W-<k>J: 
 
 V 
 
 
 isTT 
 
 ■■•- / 
 
 
 1 

 

 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED AT 
 
 ST. NICHOLAS CHURCH, LIVERPOOL, 
 
 ON MAY 26, 1878, 
 
 AND AT 
 
 SL MARY MAGDALENE'S CHURCH, PADDINQTON, 
 
 ON JUNE 23, 1878, 
 
 ON BEHALF OF THE 
 
 ^ctetg for l^romoting t{)e1£mploptcnt of ^titiitional (!i:uratfS, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. A. R. ASHWELL, M.A., 
 
 Canon of Chichester. 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE SOCIETY, 
 7, Whitehali,, London.
 
 A SERMON. 
 
 "Them that honour Me, 1 will honour." — 1 Sam. ii, 30. 
 
 For many yesivs past the ordinary popular notion about the 
 Church of England has been that it is a great, wealthy, 
 endowed Corporation, endowed with public money entrus- 
 ted to it by the State, for the purpose of attending to the 
 moral and religious welfare of the Enolish nation. Of this 
 notion part is, as we may say, founded on fact, but the 
 major part is totally erroneous. I admit expressly that it 
 is founded on fact, but we all of us know that no misre- 
 presentations are so utterly misleading as those which have 
 a little bit of fact at the bottom of them with a large super 
 structure of imagination reared above. 
 
 Let me then, this morning, try to take this notion to 
 pieces, and show you in a plain popular way what the fact 
 is on which it is based ; next, as well as I can in a short 
 space, what is the mistake which the common notion 
 involves; and then also what bearing the true history of the 
 Church of England in times past has upon the duty of 
 English Churchmen in time present. All mistakes are 
 dangerous things, and lead to mischief. Mistakes about 
 public matters are of course especially dangerous, because 
 they lead us to make mistakes about our public duties, and 
 then the whole community suffers harm. And this is so 
 most of all in days like ours, when the course of public 
 administration is less and less determined by the know- 
 ledge of the few, and more and more guided and controlled 
 by the impulse of the many. As things now are, evenj man 
 contributes his share to the ultimate direction of the 
 Government. Never, therefore, were errors as to facts so 
 mischievous. Never was it so important that every man 
 should be truly and accurately info;'med.
 
 The notion, then, which I refer to, is that the Church 
 of England is a public Corporation, holding public funds 
 in trust for the relio-ious and moral welfare of the nation at 
 large ; that the nation at large entrusted the Church with 
 these funds, and therefore has a claim upon them ; that 
 these funds were then parcelled out by the Church among 
 her various parishes throughout the country, and thus form 
 what are called the endowments of the Church ; and that 
 herein lies the chief difference between the Church and 
 what are called the voluntary societies of Dissenters. 
 
 Of this notion, as I said, part is true, but most is false. 
 The true part is that the Ministers and parishes of the 
 Church are for the most part provided for by endowments ; 
 but when you come to the process by which they became 
 endowed the picture is the reverse of a true one. Did ever 
 such a thing happen as for the State or the Government to 
 say — " We will set apart certain property for the Church 
 as a Body, to lay out in supporting its clergy and in dis- 
 tributing it over its various parishes ?" No such thing 
 ever happened. No such thing was ever di'eamed of as 
 to England and the Church in England. What really 
 happened was that individuals, all down the histoiy of the 
 country, individual landowners, — sometimes nobles, some- 
 times kings and princes — but, in the main, the landowners 
 at large throughout the country, centuries upon centuries 
 back, and through century after century, built each his 
 church upon his own land, and then endowed that particu- 
 lar church with a charge upon his land called tithe — or 
 sometimes with land in lieu of tithe — for the support of its 
 own clergyman, and then the State which enforces the 
 observance of all legal contracts, enforced the observance of 
 these contracts. So, bit by bit, as the number of these 
 parishes gradually increased by the successive action of 
 voluntary givers of these voluntary endowments, the Eng- 
 land of old times came to be gradually filled up by parishes. 
 Thousands upon thousands of our parishes were thus in 
 existence before the Norman Conquest, and as ftir back as 
 
 UIUC 
 
 K 7
 
 twelve hundred years ago the Government — if I may speak 
 of a time before England was united under one government — 
 wishing to stimulate voluntary liberality granted the rank 
 of Thane to any landowoier who could show upon his land 
 a church of a certain stability and dignity of character. It 
 was on much the same principle as when now, if a certain 
 individual is mainly or exclusively instrumental in the build- 
 ing or endowing of a new church, he is often allowed a cer- 
 tain number of turns of presentation, or the perpetual presen- 
 tation as the case may be. Thus, bit by bit, in thousands 
 of cases, estate after estate became a parish, became provided 
 with its church and with its clergyman. But in each case 
 it was a voluntary transaction, just as if anj^one of us were 
 to charge his property with a payment to a school or a col- 
 lege or a hospital, or as if a Dissenter were to charge his 
 estate with an annual payment to a particular chapel. And 
 just as the law would see that all such payments were duly 
 made, so the law (on the whole) has protected these endow- 
 ments for our parishes and bishopricks. It is in this way 
 partly, that the great diversity in the incomes of our clergy 
 has arisen. For some the endo"\vment was ample, for some 
 it was meaore. In some cases the value of the endowment 
 has greatly increased, in others not. I said " partly" because 
 a far more influential cause of the inequality lay in the 
 enormous seizure of the endo%vments in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, which has in a vast number of cases permanently 
 impoverished so many of those benefices known as " Vicar- 
 aores," But whether well endowed or ill endowed, the 
 origin of the endowments was as I have said — voluntary 
 contributions — only that in most cases the origin was so 
 long ago that persons have diifted into the notion that the 
 property was public property to start with, and granted to 
 the Church as a public Corporation from public sources. 
 
 Why do I make this long statement? I do it for two reasons: 
 partly because it explains to us how it is that the country 
 is so unequally provided with churches and clergy, giving 
 the true reason and removing false impressions — and next
 
 because it sets before us, Englishmen of to-day, our own 
 duty in the matter, which is that if we do our part as our 
 ancestors did theirs, then the spiritual needs which have 
 grown up in our age will be provided for by our voluntary 
 liberality as those of former days were by theirs. They did 
 their part, of free-will, not looking for State aid, excepting 
 to protect the endowments they provided. They provided 
 for the population as it then stood, leaving us the benefit of 
 what they gave and, may I not add, the priceless benefit of 
 their example that we in our days should do likewise for 
 the population as it has since become. How are we to do 
 like them ? I answer, by our own voluntary contributions, 
 not looking to State aid, except in this — that we all 
 insist so far as the political influence of each one of us goes, 
 that the State should give, and should continue to give, the 
 same legal protection to our gifts and endowments, whether 
 new or old, that it does to all dispositions of property, 
 whether for a secular institution, a Dissenting chapel, or a 
 parish church. 
 
 I am here to-day to ask your help for one of those great 
 Societies which have sprung up of late years in order to 
 fill up some part of the great gap which exists in our 
 Church work, — to supply some of the great spiritual needs 
 which have arisen in our own age and generation. 
 
 The ancient voluntary endowments of our parishes, the 
 ancient supply of parishes and parish churches, were sufii- 
 cient for their time, i.e. for the population as it then existed, 
 and if as population grew, a gradual step by step expan- 
 sion, sub-division of parishes and provision of new endow- 
 ments had gone forward, then the church arrangements 
 for the country would have kept pace with the need, and now 
 in our day we should only have the need of the moment to 
 make good. As it is we have more. There is the large 
 lee-way to make up which accumulated during the earlier 
 years of the past half-century before the need began to be 
 observed. Let me give you an example by way of contrast. 
 Look at the Diocese of Norwich. Norwich Diocese, in old
 
 times, was the manufacturing district of England. What 
 Lancashire is to the nineteenth century, that Norfolk was to 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth. Now, the men of that day 
 had furnished Norwich Diocese with no fewer than 1,121 
 parishes,* the second largest number of parishes in any 
 Diocese in England, the Diocese of London then having 
 only 613 parishes. What the population of Norwich 
 Diocese then was, I am not able to state. At present it is 
 about 060,000. Now turn to the Diocese of Manchester, 
 which in the nineteenth century answers to what Norwich 
 was in the sixteenth : — how stands it there ? Manchester 
 Diocese has about tiuo millions of souls ; and with all the 
 exertions of recent years — and very great they have been — 
 its equipment of parishes and parish churches — does not 
 yet exceed 4.50 ; i.e., the Norwich of three hundred years 
 ago had 2 1 parish churches for every 1 that the Manchester 
 Diocese has now. Or take the Diocese of Chester, with its 
 Tnillion and a half of sovds and 420 parishes. I need not 
 weary you with statistics or travel over the huge popula- 
 tions of Staffordshire and Yorkshire and Durham. Neither 
 do I wish to speak in the way of fault-finding. The need 
 has come upon us so rapidly, that we can scarcely wonder 
 at the result ; and we all know that good and self-denying- 
 Christian people abound who are doing all that individuals 
 can do to remedy the evil. But I am quite sure that the 
 most part of us have very little idea how enormous the 
 needs are — how entirely they have outgrown the possibility 
 of being met by the liberality of the few — how impossible 
 it is that they should be met except b}'- the combined exer- 
 tions of us all. It is the general prosperity of the country 
 that has created the need ; and as it was the general volun- 
 tary liberality of Cliurchmen of old which provided for the 
 
 * This rests on the authority of a return made by the Bishops of all the 
 Dioceses in England in the year 1603. As little, if any, "church extension," 
 had gone on during the latter part of the sixteenth century, this may be taken 
 as rejiresenting the state of things in the earl}' part of it, and perhaps during 
 the later part of the fifteenth.
 
 8 
 
 needs of their day, so it must be again. The general volun- 
 tary zeal of our own day — every one helping according to 
 his means — can alone meet the case. 
 
 My brethren, I have been speaking to you thus far of dry 
 facts and figui'cs ; but to those of us who have ears to hear, 
 and hearts to feel, and consciences to be roused, these facts 
 and figures are the very voice of God speaking to our hearts 
 and consciences. These millions of whom I speak — two 
 millions in Manchester Diocese, a million and a half in 
 Chester, and I know not how many more throughout the 
 crowded north — these are the wealth-producers ; these, and 
 such as they, are those by whose agency the gigantic 
 increase in this country's wealth and strength has been 
 increased. Go back only forty years, and the population of 
 the country was between thirteen and fourteen millions. 
 It is now over tiuenty-three millions, an addition of nearly 
 ten millions — a whole nation, in fact, in this short period — 
 and all these souls have to be trained for eternity. My 
 brethren, none know better than you do how completely 
 the prosperity of England rests upon these her toilers ; 
 none, therefore, know better than you do the debt to them 
 in respect of higher things which the educated, the culti- 
 vated, the Christian portion of the community ow^es them. 
 It is theirs to work and toil : ours to humanize, to moralize, 
 to Christianize them. Such is the law which God, Who 
 creates nations, imposes on the communities which are His 
 workmanship. And, as I said before, in these facts and 
 figm-es I hear the very voice of God speaking to our Church 
 and nation. God has given England, during the last forty 
 years, gigantic wealth : but God's gifts carry with them 
 corresponding responsibilities, and to us these responsibilities 
 come Jirst in the shape of duties to these added millions of 
 our population. To make God and His religion kno^vn to 
 those whom God has added to our nation, and through 
 whose labour God has made us rich, — this, this, believe me, 
 is the first form of that duty, that tribute, that Rent, if I 
 may be allowed to call it so, wdiich God looks for at our 
 hands as the acknowledc:incnt to Him for what He has
 
 given to us. What next ? My brethren, we have to do 
 with a jealous God, and one Who rules the kingdoms of men, 
 and Who will not clear the guilty. " Them that honour 
 Me I will honour," is His word ; and verily God's word is 
 kept. 
 
 Hoiu does God keep His word ? There is a difference 
 between nations and individuals. With individuals God 
 deals partly in this life, partly in the life to come. Nations 
 have no future life : their chastisements and their rewards 
 are here, and they are inevitable. God has so constructed 
 societies and nations that their sins tnust find them out 
 and that speedily. Should the England of our day fail to 
 rise to her duty, her punishment is sure, and the way in 
 which it will come is plain. Look at all these millions — a 
 nation in themselves — with education now all but forced 
 into their minds, with political power put into their hands, 
 which the faculty of organization, which the habit of 
 working in concert develops — look at them, and suppose 
 them left without religion, without that mastery over their 
 passions and desires which religion only brings, ^^^thout the 
 sense of a hereafter or a God, but ivith all that restless 
 craving for this world's good which intelligence stimulates, 
 and I say there, ready to hand, is the weapon by which 
 God will punish our neglect. The instrument by which 
 God has given us our wealth will be the instrument by 
 which God will punish our sin. Do you want examples ? 
 The world is full of them, and we are surrounded on all 
 sides by the visible results which follow when nations 
 sufier their populations to grow up apart from God and 
 from religion. See Paris, burning by the act of its own 
 masses. See Berlin, where not one in a hundred is known 
 ever to enter a church, honeycombed with Socialism, and 
 the revolt against all existing order. See even America 
 beginning to tremble at its dangerous classes. As yet, 
 amid surrounding warnings, the storm reaches us not. 
 Let us be wise in time, and use the opportunity permitted 
 to us. 
 
 The Society whose cause I plead to-day sustains in part,
 
 10 
 
 or entirely, nearly seven hundred assistant curates, work- 
 ing mainly in the mining or manufacturing districts 
 and it is specially worth mentioning that of these nearly 
 five hundred are engaged in what are called " mission 
 districts," that is, portions of existing parishes which will 
 ultimately form new parishes, with their own district 
 parish churches and complete parochial organizations. The 
 Society is therefore in the fullest and most exact sense of the 
 word a Church-extension Society, not merely supplement- 
 ing the labours of existing clergy and the work of existing 
 parishes, but also sowing the seed of future parishes, 
 and thus providing for the extension and permanence of 
 our time-honoured, and I trust, never-to-be-abandoned paro- 
 chial system. But when I speak of these seven hundred 
 clergy whom it contributes to maintain, I am too painfully 
 conscious how little this is in comparison of what is wanted. 
 Hundreds of cases of need refrain from making themselves 
 heard of through despair of being helped from the limited 
 means it has to administer ; and yet, this being so, there 
 are still three hundred actual applications more than can 
 be aided. Do not think either that these three hundred 
 applications come from parishes which do not, or would not 
 do their part in helping themselves. On the contrary'-, they 
 offer in the aggregate £20,000, a year towards the stipends 
 of the curates whom they umidd employ could the Society, 
 aid them with equal grants. But alas ! the Society has not 
 the £20,000 a year with which to meet them, so that the 
 £20,000 a year which would be forthcoming from local 
 sources in aid of the Church's needs is left unfruitful. 
 
 My Brethren all this is very sad, and it is very full of 
 foreboding. But where is the blame ? Busy as most of 
 us are, not knowing these things, as is the case with many, 
 it seems harsh and unreal to lay the blame on individual 
 Christians and Churchmen at large. Yet, if the matter is 
 to be mended, it can only be by the great multitude of 
 individual Churchmen each doing his part according to his 
 or her part, according to the means which God has given. 
 It really is everybody's duty. Everybody shares in the
 
 11 
 
 countrys wt'll-being. EvcrybcKly will sutler iu a national 
 chastisement. Everybody oaghf to give heed to sucli fsicts 
 as these, and every one ought to lend a hand to what is a 
 common duty. Ah ! I know nothing which strikes home 
 more painfully to tlie heart of a clergyman as he goes from 
 church to church in the well-provided parishes and sees 
 the crowded congregations apparently devout, and blessed 
 with every means of grace, and then asks himself how came 
 all these good people by their spiritual advantages ? Do 
 they cost them anything ? And then the answer comes — No. 
 They are enjoying the fruits of other people's self-denial, of 
 the gifts and endowments of men and women now with 
 Christ in Paradise, and who in their day did their part to 
 provide the means of grace for others besides themselves. 
 How many of us provide neither for themselves nor for 
 others, but contentedly accept what was done by om- 
 fathers in the faith, and never think of making any effort 
 in our turn. And then the thought strikes home, so keen 
 and chill — what is all this but spiritual selfishness — uncon- 
 scious it may be, but none the less real and deadly — and if 
 in earthly things we all look on selfishness as cutting men 
 off from all that is best in life, what must not be the retri- 
 bution which awaits the spiritual selfishness of enjoying, to 
 oneself and for oneself all means of spiritual help — at the 
 cost of others, and then taking no heed of the spiritual 
 Lazarus at our gate, full of the spiritual sores of a spiritual 
 famine which even the smallest return for what we have 
 received might heal. Ah, yes ! There is no selfishness so 
 deadly as this religious selfishness. May God deliver us 
 from it ! God grant that when we go hence "we may not 
 meet the doom which awaits the spiritual Dives, but may 
 be among those who rich in spiritual privileges have done 
 their part to see that the .spiritually needy have also had 
 the opportunity of being fed with the Bread of Life, visited 
 in their spiritual sickness, and clothed with the garment of 
 His righteousness by Whose Name we are called ! It is 
 the honour due to God, Who says, " Them that honour 
 Me I will honour." — Amen.
 
 /
 
 
 
 
 ?.;.• 
 
 
 tW. 
 
 
 r- vir K 
 
 > -iL 
 
 :i 1 
 
 / " -J II