The question is 
 absolutely important, but by no means new. It 
 is a question that has been discussed through 
 all the centuries of Christian faith. As early 
 as the Epistles of Clement and Ignatius we 
 hear of it ; in the time of Cyprian it is a 
 matter of fierce conflict ; it is in debate in the 
 time of Augustine ; it continues to be so right 
 down to the Reformation ; it is hotly discussed 
 still. Nor need we wonder ; it is a right 
 instinct which has made this topic a battle- 
 field. This is no mere academic question, 
 some matter for schoolmen only and theo- 
 logians, rather it is one that touches all that 
 is most vital to our soul's welfare, it affects 
 our very salvation ; and that is why I have 
 without hesitation put it first in the list of 
 subjects for Sunday evening consideration. 
 All controversy is distasteful to me, nor need 
 these matters be approached in a controversial 
 spirit, but I have a duty to you as my people
 
 10 The Church. 
 
 in a day of perplexity, and my object is rather 
 to defend what is true, than to attack what is 
 false. 
 
 I. The word " Church " is used in several 
 different senses, but the main question to-day 
 lies between two perfectly simple issues. Is 
 " the Church " a spiritual and mystical body, 
 invisible as a whole to man but visible to 
 God ; or is it, to quote Mr. Sadler, who 
 speaks, remember, for the High Church party, 
 " always an outward and visible body, known 
 by certain outward and visible marks " ? 
 Is it true that, " If our Services are to 
 be Scriptural, they must give no coun- 
 tenance to the idea that there are two 
 Churches — a visible and an invisible — to the 
 former of which we are supposed to be 
 admitted at our Baptism, while God has 
 restricted saving grace to the latter. Our 
 Services recognise but one Church, the visible, 
 into which the person is admitted at Bap- 
 tism " ("Church Doctrine," pp. 41, 85). 
 
 Where shall we look for guidance ? By a 
 true instinct we turn at once to the New 
 Testament, and confining ourselves for the 
 moment to one of the Pauline Epistles, we 
 find three wonderful figures of the Church. 
 It is the Body of Christ. " He is Head over 
 all things to the Church, which is His body, 
 the fulness of Him that filleth all in all " 
 (Eph. i, 22, 23). I have so recently dwelt 
 upon this sublime theme, that I will but 
 mention it now ; but whatever modern science 
 has told us of the marvellous interdependence 
 of the Head and the Members, such, at least
 
 The Church. U 
 
 spiritually, is that of Christ and His Church. 
 Through the eyes of this Body He looks forth 
 upon a world of dying men ; through its lips 
 He asks the hopeless sinner, " Wilt thou be 
 made whole ? " Through its hands He 
 ministers bread to hungry souls ; on its feet 
 He fain would go to " the uttermost parts of 
 the earth," and claim what He has purchased 
 for His own. The Church is the Fulfilment 
 on earth of Divine grace. 
 
 Again, the Church is His glorious House 
 (ii. 19-22), a Temple of which "each several 
 building fitly joined together," growing in 
 compactness, growing in extension (both 
 thoughts are in the Greek), becomes an holy 
 Sanctuary for the Lord Himself. His in- 
 dwelling in His people is a blessed reality 
 now, it is the pledge of still brighter reality 
 hereafter. Yet again, the Church is the Bride 
 of Christ. The sacred union of Holy Marriage, 
 instituted in the"world's opening glow, is what 
 it is, that it may set forth the mystery of 
 the Union of Christ and His Redeemed ; the 
 Apostle says, " the twain become one flesh ; 
 this mystery is great : but I speak in regard 
 of Christ and of the Church " (v. 31, 32, R.V.). 
 
 And now, passing from the inspired words 
 of the servant, listen reverently to the words 
 of the Master. More wonderful than the 
 figures of the Epistle is the simile of the life- 
 union of "The Vine and the Branches" in 
 the Gospel (John xv. 1-6), and surely most 
 wonderful of all, the setting forth of that in- 
 effable Oneness in the prayer of our great High 
 Priest, " that they all may be one ; as Thou
 
 1 2 . The Church. 
 
 Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they 
 also may be one in Us " (John xvii. 21). 
 
 Is there one here who is not intuitively 
 and immediately conscious that these passages 
 describe a Union that is something more than 
 the eyes of the world can see ? But if the 
 ties that link its members to Christ are 
 mystical, spiritual, and invisible, it follows that 
 the Church itself is also mystical, spiritual, and 
 invisible, " The House of God which is the 
 Church of the living God." And Luther's 
 words are true, " That there is one Church, 
 Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, is an article of 
 faith and not of sight." 
 
 Equally clear is the witness of the most 
 eminent Churchmen to this momentous fact. 
 No name stands higher than 4:hat of Hooker, 
 and what does Hooker say ? " For lack of 
 diligent observation the difference, first 
 between the Church of God mystical and 
 visible, then between the visible, sound and 
 corrupted, the oversights are neither few nor 
 light that have been committed." I might 
 quote from Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Barrow and 
 many another, but let me give you the words of 
 a more modern theologian. Dr. Chris. Words- 
 worth, the late eminent bishop, himself a 
 High Churchman : "The Church is visible as 
 far only as is seen by men ; it is invisible as it 
 is known by God. The visible Church con- 
 tains both good and bad ; the invisible consists 
 of good only. In the visible are wheat and 
 chaff, wheat and tares mixed together ; in the 
 invisible, wheat alone. The one is the Church 
 of the called^ the other of the elect of God
 
 The Church. 13 
 
 only " (" Theophilus Anglicanus," ed. ix. 
 p. 14). It must be so : — 
 
 " For She on Earth hath union 
 With God, the Three in One ; 
 And mystic sweet communion, 
 With those whose rest is won.' 
 
 Our Church herself is equally outspoken. 
 The Homily for Whit-Sunda}- defines the 
 matter thus : — " The true Church is an 
 universal congregation and fellowship of 
 God's faitlifid and elect people, built upon 
 the foundation of the apostles and prophets, 
 Jesus Christ Himself being the head corner- 
 stone." In her Ordinal she speaks of " Christ's 
 sheep that are dispersed abroad, and His 
 children who are in the midst of this naughty 
 world." In her last Collect she exults in " the 
 mystical body of Thy Son Jesus Christ, which 
 is the blessed company of all faithful people." 
 But it is in her 55th Canon that she dogmati- 
 cally defines the Church thus : — "Ye shall pray 
 for Christ's holy Catholic Church, that is, for 
 the whole congregation of Christian people 
 dispersed throughout the world, and especially 
 for the Churches of England, Scotland,' and 
 Ireland." 
 
 II. But in the New Testament the term 
 " Church " is applied not only to the body 
 mystical, but to separate comnrunities of 
 Christians ; and, mark this, it is just because 
 men apply the attributes and graces of the 
 
 ' Note that our Canon calls the Presbyterian Church of 
 Scotland a Church.
 
 14 The Church. 
 
 Church of the Redeemed to one or another 
 of these visible communities, that such fatal 
 illusions are prevalent. It is important you 
 should observe that no sooner had the infant 
 church developed than we hear no longer of 
 " the Church " but of "the churches." You 
 recollect that St. Paul speaks of the "Churches 
 of Galatia " ; and even, where we should least 
 expect it, of the " Churches of Judea " ; and 
 yet again, he writes, " The Churches of Christ 
 salute you." Especially noteworthy it is that 
 the ascended Lord Himself sends messages to 
 "the seven Churches that are in Asia" ; and 
 in the wonderful close of the Book of Revela- 
 tion He declares, "I, Jesus, have sent mine 
 angel to testify unto you these things in the 
 Churches." Surely this should make some 
 pause ; surely His language is in marked con- 
 trast to those reiterated words " the church," 
 " the church," so loosely and vaguely used 
 to-day. The Church as a single visible society 
 on earth is not so addressed or spoken of by 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 We cannot afford to be mistaken here. 
 The spell of a false conception as to the 
 Church has wrought untold misery on the 
 earth, it has been one great spiritual instru- 
 ment for enslaving the souls and even the 
 bodies of men. In the third century Cyprian 
 said, " There is no salvation outside the 
 Church," meaning the visible community. 
 The Romanist to-day says exactly the same, 
 meaning the Roman Church ; the High 
 Churchman says, with wider charity but 
 equal confusion, "Outside the Anglican,
 
 The Church. 15 
 
 Greek, and Roman communities, which 
 together constitute The Church, there is no 
 security of salvation." There ahvays have 
 been, and there ahvays will be until the Chief 
 Shep'herd Himself is manifested, many "folds" 
 of the one " flock." The effort, repeated again 
 and again, to compel all Christ's sheep into 
 one fold has always disastrously failed, and 
 always must. Look back over the pages of 
 history, and you will find that those that tell 
 of such efforts are more deeply bloodstained 
 than any other. Think of Simon de Montfort 
 and the Albigenses ; of the Massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew ; of the Revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes ; of Philip II., Alva, and the 
 Netherlands ; of Mary and the Protestants ; 
 of Elizabeth and the Romanists ;■ of Laud and 
 the Puritans ; of Charles 11. and the Scottish 
 Covenanters. Look around you, and think 
 of the Stundists in Russia, of the Protestant 
 congregations in Spain ; and, when you have 
 summed up your observations, you will con- 
 fess that the only visible results of such efforts 
 are the martyrdom of some, the hypocrisy of 
 others, the sullen resistance of many, and the 
 undying hatred of all. 
 
 At the time of the Reformation the Roman 
 Church exercised an overpowering influence ; 
 she captivated the imagination as well as 
 enslaved the conscience ; she exerted a vast 
 temporal power ; resistance to her claims was 
 sacrilege. In their struggle with the Re- 
 formers, the Roman controversialists flung 
 themselves on the antiquity, extent, and in- 
 fluence of their Church. The reply was
 
 1 6 The Church. 
 
 twofold. The Reformers acknowledged that 
 Christ had left His promises to the Church, 
 but denied that the Pope and Bishops were 
 the Church so favoured ; rather was it an elect 
 remnant, of which they themselves by grace 
 were part. In other words, they revived the 
 conception of the invisible Church of Christ. 
 Their other reply, as I need not remind you, 
 was to assert the true conditions of member- 
 ship with Christ, and to declare that Justifica- 
 tion was by faith only. By this New Testa- 
 ment doctrine alone. Christian souls, weak and 
 isolated, dared to assert their independence of 
 Rome, and to brave its thunders. 
 
 It was the secret of the Reformation. In 
 her XlXth Article our Church affirms the 
 Reformers' view : — 
 
 " The visible Church of Christ is a congre- 
 gation of faithful men, in the which the pure 
 Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments 
 be duly ministered according to Christ's 
 ordinance, in all those things that of necessity 
 are requisite to the same. As the Church of 
 Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have 
 erred ; so also the Church of Rome hath 
 erred, not only in their living and manner of 
 ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith." 
 
 The question which tortures thousands of 
 souls to-day, which is the wailing keynote of 
 Newman's Apologia^ *' In what Church is 
 salvation to be found ? " ' is based, says Dr. 
 Wace, on essential error. If conscience bids 
 
 ' See article " The Church " in The Church atid her 
 Doctrine (Nisbet), to which I am much indebted.
 
 The Church. tj 
 
 men change their church they are bound at 
 their peril to do so, but the cardinal proposi- 
 tion of the Roman Church and of the modern 
 Anglican, expressed by Mr. Gore, the latest 
 spokesman of the Oxford school, in the follow- 
 ing terms, " Membership in the true Church 
 depends on membership in the visible Church 
 on earth," is alike opposed to reason, to 
 history, to the Prayer-Book, and to the New 
 Testament. 
 
 III. Is, then, the right Organisation of the 
 Church of Christ a matter of no importance ? 
 We cannot think so. Those solemn words, 
 uttered at one of the most solemn moments 
 of our Lord's life, " That they also may be 
 one : as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in 
 Thee, that they also may be one in Us : that 
 the world may believe that Thou hast sent 
 Me," cannot be reconciled with our " unhappy 
 divisions." Unity, visible unity, as the evidence 
 of our Mission, a source of strength, and the 
 fulfilment of the purpose of Christ, is what 
 every Christian should work and pray for. 
 Not but that even Unity can be bought too 
 dear, when it is secured by the sacrifice of 
 principle ; but Unity based on the three 
 essential points of Christian Faith, Christian 
 Life, and Christian Discipline, is for the glory 
 of God. 
 
 It is as possessing these three notes that the 
 Church of England claims to be a sound 
 branch of the historic Catholic Church, and 
 protests against the Roman Church as un- 
 sound, because she does not possess them. 
 Our Church claims no perfection. "In the 
 
 2
 
 1 8 The Church. 
 
 visible Church, she insists, the evil is ever 
 mingled with the good " (Art. XXVI.). You 
 may remember the telling answer once given 
 by a clergyman to one of his parishioners, 
 who said she was about to leave the Church 
 of her baptism, and join a perfect church. 
 " Your purpose is excellent," he said, " and I 
 hope you will succeed, only don't forget that 
 so soon as you have joined such a church it 
 will cease to be perfect." Our Church bitterly 
 laments her shortcomings in the past, and 
 blames herself for much of the nonconformity 
 that exists ; but she has nevertheless the three 
 cardinal points I just mentioned, and with 
 these she links her historical claim. 
 
 Thus with regard to the Nonconformists 
 her position is clear. She asserts in the first 
 place her Antiquity. Some think she was a 
 new Church at the Reformation in the six- 
 teenth century. They are mistaken. Some 
 think she was a new Church when Augustine 
 landed in a.d. 596. They are mistaken. So 
 early as the fourth century the British Church 
 furnished martyrs in the terrible persecution 
 under Diocletian ; and to one of them who 
 refused to sacrifice to the gods, the familiar 
 name of the church, town, and diocese of St. 
 Albans is due. Earlier still, in the decree 
 convening the Council of Nicea (a.d. 325) 
 special mention is made of the Church of 
 Britain. Earlier still, at the Council of Aries, 
 in 314, we find her represented by the Bishops 
 of York, London, and Caerleon ; and earlier 
 still, Tertullian, a Roman writer, dating from 
 A.D. 201, says : " Regions of the Britons, inac-
 
 The C/mrch. 
 
 19 
 
 cessible to the Romans, have assuredly been 
 subdued to Christ." » 
 
 All this proves the existence of our English 
 Church more than three hundred years before 
 the arrival of the Roman Mission under 
 Augustine. At a time when Britain was 
 parcelled out into many kingdoms there was 
 only one Church, and, in view of some modern 
 pretensions, I would have you remember that 
 though we owe the see of Canterbury to 
 Augustine, his mission was comparatively a 
 failure in two respects. As a mission from 
 the Pope it did not succeed. At that time 
 the British Church had its own Liturgy, anfl 
 sturdily refused Augustine's demands as to the 
 time for observing Easter, as to the mode of 
 baptism, and as to the tonsure. Its clergy, 
 moreover, refused to be subject to the Pope. 
 From the very first, therefore, centuries before 
 
 ' The historian Gildas, who died at Glastonbury in 
 A.D. 570, professes to give, as some think, a still earlier 
 date to the British Church in the following words: " In 
 the meantime, Christ the true Sun afforded his Rays, that 
 is the knowledge of his Precepts to this Island, shivering 
 with Icy-cold, and separate at a great distance from the 
 visible .Sun, not from the visible P'irmament, but from the 
 Supreme everlasting Power of Heaven. For we certainly 
 know that in the latter end of the Reign of Tiberius that 
 Sun appcar'd to the whole World with his Glorious 
 Beams, in which time his Religion was propagated with- 
 out any impediment against the Will of the Roman 
 Senate, death being threatened by that Prince to ail who 
 should inform against the Soldiers of Christ." But this 
 passage, which writers have applied to the particular 
 preaching of the gospel in Britain, seems rather to refer to 
 the general liberty of preaching it throughout the Roman 
 world. Stillingflcet says, "This I take to be Gildas his 
 true meaning " (" Origines Britannicae ").
 
 io The Church. 
 
 the Council of Spires, our Church as regards 
 Rome was a " Protestant " Church. 
 
 As a spiritual effort it also failed. De- 
 votedly as Augustine worked in this part of 
 the country, his converts too often lapsed into 
 heathenism, as history shows ; and England 
 as a whole was evangelised by other mis- 
 sionaries than those of the Roman Church. 
 If you have ever read Bishop Lightfoot's 
 "Leaders in the Northern Church," you will 
 remember that not Augustine, but Columba 
 and Aidan, were the true apostles of England, 
 lona, not Canterbury, became the light of 
 Christendom. Not merely England and 
 Scotland, but large tracts of the continent, 
 were evangelised by the Irish missionaries, 
 altogether apart from the influence and guid- 
 ance of Rome. The Presbyter-Abbot of lona, 
 not the Pope, was their head ; and when there 
 arose a question as to which they owed allegi- 
 ance, they unhesitatingly chose the former. 
 And it was due to him and his, under God, 
 that this country ceased to be heathen, and 
 accepted the name of Christ. 
 
 It cannot be too often repeated that for six 
 hundred years England owed no allegiance to 
 Rome, and that for the next thousand years 
 there was always a strong national party pro- 
 testing loudly against its usurpation, until it 
 was finally shaken off. It is to their ancient 
 Church, in the providence OiGod, that English- 
 men, whether Churchmen or Nonconformists, 
 mainly owe their Bible, their Christian 
 liberty, their hopes of heaven. You have 
 not forgotten how in a.d. 12 13, when King
 
 The Church. 21 
 
 John sold his kingdom to the Pope and 
 became his vassal, it was Stephen Langton, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, who headed the 
 revolt of the Barons, and compelled the 
 unworthy king to seal Slai^-na Charta^ that 
 palladium of our national liberties ; nor how 
 its first clause runs thus : " The Church of 
 England shall be free, and hold her rights 
 entire, and her liberties inviolate." 
 
 Once again, the Church of England asserts 
 that she is a National Churchy and she has 
 good reason for doing so. It is not, remem- 
 ber, that she was ever established by Act of 
 Parliament, for she existed centuries before 
 Crown or Parliament did ; she was established 
 not by legislative decree, but by evangelistic 
 efTort ; established, that is, privately in men's 
 hearts long before she was publicly recognised 
 by the State. All that the phrase, by law 
 established^ means, is that her Constitution, 
 Liturgy, and Doctrine, drawn up by her own 
 representatives, received the sanction of the 
 State, and that the observance of them is 
 enforceable by law. The case of the Noncon- 
 formists is exactly parallel : their Trust Deeds, 
 drawn up by themselves, for the legal posses- 
 sion and succession of their own property and 
 doctrine, would be of no authority whatever 
 without the sanction of the State ; yet who 
 would say that, because they availed them- 
 selves of such protection, the State gave them 
 their property ? But you will readily perceive 
 that the ancient Church of the country must 
 be far more closely entwined with our whole 
 legal fabric than any religious body of modern
 
 22 The Church. 
 
 birth. I suppose that if Barnabas, instead of 
 selling his land in Cyprus and giving the 
 proceeds to the apostles, had legally conveyed 
 it to the Church of Jerusalem, the title to it 
 to-day would be more intricate than that of a 
 freehold which has no particular history. So 
 is it with the laws regulating the laws of the 
 Church of England, compared with those 
 regulating religious bodies outside her com- 
 munion ; ' and it is due to her ancient endow- 
 ments held by immemorial title, which some 
 to-day would seize for secular purposes, that 
 she makes provision for the spiritual needs of 
 multitudes for whom there is no other pro- 
 vision at all. Disestablishment means disen- 
 dowment ; and disendowrnent means in hun- 
 dreds of poor parishes the cessation of the 
 present public means of grace. The chapel 
 often cannot exist where the Church, owing 
 to her endowments, can.' Speaking of dis- 
 establishment reminds me that our National 
 Church secures three things. First, the public 
 
 ' See " The Englishman's Brief on Behalf of his 
 National Church " (S.P.C.K.). 
 
 ^ The following extract from a strong Liberationist 
 paper suggests the advantages of endowments from 
 another side : " A man with an income of £60 a year 
 drawn from a few people whom he is bound to please can- 
 not afford to speak his mind. We have observed such 
 poor men painfully calculating the loss to their income if 
 such and such persons were to take offence and leave the 
 place. There are hundreds of Nonconformists who, 
 laboriously treading out the corn, are muzzled and not 
 unmuzzled. And this is our blessed voluntaryism, and 
 for this we fight against (Church) endowments, and would 
 have them devoted to relieving the rates for sewering and 
 daving! " {The Christian World).
 
 The Church. 23 
 
 acknowledgment by the State of the existence 
 of God and of the work of Christ — no small 
 matter, as a glance at France will tell you. 
 " The union of Church and State," said Lord 
 Eldon, " is not to make the Church political, 
 but the State religious." Well did Dr. Owen, 
 a Nonconformist, say to the Government of 
 his day : " If it comes to this, that you say 
 you have nothing to do with religion as rulers 
 of the nation, God will quickly manifest that 
 He hath nothing to do with you as rulers of 
 the nation." Again, I say, look at France. 
 
 Second. A bulwark against the encroach- 
 ments of Rome — as her past history might 
 lead you to expect. Were our Church dis- 
 established, her residuary legatee, I am con- 
 vinced, is not the Nonconformist bodies, but 
 the Papacy, the most cunningly contrived 
 system of State polity the world has seen. 
 Gladly and thankfully do I acknowledge the 
 zeal, and piety, and services to Christian 
 liberty of the Nonconformists ; but confessedly 
 they have neither the antiquity, nor the pres- 
 tige, nor the learning, nor the social position 
 that would enable them to resist the swelling 
 tide of Rome's advance. Sheltered under our 
 lee, they have a freedom of worship and action 
 to-day, which, were our position shattered, 
 would be gone to-morrow. Many of them 
 know it, and are honest enough to confess it. 
 When the oak is felled, down comes the ivy. 
 
 Third. The Established Church secures the 
 Protestant succession to the throne. What 
 Englishmen have bought so dear, they will do 
 well to keep.
 
 24 The Church. 
 
 Lastly, I would remind you that ours is a 
 Comprehensive Church / she admits within 
 her pale High Churchmen and Broad Church- 
 men, as well as Low Churchmen. Nor would 
 we have it otherwise ; multitudes are thus 
 brought in her services within the sound of 
 the gospel who would turn their backs at once 
 were she narrow and exclusive. But never 
 forget that Truth exists independently of 
 men's views of truth, and there are limits to 
 her comprehensiveness. These limits are 
 clearly defined in her Creeds, Articles, and 
 Prayer-Book ; yet there is, beyond question, 
 a strong party in our midst determined to 
 widen those limits, if it possibly can, in the 
 direction of Rome ; and if not, to overstep 
 them. I hold it, therefore, the bounden duty 
 of every Churchman to know why he is a 
 Churchman, and what his Church holds and 
 teaches ; and then with all loyal effort, and in 
 the spirit of charity, to counteract the false 
 doctrines so prevalent, and to preserve his 
 Church. What that teaching is on certain 
 vital matters, it will be my privilege to 
 attempt to show you in these Lectures ; and 
 may the Spirit of truth and love guide and 
 bless the effort.
 
 " \Vhen He ascended up on high, He led captivity 
 captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that He as- 
 cended, what is it but that He also descended first into 
 the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the 
 same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that 
 He might fill all things.) And He gave some, apostles ; 
 and some, prophets ; and some, evangelists ; and some, 
 pastors and teachers ; for the perfecting of the saints, for 
 the work of the ministr}', for the edifying of the body of 
 Christ."— Eph. iv. 9-12. 
 
 Our subject last Sunday evening was the 
 Church ; I tried to show what it is and what 
 it is not ; I endeavoured to disengage the 
 word " Church" from some of its present-day 
 entanglements, and to show its true meaning. 
 From this it was easy and delightful to point 
 out how we as Churchmen are members of a 
 visible community boasting the most vener- 
 able antiquity, a Church hard at work not 
 only before the Reformation, but before 
 Augustine landed on the shores of Kent, a 
 Church that existed before king or Parlia- 
 ment, and that can trace back its lineage, if 
 not to the apostles themselves, at least to the 
 apostolic age ; a sound branch of the Catholic 
 Church, and its true historical representative 
 in England to-day. 
 
 25
 
 26 The Christian Ministry. 
 
 Now, such a Church must of necessity have 
 an order of men set apart for the ministry of 
 God's Word and Sacraments, and our text 
 reminds us that this is a matter of nothing 
 less than Divine provision. Translated lite- 
 rally, its terms are exceedingly suggestive. 
 We are told on apostolic authority that Christ 
 "ascended that He might give gifts unto men, 
 . . . and He gave some to be apostles, and some 
 prophets, and some evangelists, and some 
 pastors who are teachers, with a view to the 
 equipment of the saints for their work of 
 service, for the upbuilding of the body of 
 Christ." A duly ordained ministry is the 
 gift of our ascended Lord to His Church. 
 Some of these offices, as, for instance, those 
 of the New Testament apostles and prophets, 
 fell into abeyance as the need of them ceased 
 to be felt. Others, again, not specified here, 
 are familiar to us, and our Church in her 
 Ordinal traces back her threefold order ox 
 bishop, priest, and deacon to apostolic times. 
 Her assertion on this point is absolutely un- 
 questioned as regards priests and deacons ; 
 with regard to the Episcopate we are sepa- 
 rated from the Presbyterian and certain 
 other Churches. This question really lies 
 within narrow limits. While in the New 
 Testament the terms "bishop" and "presby- 
 ter" are often used interchangeably, being 
 practically synonymous, and the Episcopal 
 Order did not develope so long as the Aposto- 
 late remained ; yet it is an unquestioned his- 
 torical fact that, within a hundred years of the 
 apostles, we find Episcopacy universally recog-
 
 The Christian Ministry. 27 
 
 nised in every portion of the Church,' and even 
 in the heretical sects seceding from it. Our 
 Church, in maintaining the threefold order, is 
 convinced of its Scriptural character ; but as 
 the arguments for it are rather of the nature of 
 intimations than of positive precept, she does 
 not dare to un-church (to use Baxter's word) 
 those who have all other marks of a true 
 Church polity except Episcopacy. Hooker's 
 great authority admits that, as in the case of 
 Beza, there may be sometimes just and suffi- 
 cient reason for allowing ordination made 
 without bishops : " Men may be extraordi- 
 narily but allowably admitted in two ways 
 into spiritual functions in the Church. One 
 is, when God Himself doth of Himself raise 
 up any one ; another is, when necessity doth 
 constrain us to leave the usual ways of the 
 Church, which otherwise we would willingly 
 keep." 
 
 It is well known that that famous High 
 Churchman, Bishop Cosin, of Durham, freely 
 admitted thisprinciple; andanActpassed in the 
 13th of Elizabeth (a.d. 1570) distinctly recog- 
 nises the validity of Presbyterian and foreign 
 orders ; requiring only that those non-episco- 
 pally ordained should, in order to hold office 
 in our Church, subscribe to the Articles before 
 the bishop. Some of you know that the 
 venerable Society for the Propagation of the 
 
 ' As early probably as A.D. 1 10 we find Episcopacy 
 mentioned in the Epistles of St. Ignatius as a well- 
 ascertained fact of Church life in the many Churches to 
 which he wrote. All early history seems to point to 
 Asia, to Ephesus, to .St. John, as its original source.
 
 28 The Christian Ministry. 
 
 Gospel, with the bishops at its head, for many 
 years employed German missionaries having 
 Presbyterian and not Episcopal ordination, 
 when it could obtain no others. 
 
 In view of matters which I shall imme- 
 diately lay before you it is well to remember 
 these facts. Let no man say, however, we 
 think it matters not what order of ministry 
 we have ; we cling to what we believe to have 
 full Scriptural sanction ; and from the stand- 
 point of history we vigorously maintain the 
 threefold order to be essential, not to the 
 being, but to the well-being of a Church ; but 
 there is all the difference in the world be- 
 tween denying the validity and denying the 
 regularity of orders. Our orders have both 
 validity and regularity, others the former 
 only. Since the year 1662 our Church has 
 made Episcopal ordination obligatory on all 
 her ministers ; in regard to other Churches 
 differently constituted she is silent. 
 
 Now this brings us at once face to face with 
 two matters that have assumed the highest 
 importance, matters I am compelled to speak 
 plainly about, although I do so with real 
 reluctance. These are the questions of Apos- 
 tolical Succession, and the nature of the Priest- 
 hood of the Church of England. 
 
 I. With regard to the first, while it is an 
 undoubted fact that at no time since Christ 
 has the Church been without a continuous 
 ministry, linking (as do the Lord's Day and the 
 Sacraments) the Church of to-day with that 
 of Pentecost, the claim of Ap.ostolical Succession 
 goes considerably farther. It is the claim on
 
 The Christian Ministry. 29 
 
 behalf of our clergy of a lineal descent of 
 power from the apostles, by virtue of a con- 
 tinued and unbroken succession of bishops in 
 every effectual ordination. In so important a 
 claim, involving so much, it is only right to 
 let the High Churchmen speak for themselves. 
 
 Dr. Hook, the well-known Vicar of Leeds, 
 writes thus in his Church Dictionary : " The 
 Apostolic Succession is essential to the right 
 administration of the holy sacraments. The 
 clergy of the Church of England can trace 
 their connexion with the apostles by links, 
 not one of which is wanting, from the times 
 of St. Paul and St. Peter to our own." The 
 late Bishop of Winchester, Samuel Wilber- 
 force, said, " The bishops of the Church of 
 England are, by unbroken succession, the 
 descendants of the original Twelve." Dean 
 Goulburn declares : " There is, and there can 
 be, no real and true church apart from the 
 one society which the apostles founded, and 
 which has been propagated only in the line 
 of the Episcopal succession. There is no 
 regular authority or right for the ministry 
 whatsoever but only in this one line " (" Holy 
 Catholic Church," p. 83). 
 
 These are tremendous claims. The validity 
 of the Sacraments, as Mr. Gore terms it, nay, 
 the very existence of the Church itself, is 
 made to hang upon the Apostolical Suc- 
 cession. To a large number of our clergy 
 those noble and inspiring words, "I believe 
 one Catholic and Apostolic Church," mean 
 nothing if they do not mean all this. 
 
 Now, assuming this doctrine to be true, we
 
 30 The Christian Ministry. 
 
 may expect our Church to give forth no un- 
 certain sound on the subject ; for, if true, it is 
 simply vital to her position. The result, 
 then, of an examination of her Liturgy, her 
 Formularies, and her Articles, is somewhat 
 startling ; for, as Newman long ago was quick 
 to see, the Church of England is entirely 
 silent about any such Succession. She 
 claims emphatically her historical position ; 
 she claims an apostolical ministry ; but she 
 bases her claim not upon any alleged Apos- 
 tolical succession, but upon her faithfulness to 
 apostolic doctrine and practice. Not even in 
 her Ordinal does she hint at such a Succes- 
 sion. In her Twenty-fifth Article, indeed, 
 she declares that ordination is not a sacra- 
 ment ; but if not, it must be a tradition or 
 a ceremony^ and these the Thirty-fourth 
 Article pronounces " not necessary to be in 
 all places one and utterly alike." In the 
 Twenty-third (part of which is word for word 
 the same as the Augsburg Confession) she 
 says positively: "We ought to judge those 
 lawfully sent, which be chosen to this work 
 by men who have public authority given 
 unto them in the congregation to call and 
 send ministers into the Lord's vineyard." It 
 is useless to quibble over these words : the 
 Church of England, strong in her own un- 
 rivalled position, does not limit a lawful 
 ministry to those episcopally ordained. 
 
 But the inherent weakness of the claim of 
 Apostolical Succession by the modern Anglo- 
 Catholic may easily be demonstrated in other 
 ways ; he has not his own Church behind
 
 The Christian Ministry. 31 
 
 him ; has he anything else ? Let us see. I 
 want to make this matter perfectly plain, and 
 I would urge the following points : — 
 
 First, the man who makes this claim must 
 trove it. You of the laity should insist upon 
 this, for your eternal interests are declared to be 
 at stake. Do not think the usual answer 
 sufficient, that Christ ordained His apostles, 
 and promised to be with His Church to the 
 end of the age ; it is utterly insufficient. 
 Or that other answer, that He gave to His 
 apostles exclusively the authority to remit 
 sins ; it proves nothing if it were true ; but it 
 is not true, for, as Bishop Westcott points 
 out,' this authority was not given to the 
 Twelve only, but to the whole Society of the 
 Church, to the women as well as to the men. 
 Suppose that somebody were to claim succes- 
 sion to the Crown of England ; first and fore- 
 most he would have to prove his descent link 
 by link from our ancient sovereigns; and I am 
 strongly of opinion that some other place 
 than Windsor would be his future abode if, 
 when challenged to produce his pedigree, 
 all he could urge was that constitutional 
 monarchy had always been the accepted 
 English form of government. Archbishop 
 Whiitcly says distinctly : ** There is not a 
 minister in all Christendom who is able wi'Ji 
 
 ' ''There is nothing to .show thai the gift (of thu Holy 
 Spirit) was confined to any particular group (as the 
 Apostles) among the whole comjiany present. The coni- 
 mission, therefore, must be regarded properly as the com- 
 mission of the Christian Society, and not that of the 
 Christian ministry." — Speaker's Cowwi'/i/ary, ]n]\n xx.23.
 
 32 The Christian Ministry. 
 
 any degree of certainty to prove his own 
 spiritual pedigree." Will you please re- 
 member what this claim actually comes to — 
 that all through the storm-tossed centuries of 
 the Church the individual clergyman is able 
 to trace, link by link, through a series of 
 properly ordained bishops, his own connexion, 
 by the laying on of hands, with the apostles 
 themselves ! If one single link is missing, the 
 whole chain, yes, and all that hangs upon it, 
 falls to the ground ; and yet, as a matter of 
 fact, we do not know whether St. Peter, the 
 alleged first bishop of Rome, was ever in 
 Rome at all ; it is quite uncertain whether 
 Clement or Linus was the second ; and as to 
 the third, we are still more in the dark. 
 
 Again, let me remind you that since special 
 grace is said to be secured by this Succession 
 special results must folloiv — results perceptible 
 to men — or obviously the mere assertion of 
 them tends to bring the assertors into dis- 
 repute. Now, does Apostolic Succession make 
 its believers, or its supposed receivers, ex- 
 amples of peculiar grace ? Can we say that 
 ;he High Church party as a whole manifests, in 
 any special way, unworldliness either in church 
 or out of church ? Can we point to any par- 
 ticular zeal for the mission field ? Sad in- 
 deed it is to confess that hardly any hypo- 
 thesis is so poorly supported by actual facts as 
 this. I would go further, and point out that 
 Apostolical Succession has never safeguarded 
 the Church from the greatest dangers that can 
 beset it. In the fourth century it did not 
 protect three-fourths of the Church from
 
 The Christian Ministry, 33 
 
 adopting Arianism, the most deadly heresy 
 that ever reared its head. The Roman 
 Church insists, as you know, on exclusive 
 ApostoHc Succession ; and yet, in this nine- 
 teenth century of grace, it has not been kept 
 from inventing the blasphemous dogmas of 
 the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed 
 Virgin, and the Papal Infallibility. 
 
 And yet again, speaking of the Roman 
 Church reminds me of another inherent 
 weakness of this vaunted theory. I mean its 
 narrowness, its tincatholicity. The Church- 
 man who bases his Churchmanship on it is 
 obliged logically to regard the Roman 
 Church as a co-ordinate and sister Church. 
 But the Church of Rome contemptuously 
 refuses his kiss of peace — she repudiates the 
 Anglican Church as schismatic, its clergy she 
 considers mere laymen, and its sacraments 
 as null and void. She treats an English 
 Churchman living in a Roman Catholic 
 country as a heathen man ; he cannot com- 
 municate at her altars when living, and when 
 he dies he must be buried with the burial of 
 an ass. She ignores the whole Anglican 
 communion ; its Primate is in her eyes 
 simply a lay-evangelist and Privy Coun- 
 cillor ; she forbids her members to enter 
 our churches. Well, what is the consequence 
 to the Anglican ? Simply this. The Roman 
 Church, which on the other side of the 
 Channel he venerates as the Catholic Church, 
 on this side he must treat as the Roman 
 schism, or the "new Italian Mission," as 
 Archbishop Benson called it the other day. 
 
 3
 
 34 The Christian Ministry. 
 
 So that a Frenchman at Boulogne is held to 
 be a good Catholic ; but when he crosses to 
 Folkestone, without any change in his views, 
 he is a schismatic ! On the contrary, when 
 an Anglican goes to reside in Paris he is 
 logically bound to submit himself to the 
 Archbishop of the diocese ; only, unfortu- 
 nately, if he does so, he must renounce his 
 Anglicanism, not merely during his sojourn 
 abroad, but for good and all.' Nor need I 
 pause to point out how entirely this Succes- 
 sion theory separates the Anglican at home 
 from all those Nonconformist bodies in which 
 undoubtedly the signsof a Church are wrought. 
 He must treat them — and I am sorry to say 
 he actually does — exactly as the Roman 
 Church abroad treats him. His theory simply 
 sacrifices him on his own altar — it leaves him 
 isolated in Christendom. 
 
 But need I continue ? I have said enough 
 to prove the doctrine of Apostolical Succession 
 to be mechanical in operation, uncatholic in 
 tendency ; it is not asserted in our Prayer- 
 Book, it is certainly not found in the Bible, 
 it is incapable of proof, it is the lowest Church 
 view of the Ministry ever put forth — it is un- 
 true. 
 
 ' This point is excellently worked out by the Rev. R. 
 E. Bartletl.in the Contemporary Revie^u {oxlA^xc\\, 1893, 
 from whom I borrow it. He amusingly illustrates thus : 
 An Anglican and a Roman priest and a Nonconformist 
 minister are shipwrecked together on a desert island. 
 The Anglican congratulates his Roman brother that the 
 Catholics are two to one. "Not at all," replies the 
 Roman ; " you Protestants are two to one ; leave me 
 alone, if you please ; I am the only Catholic."
 
 The Christian Ministry. 35 
 
 II. I pass naturally, in the second place, to 
 what springs out of this assumption, viz., the 
 sacerdotal claims so strongly put forward on 
 behalf of the second order of the ministry. 
 
 Let Mr. Bennett, Vicar of Frome, examined 
 before the Ritual Commission, speak for his 
 party. " Do you consider yourself a sacri- 
 ficing priest? — Yes. In fact, saccrdos, a 
 sacrificing priest ? — Distinctly so. Then you 
 think you offer a propitiatory sacrifice 1 — Yes, I 
 think I do offer a propitiatory sacrifice." It is 
 needless to multiply evidence as to this claim. 
 Only the other day the Bishop of Lincoln 
 said (quite mistakenly, by the way) that the 
 sacerdotal character of the priesthood was at 
 stake in his trial. It is asserted by thousands 
 of our clergy. " You should never speak of 
 your priest as a minister or clergyman," is a 
 rebuke not unfrequently heard. 
 
 Brethren, I call upon you as Christian men, 
 if, indeed, you love Christ ; and as loyal sons of 
 the Church of your baptism, to repudiate this 
 assertion whenever made, and expose its hol- 
 lowness ; it does infinite dishonour to Christ, 
 it is likely to rend our Church in twain. Is 
 it true, or is it false ? That is our business to 
 discover to-day. We have three Courts of 
 Appeal in this matter, and to each of them we 
 will go. 
 
 The first is the Bible : and I challenge con- 
 tradiction when I say that there is no single 
 passage in the whole Scriptures in which the 
 sacerdotal title is once given to the Christian 
 minister, nor is the term " altar " once found as 
 meaning the Lord's Table. I want you to
 
 36 The Christian Ministry. 
 
 search your Bibles on this matter. If English 
 Churchmen knew the Scriptures better it 
 would be better, depend upon it, for the 
 English Church. 
 
 Our second court of appeal is to the Early 
 Fathers. Dr. Pusey and his followers are 
 fond of appealing to the Early Fathers. Let 
 us appeal to the Fathers, too, but, mind you, it 
 must be to the early Fathers : to Clement of 
 Rome, to Ignatius, to Polycarp, to Justin 
 Martyr, to Irenaeus, to Clement of Alexandria ; 
 and then what will you find ? Simply what 
 Bishop Lightfoot has shown in his great 
 " Dissertation on the Christian Ministry," 
 examining these Fathers in detail, that each 
 one and all of them is absolutely silent as to 
 any sacerdotal claim pertaining to the Chris- 
 tian ministry. It is not till we come to the 
 beginning of the third century that we find 
 Tertullian putting forth these claims. He 
 does so hesitatingly — in fact, he says in one 
 passage, " Are not even we laics priests ? " 
 evidently thinking of that word of St. Peter 
 that, whether presbyter or layman, the 
 Christian is a priest set apart " to offer up 
 spiritual sacrifices unto God." It is not until 
 we come to the time of Cyprian, in the middle 
 of the same century, that for the first time we 
 find these claims unhesitatingly put forward, 
 claiming for the Christian ministry sacerdotal 
 titles, functions, and powers, and from that 
 day onwards there have always been those 
 who have supported the claim. Well does 
 our neighbour, the Rev. J. W. Marshall, say, 
 that "to Cyprian belongs the responsibility
 
 The Christian Ministry. 37 
 
 of having introduced into God's vineyard this 
 plant of human origin. That it found con- 
 genial soil was quickly proved by the amazing 
 vigour with which it grew, corrupting the 
 whole Church, shutting out poor sinners 
 from the light of the gospel, substituting the 
 priest for the Saviour, penance for repentance, 
 and making merchandise of the souls of men, 
 till God raised up Luther and Melancthon to 
 lay the axe of God's truth to its root in Ger- 
 many, and Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, 
 and their followers to light such a fire in 
 England as burned it to the ground." 
 
 But you will ask, reasonably enough, 
 Whence did Cyprian get the seed of this 
 noxious plant ? The answer of the learned 
 Bishop Lightfoot is instructive indeed. In 
 the essay I have already quoted he says : — 
 " The progress of the sacerdotal view of the 
 ministry is one of the most striking and im- 
 portant phenomena in the history of the 
 Church. ... It is to Gentile feeling that 
 this development must be ascribed. For the 
 heathen, familiar with auguries, lustrations, 
 and sacrifices, and depending upon the inter- 
 vention of some priest for all the manifold 
 religious rites of the State, the Club, and the 
 Family, the sacerdotal functions must have 
 occupied a far larger place in the affairs of 
 every-day life than for the Jew of the Dis- 
 persion." 
 
 And again, " It is significant that the first 
 instances of the term * priest ' applied to a 
 Christian minister occurs in a heathen writer, 
 Lucian." Thus this sacerdotal claim is 
 
 .'59l»7l'7
 
 38 The Christian Ministry. 
 
 historically proved to be based not so much 
 on Judaism as on heathenism ! 
 
 Our third court of appeal must, of course, be 
 to our own beloved Protestant and Reformed 
 Church, and she, thank God, in her Liturgy, 
 her Articles, her Canons, allows neither 
 priesthood nor sacrifice, if by priesthood be 
 meant ministers who can offer a propitiation 
 for sin, and by sacrifice be meant such an 
 offering. Is it really needful to repeat for the 
 hundredth time that our English word priest 
 comes immediately from the French word 
 prestre^ or pretre^ itself a mere contraction of 
 presbyter, or elder? Yes, I think it is, for 
 conversing the other day with an excellent 
 High Church clergyman, I found he was 
 entirely ignorant of this elementary fact. 
 Another clergyman was asked by a lady of 
 my acquaintance the meaning of the Greek 
 word " presbuteros," or presbyter, and he at 
 once replied, " A sacrificing priest " ! Even 
 Mr, Sadler admits the actual name of priest 
 is never applied to a Christian minister. 
 Deeply do I lament, therefore, the ambiguity 
 of the word " priest " as we now have it in the 
 rubrics, for it suggests an idea of sacrifice it 
 was never intended to convey. When our 
 Prayer-Book was compiled we find the term 
 " minister " as its equivalent. Thus in the 32nd 
 Canon we read, " None is to be made a 
 deacon or minister in one day," and in the 
 76th Canon, "No man being admitted a 
 deacon or minister." 
 
 The fact is that sacerdotalism was delibe- 
 rately set aside by our Church at the Refor-
 
 The Christian Ministry. 39 
 
 mation, and nothing will convince you of 
 this more readily than a comparison of our 
 present Ordinal with the First and Second 
 Prayer-Books of Edward VI. I want you to 
 compare carefully the method of ordination 
 before, during, and after the Reformation. 
 Before the Reformation the bishop used these 
 significant words, " Receive power to offer 
 sacrifice to God, and to celebrate mass as well 
 for the living as for the dead, in the name of 
 the Lord." In 1550 (N.S.) these words were 
 struck out, and the following were substituted : 
 "Receive the Holy Ghost : whose soever sins 
 ye remit, they are remitted ; and whose soever 
 sins ye retain, they are retained. Be thou a 
 faithful dispenser of the Word of God and of 
 His sacraments ; " and a very suggestive rite 
 was introduced, " the bishop shall deliver to 
 every one of them the Bible in one hand, and 
 the chalice, or cup, with the bread, in the 
 other hand," for the first time drawing atten- 
 tion to the didactic or teaching character or 
 the ministry. But in 1552 (N.S.) a further 
 noteworthy change was introduced, the ordain- 
 ing act and its accompanying words were 
 allowed to stand, but the delivery of the 
 chalice and paten were discontinued. The 
 delivery of the Bible alone was preserved, 
 our Church thus definitely rejecting the 
 sacerdotal and exalting the didactic character 
 of the presbyter.' He is declared to be a 
 " pastor who is a teacher," in the terms of our 
 text, and as such he is still the gift of Christ 
 to His Church. 
 ' See Dean Lcfroy's " The Christian Ministry," p. 499.
 
 40 The Christian Ministry. 
 
 With equal deliberation, and for the same 
 purpose, the word " altar " which stained 
 those two earlier Prayer-Books was removed, 
 and "the Lord's Table," or "the Holy Table," 
 substituted, in conformity with original and 
 primitive use. 
 
 In short, to give you once more the un- 
 answered learning of the late Bishop Light- 
 foot, " The kingdom of Christ has no sacer- 
 dotal system^ and interposes no sacrificial 
 tribe or class between God and man by 
 whose intervention alone God is reconciled 
 and man forgiven," and our Church solemnly 
 and deliberately speaks accordingly. 
 
 I have kept you long. I am conscious I 
 have shown you what the Christian ministry 
 is not, rather than what it is, but the subject 
 is of such absolute importance that I cannot 
 feel I should have done otherwise. Enough at 
 any rate has, I hope, been said to show that 
 Apostolic Succession and a Sacerdotal Priest- 
 hood form no part of a loyal Churchman's 
 creed. At the Reformation, everything that 
 expressed sacrifice or priestly function was 
 swept away, and the primitive doctrine re- 
 stored. All intelligent and loyal Churchmen 
 were cheered the other day by words that fell 
 from the lips of the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 as chairman of the annual meeting of the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. 
 Speaking of the Reformation, he said : " I 
 seldom take up books or magazines but I see 
 a silly carping at the Reformation. It has 
 begun, and one sees it repeated. To my 
 mind, the English Reformation — and I am as
 
 The Christian Ministry. 41 
 
 certain of the fact as I can be of anything — 
 is the greatest event in Church history since 
 the days of the apostles. It does bring back 
 the Church of God to the primitive model." 
 These are brave words nowadays, let them 
 not be forgotten. 
 
 But to-night many of us are about to 
 gather round the Table of our Lord, and I 
 cannot let the sounds of controversy be the 
 last before we draw near with faith. Here at 
 least we are to remember that if we would 
 receive this Holy Sacrament with benefit to 
 our souls we are to be in perfect charity with 
 all men. Do not forget, as I conclude this 
 lecture, that false teaching such as we have 
 dealt with is often based upon some essential 
 longing of the human heart. We do need 
 an altar ; — God has provided one ; we find it 
 at " the place called Calvary." We do need a 
 sacrifice ; — God has provided one — "the Lamb 
 of God that taketh away the sin of the world." 
 We do need something more than a presbyter, 
 we need a priest : God has provided one, 
 "a great High Priest, that is passed through 
 the heavens;" and unspeakably sad it would 
 be for me, for you, if, while zealous to main- 
 tain apostolic doctrine within our beloved 
 Church, we were ourselves found in that day 
 to be unsprinkled by the blood of the one 
 Sacrifice, not partakers of the one altar, not 
 saved by the one Mediator between God and 
 man ; while others, whose doctrine we rightly 
 condemn, entered without us into the joy of 
 our common Lord. \HCE a^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 1
 
 "^tje »»acrameut of ^o\^ Baptism* 
 
 " Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 
 Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he 
 cannot enter into the kingdom of God." — John iii. 5. 
 
 The Gospel Sacraments can hardly be 
 rightly understood unless in connexion with 
 the Sacramentalism of the older dispensation. 
 They are parts of a Divine whole. From the 
 earliest times, He, " whose delights are with 
 the sons of men," has been pleased to enter 
 into covenant with them, and in so doing 
 He has usually vouchsafed some outward 
 symbol or pledge of that blessed relationship. 
 Perhaps the Tree of Life in Eden had such a 
 significance to Adam ; beyond question the 
 Bow in the cloud was of a sacramental nature 
 to Noah ; so, too, the Sacrifices of the Law, 
 and the rite of Circumcision given to Abra- 
 hain before the Law. All these instances, 
 with many others, illustrate the sacramental 
 idea that a Divine Promise is in God's benefi- 
 cent wisdom accompanied by a Divine Sign.^ 
 And when the Sun of Righteousness arose, 
 and the shadows of the Old Covenant passed 
 away, the Lord Jesus, again stooping to human 
 need, gave His Church the two Sacraments, 
 
 ' See Moule's " Outlines of Christian Doctrine." 
 42
 
 Tlte Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 43 
 
 the one of water Baptism, the other the bread 
 and wine of the Eucharist. 
 
 As to the precise nature of these Sacraments 
 our Church leaves us in no doubt, defining it 
 with admirable clearness in her Article. 
 
 Here we learn that the Sacraments are 
 badges, distinguishing Christian men from 
 those who are not. In these days, when most 
 are nominally Christian, this is lost sight of 
 to a considerable extent ; but in heathen or 
 Mahomedan lands, or among Jews, perhaps 
 the first thing evident in the Sacraments is 
 that they are badges. How thrilling a sight 
 to see a heathen, convicted of sin and led to 
 Christ, publicly go down beneath those waters 
 of death, the baptismal flood ; and then coming 
 forth, often with loss of parents, wife, chil- 
 dren, and lands, declare himself to have been 
 buried with Christ in baptism, and that hence- 
 forth he will fight manfully under His banner 
 against sin, the world, and the devil, and 
 continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant 
 unto his life's end ! And this may be seen 
 daily in the mission field. But they are 
 something more than badges — we are assured 
 they are witnesses. And such they are, in 
 an interesting way, to their own authenticity. 
 Scattered in every part of the world, north 
 and south, east and west, we find the Churches 
 of Christ to-day. They differ from each other 
 in constitution, pureness, and order ; upon 
 some matters they are even openly opposed ; 
 and yet all have this in common, that they 
 possess these two Sacraments. How, and 
 when, and where did they obtain them ?
 
 44 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 
 
 The question admits of but one answer. All 
 these Churches are like so many radii of a 
 wheel, each of which finds its proper starting- 
 point in the Church at Jerusalem. In other 
 words, they received them — the original in- 
 stitutions — from the hands of Him who or- 
 dained the Lord's Supper before He suffered, 
 and Baptism before He ascended. No modern 
 Church dare invent new sacraments ; no 
 ancient Church like Rome, that has actually 
 done so, can hope to have them universally 
 accepted. These two Sacraments thus testify 
 to their own authenticity ; they come directly 
 from Christ Himself, and indirectly they 
 witness to His death and resurrection as 
 historical facts. But to most of you they 
 are witnesses, I doubt not, in a far more 
 personal and precious sense : they assure you, 
 as you use them, of things unseen and eternal ; 
 they are visible pledges of the New Covenant, 
 they are seals of your salvation, they attest 
 to your inmost soul that its deepest needs are 
 met. In this sense especially you acknow- 
 ledge them as witnesses. 
 
 But they are more than witnesses ; the 
 Article says that they are effectual signs. 
 In other words, God has been pleased to 
 ordain and use the Sacraments as special 
 channels of His grace. In His infinite love 
 they are designed to be " a means whereby 
 we receive the same," as well as "a pledge to 
 assure us thereof." In the New Testament 
 we find that the sign and the thing signified 
 are constantly linked together. Thus, in 
 Eph. V. 26, we are told, *' Christ loved the
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 45 
 
 Church, and gave Himself for it, that He 
 might sanctify and cleanse it with the wash- 
 ing of water by the word," — that is, literally, 
 " in an utterance," referring not to the Scrip- 
 tures, but probably to the formula, "I baptize 
 thee in the name of the Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost ; " or, as some think, to the con- 
 fession of faith by the candidate at the time 
 of baptism. So, too, in Titus iii. 5 : *' Not by 
 works of righteousness that we have done, 
 but according to His mercy He saved us, by 
 the laver of regeneration, and renewing of 
 the Holy Ghost." And yet again, in our text, 
 the Lord beyond question refers to baptism 
 when He says to startled Nicodemus, "Ex- 
 cept a man be born of water and of the Spirit, 
 he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." 
 
 But although the Scriptures thus link the 
 sign and the thing signified together, are they 
 always and inseparably connected ? Simon is 
 a Scriptural proof and example that they are 
 not. He who was baptized by the Evangelist 
 as a believer is judicially declared by the 
 Apostle to be still " in the bond of iniquity 
 and in the gall of bitterness." And while our 
 Prayer-Book, following the Scripture, links 
 together the Sacraments and the grace they 
 are designed to convey in general terms, it 
 nevertheless dogmatically declares that the 
 Sacraments are " generally " (that is, not 
 universally) " necessary to salvation." Who, 
 for instance, in the Western Church would 
 say that the Eucharist was necessary for an 
 infant ? And, as to Baptism, all that our own 
 Church says in her comment on the gospel, in
 
 46 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 
 
 the Office of Baptism for such as are of Riper 
 years, is "Whereby ye may perceive the great 
 necessity of this sacrament, where it may be 
 had." 
 
 This brings me at once, as you will see, 
 into painful conflict with what I may without 
 offence call the ordinary High Church view 
 of baptism. That view is that the sign and 
 the thing signified are always and invariably 
 connected ; that the sign of water, and the 
 germ or faculty of eternal life, are inseparable 
 at the font. When some little time ago one 
 had been truly converted, and came to tell his 
 clergyman of his new-found peace and joy in 
 the Holy Ghost, his response was, " It is the 
 fruit of your baptism." " No, sir," was the 
 reply, "that cannot be, for I have never been 
 baptized, and I wanted to ask whether I ought 
 not to be baptized now ; since, by God's grace, 
 T have been born again." And I am sure 
 that, as regards adult baptism, this story told by 
 Mr. Moule just illustrates our own view. In 
 our Confirmation classes I find now and again 
 an unbaptized candidate : before Confirmation 
 he must be baptized ; but of course I should 
 never think of baptizing any one who did not 
 give sufficient evidence of union with Christ 
 by a living faith, and of forsaking sin in will 
 and purpose. Adult baptism presents no 
 difficulty, I suppose, to any of us. 
 
 The controversy really circles round the 
 baptism of infants. It is not necessary for me 
 to defend here the practice of infant baptism. 
 I am not speaking to Baptists to-night, I am 
 speaking to Churchmen. Yet it may be that
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 47 
 
 deep down in the hearts of some there is a 
 Hngering doubt whether, after all, infant 
 baptism is really according to the mind of 
 Christ. " Give me a plain text," you would 
 like to say, " that infants should be baptized." 
 Willingly, my friends, if you will give me a 
 plain text that the first day in the week should 
 be observed as the Christian Sabbath. The 
 fact is that the Scripture is silent about infant 
 baptism, and its silence seems to me eloquent 
 in its favour. I cannot bring myself to be- 
 lieve that He who promised to guide His 
 Church into all truth should have permitted 
 that Church for centuries to bring its little 
 ones to baptism without a single injunction 
 against it, or at least without bidding 
 parents train and prepare their children for 
 this sacrament. The repeated baptism of 
 " households " by St. Paul is, to say the 
 least, suggestive ; but to my own mind, if 
 the initiatory rite of the New Covenant is 
 federal^ or covenanting, in its nature, the 
 analogy of Circumcision, by which the Jewish 
 parent sealed his child as a partaker of the 
 Old Covenant, is simply irresistible. A con- 
 verted Jew, remember, has never the slightest 
 difficulty aijout infant baptism. He stumbles 
 at the Incarnation, and the doctrine of the 
 Tri-Unity ; but, these embraced, he brings his 
 infant to the font without hesitation. Just 
 as a Jewish proselyte was circumcised, and all 
 his children with him, so in the Early Church 
 it is almost certain that the baptism of a 
 Jcwir-h convert was accompanied by that of all 
 his young children ; and you cannot doubt that
 
 48 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 
 
 St. Paul had this in his mind when, in Col. ii. 
 II, 12, he distinctly calls baptism "the cir- 
 cumcision made without hands." Do not 
 forget how, under the New Covenant, a child, 
 even where one parent only is a believer, 
 shares the privileges of that parent before 
 God. " Else were your children unclean," says 
 the Apostle, *' but now are they holy " (i Cor. 
 vii. 14). "Ah, but," says one, "he that 
 believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; a 
 child cannot believe, and therefore cannot 
 possibly receive the seal of faith." If you 
 urge that, I will tell you that circumcision is 
 expressly termed by St. Paul " a seal of faith," 
 but I prefer simply to say that your text does 
 not touch the question between us ; it ob- 
 viously refers to adults. If there were a text 
 that said no one was to be baptized unless he 
 repented and believed, there would be an end 
 of controversy ; but there is no such text. 
 
 The question, then, before us is not whether 
 infants may or may not be regenerated at 
 baptism ; for God is a sovereign Lord, and 
 He worketh as He wills ; but whether infants 
 brought to the font do invariably and always 
 receive, at least in germ, that grace of baptism 
 defined as " a death unto sin and a new birth 
 unto righteousness " ? The High Churchman 
 answers, " Yes, they do ; " and quoting the 
 words of our Office, " Seeing now that this 
 child is regenerate, and grafted into the body 
 of Christ's Church," he exclaims, "Here is 
 what the Church says. This is enough for 
 me. The Church declares this child to be 
 regenerate ; further discussion is useless.'
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 49 
 
 This argument is chiefly remarkable for its 
 simpHcity. It is the Socinian's argument 
 when he takes the words, " the man Christ 
 Jesus," and says, " The Scripture plainly calls 
 Him a man, I call Him a man too. The 
 matter is settled." It is the Roman Catholic's 
 argument when, urging the intercession of 
 the Blessed Virgin, he has told me that our 
 Lord did His first miracle at her request. It 
 is the modern Anglican's argument about the 
 words, " This is My Body," and He bows 
 to a Presence in the elements and worships. 
 This argument applied to baptism, however, 
 will not do for intelligent Christians or well- 
 taught Churchmen, Unfair in itself, it entirely 
 ignores two things. One, the fundamental 
 principle on which the whole Prayer-Book is 
 constructed ; the other, the essential conditions 
 on which alone infants are baptized. To both 
 these I invite your particular attention, 
 
 I, In the first place, then, I hold that the 
 High Church view wholly overlooks the fun- 
 damental principle of the Prayer- Book. That 
 principle is simply this, that our Church 
 in her Liturgy takes men on their own 
 showing and profession. Those who "pro- 
 fess and call themselves Christians " she treats 
 in her public services as such. Hence, from the 
 moment she welcomes them into the House 
 of God as, " Dearly beloved brethren," to the 
 day when she lays them in the dust, " in sure 
 and certain hope of eternal life," she does so 
 on their own responsibility, and uses lan- 
 guage suitable to the calling they profess. 
 
 But our compilers never for one moment 
 
 4
 
 50 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 
 
 thought that all who joined in her services 
 would be really and truly Christians. Their 
 object was to construct a Liturgy for be- 
 lievers, and for believers only ; and they 
 used the highest language suitable to such. 
 It must be plain to you that they could not 
 compile two Service-books, one for believers, 
 and the other for unbelievers ; for the latter 
 would never be used by those for whom it 
 was intended, and cotild never be used by any 
 one else. Some Nonconformists (not all) 
 object altogether to a Liturgy. It is wrong, 
 they say, to put a Book of Common Prayer 
 into the hands of a mixed congregation, 
 partly Christian, partly non-Christian. Well, 
 will they who say so defend their own uni- 
 versal practice of putting into the hands of 
 mixed congregations Books of Common 
 Praise ? In thousands of chapels, as wel) 
 as of churches, there are saved and unsaved 
 together to-night, and they are singing to- 
 gether words like these — 
 
 *' Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear, 
 It is not night if Thou art near ; 
 O may no earth-born cloud arise, 
 To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes." 
 
 Those who object, I say, to a Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer, must explain how it is they 
 adopt a Book of Common Praise. The 
 rhyme can hardly account for it ! 
 
 Our Baptismal Service is therefore designed 
 for the use of Christian parents and Christian 
 sponsors. Our Church reminds us that our 
 Lord took little unbaptized children into His
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 51 
 
 arms, laid His hands upon them, and blessed 
 them ; she bids us "earnestly believe that He 
 will likewise favourably receive this present 
 infant," brought in the arms of faith to Him. 
 She leads us to pray definitely that He would 
 " sanctify this water to the mystical (?>., 
 the symbolical) washing away of sin ; " in other 
 words, that He would be pleased to join the 
 inward baptism of His Spirit with the out- 
 ward baptism of water. The child is then 
 named, as was the Jewish child at circumcision. 
 And now, the act of immersion, or of affusion, 
 being completed, our Church proceeds chari- 
 tably to use the language of faith, " Seeing 
 now that this child is regenerate." She takes 
 it for granted that minister, parents, and 
 sponsors have offered that prayer which 
 Christ says entitles us to " believe that we 
 have received it," ' and, I put it to you who 
 know the power of prayer, would you have 
 it otherwise ? The misuse of this Sacrament 
 surely does not invalidate its use ; but re- 
 member the important words of Archbishop 
 Ussher, "Though we, in the jtidgment of 
 charity^ do judge this of every particular 
 
 ' *' I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and 
 ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall 
 have them " (Mark xi. 24, R.V.). " This is the boldness 
 which we have toward Him, that, if we ask anything 
 according to His will. He heareth us ; and if we know 
 that He heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that 
 we have the petitions which we have asked of Him" 
 (i John v. 14, 15, R.V.). On this Bishop Westcott well 
 says, He who takes God's will as his own, has all he 
 seeks truly in present possession, rtaough visible fulfilment 
 be delayed.
 
 52 The Sacrament of Holy BaMism. 
 
 infant, yet we have no ground to judge so of 
 all in general ; or, if we judge so, it is not 
 any judgment of certainty — we may he mis- 
 tnkcnP Was it not in this very spirit of 
 charitable presumption that our Lord bade 
 His disciples, " Into whatsoever house ye 
 enter, first say, Peace be to this house ; and if 
 the son of peace be there, your peace shall 
 rest upon it ; if not, it shall turn to you 
 again " ? Was it not in this very spirit of 
 our Liturgy that St. Paul wrote of all the 
 Galatian Church what we know was only 
 true of some, " As many of you have been 
 baptized into Christ, have put on Christ " ? 
 Do not his Epistles throughout breathe the 
 same spirit ? 
 
 But, as for maintaining that the compilers of 
 our Liturgy held that the mere act of baptism 
 itself regenerated invariably and in every 
 case, this is simply to maintain that they were 
 fools. I can use no weaker word. It throws 
 everything into confusion. It makes them 
 contradict altogether that Bible of which 
 they had such a magnificent knowledge. It 
 makes them contradict their own Articles, 
 every word of which they so carefully weighed 
 and balanced ; for instance, the Twenty- 
 fifth Article which says of the Sacraments, 
 " In such only as worthily receive the same, 
 they have a wholesome effect or operation ; " 
 and the Twenty-sixth, which, speaking of the 
 unworthiness of ministers, declares that " The 
 grace of God's gifts is not diminished from 
 such as by faith and rightly do receive the 
 Sacraments ministered unto them j " and the
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 53 
 
 Twenty-seventh, which says, " They that 
 receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the 
 Church," while " the promises of forgiveness 
 of sins," and the hke, " are visibly signed and 
 sealed." 
 
 It makes them contradict their own pub- 
 lished writings. Hear, for instance, the words 
 of Cranmer, the Archbishop : " In baptism, 
 those that come feignedly, and those that 
 come unfeignedly, both be washed with 
 sacramental water ; but both be not washed 
 with the Holy Ghost, and clothed with 
 Christ." And again, " All that wash with 
 water be not washed with the Holy Ghost." 
 But I need not trouble you with more quota- 
 tions ; the words of the great Hooker, the 
 recognised interpreter of the Prayer-Book, 
 sum up the views of its authors, when he says, 
 " All receive not the grace of God who re- 
 ceive the sacraments of His grace." 
 
 I claim, then, to have sufficiently shown 
 that our grand old Liturgy is formed on a 
 well-known hypothetical principle, and that 
 this explains its language here, and is due to 
 the very necessities of our public services. If 
 anything were needed to confirm this, it is 
 sufficient to remind you that our Reformers, 
 almost without exception, held strongly the 
 views of Calvin as to Election, Predestination, 
 and Final Perseverance — a fact which makes 
 it utterly impossible for them to have held the 
 High Church view that all the baptized were 
 ex opcre operato regenerated. Dr. Mozley, 
 the late Regius Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Oxford, is an unquestioned
 
 54 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 
 
 authority ; he strongly disliked the famous 
 Gorham Judgment,' and determined to prove 
 the view I am upholding untenable ; but as 
 he studied the history of the Prayer-Book, he 
 became convinced it was the view of its 
 compilers ; and in his great work on the 
 Primitive Doctrine of Baptismal Regenera- 
 tion, he writes (page 102) : " Every child is, 
 upon his baptism, asserted to be regene- 
 rate. The present chapter has decided the 
 sense in which these statements are to be 
 understood, viz., that they are hypothetical. 
 It has also met the objections made to this 
 mode of interpretation, as not being literal. 
 I will only repeat here that the real question 
 is, not what is the literal interpretation of 
 these statements, but what is the trtie one. 
 These statements in our formularies come 
 before us with a certain history appended to 
 them : these are old statements which have 
 descended from prophets to apostles, from 
 apostles to fathers, and from fathers age after 
 age downwards, till at last we find them in 
 our Prayer-Book and ritual. These state- 
 
 ' The Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Philpotts, had refused to 
 institute Mr. Gorham to the living of Brampford-Speke, 
 on the ground that he denied spiritual regeneration to 
 be the invariable accompaniment of infant baptism, 
 holding that baptism is an effectual sign of grace, 
 by which God works invisibly in us, but only in such 
 as worthily receive it ; and, in fact, that regeneration 
 may be given before, in, or after, baptism. The only 
 question for the highest court was whether this doctrine 
 was contrary or repugnant to the teaching of the Church 
 of England. It was held to be not so contrary or re- 
 pugnant.
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 55 
 
 ments must not, therefore, be isolated, sepa- 
 rated from all interpretative data, and judged 
 of by themselves. They must be interpreted 
 in connection with their history, and in con- 
 nection with previous language. The asserted 
 regeneration of the Avhole body of the bap- 
 tized is but the continuation of the asserted 
 righteousness of the holy nation in the Old 
 Testament, and the asserted glory of the 
 Christian Church in the New. Is that asser- 
 tion of Scripture, then, a literal or hypothetical 
 one ? If the latter, then is the one in our 
 formularies hypothetical too. 
 
 The term ' regenerate ' comes down to us 
 with a particular meaning stamped upon it, 
 which we cannot remove, according to which 
 it cannot possibly be asserted literally of all 
 baptized persons. This is therefore an hypo- 
 thetical assertion.^'* 
 
 II. I hold, in the second place, that the High 
 Church view of infant baptism altogether 
 overhoks the definite conditions on which 
 alone such baptism is administered. It is 
 said by some High Churchmen that the grace 
 of God is certain in the case of the baptism 
 of infants, because, being unconscious, they 
 cannot put any obstacle or bar in the way 01 
 His grace. But a mere negative condition 
 like this can never take the place of the con- 
 dition of a living faith ; and, as I will show, 
 a living faith is the essential condition on 
 which the sacrament becomes efficacious. 
 The hypothesis of the Catechism and Confir- 
 mation Service alike is that the baptized 
 child is now actually and truly a believer.
 
 56 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 
 
 "What is required by persons to be bap- 
 tized ? " asks our catechism (required, that is, 
 by God, for our Church will of course take in 
 such a matter no guidance but that of God 
 Himself) ; and the answer is: "Repentance, 
 whereby they forsake sin, and faith, whereby 
 they steadfastly believe the promises of God 
 made to them in that Sacrament." "Why, 
 then, are infants baptized when, by reason of 
 their tender age, they cannot perform them ? " 
 — and I would have you here to notice the 
 difference between the catechism of 1604 and 
 that of 1662, our present version. In 1604 
 the answer to this question was this : " Yes, 
 they do perform them by their sureties, who 
 promise and vow them both in their names, 
 which, when they come of age, themselves 
 are bound to perform." Here, you see, there 
 was a substitution of the faith of the sponsors 
 for the personal faith of the infant. That 
 misleading answer was. removed in 1662, and 
 we find it as we have it now — " Because they 
 promise them both by their sureties, which 
 promise, when they come of age, themselves 
 are bound to perform." The change is in 
 itself exceedingly significant.' The words of 
 Dr. Wall, who was thanked by Convocation 
 in 1705 for his "History of Infant Baptism," 
 
 ' From the end of the second century, a time of 
 martyrdom, the Church of God has provided sponsors 
 as safeguards that the child given to Him may be 
 brought up as God would have it brought up. But 
 sponsors are not of Divine institution, nor does our 
 Church hold them to be necessary ; in the Private 
 Baptism of Infants no sponsors are required, and yet 
 siniilar words of faith and charity are used as in their 
 public baptism.
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 57 
 
 are altogether relevant. He says this : " I 
 say it appears to have been the meaning of 
 the Church in that question and answer, not 
 to determine whether infants are to be bap- 
 tized, but to determine whether infants that 
 are baptized are baptized upon any other 
 covenant than that upon which grown per- 
 sons are baptized — namely, of repentance and 
 faith. And it determines that they are not 
 baptized on any other but the very same, 
 only with this difference, that the adult 
 person is baptized into the hope of the 
 kingdom of heaven, in which he does be- 
 lieve, and an infant is baptized on condition 
 that he do, when he comes to age, believe." 
 
 "We baptize infants," says Mr. Moule, 
 " because of the Covenant ; we study the 
 Covenant and its terms and seals in the 
 adult." It is into the lips of one thus "come 
 to age " that our Catechism puts that much 
 misunderstood answer to " Who gave you 
 this name ? " viz., " My godfathers and my 
 godmothers in my baptism, wherein I was 
 made a member of Christ, a child of God, 
 and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." 
 This answer, I beg you remember, is not 
 given by any ordinary child picked up at 
 random. This answer is given by a " person," ' 
 before Confirmation, carefully instructed, and 
 having an intelligent faith, one who can say, 
 " I believe in God the Father, who hath 
 made me and all the world ; in God the 
 Son, who hath redeemed me and all man- 
 
 ' See Title of Catechism.
 
 58 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 
 
 kind ; and in God the Holy Ghost, who 
 sanctifieth me and all the elect people of 
 God." This is one of whom it is distinctly 
 affirmed in the Confirmation Service, which 
 usually precedes the first communion, that 
 he has been " regenerated by water and the 
 Holy Ghost, and has received forgiveness of 
 all his sins." The person, then, who gives 
 this answer is one who, well knowing what 
 grace is, and the Saviour's love, traces back 
 the Spirit's work to his baptismal dedication 
 — to that memorable hour when these bless- 
 ings, claimed for him in humble boldness 
 of faith, were assured to him by the seal of 
 the baptismal covenant ; and who now de- 
 clares publicly that he has fulfilled the two- 
 fold condition on which he was then admitted 
 to its privileges. 
 
 A document familiar to lawyers, called an 
 Escroio^ well illustrates this.^ An escrow is 
 an instrument of gift, duly signed and sealed, 
 and in it is an agreement that the gift shall 
 not pass to the grantee unless some certain 
 condition is fulfilled ; and until that condition 
 is fulfilled, although the gift be in words 
 immediate^ it cannot pass to the person for 
 whom it is designed. So soon as the condition 
 is fulfilled, then, without any further signing 
 or sealing, the instrument takes effect, and the 
 gift passes to the grantee. Just so in infant 
 baptism : the pledge of the covenant is " a 
 death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteous- 
 ness ; " but equally clearly and distinctly are 
 
 » See Chancellor Warren's " Ex opere operato."
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 59 
 
 the conditions laid down of faith and repent- 
 ance ; nor, until that faith and repentance 
 are given, is the Sacrament complete — till 
 then there is no true baptism ; and surely 
 that is what St. Peter meant when he said : 
 "Baptism doth also now save us (not the 
 putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the 
 answer of a good conscience towards God)." 
 
 Mr. Moule, whom all recognise as a 
 teacher, calls attention, as deeply significant, 
 to these words of Archbishop Ussher in the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century : " We 
 may judge that baptism is not actually 
 effectual to justify and sanctify until the 
 party do believe and embrace the promises. 
 Baptism is a seal of the righteousness of 
 Christ to be extraordinarily applied by the 
 Holy Ghost if an infant die in his infancy ; 
 to be apprehended by faith if he live to the 
 years of discretion. So that baptism admini- 
 stered to those of years is not eflfectual unless 
 they believe. We can make no comfortable 
 use of our baptism in minncy until we beh'eve.'''' 
 
 I say, then, that the ordinary High Church 
 view entirely overlooks the conditions on 
 which infant baptism is vouchsafed in our 
 Church. Unintentionally, no doubt, but 
 really, this doctrine ties down a supreme act 
 of omnipotence to the will of man. The 
 minister, parents, and sponsors, may all be 
 infidel at heart ; no single prayer may have 
 ascended to the One Giver of grace ; the 
 child may grow up in utter ungodliness, as, 
 alas ! thousands of baptized children actually 
 do ; he may never exhibit a spark of spiritual
 
 6o The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 
 
 life — and as he has lived so he may die — yet, 
 simply because, owing to the circumstances of 
 his birth, he was brought in infancy to the 
 font, this man is declared to have been once 
 regenerate, a child of God, and an heir of the 
 kingdom ! Not thus does the Holy One 
 make demands upon our faith. If so prepos- 
 terous a theory were not upheld and vigor- 
 ously insisted on by men of undoubted piety 
 and learning, it would long ago have tumbled 
 to pieces by the very absurdity of its own 
 pretensions. Unfortunately it is so held and 
 taught, and from my inmost soul I believe 
 it to be simply deadly in its effects. It 
 has, in my opinion, distinctly lowered the 
 standard of Christian life among a large 
 section of Churchmen. The six marks of 
 the new birth given by the Holy Spirit 
 in St. John's Epistles, " without which who- 
 soever liveth is counted dead before God," 
 are largely forgotten ; and, in many churches, 
 one would judge the only essentials to be the 
 two sacraments. If baptized, men and women 
 are invited without discrimination to the 
 Eucharist, and the sacred bread and cup of 
 the covenant are put, without warning,^ into 
 the hands of those who still are unquickened. 
 But I must not leave my subject — a con- 
 troversial and therefore painful one — without 
 a word of practical inquiry. Some men speak 
 as if there was really no alternative between 
 
 ' " It is requisite that no man should come to the Holy 
 Communion but with a full trust in God's mercy, and 
 with a quiet conscience." — Exhoitalion in Comtintnion 
 Service,
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Baptism. 6 1 
 
 the High Church theory of Regeneration and 
 mere Registration ! I would have you re- 
 member that in your Baptism in infancy you 
 entered upon a position of great Privilege, of 
 gracious Opportunity, of growing Responsi- 
 bility. And just because it was so, I would ask 
 in all solemn earnestness whether you, indivi 
 dually, have entered into that grace which, 
 with humble boldness of faith, was claimed 
 for you and assured to you in your baptism ? 
 Have you experienced a death unto sin, and 
 a new birth unto righteousness ? Symboli- 
 cally, at any rate, you have been *' buried by 
 baptism into death, that, like as Christ was 
 raised up from the dead by the glory of the 
 Father, even so you also should walk in new- 
 ness of life." Is this your actual experience ? 
 Have you by faith identified yourselves with 
 Him who on Calvary identified Himself with 
 you ? If you have thus truly ratified your 
 covenant connexion with Christ in His death, 
 sure I am that, more or less fully, you are 
 rejoicing in the power of His resurrection-life. 
 Of such does Hooker finely say, " Blessed for 
 ever and ever be that mother's child whose 
 faith has made him the child of God. The 
 earth may shake, — the pillars of the world 
 may tremble under us, — the countenance of 
 the heavens may be appalled, — the sun may 
 lose his light, the moon her beauty, the stars 
 their glory ; but, concerning the man that 
 has trusted in God, what is there in the world 
 that shall change his heart, overthrow his 
 faith, alter his affection toward God, or the 
 affection of God to him ? ''
 
 ^llt »)acramcnt of ttjc ILovh'^ »>upper» 
 
 " And He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake, and 
 gave unto them, saying, This is My Body which is given 
 for you : this do in remembrance of Me. Likewise also 
 the cup after supper, saying. This cup is the New Covenant 
 in My Blood, which is shed for you." — Luke xxii. 19, 20. 
 
 Our subject is confessedly a difficult one. 
 Its difficulty is exceeded only by its impor- 
 tance. Right views of the Lord's Supper lie 
 at the bottom of a great deal of our spiritual 
 life, and you will expect me, as your clergy- 
 man, to show clearly what I think these views 
 ought to be. We are separated from the 
 Church of Rome upon this question more 
 than upon any other. Our Reformers died 
 to uphold the doctrine of the Church ot 
 England, and yet to-day — I say it with un- 
 speakable sadness — it is evident that Church- 
 men are almost hopelessly divided upon it. 
 I cannot attempt to say anything new on a 
 subject which has been debated for centuries. 
 I shall be thankful if I can say a little of 
 what is old ; for, in this case, as in so many 
 others, the old is better. 
 
 One enormous advantage we have in this 
 matter is that we can all easily refer to the 
 
 inspired documents which contain the his- 
 
 62
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. 63 
 
 torical facts. This is no question that turns 
 upon some ancient manuscript locked up in 
 the libraries of Constantinople or Alexandria. 
 The sources of information are equally ac- 
 cessible to us all. The nature and design of 
 the Lord's Supper are stated with seemingly 
 absolute clearness in the four accounts of its 
 institution as we find them in the Gospels of 
 St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke ; and in St. 
 Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. 
 
 Putting these together, they read thus : 
 " The Lord Jesus, the same night that He was 
 betrayed, as they were eating, took bread, and 
 gave thanks, and blessed it, and brake it, and 
 gave it to His disciples, and said. Take, eat ; 
 this is My Body which is given and broken 
 for you : this do in remembrance of Me. 
 After the same manner, also, He took the 
 cup when He had supped, and gave thanks, 
 and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of 
 it, for this is My Blood of the New Covenant 
 which is shed for many for the remission of 
 sins. This do, as oft as ye drink it, in 
 remembrance of Me, for as oft as ye eat this 
 bread and drink this cup, ye do show ('ye 
 proclaim,' R.V.) the Lord's death till He 
 come." 
 
 The meaning of these words, however, is 
 disputed, or at least of some of them ; and 
 the question among Churchmen and others is 
 simply this — What is the meaning of Christ's 
 words, " This is My Body," " This is My 
 Blood," and how are wc to feed upon them ? 
 
 L I shall venture to lay down three propo- 
 sitions for our guidance : —
 
 64 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. 
 
 The first is this, We must take our Lord's 
 words, " This is My Body," in the most literal 
 and obvious sense they will bear. We may 
 be thankful that on this point Roman and 
 Anglican, High Church and Low Church, 
 are perfectly agreed. Dr. Pusey says, " All 
 things combine to make us take our Lord's 
 words solemnly and literally." Archdeacon 
 Wilberforce says, " That our Lord's words of 
 institution were to be taken in their simple 
 and natural sense, was the belief of all ancient 
 writers." Prebendary Sadler, in the middle 
 of a long argument against both the Roman 
 and Protestant view, says, curiously, " Our 
 only safe way is to adhere implicitly to the 
 terms used in Scripture, without attempting 
 to explain these hard sayings, and to leave 
 them where Christ left them — in impenetrable 
 obscurity." Is Ignorance, then, really the 
 mother of Devotion ? Did I share his view 
 as to their impenetrable obscurity, I should 
 hardly follow his practice in attempting to 
 explain them. But I do not ; I believe that 
 those words, like all our Master uttered, are 
 for the reverent and intelligent use of His 
 Church. Let us see how they are interpreted : 
 
 Two quotations from the decrees of the 
 Council of Trent will suffice to set forth the 
 Roman view : — 
 
 " If any one denieth that in the Sacrament 
 of the most Holy Eucharist are contained 
 truly, really, and substantially, the Body and 
 Blood, together with the soul and divinity of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the 
 whole Christ, but saith He is only therein
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Sut>pcr. 65 
 
 symbolically, figuratively, or virtually, let him 
 be anathema." 
 
 And again, " Christ, whole and perfect, is 
 under the species of bread, and under every 
 particle of it ; and whole under the species 
 of wine, and every particle of it." In other 
 words, " This has tinder its species My Body," 
 is the Roman explanation of *' This is My 
 Body." 
 
 Two quotations will similarly show what is 
 the Ritualistic view. In the "Little Prayer- 
 Book " is this direction : " At the words, 
 ' This is My Body,' ' This is My Blood,' you 
 must believe that the bread and wine become 
 the real Body and Blood, with the soul and 
 Godhead of Jesus Christ ; bow down your 
 head and body in deepest adoration when the 
 priest says these awful words, and worship 
 your Saviour then verily and indeed present 
 on His altar" (p. 18). 
 
 Hear next what Dr. Pusey and the leading 
 English Ritualists say in a solemn memorial 
 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to which 
 their signatures are attached : '* We believe 
 that in the Holy Eucharist, by virtue of con- 
 secration, through the power of the Holy 
 Ghost, the body and blood of our Saviour 
 Christ — ' the inward part or thing signified ' 
 — are present really and truly, but spiritually 
 and ineffably, under ' the outward visible part 
 or sign,' ox form of bread and wine." 
 
 So, to put the Ritualistic view in a sen- 
 tence, " This is My Body " means " This has 
 under its form the presence q/My Body." 
 
 Placing our Lord's words and those of 
 
 5
 
 66 The Sacrament of the Lordh Slipper. 
 
 these interpreters one below the other, we 
 find they read thus : — 
 
 Bible 
 R.C. 
 
 Ritualist 
 
 This 
 This 
 
 Thi 
 
 IS 
 
 IS 
 
 has under its 
 species . . . 
 
 has nnder its 
 form the 
 presence of 
 
 My Body. 
 My Body. 
 
 My Body. 
 
 I appeal to you whether either of these sen- 
 tences is at all a literal and obvious equivalent 
 of the word " is." We shall presently find that 
 the most literal meaning the Divine words 
 will bear condemns at once both the Roman 
 and the modern Anglican interpretation. 
 
 We can now advance a step further. My 
 second proposition is this : We must take all 
 the words Christ used if we would understand 
 them. The full words are, " This is My Body 
 which is given for you," "This is My Blood 
 which is shed for you." Mark those words, 
 " Which is given for you," " Which is shed 
 for you," for much depends upon them. 
 
 Now the Roman Catholic, in consecrating 
 the bread, says these words only : " Hoc est 
 corpus meum " ("This is My Body"); and 
 Bellarmine, in his treatise on the Eucharist, 
 has a chapter on these words, in which he 
 takes no notice of the rest of the sentence. 
 Luther, in like manner, built his argument at 
 Marburg on these words only, writing them, 
 as we recollect, on the table before him. The 
 same thing may be said of the High Church- 
 men now : —
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord\ Snppcr. 67 
 
 Wilberforce's " On the Doctrine of the 
 Eucharist " is a well-known book ; but, as 
 the learned Dr. Vogan points out, he practi- 
 cally omits just what the Roman Church and 
 the Lutheran Church omit ; " let any one," 
 he says, " who is in possession of the book, 
 take and blot out every place in which the 
 words, ' Which is given for you,' ' Which is 
 shed for you,' are recited, and he will find 
 that they have not the least influence upon the 
 argument and the doctrine which it is used 
 to enforce." Now what is the result of this 
 omission ? Simply this : that the Roman 
 Church, the Lutherans, and the Ritualists all 
 take " This is My Body " to mean " This is 
 My glorified Body." The Romanist defines 
 the body in the Sacrament as " His true Body 
 which was broken for us, and sitteth at the 
 right hand of the Father in heaven, and is 
 to die no more " — in other words, Christ's 
 glorified Body. Dr. Pusey says, " Why should 
 we think it too strange a thing for His mar- 
 vellous condescension that He should now 
 give us His blessed Body and Blood under the 
 form of bread and wine, or how should His 
 Body which He gives us not be His living, 
 life-giving Body ? " So, again. Archdeacon 
 Wilberforce thus argues the presence of our 
 Lord's Body to be possible : " Our Lord's 
 human Body," he says, " is not subject to the 
 laws of material existence, because His Body 
 is a glorified Body, which has new qualities 
 gained by oneness with Deity." In other 
 words, it is Christ's glorified Body. 
 
 Again, let us put under each other the
 
 68 The Sacrament of the Lord''s Slipper. 
 
 Bible sentences and these interpretations of 
 them : — 
 
 Bible. 
 
 •This I is 
 
 R.C This 
 
 Lutheran This 
 Ritualist This 
 
 has under its 
 species ... 
 
 has with it 
 
 has under its 
 form the 
 pre s e n c a 
 of 
 
 MyBodywhich 
 IS given for 
 you. 
 
 My glorified 
 
 Body. 
 My glorified 
 
 Body. 
 
 My glorified 
 Body. 
 
 Plainly, therefore, whereas Christ referred 
 to His Body as about to be crucified, the 
 views before us refer to it as glorified, and do 
 it by omitting to assign any meaning to the 
 words, " Which is given for you," " Which is 
 shed for you." On this ground, therefore, we 
 are compelled to say that, taking all the words 
 of the institution, the Bible gives no support 
 to the Roman doctrine of Transubstantiation 
 on the one hand, or to the High Church 
 theory of Consubstantiation on the other.* 
 
 Our third proposition is as follows : — That 
 the bread and wine are the Body and Blood 
 
 ' Hence the growing practice among the Ritualistic 
 clergy of omitting the words, " which was given for thee," 
 " which was shed for thee ; " as they administer the bread 
 and wine respectively. Notice that in these words our 
 Church uses the past tense.
 
 Xhe Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. 69 
 
 of our Lord now in the same sense in which 
 they were His Body and Blood on the night of 
 institution. This is absolutely important, and 
 I will give you a few quotations in support 
 of it. 
 
 St. Augustine says : "He gave to the 
 disciples the Supper consecrated with His 
 own hands, but we have not sat down to 
 that banquet, and yet we daily eat the Supper 
 itself by faith. Paul was not there who 
 believed, Judas was there who betrayed. 
 How many now, too, in this same Supper, 
 though they saw not then that table, nor 
 beheld with their eyes, nor tasted with their 
 mouths, the bread which the Lord carried in 
 His hands, yet, because ttz's the same ivhi'ch t's 
 now prepared^ how many also in this Supper 
 eat and drink judgment to themselves ! " 
 
 St. Chrysostom says : " This table is the 
 same as that and nothing else." And again, 
 " The first table hath no advantage above 
 that which cometh after." 
 
 This, indeed, is one of our most cherished 
 and fundamental privileges in that sacred 
 feast, that "it is the same as that and nothing 
 else," nothing less and nothing more. Handed 
 down to us all through the long-drawn ages 
 of the Church's life, it is still substantially 
 the same as that instituted by our great Head 
 Himself. Destroy this assurance, and what 
 have we left ? But I say confidently that if 
 the Roman and so-called Anglican doctrines 
 of a Real Objective Presence be true, then the 
 Lord's Supper now is not the same as that, 
 it is something essentially different. Both
 
 70 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. 
 
 these doctrines, I repeat, assert the Presence 
 in the elements to be that of Christ's glorified 
 Body. If so, then assuredly it is not the same 
 Supper, for Christ's Body was not yet glorified 
 on the night of institution. Is it, then, His cruci- 
 fied Body ? But neither was Christ's Body yet 
 broken for our sakes. Do you not see ? Christ's 
 Body as glorified and Christ's Body as crucified 
 were not at the time of institution, and there 
 can be no substantial presence of that which 
 ts not. I go further, and say that these doc- 
 trines not merely destroy the identity of our 
 Eucharist with that, but they violate the very 
 laws of thought. I put it to you, as intelli- 
 gent Christian people, whether it is not an 
 outrage upon faith and understanding alike, 
 to say that while Christ was, beyond all possi- 
 bility of doubt, sitting personally and bodily at 
 that Holy Table, He was Himself, body, soul, 
 and divinity ; really, truly, and substantially ; 
 in the bread and wine ? Yet this, and nothing 
 but this, is what both the Roman and Ritual- 
 istic doctrines of the Real Objective Pre- 
 sence necessarily involve. 
 
 So far, then, for my task — a distasteful one 
 at the best. These three propositions are so 
 simple and obvious that they merely require 
 stating, to commend themselves, I believe, to 
 every candid mind ; but use them carefully, 
 and above all things in the spirit of Christian 
 love, and you will save some perplexed and 
 devout souls from fundamental error upon a 
 matter of the most grave and sacred im- 
 portance. 
 
 II. I should like to pass on at once to the
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. 7 1 
 
 positive teaching of our Church upon what the 
 disputed sentences do mean, but I must touch 
 upon two or three points on the way. 
 
 Frequently, until it is a commonplace of 
 many — I was almost going to say of most — 
 pulpits, you will hear the Lord's Supper 
 spoken of as a sacrifice. I have already 
 shown, conclusively, I hope, in my lecture on 
 the Christian ministry, that there is no or- 
 dained sacerdotal priesthood mentioned in 
 either the New Testament, the Prayer-Book, 
 or the earliest Fathers ; and if there is no priest 
 there can be no sacrifice, and if there is no sacri- 
 fice there can be no altar. I will now merely 
 add this, that in the New Testament the word 
 " altar " occurs sixteen times, and not once is it 
 used of the Lord's Table. In every case, with- 
 out exception, it refers to the then existing 
 Jewish altars."^ The only earthly altar, says 
 
 ' Heb. xiii. 10, " We have an altar whereof they have 
 no right to eat who serve the tabernacle," is disputed. 
 " By these words St. Paul (?) meant the Communion Table. 
 By these words I mean the Communion Table." Thus, 
 to my astonishment, I heard a well-known Presbyterian 
 minister commence his sermon in St. Giles's Cathedral, 
 Edinburgh. Many High Churchmen, unfortunately, 
 agree with him, reminding us that texts apart from con- 
 text are sometimes dangerous things. What do these 
 words mean ? The context explains. The Hebrew 
 Christians, who still clung to the Temple and its services, 
 felt that in their separation from its majestic and venerable 
 ritual their very souls were bereaved. The writer, whose 
 keynote throughout is "better," reminds them, therefore, 
 in ver. 9 of the fundamental truth that "the heart is 
 established by grace, not by meats," and he proceeds to 
 prove this from the Law itself. Himself a Hebrew, he 
 links himself with them ; " We (Helncws) have an altar 
 (viz. that of the yearly Sin-Offering), whereof they have
 
 72 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Stipper. 
 
 Bishop Westcott, " is the Cross upon which 
 Christ offered Himself." The same great 
 scholar writes : " In the first stage of Christian 
 literature there is not only no example of the 
 application of the word ' altar ' to any concrete 
 material object as the Holy Table, but there is 
 no room for such an application." It is note- 
 worthy that even Mr. Sadler has to confess 
 that "the Eucharist has scarcely one thing in 
 common with what the Scriptures and English 
 Churchmen commonly call sacrifice," although 
 he adds immediately that it does possess " the 
 most intense sacrificial reality," which looks 
 very much as if he did not intend to be 
 guided by one or the other. 
 
 Is it not, then , simply heart-breaking to those 
 who, like ourselves, love their Church and 
 
 no right to eat who serve the tabernacle." This was a 
 fact, and on it hinges his argument. Of that great Offer- 
 ing, so pregnant with meaning, and rich with blessing for 
 a whole year, the priests could not partake as they did 
 of other "altars," "/or" — the reason was familiar to 
 them all — "the bodies of those beasts are burned without 
 the camp." Whatever blessing, then, there was in that 
 great sacrifice must have been by "grace" alone, for 
 "meats" there were none. But Jesus Christ being un- 
 changeably the same (ver. 8), let them hold to the old 
 doctrme (ver. 9). The writer's brethren were not de- 
 prived of grace, because they were deprived of ritual and 
 sacrifice ; nay, it was outside the whole camp of Jewish 
 ceremonial that the One great Sin-Offering, the Crucified, 
 would be found, and if they wanted grace now they would 
 only find it by going outside to Ilim. The reader has 
 but to substitute the words "Communion Table " with 
 the High Churchman, or " Cross of Christ " with many 
 Low Churchmen, for the word " altar " in the text, to 
 find that either brings the passage as a whole into con- 
 fusion.
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. 73 
 
 love their Bibles to know that literally thou- 
 sands of devoted clergymen like Mr. Sadler 
 are strenuously teaching, by sermon and lec- 
 ture, by ritual and symbol, that the priest- 
 hood of the English Church is not merely 
 ministerial but sacerdotal, that the Lord's 
 Table is really an altar, and that they offer 
 on it a real sacrifice ? 
 
 Dr. Pusey, like many of his followers, 
 argued that the words, "Do this in remem- 
 brance of Me," really mean, "Sacrifice this 
 in remembrance of Me." Such a use of 
 the Greek verb would be absolutely unique 
 in the New Testament. Bishop Thirlwall 
 was the greatest Greek scholar of his time, 
 and his comment was alike caustic and sug- 
 gestive : " Dr. Pusey may say so, but I do 
 not think he will find any Greek scholar or 
 any sound theologian to agree with him." 
 
 Yet again, you may constantly hear our 
 Lord's solemn words in John vi. 53-57 
 quoted as if He then referred to the Eucharist, 
 and to nothing else. I read a recent sermon 
 by the Dean of St. Paul's, in which he said to 
 the congregation indiscriminately, "Turn not 
 your backs upon that heavenly feast, conce*-n- 
 ing which Christ said, ' Whoso eateth My 
 flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life, 
 and I will raise him up at the last day.'" 
 Now, at the risk of seeming presumption, I 
 must honestly confess that I am unable to 
 see even an allusion to the Lord's Supper in 
 Christ's words, much less a direct reference 
 such as the Dean asserts, and for the follow- 
 ing good and sufficient reasons. First, taken
 
 74 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. 
 
 thus they would prove too much. They 
 would prove that even Judas, and every bad 
 man who has come to that Holy Table ever 
 since, had eternal life — an awkward conclu- 
 sion, surely. In the second place, I find that 
 our Lord was addressing unconverted Jews, 
 but His Supper is meant, as you will freely 
 admit, only for baptized Christians. Thirdly, 
 the Sacrament was not even in existence, nor 
 was it so for some twelve months later. Such 
 a threefold cord is not easily broken. No, 
 never does our Lord make salvation dependent 
 upon any Sacrament. The Sacraments were 
 not meant to impart life, but to maintain life. 
 The real connexion between that profound 
 discourse and the Lord's Supper is this, that 
 both set forth — the one in words, the other 
 in a Divine object-lesson — the same essential 
 truth, that the soul that desires salvation 
 must feed upon Christ. Crcde et mandiicasli 
 (*' Believe, and thou hast eaten ") is Augustine's 
 summing up of this view in one luminous 
 sentence. Our Church enforces the same 
 principle when, in the Communion for the 
 Sick, she bids the curate instruct the patient 
 in the extremity of his sickness that, if he do 
 truly repent, and believe that Christ his 
 Saviour died upon the Cross for his redemp- 
 tion, " he doth eat and drink the Body and 
 Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his 
 soul's health, although he do not receive the 
 sacrament with his mouth." 
 
 I cannot now pause upon the doctrine of 
 the Extension of the Incarnation. Many of 
 you have never heard of it. It rests upon a half
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. 75 
 
 truth, but is untrue as a whole. I must pass 
 on to St. Paul's words in the eleventh chap- 
 ter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians : 
 " He that eateth and drinketh unworthily 
 eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, 
 not discerning the Lord's Body." These words 
 perplex many, but look at them in the Re- 
 vised Version, and especially in connexion 
 with the context, and you will see at once 
 that they have nothing whatever to do with 
 any supposed Presence in the elements. The 
 " body " here is simply the Church, and the 
 teaching, too often forgotten still, is that he 
 who comes to the Lord's Table selfish, and 
 forgetful of his oneness in Christ with all 
 Christ's people, partakes to his own condem- 
 nation. This explains the remedy proposed 
 in the last two verses of the chapter. 
 
 in. What, then, is the meaning of "This is 
 My Body " ? To myself it is perfectly certain, 
 from the context in the three Gospels, that 
 the word " is " can only be used in a par- 
 ticular sense. For observe, the words are not 
 merely " This is My Body," but " This cup is 
 the New Covenant in My Blood." Why in- 
 sist on a literal meaning in the former sentence 
 when a literal meaning is impossible in the 
 latter ? " Is '' can only mean represents in 
 the latter, it must mean represents in the 
 former.' 
 
 ' *' Let those words," says Mr. Moule, " be fully pre- 
 served in our interpretation, and let the sacred Blood 
 have its place of distinct and e(]t(al honour, and it will be 
 seen that a very larj^e range of inferences, sometimes 
 taught as if directly revealed truths, prove to have no
 
 76 The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 
 
 Every Bible student is familiar with this 
 use. It demands no cloud of explanatory 
 words. The two sentences now stand in obvious 
 self-interpreting simplicity. Are you per- 
 plexed when the same Divine voice says to 
 St. John, "The seven candlesticks which thou 
 sawest are the seven churches ;" or when St. 
 Paul writes, "This Agar is Mount Sinai in 
 Arabia " ? It is a use familiar still. " What 
 is that banknote ? " " It is ^50 ; " and not a 
 single additional word is needed to explain. 
 
 It is interesting to recall the fact that words 
 somewhat similar to our Lord's were, and 
 are still, common at the Passover feast. 
 When the Jew next keeps the feast with 
 his family, he will take in his hand the un- 
 leavened cake, and say, " This is the bread 
 of affliction which our fathers did eat in the 
 land of Egypt." That ancient formula was 
 familiar, say some good authorities, to the 
 little group of simple-hearted men who 
 gathered round their Master at the Passover 
 He had so eagerly desired ; and, as He took 
 the bread in the ha ids so soon to be pierced 
 for them, it may well have interpreted to 
 them His meaning. They could not in any 
 case misunderstand Him. The New Cove- 
 nant in His Blood was to have its sacred seals 
 and symbols as well as the Old, which now 
 passed away. " This is My Body which is 
 
 basis in the words of our Lord Himself. His words 
 point directly, not to glory, but to death ; not to the 
 throne, but to the Cross; to Propitiation, Atonement, 
 Sacrifice, Offering — there completed for ever" (" Out- 
 liiies of Christian Doctrine," p. 262).
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord''s Supper. 77 
 
 given for you ; " " This cup is the New 
 Covenant in My Blood which is shed for 
 you." Blessed Master, I, too, cannot mistake 
 Thee. This bread broken, this wine out- 
 poured, are lively images to my heart of 
 Thy Body given, and Thy Blood shed, for 
 me ; and, as oft as I eat this bread and drink 
 this cup, I do it in remembrance of Thee. 
 
 Too many Christians stop here. They 
 forget that there is more than this, for St. 
 Paul says : " The cup of blessing which we 
 bless, is it not a communion of the Blood of 
 Christ ? The bread which we break, is it 
 not a communion of the Body of Christ ? '' 
 (i Cor. X. 16, R.V.) But here, too, the 
 meaning is perfectly simple. There are two 
 givers at this sacred feast — the minister, who 
 gives to our senses the bread and wine, and 
 the Holy Spirit, who gives to our faith the 
 Body and Blood of Christ, The believer 
 receives both, and both simultaneously ; the 
 unbeliever, who comes without faith, receives 
 only one. Well does Hooker say : " The 
 real presence of Christ's most blessed Body 
 and Blood is not to be sought for in the 
 Sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of 
 the Sacrament." Do you ask what it is to 
 receive His Body and His Blood ? Surely it 
 is once again as sinners to grasp the seal 
 of the Covenant — the visible pledge of His 
 finished atonement ; it is once again to 
 identify ourselves with the Crucified, who, 
 in His great love, identified Himself with us. 
 It is more ; it is for our souls to feed upon 
 Him by faith — it is hv this ej^ectual means
 
 78 The Sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. 
 
 to receive Himself. Language fails here. 
 Suffice it to know that by all the grace this 
 sacrament can convey, we are one with 
 Him, and He with us. And yet, let us be- 
 ware of mere sentiment and emotion even 
 here. I am dealing to-night with essen- 
 tial doctrine, the safeguard of all devotional 
 feeling, and I would have you listen to the 
 great Waterland. He is writing in 1737 on 
 the words of the Catechism : "The Body and 
 Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken 
 and received by the faithful in the Lord's 
 Supper ; " and he says, " The Body and 
 Blood of Christ are taken and received by 
 the faithful not corporeally, not internally, 
 but verily and indeed — that is, ejf^ectically. 
 The sacred symbols are no mere signs, as 
 untrue figures of a thing absent, but the force, 
 the grace, and the virtue of Christ's Body 
 broken and Blood shed — that is, of His 
 Passion — are really and effectually present 
 with all them that receive worthily. This 
 is all the real presence that our Church 
 teaches." * 
 
 * It is evident, I think, that Waterland had in his 
 mind Cranmer's words. Remembering how large a 
 share the Archbishop had both in the Reformation 
 and in the construction of our Articles, these words 
 become especially important. " When I say, and repeat 
 many times in my book, that the Body of Christ is present 
 in them that worthily receive the Sacraments, lest any 
 man should mistake my words, and think I mean that, 
 though Christ be not corporally in the outward visible 
 signs, yet He is corporally in the persons that duly receive 
 them : this is to advertise the reader I mean no such 
 thing ; but my meaning is that the Force, the Grace, the 
 Virtue, and Benefit of Christ's Body that was crucified
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord''s Supper. 79 
 
 I might multiply such quotations from the 
 makers of the Prayer-Book. I might quote 
 Ridley, Hooper, and other fathers of the 
 English Church, but I forbear — I will only 
 refer you to Dean Goode's Presence of Christ 
 in the Eucharist — a monumental work that 
 has never yet been answered. 
 
 It is in exact accordance with all this that 
 our Church speaks again and again. " Hear 
 the Church ! " is a common cry in some 
 pulpits. Well, they that have ears to hear, 
 let them hear. Article XXVUI. says thus : 
 " The Body of Christ is given, taken, and 
 eaten in the Supper, only after an heavenly 
 and spiritual manner. And the mean where- 
 by the Body of Christ is received and eaten 
 in the Supper is faith." Hear the Church ! 
 Article XXIX. says thus : " The wicked, and 
 such as be void of a lively faith, although 
 they do carnally and visibly press with their 
 teeth (as Saint Augustine saith) the Sacra- 
 ment of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet in 
 no wise are they partakers of Christ ; but 
 rather to their condemnation do eat and 
 
 for us, and of His Blood that was shed for us, be really 
 and effectually present with all them that duly receive 
 the Sacraments. But all this I understand of His spiritual 
 presence, of the which He saith, ' I will be with you 
 until the world's end ; ' and, ' Wheresoever two or three 
 be gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst 
 of them ; ' and, ' He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh 
 My Blood dwelk-th in Me, and I in him.' Nor, no more 
 truly, is He corporally or really present in the due 
 ministration of the Lord's Supper than He is in the due 
 administration of Baptism — that is to say, in both spiri- 
 tually by grace " (Cranmer's Works on the Lord's 
 Supper, Preface, Parker Society, Edit., 1884, p. 3).
 
 8o The Sacrament of the Lord'^s Stipper. 
 
 drink the sign or sacrament of so great 
 a thing " — words fatal to the High Church 
 contention, for " the sign or sacrament " of 
 a thing is unquestionably not the thing itself. 
 
 Hear the Church ! In the exhortation of 
 her Prayer-Book to intending communicants 
 she says, " The benefit is great if with a true 
 penitent heart and lively faith we receive 
 that Holy Sacrament, for then we spiritually 
 eat the Flesh of Christ and drink His Blood." 
 To such, and to such only, is this Sacrament 
 an Effectual Sign. By efficacia signa Article 
 XXV. means necessarily no more than " signs 
 (seals) which do seal-work effectually." There 
 is a vague but thoroughly baseless idea among 
 many that it means signs which do effectually 
 something else ^ supposed to be very mysterious. 
 " They are efficacia signa^''^ writes a well-known 
 Cambridge scholar, "just as the wax on a 
 deed duly ' delivered ' is efficax {i.e., effectual), 
 and that seems to me the gist of the word." 
 But the Black Rubric at the end of the Com- 
 munion Office makes it mere waste of time to 
 add anything more as to the Prayer-Book 
 view. I will only say, Hear the Church for 
 yourselves, and, if words mean anything at 
 all, the teaching that has leavened first 
 Oxford, and then the Church of England, 
 is not Church teaching at all. 
 
 No wonder that Hurrell Froude, with his 
 Tractarian views, should speak of the Com- 
 munion Service of the Church of his fathers 
 as "a judgment" upon her; or that Williams, 
 in Tract 86, should represent the substitution 
 of " table " for " altar " as a " judicial
 
 The Sacrament of the Lorcfs Supper. 8i 
 
 humiliation." The Oxford leaders, at any 
 rate, saw what its language meant, and some 
 of them honestly left our Communion. 
 
 I owe to Mr. Odom the following words of 
 Dean Vaughan upon this vital subject, with 
 which I will conclude. He says : " That it 
 should be given to man, instrumentally by 
 hand or tongue, to create God — to turn 
 common bread, common wine, by a few 
 movements of the hand and a few utterances 
 of the lips, into the very Body and Blood ox 
 Him who made the worlds — this was the 
 keystone of that arch of priestly domination 
 which once bestrode the world. It was this 
 that made possible the domestic tyranny of 
 the confessional, it was this that drew the life- 
 blood of our English martyrs, who felt that 
 its overthrow was worth the dying for. 
 
 " It is this which English innovators, calling 
 themselves restorers, would now bring back 
 upon us ; from whose errors, or follies, or 
 impostures — call them what you will — may 
 God evermore preserve His true. His faithful, 
 His Apostolical Church of England." To all 
 which I say, with all my heart, Amen. 
 
 L
 
 ^Ije Book of Common ^rapec^ 
 
 *' Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good." 
 
 I Thessalonians v. 21. 
 
 The Book of Common Prayer is the priceless 
 possession of all Englishmen, and especially 
 of all English Churchmen. Next to the 
 English Bible, that other trophy of the 
 Reformation, it has influenced for three 
 centuries the English language, the standard 
 of Faith, the devotion of our race. Wherever 
 the English language is spoken — and even 
 beyond that limit — our Prayer-Book is known 
 and held in just esteem. 
 
 The Prayer-Book was not, however, a new 
 book at the Reformation : it was a republication 
 or modification of the different Uses or Services, 
 such as those of Sarimi, York, Bangor, Here- 
 ford, and others, which had slowly grown up 
 during the centuries, and which were them- 
 selves the development of still earlier litur- 
 gies. In fact, as Dean Burgon says, the 
 Prayer - Book " exhibits the accumulated 
 wisdom, not of a single age or country, but of 
 all the ages. The East has contributed her 
 purest traditions ; the West has enshrined 
 them in a casket of her wisest contriving ; 
 
 and piety has gathered up the gems of the 
 
 82
 
 The Book of Common Prayer. 83 
 
 holiest utterance wherever syllabled, careful 
 only to conceal the blessed speaker's name. 
 In all its essential outlines, it has been the 
 consolation of God's people — of our fathers, 
 and of our fathers' fathers — for more than a 
 thousand years." The Prayer-Book is essen- 
 tially a devotional handbook for true be- 
 lievers ; it speaks, as you will recollect, to all 
 as Christians. That it could not do otherwise 
 I explained fully in speaking on Baptism. 
 
 I. To-night, I wish to draw your attention 
 to some of the inestimable advantages that our 
 Liturgy secures to us, and then to close with 
 a few words on what I conceive to be the 
 present position and duty of Evangelical 
 Churchmen. 
 
 Never, I suppose, was it of more importance 
 to have a clear understanding of both the 
 letter and spirit of our Prayer-Book, and of 
 the history of its compilation. He who is 
 well informed on these points will be secured, 
 by God's grace, from Popish error on one side, 
 and Puritan innovation on the other. 
 
 The first thing, then, I want to emphasise is 
 this, that in our Liturgy we have a Guarantee 
 of Orthodoxy. This is no small advantage, as 
 history teaches us. Those who have studied 
 the development of the Churches tell us that 
 even Calvin's scriptural doctrine in course of 
 time, not only in Geneva, but in many of 
 the Presbyterian congregations in England, 
 Ireland, and the United States, gradually and 
 silently gave way to a bare Socinianism.' So 
 i long as our Prayer-Book remains, it cannot 
 ' Sec Fausset, p. 8.
 
 84 The Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 be so with ourselves. We cannot utterly fall 
 away. In our churches, the pulpit here and 
 there may be worse than useless ; " dead 
 preachers may speak to dead sinners the 
 living truths of the living God." It may be 
 infected with the down-grade theology of the 
 time — the children may cry for bread and get 
 a stone ; or, it may be semi-popish, and 
 inculcate the Real Presence, and adoration 
 of the elements ; but always the error of 
 the pulpit's teaching will to some extent 
 be corrected by that of the desk ; for our 
 Prayer-Book, as its preface indicates, has this 
 as its chief feature — its adherence to the 
 Word of God. Take away the Bible out of 
 the Prayer-Book, and how little you have left ! 
 I believe that no other Liturgy in the world 
 is quite equal to our own in this. Not 
 merely is scripture publicly read, and congre- 
 gationally sung, in every part of our public 
 worship ; but the responses, collects, ascrip- 
 tions and special offices are simply steeped in 
 Bible thought and Bible language. No man, 
 it is not too much to say, can enter our 
 churches and use intelligently our incom- 
 parable Liturgy without learning his need as 
 a sinner, the way of salvation, and the outline 
 of Christian life. Yes, the very warp and 
 woof of our Prayer-Book is the Word of God, 
 and this is chiefly what gives it its inestimable 
 value. 
 
 Again, let me remind you of the advantage 
 of our Liturgical forms in securing hearty 
 Congregational Worship. No one can doubt 
 the lawfulness of such forms, since our Lord
 
 The Book of Common Prayer. 85 
 
 taught us how to pray ; but do we Church- 
 men sufficiently appreciate the gain ? Does 
 any Church give to the congregation so large 
 a share in its services as our own ? We have 
 emphatically a book of Common — that is of 
 joint — Prayer. In the first century, a 
 heathen thus describes a Christian Liturgy — 
 " The worshippers repeat a formula to Christ 
 as God, in alternate responses," Could any 
 description be more happy of parts of our 
 own ? Greatly as I value extempore prayers 
 in our weekly prayer-meeting, how much 
 should we not lose if we were thus limited in 
 our public worship ! We all know what we 
 are going to pray for. We agree on earth as 
 touching certain matters. We pray with the 
 minister, not immediately after him. We 
 have not to guess what he is going to say, 
 nor are we anxious as to whether his doctrine 
 or political views will make it difficult for us 
 to say heartily. Amen. 
 
 Once I was told that a good Christian man 
 declared he could not attend our worship, 
 because there were four or five things he 
 could not agree to in the Liturgy. I sent 
 him a message that if that were so, he ought 
 to join us forthwith, for in Church he knew 
 exactly beforehand all that he could take 
 exception to ; in chapel, he could never be 
 sure, and only hope for the best ! It was a 
 new light, and he came henceforth. How 
 dear these familiar words are, and familiarity 
 is a help, not a hindrance, to devotion. We 
 have not even to think of them, but simply of 
 the wants which they so admirably unfold,
 
 86 The Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 and of Him to Whom we come.' " If a sen- 
 sible person," says Charles Simeon, "were to 
 write down all the prayers that were uttered 
 under the name of extempore prayer, in 
 different chapels, for one Sunday, he would 
 fall down on his knees, and thank God for 
 the Liturgy of the Church of England." 
 
 It is this ancient Liturgy which links to- 
 gether devout Churchmen all the world over, 
 and, year by year, carries them through the 
 whole cycle of Christian doctrine, I like, 
 too, to think of it as one special bond of 
 union between ourselves and those who go 
 forth from us to the Mission field. One of 
 our number has just reached her destination 
 on the shores of the Niger ; another sailed last 
 week for Northern India ; yet another will be 
 dismissed this week for Japan : but week by 
 week we shall all use the same words at the 
 same Throne of Grace wherever we are. 
 Surely, if it is a sacred delight to realise in our 
 
 ' Canon Fausset tells of a Durham pitman that, being 
 found reading the Litany, he was asked why he loved 
 the Prayer-Book. He answered, "One sentence in this 
 book, if there were no other, would of itself be sufficient 
 ♦o save the world. It is this : ' O holy, blessed, and 
 glorious Trinity, three Persons and one God, have 
 mercy upon us miserable sinners.' Oh ! sir, what have 
 I experienced in these words ! I have felt the sweet 
 drawings of a Father's love, the cleansing power of a 
 vSaviour's blood, and the sanctifying influences of the 
 Holy Spirit's grace ; and I have felt my whole soul 
 entwined, as it were, in the sacred Three." Some 
 Christians object to call themselves " miserable sinners," 
 or to confess that "the burden of their sins is intolerable." 
 I admit that we need to walk very close with God to 
 use these words honestly.
 
 The Book of Common Prayer. 87 
 
 Communion Service that we unite in praise 
 with angels and archangels, and with all the 
 company of heaven, in the very words of 
 their Tersanctus ; it is only a lesser delight 
 to know that in these prayers, hallowed by a 
 thousand years, we unite with saints in every 
 part of the world below. 
 
 Once again, have you ever thought how tho- 
 roughly Protestant our Liturgy is ? Some of 
 you have been perplexed, doubtless, by a sen- 
 tence here and there which seems to be other- 
 wise, and instead of interpreting such sentences 
 by the Prayer-Book as a whole, you have 
 just reversed the process, and judged the 
 Prayer-Book by those sentences. Nothing 
 more suicidal could be well conceived, under 
 present circumstances, than to put a Romish 
 interpretation upon passages which we know 
 were never so meant by the compilers. 
 Nothing can damage our Protestant Church 
 more. It is well to remember that when, 
 in Elizabeth's reign, the Pope licensed con- 
 cealed Jesuits who should feign themselves 
 Churchmen for the purpose of sowing the 
 seeds of disaffection in the Church of Eng- 
 land, one of their chief instruments was the 
 topic that the Prayer-Book had not been 
 sufficiently reformed.' Of course, the 
 Prayer-Book could be amended — there is but 
 one book that could not ; but do remember 
 that our Liturgy as it stands is a standing 
 witness against Popery. " Away with the 
 
 ' On this whole subject see the late learned Dean Goode's 
 remarkable little book, " Rome's Tactics," published 
 for threepence by Nisbet.
 
 88 The Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 old rubbishy opinion," says the Bishop of 
 Liverpool, " that the Church of England oc- 
 cupies a middle position, a via media ^ between 
 Dissent and Rome. You might as well talk 
 of the Isle of Wight being midway between 
 England and France. Between us and Rome 
 there is a gulf both broad and deep ; between 
 us and orthodox Protestant Dissent there is 
 but a partition wall. Between us and Rome 
 the division is in essentials ; between us and 
 Dissent the division is about things in which 
 a man may err and be saved." In like 
 manner you will remember that while our 
 Church speaks in clear and tolerant tones as 
 to other orthodox Protestant communities, 
 she declares the central act of worship of 
 the Latin Church to consist of " blasphemous 
 fables and dangerous deceits." 
 
 No ; if you want to know the real teaching 
 of our Church, do not take, I pray you, an 
 isolated sentence here and there out of the 
 devotional parts of her Liturgy, but study 
 her own authoritative declaration of her doc- 
 trines. Ask the Lutheran or Presbyterian 
 the teaching of his church, and he will at 
 once refer you to the Confessions of Augsburg 
 or Westminster. Ask the Churchman, and 
 he too often forgets the Thirty-nine Articles. 
 These Articles were, to a large extent, the 
 outcome of the Romish Council of Trent, and 
 were formulated as an emphatic protest against 
 its decrees ; for although that Council, which 
 began in 1545, did not conclude until 1564, 
 and our Articles were issued in 1562, yet the 
 leading dogmas of the Tridentine fathers were
 
 The Book of Common Prayer. 89 
 
 in the hands of our Reformers long before 
 the latter date. It was in opposition to 
 them that Archbishop Cranmer with Ridley 
 drew up forty-two articles, which, after a 
 subsequent revision by Archbishop Parker, 
 Grindal, and Cox, were reduced to thirty-nine, 
 and were solemnly agreed upon by the whole 
 body of bishops and clergy gathered in London 
 under Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 Bishop Christopher Wordsworth thus 
 writes : — 
 
 "The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion con- 
 tain an exposition of the doctrines of the 
 Church of England. They contain no enact- 
 ment of anything new in doctrine, but they 
 are only a declaration of what is old. In them 
 the Church of England affirms that Holy 
 Scripture containeth all things necessary to 
 salvation." 
 
 God forbid that I should say anything 
 calculated to stir up strife, but when I read 
 in the Church Times that Lord Halifax, the 
 President of the English Church Union, said 
 at their annual meeting, at the close of a 
 carefully weighed speech, " We must strive 
 for Union, especially with the great Latin 
 Church, from which we were separated by 
 the sins of the sixteenth century," and when 
 I remember that by the " sins of the sixteenth 
 century " he means the Reformation, and 
 when I remember further that there can be 
 no union with Rome except on the terms of 
 absolute submission — a submission involving, 
 as Dr. Salmon says, " an acknowledgment 
 that we from our hearts believe things to be
 
 90 The Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 true which we have good reason for knowing 
 to be false " — then I say unhesitatingly that, 
 however devout and earnest and self-sacri- 
 ficing many of its members undoubtedly are, 
 the English Church Union is simply a dis- 
 senting body within our fold, in which loyal 
 Churchmen can find no place.' 
 
 You all know how advanced a Churchman 
 the late Bishop Wilberforce of Winchester 
 was. I ask you to hear some of his last 
 words, addressed in 1873 to his Rural Deans. 
 " There is a growing desire," he says, " to 
 introduce novelties, such as incense, a multi- 
 tude of lights in the chancel, and so on. 
 Now these and such things are honestly 
 and truly alien to the Chnrch of England. 
 Do not hesitate to treat them as such. 
 There is a growing feeling which I can 
 only describe as an ashamedness of the An- 
 glican Church ; as if our grand old Anglican 
 Communion contrasted unfavourably with the 
 Church of Rome. The habitual language 
 held by many men sounds as if they were 
 ashamed of our Church and its position ; it 
 is a sort of apology for the Church of England 
 as compared with the Church of Rome. Why, 
 I would as soon think of apologising for the 
 virtue of my mother. I have no sympathy 
 in the world with such a feeling. I abhoi 
 this fidgety desire to make everything un- 
 Anglican. It is not a grand development, 
 
 I See Bishop Ryle's, "^\^lat is Written about the Lord's 
 Supper" (Hunt), and Archdeacon Farrar's "Sacerdo- 
 talism" (National Protestant Church Union)— pamphlets 
 that should be widely known.
 
 The Book of Common Prayer. 91 
 
 as some seem to think — it is a decrepi- 
 tude. It is not something very sublime 
 and impressive, but ?i')mething very feeble and 
 contemptible." What would the Bishop say 
 if he saw the length things have gone to nmv ? 
 II. In the second place, I want to say a few 
 words about our present position as Evan- 
 gelical Churchmen, and our consequent duty. 
 For many years past an appeal has been made 
 from time to time to courts of law, under 
 well-known Acts of Parliament, as to certain 
 ritualistic practices in different churches, and 
 one by one these, or most of them, have been 
 pronounced illegal. The Church Association, 
 or any other body of Churchmen, was per- 
 fectly entitled to ascertain the law, which was 
 admittedly obscure, and this it has done. 
 Where, I venture to think, that Association 
 made a mistake was in further proceeding to 
 enforce the law when it was openly set at 
 defiance. It was a mistake from the New 
 Testament point of view ; it was a mistake in 
 policy also. The spectacle of a clergyman in 
 prison, "just because of his Church views," as 
 people thoughtlessly said, awoke sympathy in 
 tens of thousands entirely ignorant upon the 
 real question involved. The bishops, who 
 ought to have acted at first, shirked their 
 responsibility until it was too late. I do not 
 altogether blame them ; their power is but 
 small. A bishop told me it had cost him 
 personally ^4°° to oust an unworthy clergy- 
 man from his benefice. Doubtless the law 
 needs amending ; but Convocation, if it had 
 the will, certainly has not the power ; and
 
 92 The Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 Parliament, which never will concede the 
 power, certainly has not the will. The final 
 result of this appeal to law has been, as you 
 know, the Lincoln Judgment. The highest 
 Ecclesiastical Court hasconfirmedthejudgment 
 of the Archbishop's Court, and has reversed 
 all previous decisions. It has said that 
 practices, which Bishop Wilberforce declared 
 alien to the Church of England, are not 
 illegal in the administration of the Lord's 
 Supper. It is useless to complain. The 
 appeal was to Caesar, and Caesar has spoken. 
 I feel, therefore, it is important to remind you 
 of two things. First, that the utmost declared 
 by the judgment about any of these things is 
 that they are not illegal. Secondly, that both 
 courts declare that these practices, though 
 permitted, are not to be taken as having any 
 doctrinal signification. The position of Evan- 
 gelical Churchmen, therefore, is not affected 
 in the slightest. To talk of leaving the 
 Church of our fathers is the language of 
 irritation, and not of reason. The judgment 
 shakes our confidence in courts of law — it 
 does not alter our position as Churchmen ; 
 we are exactly where we were. For this we 
 may thank God and take courage. 
 
 What, in conclusion, is our duty ? Two- 
 fold, I take it, in the main. First, hear the 
 apostle speak : " If it be possible, as much 
 as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." 
 We have the Prayer-Book and the Articles. 
 We have the earliest Fathers ; we have all 
 the great Divines of the Church of England 
 down to fifty years ago ; we have the lessons
 
 The Book of Common Prayer. 93 
 
 of history, all on our side. We may well be 
 satisfied. I am a strong Churchman. I 
 knoAV why I am not a Roman Catholic, and I 
 know why I am not a Nonconformist. I also 
 know why I am an Evangehcal Churchman, 
 and I am prepared, humbly by the grace of 
 God, to maintain my position. Of one thing 
 I am sure, it is possible to contend earnestly 
 for the faith once delivered to the saints with- 
 out breaking the ever-new Commandment of 
 Love. If we cannot, depend upon it our 
 position is not worth the fighting for. The 
 matters at stake in this controversy are too 
 tremendous for loss of temper. They are not 
 mere questions of music, or banners, or of a 
 trifling ceremonial ; they are questions of 
 God's truth and of Man's salvation. Contention 
 there must be ; but, I repeat, it must be in the 
 spirit of love, or it will be contention in vain ; 
 and I say that every Evangelical Churchman 
 ought, above all things, to know why he is 
 what he is. " Prove all things ; hold fast that 
 which is good." 
 
 SecMidly, Adorn the doctrine you profess. 
 If Evangelical Churchmanship means any- 
 thing, it means not merely the head clear, but 
 the heart right with God. It means a personal 
 knowledge of Christ as a personal Saviour, and 
 of the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. 
 It means an intelligent love of the Bible ; 
 a growing unworldliness ; an openly avowed 
 love to all who love our Lord in sincerity 
 and truth, be they Churchmen or Noncon- 
 formists ; an ever intenser desire for the 
 salvation of souls at home and abroad. In a
 
 94 TJie Book of Common Prayer, 
 
 word, it means that practical spirituality of 
 life which is at once our only real power, and 
 our justification before men. Any weapons 
 but those of the Spirit will break in our hands 
 and wound us. Use thesc^ and as Christians 
 we shall glorify God, and as Churchmen we 
 shall be a blessing to our country. 
 
 I feel that I might speak to you upon the 
 importance of Organisation, of a clearer mani- 
 festation to the world of the actual Unity 
 that exists among us, but these things would 
 be beyond my scope to-night. Words of in- 
 spiration run in my mind ; hear them as I 
 close : " By pureness, by knowledge, by long- 
 suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by 
 love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the 
 power of God, by the armour of righteous- 
 ness on the right hand and on the left, by 
 honour and dishonour, by evil report and 
 good report : as deceivers, and yet true ; as 
 unknown, and yet well known ; as dying, and 
 behold we live ; as chastened, and not killed ; 
 as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing ; as poor, yet 
 making many rich ; as having nothing, and 
 yet possessing all things" (2 Cor. vi. 6-10).
 
 %\)t Edatiije 3iniporttintc of tljc 
 tiiffcL-cur 9dtm0 of dPcact* 
 
 " And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more 
 and more in knowledge and in all judgment ; that ye may 
 approve things that are excellent ; that ye may be sincere 
 and without offence till the day of Christ.'" — Phil. i. 9, 10. 
 
 " That ye may approve the things that are 
 excellent " ; that is, in the original Greek, 
 " That between things that are alike excellent 
 you may judge or distinguish " — exactly bring- 
 ing us to our subject to-night, " The relative 
 importance of the different means of grace." 
 
 We all feel that we live in perplexing times. 
 In the State there is admittedly an upheaval, 
 and on all sides we see indications of social and 
 political convulsion. In the Churches, amid 
 many activities, we have distinct evidence in 
 some directions of decadence. There is a 
 marked decay of the Lord's Day observance. 
 There is a conformity to the world. There is 
 a growing use of worldly means for spiritual 
 ends ; and now and again the papers tell us of 
 some terrible divorce, in church or chapel, of 
 the gospel and common honesty, which it is 
 painful, but necessary, to confess. 
 
 Why do I mention these things ? Because 
 I believe them to be closely connected with 
 
 95
 
 96 The Relative Importance of the 
 
 our subject. I believe that on observing the 
 relative importance of the means of grace 
 depends to a considerable extent the spiritual 
 life of the individual Christian. I believe that 
 Churchmen especially, with their authorised 
 standards of faith and doctrine, and holding 
 the position they do, have a grave responsi- 
 bility in this matter ; and that, when a majority 
 of them ignorantly invert these divinely 
 ordered proportions, we may reasonably expect 
 a decay of spiritual life in the Church, which 
 will be quickly reflected in the nation at large, 
 and in the tone of the House of Commons. 
 
 That such an inversion has taken place I 
 shall attempt to show. Surely the question 
 is one of the highest importance, for, what are 
 the means of grace ? What, indeed, is grace? 
 Simply this — God in action towards sinful men 
 in Christ Jesus ; and by " means of grace " we 
 understand those ordained channels in and 
 through which He is usually pleased to act. 
 As I utter the words, my heart goes up in 
 wonder at the multitudinous means God has 
 provided. It is as if He, Who from the begin- 
 ning " rejoiced in the habitable parts of the 
 earth," longed to use every means, that even 
 Divine Wisdom could devise, of intercourse 
 and communion with His creatures. And yet, 
 just as the colours of the rainbow, blending in 
 one harmonious whole, are nevertheless dis- 
 tinct, and bear a definite relation the one to 
 the other, on which the perfection of the whole 
 dtp.'nds, so is it with the different means of 
 grace. I can of course only select. I will take 
 four of the most important, upon some of
 
 different Means of Grace. 97 
 
 ■which I have already spoken, viz., the Chris- 
 tian Ministry, the Sacraments, the Scriptures, 
 and Prayer. With all the fairness I can, I 
 shall endeavour to show the relative impor- 
 tance attached to these by the dominant party 
 in our Church, and then state what I believe 
 that proportion is designed by God to be. 
 
 I. There can be no question but that in 
 the minds of a majority of our most zealous 
 Church-people the ordained Ministry occupies 
 a position that it has not occupied for three 
 hundred years. The theory of apostolical suc- 
 cession is widely held in its most naked form — 
 that the Bishops are the representatives of the 
 Apostles, and the heirs of their spiritual power ; 
 and this by virtue of a direct devolution of 
 that power through an unbroken succession 
 of laying on of hands, down from the Apos- 
 tolic age itself. The logical issue of this view 
 is found in the common formula, " No Bishop, 
 no Church." To the second order of the 
 Ministry are widely assigned sacerdotal titles, 
 functions, and powers; "on which," to use 
 Mr. Gore's words, " the validity of the Sacra- 
 ments depends." There is an increasing 
 number who believe that by virtue of the 
 Priest's Absolvo /<?, heard in the Confessional, 
 all sin is remitted ; ' and a multitude, who do 
 not go so far as this, do heartily believe that 
 certain words of consecration change, if not 
 
 ' A few years ago the Confessional was rare, now it is 
 habitually used in 177 churches in London alone, and is 
 being introduced everywhere. In some churches, I am 
 told, it is even made a condition of receiving the Lord's 
 Supper. 
 
 I
 
 98 The Relative Importance of the 
 
 the visible substance of the bread and wine, at 
 least their essential character. While refusing 
 the Roman doctrine of Transubstantiation, 
 their own formula as to the presence of Christ 
 in the sacred elements differs from it in words 
 only ; while as to the offering of Christ in the 
 Eucharistic Sacrifice, there is not even a verbal 
 difference. The result is what we see. The 
 Holy Communion is pushed into the very first 
 place among the means of grace. It is the 
 grand remedy for the spiritual needs of all the 
 baptized. " Come to the Holy Altar as par- 
 takers, and, if not, as worshippers," is the call 
 from hundreds of our pulpits week by week.^ 
 Again and again we are told that it is the chief 
 act of worship, as well as the chief means of 
 holiness. Everything is sacrificed (I speak 
 advisedly) to the sacrifice of the Altar. It is 
 not long since a leading High Church organ 
 condoned the spending of the Lord's Day in 
 pleasure, if only the Supper, instituted in the 
 evening, were taken first thing in the morning. 
 Evening Communion is an abomination be- 
 cause it cannot be received, as it is said it 
 should be, fasting. In short, as " No Bishop, 
 no Church," so it is distinctly held, " No 
 Priest, no sacrament." 
 
 Just as clearly as the Sacraments have been 
 exalted among the means of grace, so the Bible 
 has taken a lower place in the hearts of myriads 
 of honest Churchmen. About this there can 
 be no question ; indeed it is openly avowed 
 
 ' " The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be 
 gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should 
 duly use them " (Article XXV.).
 
 different Means of Grace. 99 
 
 that the Bible, and the Bible only, is the secret 
 of an uncatholic Protestantism. " The Bible 
 and tradition, the Bible and primitive an 
 tiquity, the Bible and the voice of the early 
 Church, contain together the rule of faith." 
 Ever since Keble published Tract 78, and 
 declared that Scripture and Tradition together 
 are the joint Rule of Faith, this doctrine has 
 been proclaimed upon the housetops. This 
 fully accounts, I maintain, for the lower 
 esteem in which the Bible is held by the 
 mass of the Ritualistic party. The Scrip- 
 tures, we are told, are not to be put hastily 
 into the hands of the young and ignorant ; 
 and I can speak, confidently as an old Oxford 
 man, who has kept touch, so far as he may, 
 with the Oxford Movement, that a large pro- 
 portion of zealous Anglicans practically do not 
 read their Bibles at all. Nor can I wonder, 
 when only the other day I heard a prominent 
 Ritualistic clergyman laugh publicly at the 
 idea that the Bible is "the Word of God." 
 Do not mistake me ; I must not weaken 
 my position by overstating it. What is 
 true of many is certainly not true of all. 
 The High Church party is rent in twain to- 
 day upon this very question. Mr. Gore's 
 unproved hypotheses about the Old Testament 
 have been greedily welcomed by many, for the 
 supposed claims of the Church are not con- 
 sistent with the claims of the Bible. On the 
 other hand, all honour to Archdeacon Denison, 
 and those High Churchmen with him, who 
 firmly uphold the Divine authorship and 
 supremacy of Holy Writ.
 
 loo The Relative Importance of the 
 
 The last of the means of grace I take up is 
 Prayer. Thank God, prayer is insisted on by 
 High Churchmen as well as ourselves. I am 
 sure there are scores of devout men, from 
 whom I totally differ on important Church 
 matters, with whom I should count it a 
 privilege to kneel in prayer ; but, speaking of 
 the party as a whole, I think I may ask with 
 affectionate anxiety — Does private prayer 
 occupy the place it should ? Is there not a 
 real danger of the supposed claims of public 
 worship invading the sacred duties of the 
 closet ? We have been plainly told by one of 
 their journals that prayers said in the church 
 are more acceptable to God than prayers said 
 in the chamber ; and I say sadly I have reason 
 to fear that numbers of well-meaning Church- 
 men are giving up, first, Family Prayer, that 
 great bond of the Christian family, for Matins ; 
 and then the sacred communion of the closet 
 for the Early Celebration in the church. 
 This will bear further fruit in the same direc- 
 tion. The effects of the loudly proclaimed 
 theory of priestly intercession are visible 
 already, and in scores of churches day by day 
 the clergyman may be seen monotoning 
 morning prayer to a congregation consisting 
 of some of his own family and the verger. I 
 greatly fear that the principle, " Qtu facit 
 i>er alium facit per se^'' is leading to deserted 
 closets and to frequent services, and frequent 
 services tend too often to empty churches. I 
 am most anxious not to exceed the limits of 
 actual fact in what I am saying. I repeat that 
 I am not alluding to individuals but to the
 
 different Means of Grace. loi 
 
 High Church party as a whole ; and I say 
 that, so far as I can judge, the Ministry is 
 held first in esteem among the means of grace ; 
 because neither Church nor Sacraments, it is 
 supposed, can exist without it ; and Scripture 
 and Prayer take distinctly lower places. I 
 believe this order to be an inverted order ; I 
 believe it to be full of danger both to Church 
 and State ; and I shall now proceed to indi- 
 cate what I believe to be the true relative 
 importance of these means of grace. 
 
 II. As loyal Churchmen, I claim that we 
 yield to none in the value we set upon the 
 Christian Ministry. We hold an ordained 
 ministry to be a special gift of our ascended 
 Lord. We accept the threefold order of 
 Bishop, Priest, and Deacon. We claim em- 
 phatically the historical succession of the 
 Church of England. Episcopacy we hold 
 essential to the well-being, not to the being, 
 of a church ; but we do not hold apostolical 
 succession in the sense asserted as essential. 
 We hold it to be a theory incapable of proof, 
 and worth nothing spiritually if it were 
 proved. Carefully guarding as we do Epis- 
 copal ordination, we cling to our Church 
 Article, and will not for a moment allow that 
 the last fledgling admitted to Holy Orders, be 
 he good, bad, or indifferent, is a true minister 
 of Jesus Christ ; and that Matthew Henry, 
 and Doddridge, and Robert Hall, and Chal- 
 mers, and Spurgeon were nothing of the kind. 
 
 As to the second order of the Ministry, we 
 deny emphatically that any Presbyter can do 
 more than authoritatively declare the terms
 
 I02 The Relative Importance of the 
 
 upon which God is pleased to forgive sins. 
 As to the Sacraments, we would point out 
 that, in regard to that of Baptism, its validity 
 so little depends upon apostolic succession, 
 that it does not necessarily depend upon a 
 clergyman at all ; but may be administered 
 under certain circumstances by a layman, or 
 even by a midwife, and it cannot be repeated. 
 
 In the Lord's Supper we maintain jealously 
 that the bread and wine are bread and wine 
 still ; nothing more and nothing less. We 
 assert, with our Article, that the blessing 
 of the Sacrament — which is indeed nothing 
 less than the communion of the Body and 
 Blood of Christ — depends wholly and entirely 
 upon the hearts of those who receive, and not 
 upon the hands of those who consecrate ; and 
 we hold that the adoration now so commonly 
 oflFered to the Presence in the consecrated 
 elements, is dangerously akin to " idolatry, to 
 be abhorred of all faithful Christians." We 
 deny altogether any sacerdotal character what- 
 ever to the Presbyter of the Church of Eng- 
 land, save and except that which every Chris- 
 tian shares, whether he be cleric or lay. We 
 say, with Hooker, that " Sacrifice is no part of 
 our Church's ministry " ; and we appeal to 
 antiquity, and say that the earliest Fathers 
 never asserted it was. 
 
 Our position is perfectly clear, and con- 
 fidently we claim Bible, Prayer-Book, and 
 History, and the greatest Divines of the 
 English Church, in support of it ; but if so, 
 the Sacraments stand on a wholly different 
 footing from that commonly assigned to
 
 different Means of Grace. 103 
 
 them, and we must discov'er some other 
 principle for determining their relative im- 
 portance. 
 
 III. I venture to lay down three propositions. 
 First, that the proportionate value of any 
 doctrine, or ordinance of the Christian Faith, 
 must be ascertained by the frequency and 
 urgency with which it is enforced in the 
 Bible, and especially in the Epistles ; which 
 teach doctrines, just as the Gospels mainly 
 record the facts on which those doctrines are 
 based. Apply this test to the Lord's Supper ; 
 and, if accustomed to the extravagant language 
 of the day, you will be positively startled by 
 the contrast, and by the small place it rela- 
 tively occupies in the New Testament. 
 
 About Faith and Works, about Holiness 
 and Unholiness, about Justification and 
 Sanctification, we have line upon line, and 
 precept upon precept. About the Lord's 
 Supper, you will find that blessed ordinance is 
 mentioned in one single Epistle, and that in 
 all the other twenty it is not so much as men- 
 tioned. The Bishop of Liverpool (Dr. Ryle) 
 says : " In the Pastoral Epistles to Timothy 
 and Titus, where one might certainly expect 
 to find detailed instructions about the Lord's 
 Supper, it is conspicuously absent. Now I 
 cannot get over that fact. The silence of 
 Scripture is just as eloquent as its voice.'* 
 This argument of course is flouted, but I have 
 not yet seen it answered. It seems to me a 
 perfectly obvious contention ; and in using it 
 I am glad to find an ally, unconscious of 
 course, in Mr. Sadler, in his " Church Doc-
 
 104 -^'^^^ Relative Importance of the 
 
 trine, Bible Truth." " Judged by their 
 respective services," he says (p. 117), "Bap- 
 tism has a far higher position in the English 
 than in the Romish Church." And he proves 
 it thus, "In the Romish office the administra- 
 tion of the Sacrament itself is thrust into a 
 corner, and four-fifths of the Service have 
 to do with other ceremonies (exorcisms, 
 benedictions, and the like), so that in a copy 
 of the ' Rituale Romanum ' now before me, 
 out of ten pages occupied by the Baptismal 
 Service, not two have to do with the Sacra- 
 ment itself." Mr. Sadler's point is conclusive ; 
 but this is exactly our own argument from the 
 place the Lord's Supper holds in the New 
 Testament. If the inspired writers of the 
 first century were right in the way they dealt 
 with the Lord's Supper, I cannot help feeling 
 that some of the uninspired writers of the 
 nineteenth century are entirely wrong. 
 
 My second proposition is this : That the 
 relative importance of the means of grace may 
 be further ascertained by the admitted neces- 
 sities of the regenerated soul. As there is an 
 analogy, divinely taught, between physical 
 and spiritual birth ; so there is a likeness 
 between the intuitive longings of the infant 
 and of the new-born soul. As the one cannot 
 be satisfied without its mother's milk, so the 
 other is athirst for God's Word. "As new- 
 born babes," writes St. Peter, " desire the 
 sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow 
 thereby." Again and again, until I take it as 
 one of the best evidences of the Spirit's quick- 
 ening work, have I heard men say, " The
 
 different Means of Grace. 105 
 
 Bible has become a new book to me." Nor is 
 this all ; as men grow in grace, the ** sincere 
 milk " is exchanged for the " strong meat " of 
 their full manhood in Christ, and it is the 
 eminent saint who cries, " Thy words were 
 found, and I did eat them, and thy word was 
 unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart " 
 {Jer. XV. 16). '' I," said Luther, " did not learn 
 my divinity at one only time, but was con- 
 strained to search deeper and deeper, to which 
 my temptations brought me ; for no man with- 
 out trials and temptations can attain to the 
 true understanding of the Holy Scriptures." 
 
 Hear, again, Ridley, our blessed martyr- 
 bishop, whom Cambridge trained, and Oxford, 
 I am sorry to sav, burned ; he is writing just 
 before his fiery death, and thus says he : " In 
 thy orchard, Pembroke Hall (the wals, buttes, 
 and trees, if they could speak would beare me 
 witnes), I learned without booke almost all 
 Paule's Epistles, yea, and I weene all the 
 Canonicall Epistles, save only the Apocalyps. 
 Of which study, although in time a great part 
 •did depart from me, yet the sweete smell 
 thereof I trust I shall carry with me into 
 heaven ; for the profite thereof I thinke I 
 have felt in all my lyfe-tyme ever after." " So 
 shall it be with us also," comments Mr. 
 Moule, "if we go and do likewise in our 
 ''lyfe-tyme' — our period, not at present of 
 martyrdom, but, God knoweth it, of need." 
 
 And if we look humbly at Him who " left 
 us an example that we should follow His 
 steps," were not the daily needs of His 
 human soul met, not by Sacraments, but by
 
 io6 The Relative Importance of the 
 
 the Old Testament writings ? By His con- 
 stant use of them, not less than by His 
 emphatic vindication of the authenticity and 
 inspiration of the Old Testament Canon, we 
 learn their relative place. With the Scripture 
 He resisted the Tempter in the wilderness ; 
 with the Scripture He opened His mouth and 
 taught the people ; with the Scripture He 
 confuted scribe and Sadducee : " Ye do err, not 
 knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of 
 God " ; with the Scripture on His lips He died ; 
 and when the glorious Easter dawned, and He 
 revealed Himself to shattered hopes and aspi- 
 rations, it was once again to appeal to the 
 written Word, for, " beginning at Moses and all 
 the prophets, He expounded unto them in all 
 the scriptures the things concerning Himself." 
 And if the Master's needs were thus (though 
 not thus exclusively) met, how must it be with 
 the disciple ? We are not left in doubt. In 
 John vi. our Lord declares Himself to be the 
 living Bread come down from heaven, of which 
 if a man eat he shall live for ever. Not un- 
 naturally perplexed, His hearers seek to know 
 His meaning, and He explains it thus, " The 
 words that I have spoken " (/.,?., those last 
 utterances of Mine) " are spirit and are life " ; 
 " that is," says Bishop Westcott, " belong 
 essentially to the region of eternal being, and 
 so are capable of conveying that which they 
 essentially areP "Lord, to whom shall we 
 go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life," 
 cry the disciples, and our hearts echo their 
 cry. And as life comes through Christ's 
 words, so "he that keepcth them" is solemnly
 
 different Means of Grace. 107 
 
 declared to have fellowship with Father, Son^ 
 and Holy Spirit (John xiv.). The Epistles en- 
 large upon this teaching. St. James bids u& 
 " receive with meekness the implanted word,, 
 which is able to save your souls " (i. 21). St. 
 Peter says, " Ye were born again through (ota)_ 
 the word of God" (i Pet. i. 23). The last of 
 the apostles writes, " I have written unto you,, 
 young men, because ye are strong, and the 
 word of God abideth in you, and ye have 
 overcome the evil one " (i John ii. 14). How 
 impossible is the Ritualist's practical limita- 
 tion of " the means of grace " to the two- 
 Sacraments in the light of typical passages 
 such as these ! If Simon Magus, baptized but 
 still unregenerate, was ever to become a child 
 of God, what other method for him was there 
 but to receive, under the Spirit's teaching, the- 
 life-giving word ? 
 
 If you want to know how a Churchman, 
 firmly holding Primitive and Catholic doc- 
 trine, loves the Lord's Supper, I would have 
 you read Adolphe Monod's "Farewell" ; or,, 
 better still, the writings of the great Fathers 
 of the English Church. It is simply grievous 
 to have to attempt to compare the relative 
 place of two such essential means of grace^ 
 nor would it be necessary but for the un- 
 primitive and uncatholic teaching so prevalent 
 about the Sacraments. Uncatholic, I repeat,, 
 for if " Catholic " means, among other things,. 
 '■'' quod semper^'' it includes the New Testament 
 times and teaching. 
 
 Our Church insists upon this proportion, if 
 not in words, at least in practice. Her Liturgy^
 
 io8 The Relative Importance- of the 
 
 as I have shown you, is steeped in Scripture. 
 Her Sixth Article declares : " Holy Scripture 
 ■containcth all things necessary to salvation, so 
 that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may 
 ■be proved thereby, is not to be required of any 
 man that it should be observed as an article 
 ■of the Faith, or be thought requisite to sal- 
 vation." How different her attitude towards 
 that blessed Sacrament she so jealously guards 
 from Zwinglian half-truth, or Roman innova- 
 tion : "There shall be no communion except 
 four (or three at the least) communicate with 
 the Priest." And again in the Rubric concern- 
 ing small parishes, " There shall be no celebra- 
 tion of the Lord's Supper, except there be a 
 convenient number to communicate with the 
 Priest according to his discretion." I ask 
 •emphatically, how dare our Church thus re- 
 strict the opportunities of Holy Communion ; 
 making them, in fact, contingent on the num- 
 •ber of communicants, or the discretion of the 
 Curate, if she holds it to be "the highest means 
 of grace " ? The place she assigns to Scripture 
 and this Sacrament in her public services is 
 -eloquent of her view ; and certainly it is not 
 he who thoughtfully adopts it who deserves to 
 be called an ill-taught or disloyal Churchman. 
 High as is the position thus given to Scrip- 
 ture, there is, judging by the universal in- 
 stincts of the regenerate soul, one means of 
 grace more important still ; I mean, of course. 
 Prayer. Prayer is closely linked with Scrip- 
 ture. The promises of God are the basis of 
 prayer. The encouragement to prayer, is the 
 bidding of God. The best words of prayer
 
 different Means of Grace. 1 09 
 
 are often the very words of God ; but, never- 
 theless, first in order of time and of importance 
 is Prayer. The inarticulate cry of the new- 
 born babe is the first joyful intimation to the 
 mother's heart that a man is born into the 
 world ; and, " Behold, he prayeth," is God's- 
 own convincing illustration of His quickening 
 work. Of our duty to the Scriptures nothing 
 is said like this : " Pray without ceasing "" 
 (i Thess. V. 17), or, " Praying always with all 
 prayer and supplication in the spirit " (Eph. 
 vi. 18). Here, again, his Lord's example in 
 prayer — deliberate, sustained, ejaculatory, 
 public, private, secret prayer — is the Chris- 
 tian's assurance both of the need and place 
 of prayer. " Prayer is the Christian's vital 
 breath." It is so on earth ; it will be so, we 
 believe, in heaven. Dear as is the Lord's 
 Supper to every true disciple, it is but a 
 pledge of something dearer far, the personal 
 visible presence of His Lord ; in this sense it 
 speaks to him of a real absence, for it is only 
 " till He come." In due time it will surrender 
 its place and use ; for when we gaze, with St. 
 Thomas, on Him " who was wounded for our 
 transgressions," Sacraments will be needed no 
 more. So, too, the Books of the Old and New 
 Covenants will cease perhaps to speak to us 
 when we see no more through a glass darkly, 
 and "know even as also we are known." But 
 through Eternity, I take it. Prayer will ever 
 mingle with Praise, and with ever deepening 
 meaning we shall cry, "Teach me to do Thy 
 will, for Thou art my God." 
 
 My last proposition is this : That we can,
 
 Eio The Relative Importance of the 
 
 to some extent, test the relative importance 
 of the different means of grace by the effects 
 they produce. Upon this only a few words 
 before I close, but uttered with a deep convic- 
 tion that they are substantially true. 
 
 It is by results, results visible in life and 
 ■conduct, that the truth of doctrines must 
 ultimately be tested. Christianity itself, com- 
 pared with other systems of faith, must stand 
 or fall by this test. Within the Christian 
 faith there are a variety of means of grace, 
 some more, and some less, essential. Com- 
 mensurate with the claims put forth for one 
 or other of these, results must be apparent, or 
 the claims themselves become open to sus- 
 picion. "With Truth all facts and realities 
 agree," says Aristotle. Put modern claims as 
 to the Sacraments to this simple test, and what 
 •do we find ? We have the means of judging. 
 Let us take one important section of our 
 population, distinguished by its wealth, its 
 general intelligence, and better cared for by 
 the High Church clergy, as Mackeson's Guide 
 proves, than any other equal number of such 
 persons in the world. I mean, of course, those 
 ■who live in the West-End of London. Larffe 
 
 O 
 
 numbers attend church. Large numbers, 
 larger than ever before, are communicants. 
 L"'^rged, persuaded, entreated, they come to 
 Holy Communion,^ especially to early cele- 
 
 ' Now openly called " The Mass " in many churches. 
 "" We already have the name, we shall soon have the 
 thing,'" said an exultant Ritualist not long ago. Nor 
 <lo I think his prophecy unjustified. Already there are 
 more than one thousand churches in England where the 
 mediasval eucharistic vestments, the symbol of the sacer-
 
 dificrent Means of Grace. jii 
 
 brations. Many of them doubtless are most 
 sincere Christians, but how does a large pro- 
 portion of them afterwards " kill Sunday " ? I 
 could speak from personal knowledge ; but it 
 is less invidious and more important to hear 
 what the Bishops say. In their recent utterance 
 on the growing desecration of the Lord's Day 
 they speak with no uncertain sound ; they 
 are dealing with London Society that goes to 
 church ; and they tell of picnics on the 
 Thames, of tennis parties, of fashionable 
 visiting, of late dinners. Many of the High 
 Church clergy lament it too. They do their 
 best to check an increasing evil ; they speak 
 of it, they preach of it ; but what never seems 
 to occur to them is that the habit of many 
 of their communicants condemns their own 
 Eucharistic theory. Grace is not given, after 
 all, by a mere reception of the elements ; some- 
 thing does depend, it would seem, upon the 
 heart and motive of the communicant. I am 
 far from saying that Bible-reading and prayer 
 are charms either : they are only channels, 
 and sometimes empty channels. Here, too, 
 grace depends upon something more than its 
 appointed conduit ; but, I put it to you, were 
 you to hear that these same fashionable multi- 
 tudes that throng, first, the rails of our West- 
 End churches, and then " Church Parade " 
 in the Park, had suddenly become earnest in 
 Bible study, earnest in secret Prayer, would 
 you expect London Society to continue what 
 
 dotal doctrine, are worn. Already seven Bishops have 
 worn the obsolete mitre, discarded at the Reformation as 
 a symbol of what was corrupt and not primitive.
 
 112 The different Means of Grace. 
 
 it is to-day ? And if not, why not ? Does not 
 your answer prove that in your inmost heart 
 you do not beheve the Lord's Supper occupies 
 the place commonly claimed for it among the 
 means of grace, and that other means, not 
 less ordained of God, need to be exalted ? 
 
 How shall I close ? With a word of earnest 
 exhortation to you personally. It is so easy to 
 sit in judgment upon others, and to forget our 
 own personal responsibility. Our communions 
 are large, I greatly desire to see them larger ; 
 I want to see more of you coming to the 
 Lord's Table, but coming only on those con- 
 ditions which Scripture and our Church alike 
 so clearly and certainly lay down — '' Let a 
 man examine himself, and so let him eat 
 of that bread and drink of that cup " (i 
 Cor. xi. 28). For this, self-judgment in the 
 light of the Avritten word, and confession in 
 the closet, are essential. If further help is 
 needed, our Church bius him have recourse to 
 that other appointed means of grace, " some 
 discreet and learned Minister of God's Word^ 
 that by the ministry of God^s holy Word he 
 may receive the benefit of absolution, together 
 with ghostly counsel and advice." Thus 
 linking together these means of grace, the 
 Scriptures, Prayer, the Ministry, and the 
 Sacraments, you will find that the Divine 
 Giver Himself blesses you by each and all of 
 them ; you will distinguish between one and 
 the other while you delight in each ; and you 
 will, as a result, "glorify God in your bodies 
 which are His." 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.
 
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