About Our Church in 1896 (part 1 of 2)

An Address Given At The Fifteenth Annual Liverpool Diocesan Conference, At St. George&Rsquo;S Hall, November 3, 1896. Reverend and Lay Brethren, Once more, for the fifteenth time, I am allowed to preside at our Annual Diocesan Conference, and I offer you a hearty welcome. We are gathered together at a somewhat critical period in the history of the Established Church of England. Questions seriously affecting its interests, and of peculiarly grave and delicate character, are continually coming to the front, and demand the thoughtful attention of all loyal Churchmen. Two of them have been wisely selected by your Standing Committee for discussion this week. I refer to Church Reform and Anglican Orders. Unhappily these two questions do not stand alone. There are others demanding solution, of no less importance, which are being pressed on our notice in these days, both in Parliament and in the Press, which I propose to consider in this Address. About them all a Diocese has a right to expect its bishop to express an opinion. Without further preface, I proceed to do so this morning. I shall try first to handle the Church’s Present Problems and then the Church’s Present Position.

1. The first and far the most important subject which demands your attention is Disestablishment.

I need hardly remind you how much we heard of this matter a year ago. The bold attempt of the recent Government to disestablish and disendow the Church in Wales, to dissolve the union of Church and State, and to deprive the Welsh clergy of their incomes, aroused an unexpectedly strong feeling throughout the land, and made thousands of sleeping Churchmen sit up and open their eyes.

Footnote In March, 1895, H. H. Asquith (Home Secretary in the Rosebery Government) had introduced a Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill in the House of Commons.

The attempt you will remember, failed so completely that it is hard to understand why it was ever made. The enemies of the Church entirely miscalculated their own strength, and the defenders were no less surprised by the amount of support which they received in almost every quarter, from north to south and from east to west, and nowhere more than in Lancashire.

But have we done with Disestablishment? Is the subject shelved and buried for ever? Is it an old fossil for which there is no resurrection? I warn you not to give way to the thought. The doors of the temple of Janus are not yet closed. This is not the time to lay down our arms and go to sleep, but rather to keep awake and be on our guard. Disestablishment has been once accepted by the House of Commons within the last four years. Will anyone undertake to say what the next Parliamentary election will produce? Political power in this day is very much in the hands of the working classes, and the upper ten thousand are comparatively a small minority. The pendulum may take a violent swing in an anti-Church direction. Once let the voters get into their heads the notion that all clergymen are narrow-minded sacerdotalists and want to Romanize the Church of England, and Disestablishment will come. The battle is not yet over, whatever we may think of the last election. The working classes will not vote to maintain a semi-Romish establishment, and if the Church loses their confidence she will be ruined.

The length and breadth of the harm which would be done by Disestablishment and Disendowment it would be hard to estimate. The one would certainly accompany the other. It is foolish to suppose that the Church will be allowed to dissolve partnership with the State and walk off with all her income. In the agricultural districts, hundreds of Churches would have to be closed. Farmers and labourers alone could not support a minister. Services would have to be given up, and people left like sheep without a shepherd. Even in towns the hands of the Church of England would be greatly weakened, foreign and home missions would be sadly crippled, and every philanthropic agency would receive diminished support. Of course the good old Church of England would still live and not die, but she would live with immensely lessened powers of usefulness; and with Disestablishment and Disendowment would come Disruption. No doubt some thoughtless Churchmen may fancy that separation of Church and State would be an unmixed benefit and a blessing.! take leave to doubt this. The weak points of an Established Church no doubt are many, but the weak points of voluntary Churches are neither few nor small.

The present duty of Churchmen, I believe, is very clear, if the Disestablishment controversy returns. We must keep our powder dry, and be prepared to fight to the bitter end if need be. We must constantly expose and answer the ridiculous slanders and misrepresentations of those who envy our comparative prosperity, and hunger and thirst for a sweeping change.

It is not true, for example, as it is sometimes asserted, that clergymen, as a body, are all sacerdotalists, and want to Romanize the Church of England. There are thousands of clergymen in this day who dislike sacerdotalism and Romanism in every form, and are as sound Protestants as any liberationists in the land.

It is not true that the bishops and clergy of the Established Church are rolling in wealth, and could spare half their incomes. Thousands of the clergy in rural districts are almost ruined by agricultural depression. Even in towns I suspect that many leading Nonconformist ministers receive more pecuniary support than our own parochial clergy. As for the bishops, many of them find it hard to make both ends meet, with the incessant demands made upon their purses. The late Archbishop Longley used to say that he got on pretty well when he was Headmaster of Harrow School, but began to grow poor when he became Bishop of Ripon, got poorer still when he was made Archbishop of York, and was poorest of all when he was Archbishop of Canterbury. (The appointments listed cover the period 1829-68 (Longley was also for four years Bishop of Durham).)

It is not true that the Prayer-book is a mere Popish compilation. The greater part of it is taken out of the Epistles, Gospels, and Psalms. The prayers, as a whole, will bear a favourable comparison with most of the extemporaneous supplications and intercessions in non-episcopal places of worship.

Ignorant statements, such as those I have just mentioned, have been far too often made in the last two or three years, and ought to be boldly and firmly contradicted and corrected on public occasions. Unhappily they are greedily believed, and swallowed, and circulated among the enemies of the Established Church. ‘Slander,’ says a Chinese proverb, ‘is an insect which has long wings but no feet. It cannot stand, but it can fly.’

The printing press, as well as the pulpit and the platform, should be diligently used in resisting the Disestablishment movement. Cheap and simple literature should be widely circulated, and especially literature which gives a plain, honest account of the history of the Church of England during the last three hundred and fifty years. Few Churchmen have a very clear knowledge of the enormous debt which we owe to the Reformation, and of the immense mass of error and superstition from which it delivered us. Not a few have imbibed the stupid idea that our Church was in a dark state before Archbishop Laud arose, and are totally ignorant of the good work done by Parker, Grindal, Whitgift, Jewel, and Hooker. To spread useful knowledge and let in light on blind eyes, is one great business which the friends of the Establishment should take in hand, if they want to repel the attacks of our foes.

I leave the subject of Disestablishment with one sorrowful reflection. I cannot refrain from expressing my firm conviction that some of the most efficient helpers of the movement are within the pale of our own Church. That large and influential body of clergymen and upper-rank laymen, which appears determined to Romanize the Protestant Church of England, is gradually shaking the confidence of many Churchmen, digging the grave of the Establishment, and making work for the next Parliamentary election. I warn you once more that the middle and working classes have now got immense political power in their hands, and are determined to use it. I am certain they will not elect a House of Commons which favours sacerdotalism, the mass, and the confessional. They will refuse to support the Church at the pollingbooth, if they do not feel confidence in Church candidates; and then will come Disestablishment. I am too old to see it. But remember my words: It will come.

2. The second subject to which I propose to call your attention this day is the very important one of Elementary Church Education. This, I need hardly say, is a very difficult and thorny question, and contains knots which the ablest statesmen find it hard to untie. The roots of the difficulty, in my opinion, may be traced to two huge political mistakes from which we are suffering to this day. One of those mistakes was made in 1870, when the Board School system was called into existence. If at that date the Government had boldly insisted that the Bible, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, should form part of the religious instruction given to every child in schools helped by the State, unless a parent conscientiously objected, I doubt if one person in twenty throughout the land would have opposed the plan. I believe it was a terrible omission to make the Bible optional to every Board, and to leave out the Creed altogether. The other mistake was made only a few years ago, when the ‘Free Education’ Act was passed under the vain idea that it was necessary, and would be popular. (1891. The Act made the great majority of elementary schools free, and reduced the charge in the remainder.) A greater blunder, in my judgment, was never made. Nobody really wanted ‘Free Education.’ Nobody asked for it. Nobody said ‘Thank you’ for it. When it came, the income from school pence in many cases was destroyed, and some three millions of money were recklessly thrown away and not saved, while labourers at ten shillings a week in Suffolk were as willing to pay for their children’s schooling as for their children’s clothes or food. However, these two mistakes have been made, and are not likely to be given up or repealed. Political clocks are never put back. The result is a perpetual grievance about religion in Board schools, and a perpetual worry about money in Church schools.

The position of the great question of education at this moment is a very anxious and critical one. The Government, you will remember, brought into the House of Commons last session a huge Bill which proposed to deal with the whole subject. It was much too large a mouthful for any modern British House to swallow. It was a long, complicated, sweeping measure, which, after an immense amount of weary discussion, was withdrawn, and has come to an end. We are promised another Bill in the next session, but at present no one can tell us what it will be like. Will it be long or short? Will it be simple or complicated? Will it contain many provisions of the old Bill which foundered--fished up and re-adapted--or a brand-new measure? All these are inquiries which I cannot answer; and, as Faraday used to say, it is best to keep our minds in a state of judicious suspense. There are, however, three points about which Churchmen should put down their feet very firmly, and should not hesitate to tell the Government what they expect any new Education Bill to provide. I will tell you what they are. One is the abolition of the objectionable 17S. 6d. limit. (17s. 6d. had been made the maximum annual grant of state aid per child at school.) Another is the entire exemption from taxes of all schools and school buildings. Another is the just right to claim from Government a reasonable annual support for all elementary Church schools, inasmuch as they educate half the children in the land, and in many cases freely. On these three points I hope all Churchmen will stand together, leave no stone unturned, and, if needful, fight to the last.

There are, however, three points in the Education campaign before us which I frankly admit are disputable, and concerning which I can understand a good deal being said on both sides. I hope I am willing to preserve an open mind about them. At present, however, I hold rather decided opinions about all the three, and I will state them as briefly as I can.

(1) For one thing, I certainly prefer Rate aid to State aid. A fixed State aid per head would be very satisfactory in some schools, but very unsatisfactory in others. The Rate aid would be managed far better by County Councils and Corporations, who would apportion it according to the need of each school, giving more to some and less to others. I am not so much afraid of the management of Church schools falling into bad hands under Rate aid as some appear to be. I have great faith in the fairness and common sense of the English laity, and I do not believe they would ignore the judgment of Church school managers by interfering needlessly with religious teaching or teachers. My heaviest objection to State aid is my strong belief that it would be utterly inadequate and insufficient. I have not forgotten that four shillings a head was all that was proposed in the recent departed Bill, (i.e. 4s. over and above the previous 17s. 6d. limit.) a sum that would do very little for Church schools in the north, whatever it might do in the south. This, too, you will remember, was offered in a Session when a modest proposal to give a little State aid to the depressed agricultural interest, raised a storm in the House of Commons, and was carried with difficulty. After all, there is one very awkward point about State aid which ought never to be forgotten. If words mean anything, ‘State aid’ means an annual vote of money in the House of Commons for the maintenance of Church schools. Can anyone doubt that such a vote would bring on an annual fight like the famous Maynooth Grant in days gone by? (In 1845 Sir Robert Peel got Parliament to give Maynooth R.C. College (Dublin) an annual grant of £26,360.) I dread such annual fights, and I must object to State aid, whatever my excellent brethren in the south may say. If they like State aid, let them allow us, at any rate, to have Rate aid in the north.

(2) For another thing, I must plainly say that I fail to see the wisdom and expediency of allowing ministers or members of religious bodies outside the Church of England to go into Church schools and give religious instruction to their own young people. I cannot believe that the idea, however liberal and good-natured it may sound in theory, would work out satisfactorily in practice. In hundreds of schools no separate accommodation could be provided, unless a room is to be specially provided for the purpose. In many others it would be impossible to ensure the regular attendance of a competent teacher, as he would probably have other demands on his time. The result would be, that the unfortunate nonconformist children would receive less religious teaching than the children of the Church, together with the heavy risk of friction when a Church teacher saw some of his scholars constantly withdrawn from him, as if he was not fit to teach them. I may be wrong, and I lay no claim to infallibility; but my present impression is that the proposed scheme, however well meant, would never work.

(3) One more thing about which I am not convinced at present is the proposed federation of schools. I am not sure that I fully comprehend the meaning of the expression. If it only means the union of all Church schools within a certain district, enabling them to have one banking account, one correspondent with the Educational Department, and one architect to superintend all building alterations, I believe it would be very useful. It would promote economy, prevent overdrawing at banks, and check unwise expenditure on bricks and mortar. But if federation means besides, that good schools are to pay down hard money to enable bad schools to stand on their legs, I cannot say that I approve the idea, and I cannot think it would succeed.

We all know that there are schools and schools, schools which are well managed and well worked, and schools which are comparatively let alone, seldom visited by the clergy, and nothing done to cheer, encourage, and stimulate the teachers. In cases like these I do not believe that the managers of one class of schools would like to hand over any part of their income to support other schools, which are weak and languishing because they have done little or nothing to deserve success. There is a good deal of human nature in school managers, teachers, and clergy; and if this is what federation means, I do not like it. However, I am willing to admit there may be something about it which I do not understand. I cannot leave this part of my address without urging on every clergyman who has an elementary day school, the immense importance of doing everything in his power to keep up every part of the instruction to the highest standard of excellence. I have been pained to observe on some occasions, at the annual great meetings of our Education Council, that the Board schools carry off a much larger proportion of prizes and honours than the Church schools. Of course,! know that there is a competition in which most of our Church schools are very heavily handicapped, and, with limited means, find it hard to hold their own. But I want them to be second to none, and I urge every clergyman who has a Church school to strain every nerve in the great educational race. The frequent visiting of your school, and showing a friendly face and keeping a friendly eye on its work, if only for a few minutes, not so much to teach yourself as to see that the teaching is real and efficient, has a great influence. When I first came to Liverpool, sixteen years ago, I remember walking alone into a large school unexpectedly, and asking the headmaster how often the clergyman of the parish came to visit him, and I received the painful answer, that ‘no clergyman had been inside the school for three years!’ I need not say that such a neglected school was not likely to prosper. I am certain, after long experience, that kindly attention to teachers, from the highest to the lowest, friendly interest in all they do, and pleasant, genial notice of the children, are things that always pay. They cost little, but they are worth much.

I leave the thorny question of education at this point with much anxiety. The outlook before us is eminently gloomy and uncertain. If, on the one hand, the Government resolves to give real adequate aid to Church schools, whether it be State or Rate aid, I believe they will be able to hold their own, however furiously the aid may be opposed by the Church’s enemies. If, on the other hand, the Government refuses to give sufficient aid to Church schools, the weakest and poorest of them must go to the wall, will ultimately be starved to death, and have to be closed and replaced by Board schools. The consequences of this would be most disastrous. There would be a great expenditure required of public money in order to buy up or replace the closed schools starved to death. There would be much murmuring and dissatisfaction among the working classes when they found their children driven into Board schools, where, in many cases, they would not be taught that Christ is God. Above all, there would be created a deep and abiding sense of injustice among the general body of Churchmen. These are very tough knots, and I shall not attempt to untie them.

3. The next general subject to which I think it my duty to call your attention, is one which has come to the front very much during the last two years. I refer to Church Reform. In the course of the recent campaign in defence of the Establishment, we have been told repeatedly, both in the press and on the platform, that we must amend abuses and throw lumber overboard if we mean to beat to quarters and prepare for action. In short, it has become a kind of proverbial saying, that the best Church Defence is Church Reform. Now, I shall handle this wide subject very briefly today, for two very sufficient reasons. One of them is, that two very important branches of it will be discussed in our present Conference at one of our sessions, and I am extremely glad that they will be introduced by two laymen. For obvious reasons, the clergy ought to be glad to know what the laity are thinking about them and their position. The other reason why I shall be brief is the simple fact that Church Reform formed a large portion of a long Conference address which I delivered in this room a year ago, in which I handled the whole subject pretty fully and exhaustively. Few people, however, seem to have noticed what I said at the time, and a large-type letter of three columns in the Times, of last September 8, totally ignored all my statements, and told the public that the Bishop of Rochester stands alone on the Episcopal Bench in recognition of the Reform League. This, however, does not surprise me. I have long observed that things spoken by Churchmen in the Northern province attract little attention in the South. You, at any rate, who were in this room last November, will perhaps remember that I gave you at least half an hour about Church Reform. For this reason, I repeat, I shall not go over the ground again, and the more so as the question is coming up for public discussion.

I cannot, however, pass away from this great subject, and leave it untouched, without two cautions.

On the one hand I advise the friends and advocates of Church Reform to keep a vigilant watch on the proposed Benefices Bill, which was left in suspense and did not become law in the last session of Parliament. Undoubtedly it is a move in the right direction, and contains the elements of much usefulness. At present it is a grievous evil that bishops should be obliged frequently to institute men to livings who are physically, or mentally, or doctrinally, unfit for them. But, at the same time, the power of refusing a nominee ought to be carefully safeguarded, and the just rights of patrons protected, and the feelings of congregations considered. Above all, where the bishop’s decision is disputed, and a legal inquiry demanded, a bishop should be bound to have the assistance of a competent legal assessor. But it remains yet to be seen whether the Benefices Bill will be brought in again, and if so, in what form, and with what amendments.

On the other hand, I advise the advocates of Reform not to forget that in giving the laity a voice in the selection of a minister for a vacant church they must carefully consider what they mean by the laity. However right and good the principle, It involves very grave difficulties, and will require great wisdom in order to meet them. No man of common sense, I fancy, would like clergymen to be chosen by popular election, whether by the ratepayers, or by the mere churchgoers, or by the communicants. In every such election you would almost always create two parties in the congregation, and have a disappointed minority. Nor can we suppose for a moment that the Crown, the colleges, and the bishops, to say nothing of the great landowners, would consent to give up all their rights as patrons. All these are difficult points, and require very delicate handling. At present I only say that I hope we shall get more light upon them from discussion. The practice of the Disestablished Church of Ireland about filling up vacant livings, and the results of the system, deserve careful investigation.

4. The fourth and last public subject which has been pressed on the Church’s attention during the last few years is the reunion of Christendom. It is one which I shall handle very briefly.

Unity among Christians, it is needless to say, is a most desirable thing. It is one of the four topics named by our Lord in His wonderful last prayer before crucifixion, in the 17th chapter of St. John. The want of it is the weakness of the Church and the favourite weapon of the infidel. It is vain to expect much of it in the great visible Catholic Church, in which the various branches differ widely, both in ritual and doctrine, and where the evil are always mingled with the good. You must look for it in that Holy Catholic Church which, as our Prayer-book says, is ‘the mystical body of Christ, and the blessed company of all faithful people.’ This, as that great man Isaac Barrow says, is ‘the society of those for whom Christ did pray that they might be one.’ Yet even among them it is very imperfect, and will be till we get to heaven. Here below there is often unity without uniformity, and uniformity without unity. As to the reunion of all Christendom, it is a mere castle in the air.

Can there be any reunion between the Church of England and other bodies of Trinitarian Protestant Christians in Great Britain? I answer decidedly, that it appears to me hopeless. It might have been possible in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, if that autocratic Tudor sovereign had allowed Parker and Jewel to complete the work of the Reformation. But, unhappily, she pulled them up sharply and snubbed them in every direction, and the seeds of a crop of nonconformity were sown broadcast. The reigns of James I and Charles I only made matters worse, and the Church policy of that unhappy, overpraised man, Archbishop Laud, laid deep the foundations of English dissent. From Laud’s time down to the present day the current of events has always been one way, deeper and wider disunion every century. The wretched conflicts of the Commonwealth times, the suicidal ecclesiastical measures of Charles II, the weak attempts at improvement in William III’s days, the blind inability of the English bishops to understand or utilize the Methodist movement a hundred years ago, and last but not least, the Romeward tendencies in some parts of the Church of our own times--all these things, I believe, have dug a huge gulf between Church and Dissent which never will be bridged over or filled up-- never, never, never!

Can there ever be any reunion between the Church of England and the Church of Rome? I answer without hesitation, that the very idea is monstrous, and reflects no credit on the common sense of those who have launched it in these latter days. I care very little for the Pope’s recent decree about Anglican orders. (Pope Leo XIII’s ‘Apostolicae Curae’ of 1896 rejected Anglican orders as invalid.) I am quite content to know that our own are perfectly valid, and I never doubted it. But our conception of a Christian minister’s office is very different from that of the Pope’s. On the one side, the clergyman of the Roman Church is a priest, whose great business is to offer the sacrifice of the Mass. On the other, the clergyman of the Anglican Church is not a priest at all, though called one, and only a presbyter, whose chief business is not to offer a material sacrifice, but to preach the Word of God and administer the sacraments. My main reason for objecting to reunion with Rome is the broad fact that her distinctive doctrinal principles are utterly irreconcilable with our own. If the recent decree of Rome had formally announced to the world that the Pope admits the validity of our orders, and recognizes all Anglican clergymen as Catholic priests, it would not make a jot of difference to me. It is doctrine, doctrine, and not orders, which makes the insuperable objection to reunion with Rome. So long as subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles is required from every English clergyman before he can have a licence or be instituted to a living; so long as nine of those Articles are not repealed or tampered with, and distinctly condemn certain Romish doctrines and practices, and especially and particularly the Mass; so long it appears to me a childish waste of time to talk of reunion. That able man, Dr. George Salmon, the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, says in his book on Infallibility: ‘As the Roman Church is at present disposed, there can be no union with her except on the terms of absolute submission; that submission, moreover, involving an acknowledgment that we, from our hearts, believe things to be true which we have good reasons for knowing to be false.’ (Salmon: Infallibility of the Church, Preface v.) I agree with him entirely, and I cannot believe that English Churchmen will tamely consent to submit to such an abject surrender as reunion would require. (See APPENDIX, CHAPTER 14. note 1.)

I refrain from saying more than a few words about a very painful subject affecting the Church which was brought before the House of Lords last session. I refer to the Bill in which it was proposed to legalise marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, which was unhappily carried by a large majority in the Upper House, but happily never reached the House of Commons. It is a disagreeable question, about which there is a curious diversity of opinion, and I shrink from saying much on it when so many ladies are present. Diocesan engagements made it impossible for me to be present at the division in Parliament. But I think it due to myself and to my diocese to say that I should certainly have voted with the minority against the Bill. The proposed change of the law seems, to my eyes, likely to create an immense amount of social discomfort and unhappiness, and I deeply regret the success of the Bill in the House of Lords. From the difficult problems which I have been trying to discuss, I must now turn to other matters of equal if not greater importance. We are drawing near to the end of another century. Many of you in all probability will live to see A.D. 1900, if I do not. Let me, as an old man, try to put before you the present position and prospects of the Established Church of England, and offer a few words of practical advice.

1. If we compare the condition of the Church of England in 1896 with the condition in 1796, I have no hesitation in saying that we have very great cause for thankfulness to Almighty God. The state of things ecclesiastical a hundred years ago was so entirely different from what it is now, and so eminently unsatisfactory, that I wonder the Church was kept alive and survived the deadly contagion of the first French Revolution. The improvements, reforms, alterations, and changes for the better which have taken place are so numerous that we seem to have had a second Reformation. Within the sixty years of our gracious Queen’s reign, not a few of our grand old cathedrals have been thoroughly repaired and preserved from ruin, hundreds of our old parish churches have been restored, and many more hundreds of new churches, especially in the manufacturing districts, have been built. On building, restoring, and renewing churches, it is reckoned that nearly forty millions of pounds have been voluntarily raised and expended. During the same period, glaring abuses of all kinds, such as non-residence and pluralities among the clergy, have been completely suppressed. At the same time, thousands of scriptural schools have been built all over the land. Our great religious Societies for promoting missions abroad and at home have been called into existence. Parochial machinery of every kind has been created and set to work. The standard of preaching and living among the clergy of all schools of thought has unmistakably improved. The number of drones in our hive is decidedly less than it was. Scores of philanthropic agencies of all sorts have been set on foot in every part of England. In spite of all our faults and divisions, the Established Church, as a body, is not asleep, but awake. Her worst enemies must admit that she is not dead, but alive. For all these things I maintain firmly, we ought to be deeply thankful.

Whether, at the same time, there are not some causes for grave anxiety in our Church’s condition, I am obliged to say, appears to me rather doubtful. Side by side with an undeniable increase of outward religion, I am afraid that the standard of practical Christianity is not so high as it ought to be, and is rather on the down grade. The painful quantity of Sabbath-breaking and neglect of worship, the growth of gambling and racing, the increase of a very loose style of literature, the extravagant love of pleasure and amusements, the continuance of drunkenness, and the annual expenditure of one hundred and forty millions on intoxicating liquors, the half of it not necessary--all these things are rather black clouds on the horizon of our Church, and deserve the watchful attention of all who love her. We may depend on it, an increase of practical godliness is the only sure test of a Church’s health and prosperity.

2. The darkest cloud on our horizon, however, is the continuance and increase o four unhappy divisions, and especially, I grieve to say, our divisions about the blessed sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The threatening dangers from these divisions I believe to be very great. I know not whether the coming Lambeth Conference will ignore them as it did in 1887, in spite of my own feeble protest at the end. But if they are ignored and let alone, I believe our Church will receive immense damage. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

With every feeling of respect for the late lamented Archbishop (Edward White Benson (1883-96); for Lincoln Decision.) of Canterbury, I have never been able to see that the famous Lincoln decision did anything to lessen or heal our divisions, whatever others may please to say. To my eyes it left things much as they were, and proved the uselessness in these liberal days of all prosecutions about ritual and doctrine, when everybody is right, and nobody is wrong.

Let me once more, and probably for the last time, say a few plain things about the painful subject of our divisions. You all know perfectly well that in the present day strange and apparently Romish views of the Lord’s Supper are preached, taught, and put in practice by thousands of clergymen, which Jewel and Hooker and Hall and Usher and Davenant and Beveridge, and a host of other departed divines, never sanctioned for a moment; and that a fog of novelties has arisen and spread over the whole land, and becomes thicker every year. At the same time, we cannot deny that many who advocate or practise these novelties are amiable, zealous, hardworking, self-denying, devout clergymen. Whatever their principles may be, their lives are exemplary and blameless. They profess to love the Church of England quite as much as any of their brethren, and yet, on the doctrine and ritual of the Lord’s Supper, the two parties are as the poles asunder.

They cannot work together comfortably. They rarely worship with one another. They support, on every subject, two different Societies, and each thinks their own the right one. In short, there are within our Church two opposing views of the Lord’s Supper, and I fail to see how they can be reconciled. It is useless to appeal to Old Church Courts about them, because their decisions are not obeyed. It is useless, apparently, to expect New Courts, as there is no attempt to create them. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Ecclesiastical discipline seems to have died out, and in place of it there is such a reign of anarchy, chaos, and confusion that every clergyman does what is right in his own eyes. Such are the days in which your lot is cast. I need not tell you that these sad divisions are a cause of great weakness, and terribly damage the Church of England.

Now, I am not going to weary you with long, well-worn statements about the Romish view of the Lord’s Supper, such as the cardinal errors of the Mass, Transubstantiation, the Real Corporal Presence, and the Sacerdotal Office. But I do feel it a plain duty to raise a warning voice about a few things which appear to me to be doing special harm in this day, and I must use great plainness of speech. (1) I hear with deep regret that many clergymen all over the land hold and teach that it is useful, edifying, and desirable to receive the Lord’s Supper fasting. I fear there are many strange views in some minds on this subject. You will distinctly understand that I have not the least objection to early administrations, if people prefer them. That is not the question. The ground I take up is of a very different kind.

I contend that the practice of fasting communion is neither commanded nor recommended in Scripture. It is perfectly clear that at the first institution of the sacrament, the apostles could not have received the elements fasting, because they had just eaten the passover. There cannot, therefore, be anything very important in this point, and every believer may use his liberty, and do what he finds edifying to himself, without condemning others. But it may be feared that there lies in the minds of many who attach immense value to fasting communion, a vague belief that the consecrated bread and wine which we receive are in some mysterious way not real bread and wine, and ought not therefore to be mixed with other food in our bodies! Such a belief cannot be praised. Moreover, those who teach that fasting communion is a rule obligatory on all persons, take up a position which is not only unscriptural, but even cruel. To go fasting to an early morning communion is likely to cause the death of delicate persons.

I invite your attention to the weighty words of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce on this very subject, and I ask you to remember that he was always a decided High Churchman, and I did not agree with him on many points. They were spoken a few days before his death. He says: ‘It is not in a light sense that I say this new doctrine of fasting communion is dangerous. The practice is not advocated because a man comes in a clearer spirit and less disturbed body and mind, able to give himself entirely to prayer and communion with his God; but on a miserable, degraded notion that the consecrated elements will meet with other food in the stomach. It is a detestable materialism. Philosophically it is a contradiction; because, when the celebration is over, you may hurry away to a meal, and the process about which you were so scrupulous immediately follows. The whole notion is simply disgusting.’ (J. W. Burgon: Lives of Twelve Good Men, vol. 2 p. 56.)

(2) I hear, again, with deep regret, that many zealous clergymen are recommending non-communicants to remain in church and be present at the administration of the Lord’s Supper. Some of you may hear of this with surprise, and some may ask in their simplicity ‘Where is the harm?’ I believe it is a growing evil, and a thing that ought to be firmly resisted. It originates in the mischievous idea that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice offered up by a priest, and not a commemorative ordinance of which all present ought to partake. In short, it is a direct step toward the Romish sacrifices of the Mass, of which your Thirty-first Article declares that they are ‘blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.’ That there was nothing of the kind at the first institution, that all present were communicants and all received the bread and wine, that none were merely spectators, that there is not a jot of evidence in the Acts or Epistles that noncommunicating attendance was recognized or permitted--all these things are as clear as noonday, and I will not waste your time by dwelling on the subject. Well and wisely says the Homily of the Sacrament, ‘We must be ourselves partakers of this table, and not beholders of other.’