I 
 
 
 ^
 
 L I B RARY 
 
 OF THL 
 
 UN IVERSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS
 
 The Voice and its Homes. 
 
 9 Sermon 
 
 PREACHED IN BEHALF OF THE 
 
 INCORPORATED CHURCH BUILDING SOCIETY, 
 
 /// ^. Fai/l's Caihedrol, Lofidofi, on May 20, 1881 
 
 (BEING THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF TRURO 
 
 CATHEDRAL), 
 
 EDWARD WHITE BENSON, D.D. 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF TKUKO. 
 
 O HOH' AAf/ABLE 
 
 ARE THY 
 
 DWELLINGS, 
 
 THOU 
 
 LORD OF HOSTS ! 
 
 I IVAS CLAD WHES 
 
 THEY SAID 
 
 UNTO ME: 
 
 IV E WILL GO INTO 
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 OF THE LORD. 
 
 m 
 
 [C- 
 
 EoiiDoii : 
 
 AT THE OFFICE OF THE SOCIETY, 7, WHITEHALL, S.W 
 
 AND AT 
 
 RIVINGTONS, 
 
 WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL. 
 
 .-. \Fiice Si.\pence.'\
 
 I
 
 THE YOICE AND ITS H031ES. 
 
 " Build the house, and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be 
 glorified, saith the Lord." — Haggai i. 8. 
 
 When time and place are very eloquent, tlie 
 preacher should take care to interpret only, not 
 to interrupt. This week is eloquent in the ears 
 of all English-speaking men. The New Version 
 of the New Testament has been but three days 
 in possession of their silence. 
 
 In our history it is a short time since Tyndale 
 declared that there was " no place in England 
 wherein to translate the Bible," fled the country 
 that would have crushed so monstrous an under- 
 taking, and shortly after heard how eagerly his 
 Testaments had been bought by the authorities 
 to be burned in the Nave of S; Paul's. Yet a 
 short time after that, and the Government was 
 pressing it upon all, " that you use this most 
 high benefit quietly and charitably, every of you, 
 to the edifying of himself, his wife, and family " — 
 So swift the change. So clear and rapid the 
 perception of what a domestic power the English 
 Bible was to exercise !
 
 2 The Voice and its Homes. 
 
 Pass but a short time again, and yet a new 
 translation was accepted in every cliurcli, not, as 
 it now appears, by any enactment, but simply 
 because its fresh excellence won it its place. And 
 that English Bible has been more than the ex- 
 pected light of the household. It has proved to 
 be the very symbol of resistance to aggression. 
 It has been the universal and most catholic bond 
 of the whole English race. 
 
 Now, again, just as its predecessors did, comes 
 a new version, richer (we trust) with all that 
 three centuries have added ; clearer with all that 
 three centuries have illustrated of knowledge, of 
 criticism, of insight. But like its predecessors, 
 it, too, must prevail, not by authority, but by 
 value. Time speaks in that New Testament with 
 a new and eloquent voice. 
 
 And the place is eloquent, too. The underground 
 church of S. Faith's, beneath S. Paul's, is popu- 
 larly associated with the first, the long-continued 
 public readings of the Scriptures to unlearned 
 congregations; and Paul's Cross outside with the 
 expositions of the Reformers ; and the interior, as 
 now, with the vast, unceasing tides of worshippers, 
 and with a worship which daily seems to grow in 
 intelligence, in beauty, and in endearment. Never 
 can England's deepest religion or highest art be 
 dissociated from the thought of S. Paul's. 
 
 At such a time, then, and in such a place, is to 
 be pleaded before you the cause of that quiet. 
 
 ir' 

 
 A Sennon. i] 
 
 energetic Society which devotes itself to providing 
 lasting Homes for Bible truth, for Christian 
 teaching, for holy worship — "Houses of God" 
 among men ; churches for the Church which is 
 in Christ Jesus. 
 
 But because there are never wanting, even 
 among good people, some objectors to anything, 
 however good ; because there is no cause from the 
 support of which men do not excuse themselves, 
 at the moment, by saying they could imagine a 
 better ; let us look steadily at what they intend 
 by implying that mean, poverty-struck shells of 
 rooms are serviceable enough, instead of nobler 
 churches ; or b}' assuring us that what we want 
 in the present day is not "bricks and mortar" 
 (as they usually call good architecture), but that 
 we should devote all to "the living voice," "the 
 living agent." 
 
 Well. You may estimate the integrity of the 
 latter excuse by just inquiring into the funds of 
 such societies as the Pastoral Aid, or that for Ad- 
 ditional Curates, and finding that " at the i^resent 
 day" (whose needs the self-excusers see so 
 clearly), the one is positively falling in funds, and 
 the other, though increasing, yet increasing very 
 slowly, and with frequent relapses. 
 
 Times having been a little hard, the two things 
 Avhich men have denied themselves of late are the 
 luxury of charity and the higher education of their 
 own children (a thousand institutions tell tho 
 
 A 2
 
 4 TJie Voice and its Homes. 
 
 same tale) — the two things iu which lies the hope 
 of the future, both near and distant. If the 
 *' living voice" is not more liberally supported 
 than it was last year, it would be as well for its 
 economical admirers to fall silently back to 
 "bricks and mortar," as being less expensive 
 when once provided. 
 
 But this Society for Building Churches and 
 Mission Chapels is the real helper and necessary 
 prop of the Society which sends out the living 
 agent. The two societies live in the same house, 
 and their brotherhood is inseparable. " Living 
 agents," if they are to live long, or give voice 
 long, cannot be always living and crying in the 
 wilderness. The Hermit Baptist did so. But 
 Christ and his followers " preached throughout all 
 their synagogues;" and in the chill seasons and 
 settled countries of the North and of the West, 
 S. Paul's question, addressed to the plain sense 
 of men, " How shall they preach, except they 
 be sent?" must be followed by, "and where 
 shall they be sent if there be no roofs to cover 
 them?" 
 
 Who among us is such a " living voice " as 
 Henry Martyn ? who so eager to draw out voices 
 full of learning and wisdom to his own work ? 
 Yet Ms aspiration, as he sate on the " vessel's 
 poop," coasting Ceylon, was to see " Temples of 
 Jesus in the cinnamon groves ;" his longing was 
 for the "day when Ganges shall roll through
 
 A Sermon. 6 
 
 tracts adorned with Christian churches. " Yes, 
 for Henry Martyn was a man of practical fore- 
 sight, who knew how work must be done in order 
 to be permanent. 
 
 Another objector says : — " In these days there 
 is too great a tendency and hking for the material, 
 in preference to the spiritual building." But if 
 the material were not necessary to the use of 
 spiritual (just as with body and soul), it would 
 be singular indeed to observe that it is the most 
 spiritual people who ai"e the chief promoters of 
 the material buildings. 
 
 Again, we may be sure it is rarely that the 
 united self-sacrificing exertions of a whole people 
 are misguided. The instinct of the thinking 
 population is commonly true. There would not 
 have been such a wide feeling for church building 
 if churches had been practically superfluous. And 
 if it is true (as historical critics calculate) that 
 there were not short of 40,000 parish churches 
 to meet the needs of the population before the 
 usefulness of ruins and the profitableness of im- 
 propriating tithes was well recognised, then there 
 is yet lee-way for the Church to make up before 
 she need dread a crash from over-building. 
 
 But suppose that in any census year there 
 were really enough churches for the population of 
 England — how is it ten years later ? Those ten 
 years add three millions to the population ; does 
 any one pretend that there are churches enough
 
 6 The Voice and ils Homes. 
 
 « 
 
 added for those added three millions ? and again 
 the next ten years, and the next ? 
 
 In the next place, the proportionate costliness of 
 even the grandest churches, much more of village 
 churches and precincts, is surely immensely over- 
 rated. When we consider the hundreds of years 
 that their main fabric lasts, the hundreds of 
 people that they accommodate for all those 
 hundreds of years, and in what an admirable 
 way, they surely have not been costly buildings. 
 Other mansions, with their rapidly successive 
 additions and alterations, even the plain houses 
 of streets, the very cottages rebuilt from the 
 ground again and again, make the cost of churches 
 trivial by comparison, to any one who looks 
 seriously at the mere finance. 
 
 To take a single instance of the need. I 
 believe you will excuse me if I call up and mingle 
 the reminiscence of an Anniversary (such as this 
 must be to a Cornishman) with a general pleading 
 for the church builders of England. What would 
 such advisers bid U8 do ? We have the living 
 agents and voices more than most. We have that 
 Bishop's council which is called a Chapter. We 
 have those who discharge unfeed the offices of 
 Treasurer (though that is less onerous) ; of Pre- 
 centor, teaching and conducting the services of 
 God ; of Missioners, preaching and teaching where- 
 ever the parish clergy call them to their side ; of 
 Chancellor, training between twenty and thirty
 
 A Scniion. 7 
 
 ]uen as parish clergymen. We have the full 
 (though unendowed) cathedral staff, and we have 
 the parochial work proceeding side by side — and 
 we have the crowding people. What should we 
 do ? We had lately ruinous walls and ratting 
 roofs, and now we have a wooden shed for all our 
 work of Divine service and sacraments and preach- 
 ing. Shall we build such a something that they 
 must build again in a hundred 3'ears or less, at 
 the same expense and after the same incon- 
 veniences ? or do we really believe the Church 
 will last as long as the world ? and ought we to 
 bnild as men " that dream not of a perishable 
 home ? " And, if the whole Church bids %is go 
 on like rational and spiritual creatures in God's 
 name, must not precisely the same reason and 
 spirit guide all others who in various degrees are 
 situated exactly as we are, and perhaps worse off 
 still ? 
 
 No ; they that bid the Church work churchless 
 do not really cherish her. They have their own 
 little systems to propagate ; they fear her wide, 
 grand working, and they are encouraging the 
 children of this world to be more selfish, more 
 luxurious, ever more private in their ends, by 
 quenching self-sacrifice and repelling devotion to 
 the Church's commonwealth. They seem to 
 wish to treat their own ambassadors as the 
 patriarch would have treated his dove if he 
 had closed the ark window for good when lie
 
 8 The Voice and its Homes. 
 
 sent lier out, and bad bidden liei' wander still, 
 though she found no rest for the sole of her foot. 
 What would have become of her ? She would 
 have dropped upon the waters ; the olive-leaf 
 would never have come back, nor the message of 
 peace to man. 
 
 Happily, men are better than their principles. 
 Their good deeds defy their logic. But if such 
 logic is to run its course, if we are to minimise 
 the beauty of the future, and barely stop the gap 
 of pressing needs, then what right have we to our 
 present possessions ? Why should we inherit the 
 past ? 
 
 However, let me tell you one little instance of 
 what tlie difference is between the " living agent " 
 with^ and the " living agent " without comely 
 surroundings. 
 
 I know a wild hamlet which had such a fame, 
 that letters were written urging that any intended 
 efforts made should be transferred to ground 
 which gave at least some promise. For several 
 years the same zealous labourer as now (an 
 ''^Additional Curate'') had toiled there. The loft 
 over the wheelwiight and blacksmith's shop was 
 his church, and was the very exemplification of 
 having "no more brick and mortar" than was 
 enough. And it remained enough, A few old 
 people, sick of sinning, and a few little girls 
 mainly represented the Church of Christ — with- 
 out Confirmation and without the Eucharist.
 
 A Sermon. 9 
 
 By the self-denial — the extreme self-denial — of 
 a wido\Y, and some little help beside, a little 
 church has been built and now opened a few 
 months. She was urged to make a smaller, a 
 plainer, a ruder, "a sufficient" mission-room. 
 For she was living on less than half her little 
 income for its sake. But no, it should be a 
 Church. It should have all that marked a church 
 — and it should have all in beauty within and 
 without — even stained glass, that should mutely 
 preach Christ's atonement, whatever else should 
 be preached or sung there. And it came to pass. 
 
 And what has been the effect ? Why, the 
 harbour basin being dug, and the flood-gates 
 opened, the sea ran into it. The self-same 
 minister does the self -same work ; but his morning 
 congregation is of ninety people already, and 
 among them between twenty and thirty young 
 fellows, who, until this mission-church was built, 
 never spent Sunday morning except in their 
 working clothes, sitting on the stone hedges. At 
 evening the church is full. There is a choir of eight 
 men and ten boys, a Sunday-school of seventy 
 children, a week-day service fairly attended, a 
 young men's Bible class, a women's Bible class; 
 and at the children's service after noon, parents 
 flock in to learn, by listening to their children,^ 
 about the Divine things and persons which before 
 were scarcely names to them. 
 
 Now that the people are within those fair four
 
 M) TJie Voice and its Homes. 
 
 walls, quiet and reverent, they can be taught, and 
 are being taught, and the fruit is visible even now. 
 Certain I am that if it were unbuilt still, the 
 hamlet would still be what it has been for cen- 
 turies. And she who built it found encouragement 
 and counsel and help (according to their means) 
 from this Society. 
 
 And why is it — what is the rationale of the fact 
 — that these people now bring themselves thus 
 within the pastor's influence, and would not before, 
 even on Sundays ? How was it that the patient 
 work began to bear fruit tlien^ and never till 
 then ? It is this. The cause is not a superficial 
 one. It is deep down in the wildest heart. If 
 (as long strangers to Him) they are to come 
 before God at all, the first instinct teaches that 
 they must come to worsliip. It was about 
 " worship " that the profligate Samaritan began 
 to ask, when first she perceived there was " a 
 prophet" to ask of; it was of worship that He 
 spoke to her. When first it becomes evident to 
 men and womeu, like her five husbands and herself, 
 that we really worship ourselves the Grod of whom 
 we speak, the instinct of worship stirs within 
 them. But to this early instinct we make no 
 response — of this powerful, profound impulse we 
 make no use — so long as our mean and casual 
 arrangements give no token of sacrifice in us. 
 
 The comfortable classes (if I may so speak) 
 send the name of God and relio'ion to the io^no-
 
 A Semwn. 11 
 
 rant and unblest. These do not wonder at that. 
 The name has been a profitable name to us, and 
 rehgion is a cheap way of keeping things quiet. 
 There are not wanting tongues to tell them this. 
 And then, so long as our offered religion shambles 
 on thriftily and savingly and miserly, none but the 
 clearer spirits look through and catch the truths. 
 But when we bring Worship among them — not a 
 living voice only, but a living worship which has 
 cost us time and love and gifts in its providing — 
 when we build up homes of reverence, worthy 
 houses of prayer for all — habitations whose 
 fashion tells that man there expects to meet more 
 than man — then little by little they begin to see 
 that we in reahty know God to be without us 
 yet about us, to be beyond us, to be above us, and 
 yet approachable. Here is a substantial assurance 
 that we are not talking to ourselves when we pray ; 
 that we are looking beyond the prospects of 
 society when we preach ; that we believe that in 
 the Unseen dwells not the Unknown, but the 
 Reality of all Realities. We have given pledges 
 to God. Our preacher and missionary bear 
 credentials, setting forth that we at least plainly 
 honour One whom we call on them to adore and 
 to obey. And as such solid pledges of our 
 sincerity multiply, each one supports each other. 
 Send out the living voices fast and fi^ee ; pene- 
 trate with them, if you can, the heathen wilderness 
 that has reappeared round all our towns; clear
 
 12 The Voice audits Homes. 
 
 the pagan tangle and brushwood that has crept 
 back over our trim, reclaimed fields. But as 
 fast as possible occupy the ground you win with 
 shrines for the Divine oracles — at least, do not 
 commit the folly of omitting them on principle. 
 If you do, all your living voices will have to 
 begin their work again from the beginning, once 
 at least every ten years. 
 
 And now let me shortly say why you should 
 employ this Society — the Church Building Society 
 — as your agency of reclamation. Its long trust- 
 worthiness, its simplicity, its inexpensive working, 
 its voluntary staff of able architects, its quiet 
 substantial effectiveness — what far-reaching re- 
 commendations these are ! It is no splendour 
 that it aims at, it is not even grandeur — all 
 such things must be left to individuals — but it is 
 jDermanence, it is substantiality, it is extension, 
 which this Society cares for. Great churches 
 have their place, and mission-chapels theirs, but 
 each should be worthy of its place, and both 
 worthy of God. The palm-tree and the daisy 
 are both plants of God, and both are worthy of 
 Him. 
 
 So long as the local effort is real, so long as a 
 neighbourhood is doing its best, the Society helps 
 alike the great object and the small one. And 
 herein lies what this Society has always been 
 deservedly praised for — its stmmlating power. 
 Many a committee, many a parish, has found that
 
 A Scnnon. 13 
 
 with the prospect of this subsidy, iirst the hope, 
 and then the performance came of what had 
 seemed just out of reach. 
 
 Would you hear in a few words what they have 
 done ? They have helped half tlie parishes of 
 England. The outlay which they have fostered 
 has provided two miUions of places in church, 
 and three-fourths of these are absolutely free. 
 Half of a century of living work wrought in this 
 Church has had no stronger, readier minister than 
 this Society. Its helpfulness is only bounded by 
 its means. Its meuns — I. am ashamed almost to 
 speak the word ! Thousands of gentry who think 
 themselves not rich, thousands of manufacturers 
 and merchants, aye, and thousands of loungers, 
 are richer than this Society. Its income is just 
 £8000 per annum, all told; and its income is 
 a reproach to us all. If it be only inattention, 
 only thoughtlessness, which leaves it so low, it 
 is a reproach. What is it to certain parishes, 
 which, having sued for and received its aid, 
 never more have gift, or offertory, or collection, 
 or one annual subscription to assign to it — yet 
 not to it^ to other churches that are as they 
 were ? The Society and its work have suddenly 
 become as irksome to them as the self-despoiled 
 king became to Goneril and Eegan. Yet such 
 examples of ingratitude and parochial selfishness 
 surely add pathos to their appeal to our sympathy. 
 
 "Build the house," then (saith God), "and I
 
 14 The Voice mid its Homes. 
 
 will take pleasure in it." We have seen how that 
 must be so. To build the house is an act of 
 Faith ; to build the house is a venture of Sacrifice ; 
 it is going a little beyond what the bare need of 
 the case requires — a little beyond four walls and 
 a bare ceiling and meanly-cut adequacy to the 
 needed space and air. And yet we scarcely ask — 
 we scarcely dare ask — for more than that. If you 
 will only build places from which our swarming 
 squalor shall carry away the impression that the 
 life to come is a reality to them that build, God 
 will " take pleasure in it." Room for their souls 
 among us is room for His pleasure in us. 
 
 " Build the house " (saith God again), " and I 
 will be glorified." We have seen how that also 
 comes to pass. The simple tale I told you of 
 God's glory beginning to be loved and known in 
 one place, where all was dark indeed until that 
 house of theirs arose, might be told of hundreds 
 of places ; and if we but consider our ways and 
 pray over them, the glory of the Lord shall be 
 revealed in all dark places, and where His sun has 
 risen there shall be growth and life, and "ye also 
 shall be glorified in Him." 
 
 ^
 
 THE 
 
 CHUKCH BUILDEE 
 
 A QUABTEBLY BEGOBD 
 
 OF THE WORK OF TIIE 
 
 INCORPORATED 
 
 CHUKCH BUILDING SOCIETY, 
 
 AND OF OTHER WORKS OF 
 
 otixJiRCH E2s: TE i>T SI o isr_ 
 
 Price 3d. ; or Is. a year, post free. 
 
 HoutJon : 
 AT THE OFFICE OF THE SOCIETY, 7, WHITEHALL, S.W, 
 
 AND AT 
 
 EIVINGTONS, 
 WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL.
 
 
 LONDON : 
 GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, 
 
 ST. John's square.
 
 i
 
 .Wl\-/^ -'ktJ^^ 
 
 y 
 
 ->• . 
 
 Vl\( 
 
 m4^ 
 
 
 > %^?^^' 
 
 Itr '^ 
 
 ^?.P<Lt 1. A\