The Present Distress

Part Of An Address Given At The Seventeenth Liverpool Diocesan

Conference, November 1898.

My Reverend and Lay Brethren, From diocesan subjects I turn to four others of far more gravity, subjects in which I think every Churchman ought to take a very deep interest in the present day. I shall make no apology for handling them in order, and asking you everyone to look steadily at them. Those subjects are--Church Reform, Church Defence, Church Divisions, and Church Toleration. (1) I shall begin with Church Reform. This is an old and wide subject, which is rapidly becoming one of grave importance. I can remember the time, seventeen years ago, when some members of this Conference smiled at those who brought it forward, as amiable enthusiasts. They would not smile now, if they were alive. The Benefices Bill, and the fierce debates which accompanied that measure, have made the House of Commons sit up and compelled attention. In every part of the land men are awake and alive about Church Reform. Committees and Societies for obtaining it, with active members of every rank, are coming to the front everywhere. It is useless to say that Church Reform is not needed. After two centuries and more the grand old ship, which has stood so many battles and breezes, requires not a few repairs and amendments. Reason and common sense point out that there is a continual increase of defects in all human handiwork, and a gradual tendency to decay. The progress of knowledge, science, and education brings to light weak points requiring improvements of which our forefathers never dreamed. Church Reform is rapidly becoming a necessity if our Church is to live and not die.

The subject is continually cropping up every year, whether we like it or not, in some shape or another. The mere fact that a Reform League with many influential supporters has been lately called into existence, is a fact which alone speaks volumes. The repeal of the Corn Laws, we should remember, began with a League.

Footnote The Anti-Corn Law League, founded by Cobden and Bright in 1839. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846.

The Benefices Bill of last Session, the comparatively recent formation of a House of Laymen in each of the Provinces of Canterbury and York, the increasing demands of congregations, when livings are vacant, to have some voice in the selection of a new minister--all these things show plainly that Church Reform is in the air. I wish today to impress on the members of our Conference the absolute necessity of looking seriously at it, and making up our minds as far as we can.

It is needless to tell you that Church Reform is a very large subject, and greatly complicated by the connection of Church and State. Nevertheless there are some branches of it which appear to me quite within reach, and if Churchmen would only unite in trying to obtain them something might be done. Though I shall go over old ground, which I have surveyed more than once, I will mention Reforms which seem to me urgently needed.

(i) We need reform of our Ecclesiastical Courts, both in cases of false doctrine and immorality. At present their constitutions are defective, their modes of proceeding expensive, cumbrous, tedious and dilatory, and their penalties most unsatisfactory. To imprison a clergyman for holding false doctrine is to go back to the dark ages. (ii) We want a new set of Canons for the regulation of all the proceedings of the Church of England. Those that we have at present are many of them practically useless, and little more than curious fossils rendered needless by alterations of law. In this matter we might learn a few things from the new Canons of the Disestablished Church of Ireland.

(iii) We need a reform about the voice of the laity being heard in some way, both about the manner of the services in the parish church, and about the selection of ministers for vacant livings. (iv) We need a reform about all Church patronage. I frankly admit that I mention this with much hesitation. At present there is a good deal to be said for the existing system of wide variety. But I am not quite convinced that the old system can be very much mended. It is easier to find fault with it than to improve it. However, so long as the union of Church and State continues, there is not much chance of the present system being given up; and the prohibition of sale of livings would stop half its mischief.

(v) The last but not the least reform needed is a reform of Convocation. The reform that is really wanted is the admission of the laity in both Houses. Until the laity have a proper place, and voice, and vote in the proceedings of our Church assembly, I believe that Convocation will never enjoy the full confidence of the country, and few Englishmen will care for its debates. Legislative powers such a reformed Convocation certainly ought not to have. England would not stand two parliaments. But if the opinions and wishes of Convocation came to Parliament from a body consisting of able laymen as well as clergymen, I am convinced that they would receive far more respectful attention in the House of Commons than they do now.

(2) From Church Reform I turn to Church Defence. It is my firm belief that as a body there are no Christians more ignorant of the principles and history of their own community than English Churchmen, and I believe the time has come when a strenuous effort ought to be made to increase the knowledge of distinct doctrine and historic Christianity throughout the land. I should like the clergy to preach and explain more frequently the Creeds and Articles, and make men understand clearly what a Churchman ought to know and believe. I should like the leading events in the history of our Church during the last three centuries to be made quite familiar to our people, so that they may be able to answer the enemies who make erroneous assertions and reckless statements about us. It is time to awake out of sleep. The Disestablishment campaign may be upon us again before long. We must be prepared to defend as well as to cleanse the Church.

But systematic pulpit instruction is only part of what is needed in order to meet the ignorance of the times. We ought to organize a supply of information about English Church history. We ought to provide a qualified body of lecturers whose whole business shall be to visit every diocese, and tell people what the story of the Church of England really is. One caution only must be remembered. The lecturers must be thoroughly impartial, and not one-sided men. If, for example, they went about telling people everywhere that Archbishop Laud was a blessed martyr, and saying nothing about Ridley and Latimer; or if they praised James II, and abused the Puritans; such lecturing would do more harm than good. However, I trust these doubts and fears would prove groundless. I believe that an honest, capable body of lecturers would spread much light, and dispel a vast amount of ignorance which now exists. After all, I must express my firm belief that the best defence of the Church of England in the present day is more attention to the pastoral work of the clergy.

We want more house-to-house visitation, more direct personal dealing with the souls of the people, more kindly, friendly, evangelistic aggression. The whole style of clerical work is greatly altered. Multiplied Services and Communions absorb a vast amount of time and attention. But I have grave doubts whether our Church would not be much stronger if there was more old fashioned pastoral visitation.

I have a firm conviction that the sympathy and confidence of the working classes are the chief defence of the Church of England at this crisis of her history. This sympathy and confidence, I believe, the clergy will find no difficulty in getting if they go to work in the right way.

I assert confidently that the English working man is peculiarly open to sympathetic attention, and the clergyman has peculiar opportunities of showing it. The working man may live in a poor dwelling; and after toiling all day in a coal pit, or cotton mill, or iron foundry, or dock, or chemical works, he may often look very rough and dirty. But after all he is flesh and blood like ourselves. Beneath his outward roughness he has a heart and a conscience, a keen sense of justice, and a jealous recollection of his rights as a man and a Briton. He does not want to be patronized and flattered, any more than to be trampled on, scolded, or neglected; but he does like to be dealt with as a brother, in a friendly, kind, and sympathizing way. He will not be driven to attend daily services, or early communions, and indeed has no time for such things. He will do little for a cold, hard formalist, however correct he may be in ritual. But give him a clergyman who really understands that it is the heart and not the coat which makes the man, and that the guinea’s worth is in the gold, and not in the stamp upon it; give him a clergyman who will not only preach Christ in the pulpit, but come and sit down in his house, and take him by the hand in a Christ-like, familiar way during the week; give him a clergyman who realizes that in Christ’s holy religion there is no respect of persons, that rich and poor are ‘made of one blood,’ and need one and the same atoning blood, and that there is only one Saviour, and one fountain for sin, and one heaven, both for employers and employed; give him a clergyman who can weep with them that weep, and rejoice with them that rejoice, and who feels a tender interest in the cares and troubles, and births and marriages and deaths of the humblest dweller in his parish; give the working man, I say, a clergyman of that kind, and as a general rule, the working man will come to his church. Such a clergyman will not preach to empty benches. Such a clergyman is the best and most efficient defence of the Established Church of England, and will have a congregation who will be her best guards and supporters. (3) I turn next to the painful subject of Church Divisions. It is needless to tell most of you that our Church has never been free from divisions ever since the days of that unhappy man, Archbishop Laud. I know it is the fashion to admire him in the present day, and I have seen book after book written to show how much the Church of England is indebted to Laud. I cannot agree with the writers of these books, and I shall always regard Laud as the real founder of English dissent. But the divisions of the present day are far the most serious that have ever troubled our Church, and demand our most serious consideration. When that great organ of public opinion, The Times newspaper, throws open its columns to lengthy controversial correspondence about such subjects as auricular confession, and gives the public powerful articles discussing religious points in dispute, it is high time to rub our eyes and ask ourselves what it all means. How are we to account for the agitation and excitement, unrest and disquiet, and disturbance about religion which is heard of in every part of the land? I shall offer an answer to these questions. I point to extreme ritualism.

In saying this, I ask you not to misunderstand me. There are Ritualists and Ritualists. There are some who, with many errors, are loyal and faithful men at heart; there are others who hold such strange and heterodox opinions, that it is hard to understand why they remain inside the Church of England at all. These are the troublers of our Israel. These are what I mean by extreme Ritualists. I am firmly persuaded that the root and cause of the present state of things is the strong conviction of many lay Churchmen that it is the secret intention of not a few of the clergy to undo the work of the Protestant Reformation, and to re-introduce into England the erroneous doctrines and worship of the Church of Rome. Rightly or wrongly, they look upon the movement of the extreme Ritualist body with suspicion, and regard it as the highway to Popery. Some of them no doubt have read English history, and know something of the reign of James II. They do not forget the unhappy efforts of that misguided monarch to suppress Protestantism, and bring back Popery into the land, which cost him his own crown, drove him into exile, and caused the Revolution of 1688. They remember those things, and resent the slightest appearance of a return to Romanism in 1898.

The laity throughout the land complain justly about the ceremonial novelties which extreme Ritualists have thrust into our Church worship during the last forty years. They have all been in one direction, whether of dress or gesture or posture or action or anything else. They have been as un-Protestant as possible. They have been borrowed or imitated from Popery. They have exhibited one common bias and animus, an anxious desire to get as far as possible from the ways of the Reformers, and to get as near as possible, whether legally or illegally, to the ways of Rome. They have shown one common systematic determination to un-Protestantize, as far as possible, the simple worship of the Church of England, and to assimilate it, as far as possible, to the gaudy and sensuous worship of Popery. A short catalogue of specimens will show what I mean.

(1) Our Reformers found the sacrifice of the Mass in our Church. They cast it out as a ‘blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit,’ and called the Lord’s Supper a sacrament. The extreme Ritualists have re-introduced the word sacrifice, and too often glory in calling the Lord’s Supper a Mass.

(2) Our Reformers found altars in all our churches. They ordered them to be taken down, cast the word ‘altar’ entirely out of our Prayer-book, and spoke only of the Lord’s table and the Lord’s board. Even one hundred years after the Protestant Reformation, when our Liturgy was finally revised and placed on its present basis, in the reign of Charles II, the Revisers did not attempt to bring back into our Communion Service the word ‘altar.’ The extreme Ritualists delight in calling the Lord’s table the ‘altar,’ and setting up altars in all their churches.

(3) Our Reformers found our clergy sacrificing priests, and made them prayer-reading, preaching ministers--ministers of God’s Word and sacraments. The extreme Ritualists glory in calling every clergyman a sacrificing ‘priest.’

(4) Our Reformers found the doctrine of a real corporal presence in our Church, and laid down their lives to oppose it. They would not even allow the expression ‘real presence’ a place in our Prayer-book. They distinctly repudiated alike both Romish transubstantiation and Lutheran consubstantiation. They declared in their 29th Article that faithless communicants are ‘in no wise (nullo modo) partakers of Christ.’ The extreme Ritualists have re-introduced the doctrine, and too often honour the consecrated elements in the Lord’s Supper as if Christ’s natural body and blood were in them.

(5) Our Reformers found in all our churches images, rood screens, crucifixes, and holy places, and indignantly cast them out. The extreme Ritualists are incessantly trying to bring them back. (6) Our Reformers found our worship stuffed with processions, incense-burning, flag-carrying, candles, gestures, postures, flowers, and gaudy sacrificial garments, and ordered them all to be put away. The extreme Ritualists are too often labouring to re-introduce them. I pause here, and will go no further. I might easily name other things which I regret, and regard as dangerous innovations in this day. Such things are lighted candles on the holy table at Communion by daylight, incense, the mixed chalice, ceremonial ablution, holy water, and the use of mischievous catechisms for children, catechisms teaching Mariolatry, and seven sacraments instead of two, and worst of all, enforced auricular confession. I pass them all by, because in the present state of ecclesiastical discipline, when absolute liberty seems the only rubric, it is waste of time to do more than express regrets. I can only look on and grieve. Some people, I know, regard these things as trifles not worth attention. I cannot see with their eyes. They are very mischievous trifles. They are just the kind of things which in the present day are gradually sapping the foundations of the Church of England. They irritate and annoy the middle and lower classes, who cannot find them in the very Prayerbook which from childhood they have used, and been incessantly urged to value and treat with veneration. They are regarded as an attempt to un-Protestantize the Establishment. If they continue to increase, and are not checked, the end will be disestablishment, disendowment, and disruption. This, at any rate, is my deliberate opinion.

The plain truth is that extreme Ritualism, with its many novelties, seems to be gradually alienating the middle classes and lower orders from the Church of England. These have now the voting power in their hands, and are pretty sure to use it at the next election, and to leave the upper ten thousand in a minority. Thousands of tradesmen and farmers and artisans have an instinctive horror of Popery. It is not wise to sneer at them as unlearned and ignorant men, as some do. They may not be very intelligent or deeply read in theological matters, but they are determined not to put up with Popery. They cannot draw nice distinctions: they are apt to call a spade a spade, and to give things their right name. They may not be able to speak like John Bright, or write like Macaulay, but they have heads on their shoulders, and can and will think. And if they see the slightest attempt to re-introduce Popish ceremonies into our parish churches their suspicions are roused, and they walk off to Chapel. The Churchman who allows these suspicions to be roused may be earnest, well-meaning, innocent-minded, and zealous, but he is no true friend to the Church of England.

Once for all, I must honestly avow that my chief fears of extreme Ritualism arise from the effect which it has on the minds of the lower and middle classes. They do not like it. They will not have it. They call it Popery.

It is my own belief that the strength of the extreme Ritualists lies chiefly among the upper classes. Members of the English aristocracy who like ornate services with much music and singing and little preaching and prayer; half-instructed people who have gradually seceded from Evangelical families; idle young ladies and thoughtless young men who seldom read their Bibles and like lively, sensational worship, and dislike anything which seems plain and dull--these, and such as these, in the present day are continually falling away and proclaiming that they are not satisfied with old-fashioned Protestantism. They are like children who admire poppies more than corn, and like babies who care for toys more than food. But extreme Ritualism does not meet the wants of the hard-working, the hard-headed, the hard-handed masses of the great middle classes and intelligent artisans, the brain and muscle of England. These men want food for their souls and rest for their consciences. They find life too hard and heart-wearing to be content with trifles and toys in worship. If the Church will not provide them with the plain bread of the pure Gospel unadulterated and unmixed, they will leave her and pitch their tents elsewhere.

What the end of our unhappy divisions and the present distressing state of things is likely to be, it is impossible to say. I do not wish to be a black prophet. I have great faith in our Church’s tenacity of life. She survived the temporary suppression of Protestantism in the reign of ‘bloody Mary’. She survived the overthrow of Episcopacy and the proscription of the Liturgy in the days of the Commonwealth. She survived the expulsion of 2,000 most able clergymen in 1662, many of them learned and excellent Fellows of Colleges, by the Act of Uniformity. She survived the secession of the non-jurors when William III came to the throne. She survived the loss of the Methodist body in the last century. She has survived the departure to their own place of Manning, Newman, Oakley, Faber, the two Wilberforces, and many others in our own day. If she is faithful to the grand old principles of the Protestant Reformation, I believe she will yet live and not die. But at present I am firmly convinced that the huge divisions caused by the movement called Extreme Ritualism are seriously endangering the life of the Church of England.

(4) The last subject which I propose to handle in this Conference paper is ‘Church Toleration.’ Toleration, up to a certain point, will always be one mark of a healthy Protestant Church. As long as human nature is what it is, it is useless to expect all Christian people to see all things, both great and small, in exactly the same light and to require from them a Chinese uniformity. Common sense tells us that Churchmen ought to tolerate diversities in matters indifferent about which both Scripture, Prayer-book, and rubrics are all silent, and no question of doctrine is involved. There are a good many small points of this kind, as we must all be aware. To condemn men as heretical and unsound because they do not agree with us about these small points appears to me the height of narrowness and intolerance. We may think our brother very stupid for not seeing things as we do; but in the absence of Bible and Prayer-book argument he has as much right to have an opinion as ourselves. But toleration must have limits; and this is precisely the point at which I see danger ahead in the present day. That danger consists in the growing demand which many are making for the toleration of every kind of religious opinion and ritual practice within the pale of the Church of England. Such a policy, we are gravely told, is the true remedy for ‘the present distress.’ Every clergyman is to be allowed to hold and teach and do what he likes. No one is ever to be called to account either for his ceremonial actions at the Lord’s table or his sermons in the pulpit. Every school of thought, however extreme, is to be tolerated. No prosecutions in any Court, whether spiritual or secular, are to be permitted. The model for the Anglican Church is to be Israel in the days of the Judges, when ‘Every man did that which was right in his own eyes’ (Judges 21:25).

The mere fact that such a monstrous policy as I have described finds acceptance with many Churchmen is, to my mind, one of the greatest perils of the Church of England; and like extreme Ritualism its adoption could only have one result. That result would ultimately be disruption, disintegration, disendowment, and disestablishment. You could not possibly have two or three distinct churches within one communion. It is amazing to me that the advocates of this notable policy of universal toleration do not see that it would infallibly end in our Church being broken to pieces.

No doubt, at first sight the policy of universal toleration looks very specious. It suits the temper of the times. What more likely to provide peace and stop quarrelling than to declare the Church a kind of happy family or Noah’s ark, within which every kind of opinion and creed, and every animal, shall dwell safe and undisturbed, and the only terms of communion shall be willingness to come inside and let your neighbour alone? Nevertheless, I must confess my utter inability to understand how this policy could ever be carried out without throwing overboard all Articles and Creeds, without doing away with all subscriptions, in short, without altering the whole constitution of the Church of England.

Whether this state of things will ever be sanctioned and allowed I cannot tell. Nothing in these days is impossible. Nothing is too absurd to concede and allow in the present mania for complete freedom of thought, and absolute liberty of opinion. I will only ask my hearers to consider carefully what the practical working of the new system would be.

What would be the position of the laity? At present the English lay Churchman, wherever he lives, or moves to, in England, may justly expect to find a certain degree of uniformity in the services and sermons of the parish church. No doubt he may find more singing and surplice-wearing and outward ceremonial in one place than another. One clergyman may give more prominence to one set of verities than another. But on the whole the diversity is generally within limits. There will be an end to all this when the reign of universal toleration begins. He will be startled to hear from one pulpit that much of the Old Testament is defective and uninspired, or that there is no such person as the devil, and no future punishment. If he moves to another parish, he may be astonished to see the Lord’s Supper administered with a sacrificial dress, and accompanied by incense and lighted candles in broad day, and adoration of the consecrated elements. If he dislikes all this he must not complain! However much aggrieved, he will be told that this is the famous brand-new policy of toleration, and that he must submit! Will the laity be content and satisfied with this state of things? I doubt it extremely. There would be general grumbling all over the country. Myriads of the middle class would leave the Church and become Dissenters.

What would be the position of the English clergy? At present, in spite of much friction and jarring, the great majority of the three schools of thought--honest High, Low and Broad, with the exception of violent and extreme men--manage to get on pretty amicably, and respect one another, especially on such matters as education, temperance and missions. There is a common bond of union in loyal love to the Church of England, and a cordial desire to hand her down uninjured to their children. There is a common determination to abide within the limits of our creeds and formularies, and not to transgress them. There is a common dislike of the furious zealots who are striving by addition or subtraction or alteration to depart from the old paths. There will be an end of all this when the reign of universal toleration begins! When the Mass on one side, and avowed scepticism on the other, are formally sanctioned by authority, it is vain to suppose there would not be a large secession of some conscientious clergy from our communion. Others who did not secede would draw together for protection, and crystallize and solidify their own peculiar views, and refuse to recognize any others. In short, there would be a multiplication and increase of our ‘unhappy divisions,’ which would endanger the existence of the Church of England and shake it to the very centre.

What, above all, would be the position of our English Bishops? At present they make a solemn promise at their consecration, that they will be ‘ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word, and both privately and openly to call upon and encourage others to do the same.’ Once let the much praised policy of universal toleration be accepted and formally authorized, and I fail to see the slightest use in this promise. Some of a Bishop’s clergy will hold a Romish view of the Lord’s Supper, and openly call it the Mass. Others will be content with the views of the Prayer-book, and indignantly repudiate incense, the chasuble, a material presence, an altar and a sacrifice. Some of his candidates for ordination will hold broad and liberal doctrines which cannot, by any ingenuity, be reconciled with the Articles, and will write them down in their examination papers. Others, with equal coolness, will offer sceptical statements about inspiration and the atonement. What then, is the unhappy Bishop to do? He will be able to do nothing at all. He must become an ‘honorary member of all schools of thought.’ He will be obliged to smile on all with equal complacency, and to license, institute, and ordain anybody or everybody, without asking any questions at all or requiring any declarations, promises, vows, oaths, or subscriptions. If the Church of England long survived such a chaotic state of things it would be a miracle indeed. When there are no laws or rules, there can be no order in any community. When there is no creed or standard of doctrine, there can be no church, but a Babel. Let men say what they please. A ship without a compass, a light-house without a lantern, a locomotive express engine without a fire, would not be more useless than a Church would be without Creeds, Articles, or Rubrics, and sailing under the flag of universal toleration.

I bring my annual address to a conclusion at this point... Whether Parliament is going to interpose and help us I cannot tell. I see little hope of deliverance from any other quarter. There are handwritings on the wall which it needs no Daniel to interpret. There is a current setting in towards the disestablishment of all national Churches, and it is a question whether we are not already in it. We are daily drifting downward, though some may neither feel nor perceive it, and in a few years, unless we exert ourselves, we shall be over the falls. In a day like this every loyal Churchman should be ready to do his duty, and determine, by God’s help, to hand down the pure faith of the Reformation to his children’s children.