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 'A CITY SET ON A HILL' 
 
 (Matt. v. 4) 
 
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 TO 
 
 THE ASSOCIATION OF LAY HELPERS 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 DIOCESE OF LONDON 
 
 delivered hi the 
 NORTH CHAPEL OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 
 
 ON 
 
 MONDAY EVENING, JAN. 10, 1876 
 BY 
 
 JAMES AUGUSTUS HESSEY, D.C.L. 
 
 ARCMDKACON OF MIDDLESEX : PREACHKK OT GKAy'S INN ; 
 ONE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENTS OF THE ASSOCIATION 
 
 priulcb bn 
 SrOTTLSWOODE c^- CO., NEW-STREET SQUARL, LONDON 
 
 J 876
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 * A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.' — Mattheiu v. 14. 
 
 I REMEMBER oiice reading a very remarkable allegory in 
 which occurred the words, ' It was the condition of that 
 fortress that no assaults could prevail against itfromwitliout, 
 unless treachery existed within.' The fortress intended is 
 the baptized soul. It is the soul of every one of us — the soul 
 of each of you, my dear friends, and my soul. I say this 
 most advisedly. Our cases and our courses, however ap- 
 parently different or divergent, are made one by the following- 
 consideration. God's Providence has led you to join an 
 Association which places you to some extent in the position 
 assigned by Christ to His Apostles, and, inferentially, to all 
 who sliall in any degree exercise their office to the end of the 
 world. Glancing first at one of the hill-forts of Palestine, 
 perhaps Sanur or Eethulia, which is visible from the Mount of 
 the Beatitudes, and then at themselves, He said, with a 
 significance that could not be mistaken, ' A city that is set 
 on a hill cannot be hid.' Such a city cannot escape some 
 enemy's notice. Let it be well seen to that everything within 
 is sound.
 
 You will not be surprised then, my dear friends, if, holding 
 you to be of those whom St. John describes as 'fellow-workers 
 (fTviepyoi) in the truth'* (3 John, v. 8), I have come to 
 take kindly counsel with you this evening as to our common 
 duties and common dangers. I am not, in strictness of 
 speech, about to preach to you. Your presence and your 
 acceptance of what is part of my special office rather preach 
 to me. If you, whose callings are secular, are willing to 
 turn your studies into the way of evangelising the dark 
 corners of this vast diocese, to devote your hardly- cam ed 
 leisure to it, and to make yourselves a pattern of good works, 
 I am tenfold more bound to these things. 
 
 Let us, however, consider for a few moments both what 
 the Association of Lay Helpers is not, and what it is. 
 
 It is not merely a revival of active functions on the part of 
 the laity, which have been forgotten or become obsolete in lan- 
 guid times of the Church. It may be this, indeed, to a certain , 
 extent, for, as you know, it was till recently an error of society 
 to regard the clergy only as the Church, and as the only 
 persons who had to preach Christ ; and preaching was sup- 
 posed to apply to nothing but the delivery of sermons. But 
 the Association is something fuller and deeper. It is a volun- 
 tary recognition on the part of the laity of their share in that 
 spreading the Gospel which is divinely enjoined upon all. 
 
 Nor is it, again, viercly an acceptance by its members of 
 definite duties, confined to certain spheres or localities, neg- 
 lect of which would expose them, as the clergy would be 
 exposed, to ecclesiastical censure. This would be incom- 
 patible with the secular engagements of many. Some, indeed 
 have enrolled themselves as members of parochial choirs, 
 and so have discredited the opinion that the office of con- 
 
 * St. Paul spoke of Epaphroditus as his brother, fel low- worker (cu- 
 vif^hv), and fellow-soldier — epithets implying common sympathy, com- 
 mon work, common toil and suflfering.
 
 tributing to Church psahiiody is a hirehng or inferior one. 
 Some have undertaken the office of lay missionaries, leaving 
 their own homes in pleasant places to sgek and to save the 
 reckless and tlie well-nigh lost. Some have held night- 
 schools for adult classes. Some, again, have devoted a large 
 portion of Sunday to the teaching of children. All honour 
 be to such men, and to others, who, in any such direct way, 
 have helped Christ's ordained ministers. But these are helped 
 as well by the knowledge that they have about them a body 
 of laymen, ready, by occasional services of whatever kind, to 
 strengthen their hands, and to act as leaders and encouragers 
 when unexpected emergencies present themselves. 
 
 Nor, though the works of the members must be to a 
 certain extent \isible, and act upon others, was the Associa- 
 tion formed merely for this. It was formed also for that 
 society, and help, and comfort, which consciousness of union 
 supplies. Not, indeed, that this is any new invention. The 
 blessed doctrine of the Communion of Saints joins us in the 
 design of Christ, through Himself, to all who are saved by 
 Him, whether they be departed hence, or be still labouring 
 here. The blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, besides its 
 other gracious strengthening powers, is a memorial and a 
 perpetual reinvigoration of that communion. The Universal 
 Church, the particular Church to which we belong, the diocese 
 or parish in which our homes are situate, are, or might be, in 
 their several ways, reminders that we are all members of One 
 Body. But, alas ! in a sceptical age doctrines and ordinances 
 connecting men by foith with the unseen world and with its 
 Head are liable to be forgotten or neglected. And it has 
 been a lamentable result of the tendency of the population 
 to converge to this great centre called London, that the 
 diocesan and parochial systems have become weakened, and 
 that men have been too isolated to be a su})port and help to 
 each other. 
 
 A 2
 
 Well, such a state of things gave rise to our Association, 
 as an auxiliary to the clergy, as a bond of union between 
 l)ersons of all ages, all ranks, all circumstances, as an 
 answer to the cry of some, ' "\^'hat shall we do for Christ?' 
 — to the cry of some, * Where shall we find sympathy?* — to 
 the cry of others, especially those who, being young, or 
 without many personal friends, and with leisure on their 
 hands, which they feared they might spend dangerously or 
 unprofitably, said, 'Who or what shall save us from our- 
 selves, and from the temptations which so easily beset us ? ' 
 Let me add, that it arose as a natural response to some peculiar 
 features of our day, besides those which I have mentioned. 
 
 For what is our day? It is one of rapid intercommuni- 
 cation of facts and ideas; a day of well-nigh irresistible 
 combination ; a day of disclosure of wants unfelt or un- 
 regarded heretofore ; a day of opening-up of opportunities 
 of usefulness to those who are thus made conscious of their 
 latent powers and talents ; a day of widely and deeply spread 
 perception, that — 
 
 ' He that made us with such large discourse, 
 Looking before and after, gave us not 
 That capability and god-like reason 
 To fust in us unused.' — Hamlet, iv. sc. 4. 
 
 And, I will say further, it is a day of search, of earnest, 
 intense craving, after what may raise not the individual, self- 
 contained man merely, but the community, in the scale of 
 being, morally, socially, intellectually, religiously. 
 
 Such, stated in terms broad, indeed, but quite definite 
 enough for my purpose, are characteristics of our day. And, 
 though as yet quite in its infancy, our Association endea- 
 vours to meet them. It is one of the * many ways ' in which 
 * Ciod fulfils Himself;' that is, in which He stirs up the 
 hearts of men to meet the contingencies of His Providence.
 
 Several other guilds or institutions have sprung up of a 
 somewhat similar kind, with their several good objects, which 
 I need not specify here. Their names will readily occur to 
 you. But our Association has its own peculiar office, that of 
 making men realise their Church membership by actively 
 interesting them in each other, and thereby causing their 
 own views to be more truly human, because more divine. 
 It is but right that, on such an occasion as this, I should tell 
 you what I could imagine would be its working. 1 could 
 imagine grey-haired men, who would assure me that since 
 they have joined it they have felt a new life and reality 
 imparted to the theory that we are all members one of 
 another. I could imagine rich men who, seeing those who 
 are not gifted with this world's goods, giving of themselves 
 to Christ, have been moved to larger liberality out of their 
 stores. I could imagine men of experience and Christian 
 sympathies, who have found in the conferences to which it 
 has given occasion the opportunities which they much 
 wanted, but knew not how to obtain, of co-operating with 
 their clerg}'man. And then I could imagine those who 
 might have been left to themselves, unregarded, unelevated, 
 unguided, amid the temptations which beset young men in 
 ' this great, dim, wicked city,' and under which many fall, in 
 the hours which early teniiination of business places at their 
 disposal, and which necessary separation from family ties 
 renders proverbially dangerous. And I could go on to 
 picture them — what? As devout communicants, as deeply 
 impressed with a sense of the preciousness of their bodies 
 and souls as temples of the Holy Spirit ; as content to spend 
 their time in teaching little children, or in acting as readers 
 to the sick and infirm ; or in holding such mission services 
 as their overworked ])astors are unable to hold themselves ; 
 or in other ways adorning the doctrine of God their Saviour.
 
 8 
 
 Nor is this merely imagination. I have many testimonies 
 to the Hteral truth of these statements. I have known those 
 in high positions who have gratefully acknowledged the 
 blessing gained from the new sense of Church membership, to 
 which they have been awakened by the fact of belonging to 
 this Association. And I have known young men who, 
 before they joined it, felt as though they had only ' to fight for 
 their own hand,' as it were, in the battle of life; but who have, 
 since they joined it, realised the truth that they are soldiers 
 of Christ's army, strengthened by, and strengthening others by, 
 combination. These have devoutly thanked God that they have 
 not been left to themselves. If there are any such here, let me 
 say to them — It is very meet and right that you should do so. 
 O I (I repeat it w^ith all the energy of which my heart and 
 voice are capable) — O, ever thank God, on your bended knees 
 and in your best moments, that you have not been so left : 
 that what is good in you finds in this brotherhood an oppor- 
 tunity of springing up, what is bad is by it providentially let 
 of development. Thank God that your brethren thought of 
 your dangers, as young men, unbefriended men, and yet 
 men embarked upon a sea which was likely to dash your 
 frail barks against rocky shores already strewn with the 
 wrecks of once goodly humanity. Some one who knew 
 your case, and who had himself experienced desolateness 
 amid crowded myriads, wrote well and sympathisingly : — 
 
 * He has a life small happiness that gives 
 , Who friendless in a London lodging lives, 
 Dines in a dingy chop-house, and returns 
 To a lone room, while all within him yearns 
 For sympathy, and his whole nature burns 
 With a fierce thirst for some one — is there none ? — 
 To expend his human tenderness upon. 
 So blank, and hard, and stony is the way 
 To walk, 1 wonder not men go astray.'
 
 And they were actuated by that man's spirit who called this 
 Association into being, and sacrificed their own quiet and 
 ease to induce you to join it. They were actuated, let me 
 say it reverently, by a higher Spirit still — the loving Spirit of 
 Him who gave His life for the world. 
 
 But I must not close without again placing my own case 
 and yours upon a level. So frail and fickle are our natures, 
 that even measures to which we resort for safety present new 
 and peculiar snares to us. One of old, who mistakenly 
 fancied that he could avoid worldliness by sequestering 
 himself in a desert, found that he had still a world within, 
 which was, if not more perilous than, yet at least as perilous 
 as, the world without. So, though we of the clergy, and you 
 of the laity, have taken upon ourselves new obligations to 
 holiness and Christian activity — obligations which cause the 
 eyes of our neighbours to be upon us — we are thereby exposed 
 to dangers. We clergy incur the danger of placing ourselves in 
 God's stead, of forgetting that we have a part in the confes- 
 sions that we lead, that we want the absolution which we 
 pronounce in our INlaster's name, that the advice which 
 we urge upon others should proceed from a knowledge 
 of our own hearts and our own hearts' failures and sins. So, 
 brethren, it will be, perhaps it has been, with 3-ou. You 
 have been, and you will be, tempted by your very familiarity 
 with divine things to a careless use of them. The brilliant 
 soloist in a choir may touch the hearts of others by ' He 
 was despised and rejected of men ;' they may be moved to 
 goodly sorrow for the sins which caused Christ's death, while 
 the iiia?i himself^ having thought, through the preceding 
 prayers, of nothing but of himself and of the effect which his 
 voice and execution would produce, is but as sounding brass or 
 a tinkling cymbal. A man may dilate to a class of learners upon 
 the graces of the Christian life ; but this may be rather from
 
 lO 
 
 a sense of what is expected of him, or of what it is decent for 
 him to say, or from an eftbrt of memory, than from an abun- 
 dant store of personal experience, or out of the fountains of 
 a renewed heart. A man may apply the Holy Scriptures 
 with great force and propriety to the poor, to children, to 
 the sick, to the distressed, to the dying, yet be insensible to 
 tlieir applicability to himself. These cases are not imaginary 
 ones. Solomon's words prefigured them : ' They made me 
 keeper of vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.' 
 (Cant. i. 9.) St. Paul's words described them, for, no doubt, 
 they were actually before him : ' If I give all my goods to 
 feed the poor, and have not charity ' — i.e. true Christian love 
 — •' I am nothing.' And this same writer's fears for their end 
 are solemnly admonitory : •' Lest, after I have preached to 
 others, I myself should be a castaway.' So our Lord lias 
 told us in the text that we are cities set on a hill, and that 
 cannot be hid, and thus that our failure, if discovered, as it 
 may be sooner or later, may pull down the truth with it, and 
 discredit the doctrines which we have delivered. 
 
 There are few things under which people are more im- 
 patient than what are called 'talking good' and ' acting good.' 
 By these phrases is meant, assuming a high moral standard 
 of tone or conversation which is belied by what is commonly 
 known of the talker's or actor's individual life, or by its forced 
 and unnatural contrast to what has been going on. There 
 are various reasons for this impatience. -Men do not like 
 sudden transitions, either from better to worse, or from worse 
 to better. Though they will acquiesce in an unpretending, 
 admitted superiority, they will not endure a spontaneous 
 assumption of it, which is either unproved or more tlian 
 questionable. It is almost irksome to them to be taught at 
 all — the very position of a learner implies a sense of sub- 
 ordination — and they resent vehemently being taught by a
 
 II 
 
 process which, Hke talking good, costs a teacher so little, or, 
 like acting good, may have been put on for the occasion, 
 and esi)ecially so if the teacher is one whom they suspect of 
 having little or no personal belief in the truth of what he is 
 teaching. 
 
 We have, then, my dear friends, to cultivate reality and 
 earnestness if we would carry^ out our evangelising mission. 
 "W'e must be and do Avhat we recommend others to be and 
 to do. ' Come and do it,' not necessarily uttered, indeed, 
 but implied, by one who throws himself into a work which he 
 inculcates upon others, is always a more powerful incentive 
 than *go and do it.' The officer who leads his troops to a 
 charge is obeyed with greater enthusiasm than he who 
 assumes a post free from danger, and satisfies himself with 
 issuing commands from thence. Therefore, I say, if you 
 would influence your brethren for good, be real. Be, do not 
 seem fo he. "What you do, what you sa}-, though you do it 
 without thinking at the moment of setting a good example 
 to others, will affect them, though they for their part also are 
 unconscious of being affected. Many a man has been stin-ed 
 to heartier devotion in a congregation by hearing his neigh- 
 bour's earnest utterances, and by seeing how his whole soul 
 is intensely thrown into the service \\\>o\\ which he is engaged. 
 Many a man has been brought to believe that the busiest 
 life and the most intense mental occupations may leave a 
 margin of time for works for God, by learning that one of 
 our greatest lav/yers devoted, year after year, a portion of his 
 rest-day to teaching in a Sunday school. 
 
 But how is this reality to be compassed ? What are we 
 to do ? AVe are to keep our hearts, as I said at the outset, 
 with all diligence ; or rather, we are to pray, constantly and 
 continually, and especially when we are upon any strictly
 
 religious work, that God may preserve us from the sin of 
 thinking more -of ourselves than of Him and His glory. If 
 any miscarriage befall us — and perhaps many do or will — let* 
 us look for the cause of it within. Most likely it will be 
 found there, and not, as we are inclined to flatter ourselves, 
 in external circumstances. I remember a young instructor 
 of children once told me that he feared he was not making 
 way with his class ; that he found them impatient and dis- 
 obedient. I ventured to enquire, affectionately, * Have you 
 prayed for them, that they may bear with you ; and for your- 
 self, that you may bear with them ? ' He admitted with. 
 sorrow that he had not done so. Well, the batdewith those 
 children's hearts was at length won by him, as other battles 
 of the kind, of every kind, have been and will be won, upon 
 liis knees. Let us, who desire to lead men to Christ, not be 
 ashamed to confess how entirely we need ourselves His 
 leading by His Spirit, His lifting up of our hands that falk 
 down, His supporting of our feeble knees ; and, after all. His 
 clothing our poor imperfect works with the robe of His own 
 righteousness. Amen. 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY 
 
 SrOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQL'ARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET
 
 
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