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Da not deface books by marks and writing, . inillllllllllllllllllllinilllllllllllllllinillllllliniliiiiniiiiiKinxill 3 1924 031 320 454 olln.anx issxi Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031320454 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED IN JUNE, 1892, IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. ASAPH BY CHARLES GORE, M.A. Principal of Pusey House; Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford ihe l%ik)sophicsil ^mksn^ ' DEC 1 i : eOBKELL XJ(NIV=;:::TY Ithaca, N, ■?. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1892 [Ali rights reserved^ ^Mi.^2. I LI PREFACE This volume contains the substance of the lec- tures delivered by me in the Cathedral Church of St. Asaph, about the festival of St. Peter in this year, on the subject suggested to me, viz. the Mis- sion of the Church. The lectures were not written, and I had, when they were delivered, no intention of publishing them ; but I was led to alter my determination and have here endeavoured to repro- duce them in substance, with slight alterations and additions, by the help of a report published in the Ohurch Times. The " excitement," alluded to in the opening of the first lecture, was that occa- sioned by the General Election then immediately approaching, which, in Wales at least, had direct reference to the position of the Church. The general argument of the lectures will indicate what is to my mind the best method of Church defence. Before going further I should wish to express my sense of the great good which gatherings of IV PEBFACB the Clergy, such as that in which it was my privilege to take part at St. Asaph, are calcu- lated to do. It would be indeed a good thing if in every diocese, especially every country diocese, a benefaction similar to that which pays a lecturer at St. Asaph, only too liberally, were to open the way to a similar gathering. To get a great pro- portion of the clergy of a diocese together during four days for common prayer and eucharist, and a course of instruction such as leads naturally to mutual enquiry, discussion and intercourse, seems to me a measure admirably calculated to meet the evils which isolation and the prevalence of spirit- ual apathy tend to generate in rural dioceses. Why should not the example be widely followed ? I know that these lectures will be condemned by many as too ecclesiastical. "By making so much of the Church organization," it will be said, "you only alienate the Nonconformists, and pro- mote disunion." My answer to this would be a plain one. If we believe — what the primitive Church and the New Testament documents do, as it seems to me, come near to forcing us to believe — that our Lord founded a visible Church, and that this Church with her creed and scriptures, ministry and sacraments, is the instrument which He has given us to use, our course is clear. We PREFACE V must devote our energies to making the Church adequate to the divine intention — as strong in principle, as broad in compass, as loving in spirit, as our Lord intended her to be ; trusting that, in proportion as her true motherhood is realized, her children will find their peace within her bosom. We cannot believe that there is any religious need which at the last resort the resources of the Church are inadequate to meet. Meanwhile it is of great importance that we should remember that all baptized persons, even if they belong to separatist organizations, are as individuals members of the body of Christ. Surely it would be well if we Churchmen endeavoured to take every opportunity of cultivating equal and friendly social relations with Nonconformists. I believe Dr. DoUinger once expressed a great hope that internal reunion among Christians in England would be largely promoted by the common educa- tion of Churchmen and Nonconformists at the universities. This common education, promoting friendliness among those who are to be clergy of the Church or ministers of different religious bodies, may do much good. But may not such friendly relations be established equally well else- where? Such personal acquaintance is much more likely to do good than the attendance of vi PEEPACE . Churchmen at Nonconformist gatherings to depre- ciate their own Churchmanship. This latter course of action does not appear to minister to any other result than that of promoting disunion among ourselves. Once more, these lectures will be said to minister to sacerdotalism. There is no doubt a widespread horror of " sacerdotalism," but the way to meet it is not, I think, by vague denunciation or vague glorification of an undefined principle ; but by careful explanation of what the Catholic principle of the apostolic succession in the ministry means, as expounded by the best theologians and verified in the documents of the New Testament. Arch- deacon Farrar, in a recent denunciation of "sacer- dotalism" in the Contemporary Review for July of this year, has quoted some expressions of mine in repudiation of the idea of a vicarious priesthood with apparent approval. "It is encouraging to find that the head of the Pusey House recognizes the priesthood of the English Church as ministe- rial . . . and says : ' It is an abuse of the sacerdotal conception, if it be supposed that the priesthood exists to celebrate sacrifices or acts of worship in the place of the body of the people or as their substitutes.' " May I assure the archdeacon that I am not separating myself from other High PREFACE VU Churchmen or from Catholic theologians as a whole, in maintaining the ministerial and repi'e- sentative character of the Christian priesthood ? No doubt, however, as all the best things are most liable to corruption, so there is a reality corresponding to what is denounced as ecclesias- tical exclusiveness and sacerdotal pride. It is in view of this that the Rev. E. F. Russell, of St. Alban's, Holborn, after speaking of the late well- known vicar of that Church as one of those who " to some extent at least, have realized in their own person those revived ideals of the priesthood, its supernatural character, mission, and endowment, which are filling the hearts and firing the zeal of so many of the new generation of our clergy" — adds the words, "Ideals of any sort are dangerous visitants to vain and shallow minds. In the thin soil of a poor nature they bear ugly fruit in arro- gance, or insolent pretentiousness. It is not to be denied that instances of this 'bringing forth of wild grapes ' are not unknown amongst us. But it is far otherwise in the case of those loftier, nobler souls, which, thank God, are also to be found in our ranks. Upon them the dignity of the sacer- dotal character, the glory of a divine trust for the good of human life, weighs with the oppression of an almost unbearable responsibility. They find in Vm PREFACE it a ground, not for self-exaltation or self-assertion, but rather for the deepest self-humiliation. They are filled with concern how they may make good its requirements. A sense of shortcoming haunts them. The vision of what should be prevents all satisfaction in that which is. Hence the feature common to the saintliest among the clergy, every- where and in all times, of a merciless self-efface- ment and self-sacrifice, and, by natural consequence, an especial devotion to the cross of Christ. " ^ In fact, in proportion as we believe in our priesthood, we believe that we must live and die for men ; nay more, that we must represent men, represent what is good even in the least enlightened aspirations of people about us. This ideal is not one which, honestly pursued, will minister to any- thing else than humility and sympathy. For to understand men Ave must learn to honour them, and this is only possible to humility and self-efface- ment. I have enunciated principles in this book which I have endeavoured to justify at length elsewhere. Thus the ecclesiastical principle, and the principle of the apostolic succession asserted in Lecture I, I have vindicated at length in The Church and the Ministry (Longmans) : the Anglican position as 1 Alexander Heriot Mackonochie (Kegan Paul, 1890), p. ix. PEEFACE IX against Rome, also asserted in Lecture I, in the Roman Catholic Claims (Longmans, see 3rd or 4th edit.) : the orthodox position as against de- structive criticism, asserted in Lecture III, in the Bampton Lectures of 1891 (John Murray) : the position of freedom within the Church in regard to many points raised by the criticism of the Old Testament, also asserted in Lecture III, in the Essay on "The Holy Spirit and Inspiration," in Lux Mundi and in the Preface to the 10th edition (John Murray). I must express a hope that if anyone wishes to criticize opinions which I have expressed on these subjects in the following pages, he will remember that they are justified at greater length elsewhere. C. G. Michaelmas, 1892. CONTENTS LECTURE I PAGE > The Mission op the Church 1 LECTURE II Unity within the Church of England ... 29 LECTURE ni The Relation of the Church to Independent and Hostile Opinion 58 LECTURE IV The Mission of the Church in Society . . 85 APPENDED NOTES 1. The witness to the doctrine op a visible Chukch in Clement and Ignatius Ill 2. The recent charge of Archdeacon Sinclair . . Ill 3. The necessity of sacraments not absolute . 114 4. Ikenaeus on the elements OF the Christian Religion 115 xi Xll CONTENTS PAOE 5. The contents of the New Testament tradition . 115 6. The Anglican doctrine of the sacraments . . 116 7. The Anglican requirement of the apostolic suc- cession 116 8. The meaning of the word "spiritual" . . 117 9. Gnostic esotericism and Christian universality . 117 10. Tertullian on the simplicity of Christian sacra- ments 118 11. Goethe on the sacramental system . . . .118 12. That Christians have no need to ask for the Spirit . 119 13. Infants who are proper subjects of baptism . 119 14. Science cannot proceed without assumptions . 121 15. Evolution and its relation to Religious Thought 121 16. The resolutions of the Pan-Anglican Conference on Divorce . . 122 17. Christ our example and our inward life . . 123 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH LECTURE I THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." — St. John XX. 21. Reverend Father in God, my brethren of the clergy and of the laity, — If it be true, as a general rule, that the fault to which the Church in agri- cultural districts is specially liable is the fault of apathy and indolence, yet it is, I suppose, pro- foundly improbable that such would be at all the danger of the Church of Christ in Wales under present circumstances. Whatever else may be the effect of the agitation of past years and of the present moment round the walls of your spiritual building, it must at least have the effect of putting you upon your mettle. It must substitute for any tendency to indolence or apathy a condition of excitement, with what is good and what is bad in excitement. Thus we hear round about us to-day the note of encouragement ; and we hear the note of fear, the presage of disaster : — the note of encouragement, because of the real progress of the Church in recent years, the note of fear, because 1 2 THE MISSION OF THE CHUKCH SO much is still lacking, the ground still to be made up is so vast, the dangers which threaten us are so alarming. We may have been reminded of our own mingled atmosphere of grief and joy by the lesson from Ezra which we read but a few days ago describing the state of things in Jerusalem when the builders after the captivity had "laid again the foundation of the temple of the Lord " ^ : — " All the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice ; and many shouted aloud for joy : so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people." Now, in times of excitement, if we would be spiritually-minded, we have one supreme and para- mount obligation — it is that of recalling ourselves again and again, away from the cry of the religious or political platform, to first principles, those iirst principles in the light of which our true life must be lived. What do we mean by being Church- men? What is the Divine mission of the Church? What is the ground of our imperishable confi- dence ? It is — " As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." 1 Ezra iii. 11-13. THE MISSION OF THE CHUllCH This is, ill its ultimate terms, the mission of the Church. It is the carrying out, in its full scope, of the mission of the Christ : " As my Father hath sent me." God has given us a revela- tion of Himself in His incarnate Son ; and this revelation or disclosure of God in Christ is ex- . pressed in the threefold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. As prophet He not luerely conveys to man a particular message about God, but He discloses God under conditions of our humanity. He is very God, Son of God; and, being God, He dis- closes in the intelligible terms of our humanity what God is. We look to the human mind and will and character, the human justice and love, of Jesus of Nazareth, and we know that we behold nothing else than the mind and will and character, the justice and love, of very God. Moreover what is revealed is not merely the mind or purpose of God towards men ; but, within certain limits, there is a real disclosure of His inner being, of those inner relations which bind altogether in the indissoluble unity of Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Hoi}'' Ghost. Christ is prophet, then, and discloses God to man ; but He is also priest, to unite or reconcile man to God. In this capacity He first exhibits, in supreme perfection and ful- ness, that unity with God of which our nature is 4 THE MISSION OF THE OHUKCH capable. In His own person He represents the perfect attitude of man to God. In His own per- son He offers, in our name and on our behalf, the sacrifice of perfect homage to the divine righteous- ness, which our sins had been continuously out- raging. All this He does first in His own person independently of us and in our stead; but what He first does for us. He proceeds to do in us. He takes us up into union with Himself. We share His manhood, His communion with God, His self- oblation to the Father. Thus He is our priest. Thirdly, He is king; because He comes forth to make His moral claim felt upon our manhood : to redeem and to liberate it, to subdue and to govern it, in all its parts and faculties. Thus He is prophet, priest, and king ; and, as His Father hath sent Him on tjiis prophetic, priestly, kingly mission, so in His turn in the persons of His apos- tles He sends out His Church. "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." The Churchperpetuates the mission of her Mas- ter — prophetic, priestly, kingly. She perpetuates the prophetic mission of Christ, because she carries down through the ages, as its pillar and ground, the truth which once for all was disclosed in Jesus, the truth involved in His per- son, God and man; the truth about God, which He disclosed in His life, His works. His words ; the truth about man, his destiny, his capacity, and the sin which has marred his destiny, and sepa- rated him from God; and the truth about redemp- THE MISSION OP THE CHTJECH 5 tion, the redemption wrought out by God in Christ. This truth involved in the person of our redeemer, Jesus, it is the prophetic office of the Church per- petually to bear witness to, to place continuously before the eyes of men, to inculcate again and again in its varied adaptation to the different needs of different ages. Again, the Church goes forth to perpetuate the priestly mission of Christ. For the work of Christ is not perpetuated merely in words ; there is more to be done than teaching. "The kingdom of God is not in word but in power." There is the gift of grace, the gift of the Spirit, and manifold gifts from the Spirit in view of man's manifold needs ; and the Church is the home in which this rich treasure is dispensed, the household of God in which is distributed the bread of life, a portion to each in due season. It is by the ministration of these manifold gifts of grace that our humanity is raised again into its true relation to God, and brought back into union with Him. And the Church shares also Christ's kingly function. The pastoral office is at least as much an office of ruling as of feeding. The Church is to discipline, to guide, to strengthen, the manifold characters, wills and minds of men, till this human life of ours is brought, in all its parts and capacities, into the obedience of Christ. Thus the Church perpetuates the threefold mis- sion of the Christ. " As my Father hath sent me prophetic, priestly, kingly, so send I you, pro- phetic, priestly, kingly." THE MISSIOK OP THE CHUECH II Now the point which, at this stage, I wish to emphasize is that Christ has thus enshrined in a visible body, a visible Church, those gifts of truth and grace with which He has enriched mankind. Another method might have been adopted. It is conceivable that our Lord might have pro- claimed a certain body of truth, and then left it to make its own way, to advance by its own weight among mankind. He might have scattered truth at random, like "bread upon the waters," over the area of human need. But in fact He did some- thing different. He enshrined the truth deliberately in an organized society ; and it is, we believe, in accordance with the mind of Christ that the Church has in fact gone out into the world as a society based upon a distinctive creed, a creed gradually enshrined in formulas and appealing to a fixed canon of sacred scriptures, representing the origi- nal teaching of Christ's Apostles. Once more, the gifts of grace are made part of a visible system through the ministry of sacraments. What are sacraments ? They are outward, visible and also social, ceremonies intended for the con- veyance of spiritual gifts. There is the gift of regeneration, the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the gift of the bread of life, the flesh and blood of Christ. Now these are spiritual gifts, and we can conceive of their having been THE MISSION OP THE CHUECH 7 given through purely invisible channels ; in fact, they are given by channels which, as I say, are not only visible, but also social. Baptism, through which is conveyed the Spirit's gift of regeneration or incorporation into Christ, is an outward cere- mony, and an outward ceremony which, at the same time, is social. It is a ceremony of admis- sion into a visible society. Confirmation, by which is bestowed the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, is an act of benediction, the laying on of the hands of the chief ruler of a society upon one of its members. The Eucharist again, in which is given and taken the body and blood of Christ, is an outward ceremony, and a ceremony which, in its material basis, involves a fraternal meal. Each of the sacraments is not only a visible but also a social institution ; such as involves that men are to be admitted into, and kept in relation to, a visible society. Once again this society is not only to be a visible reality at any particular moment. It is also to be continuous down the ages. It is in view of this need that the meaning of the apostolic succession of the ministry becomes apparent. For the Church is a catholic society, that is, a society belonging to all nations and ages. As a catholic society it lacks the bonds of the life of a city or a nation — local contiguity, common language, common customs. We cannot, then, very well conceive how its corporate continuity could have been maintained otherwise than through some sue- 8 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH cession of persons such as, bearing the apostolic commission for ministry, should be in each gener- ation the necessary centres of the Church's life. Granted this apostolic succession, there is guar- anteed in the Church as a whole, and in each local church, a perpetual stewardship of the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ, a perpetual stewardship Avhich, at the same time, acts as the link of continuity, binding the churches of all ages and of all nations into visible unity with the apostolic college. Thus by her creeds and her canon of scriptures, by her sacraments and her apostolic succession, the Church is rendered necessarily a visible body. It is spiritual in its aim. It exists for no other purpose than to minister to the spiritual union of man with God. It is' spiritual in its aim and essence, but it is visible in fact on earth. The invisible gift is conveyed through visible channels: the invisible essence is enshrined in a visible body. Of this doctrine of the visible Church we may say that it is first natural and second historical. Its intimate correspondence with the principle of the Incarnation we shall have the opportunity of noticing in the next lecture. First it is natural: it corresponds to a law of our nature. Aristotle said long ago that man is a "social animal." The meaning of this is that though society is made up of individuals, and indeed the aim of society is the development of THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 9 the faculties of the individual, yet man realizes his individuality only by relations to a society. It is the society that makes him man, it is the social life of the nation or the city that enables the individual to become truly human. The moral philosophy of the last, and of the early part of the present century was characterized by individualistic theories, according to which men were regarded as primarily individuals and only secondarily as members of society. But it is noticeable that modern ethical writers, even of a non-theistic school, such as Mr. Leslie Stephen and Mr. Alexander, exhibit a return to the Aris- totelian principle. "We must take society and the individual as we find them in fact," says Mr. Alexander, "the latter with ties that bind him to others, the former as something which we have never known to be formed by the mere coalescence of separate and independent individuals." ^ It is, then, in correspondence with a fundamental law of man's social nature that the religion of the Son of Man should not deal with us first as isolated individuals; that it should present itself as a society incorporating individuals and developing the individual life by first absorbing it. It is because man is social that " the perfect man " ^ is to be realized, not by the single Christian, but by the whole Church. Secondly, this theory of the Church is historical 1 Alexander, Moral Order and Progress (Triibner, 1889), p. 96. sEpli. Iv. 13 [R.V.]. 10 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH — - the title-deeds of Christianity establish it. His- torical proof is a long matter. It cannot be given fully in a single lecture, but I may refer to one or two chief elements in it. 1. The method of Christ. We can conceive, as I have said, easily enough how our Lord might have cast the truth which He came to teach man- kind broadcast over society, and left it to make its own way. But the more you examine the gospels, the more you will note that His method was not in fact this, but the opposite. More and more He concentrates all His efforts upon that little band beside Him, whom by steady discipline He was preparing to be the nucleus of His new and distinctive societj'. On this vigil of St. Peter's Day, we naturally notice this more par- ticularly: He turned away from our human nature as He found it, unsatisfactory and inadequate, when He wished to lay His new foundation. " He did not commit himself to men . . . for he knew what was in man." Those favilts in our human nature, which in every generation have turned philanthropists into cynics, and driven the wisest wellnigh mad — that unsatisfactoriness of our fallen manhood — Jesus knew from the first. Therefore He waited. He laboured, He prayed in our true manhood till He had prepared the soil which should be adequate for the seed He meant to sow in it; till He had found a foundation, not like the shifting sand of ordinary fallen manhood, but strong and rock-like, on which He could build; THIC MrSSION OF THE CHCJRCH 11 and this rock-like character our human nature was to gain only through faith in Himself complete and entire. Thus, when He had gained from the lips of St. Peter an adequate confession of His name, a confession different altogether from the vague and shifting ideas about Himself which were current among the people generally, then it was that He could make a beginning with his new spiritual structure. He turned to Peter, the representative of the new confession, and said, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it tinto thee, but ni}^ Father which is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter — Rockman — and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death shall not prevail against it.''^ We know the subsequent history. The faith of Peter was shared by the apostolic college, and the promise to Peter was, as the Christian fathers perceived, ful- filled to the whole apostolic companj' in their com- mon commission: "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." And the meaning of this whole history is, that Jesus did, with all deliber- ation, establish a distinct society to represent the kingdom of God on earth, a society distinct from humanity at large, based upon the explicit con- fession of His name. Consider further the method of Christ, the institution of social sacraments, baptism and the eucharist, and you will find that 1 St. Matt. xvi. 17, 18. Cf. Holland's Greed and Character, Serm. III. "The Rook of the Church " (Longmans). 12 THE MISSION OF THE CHUKCH it becomes to your mind a more and more luminous truth, that our Lord was constituting, to last till He should "come again," one visible fraternity, the company of His "elect" in which to enshrine the spiritual life which was to have its source in Himself. 2. Xow let us read, from this point of view, the apostolic writing; and we shall notice with what clearness the religion of Jesus Christ appears in history as a visible societ}-, and nothing else than a visible societ}-. Its story is told simplj' enough in the Acts of the Apostles. In that book being a Christian means nothing else than membership in the visible body, the Church. The Church advances from place to place, but the local bodies, "the churches," are the expansions of "the Cliurch " 1 — based upon the "apostles' doctrine," continuing in the "apostles' fellowship," and governed by t-he common apostolic authority.^ The same truth is apparent in St. Paul's epistles — not only in the Epistle to the Ephesians, or in the Pastoral Epistles in which he is speciallj- making provision for the Church's future in view of his own death, but also in an epistle of an ear- lier period. Observe in the First Epistle to Cor- inth, where St. Paul is dealing with the lament- able case of incest in the young church there, how instinctively clear to his mind is the distinction between "those within" and "those without."'^ 1 Acts ix. 31 ; xi. 20 ; xiii. 1 ; xv. 41 ; xri. 5. ^ Acts XT. 28. 3 1 Cor. v. 9-1-3. THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 13 Christianity is not a set of opinions which people may hold, as in fact people in India to-day do hold, more or less, the truth about Christ over a wide area of Hindoo society. To be a Christian means to be within that apostolic society, which was made up of good and evil mingled together, OS this incestuous man, and those aiding and abetting him, were as tares among the wheat, in the young community at Corinth. 3. Let us pass to the sub-apostolic Church. We should all of us make ourselves familiar with those very short writings, the Epistle of Clement and the Epistles of Ignatius. The Epistle of Clement was written about the same time as St. John's Gospel, in the West, at Rome. It comes, then, from under the immediate shadow of apos- tolic influence and teaching; yet notice how unquestionably this doctrine of the visible Church is its characteristic mark. There is no conception of Christianity there discoverable, except this con- ception of an actual society, with its divinely established order and its ofificers commissioned by ajDOstolic authority. 1 You turn from the West, from Clement, from the iniluence of St. Peter and St. Paul, to Igna- tius, in the East, to the sphere of the influence of St. John, and still you find the same thing. Read the letters of Ignatius the martyr, written about A.D. 110, on his way to death. He is hard pressed to deliver his message to the churches before he is 1 See appended note 1. 14 THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH taken away. And the central interest of his mes- sage is twofold. It lies first in the paramount necessity which he discovers in the truth of the Incarnation, that Christ, the very Son of God, did really take our human nature ; and secondly in his insistence upon the truth that God's message to man is enshrined in those visible societies which have for their ministers bishops, priests, and dea- cons, " without which three orders no Church has a title to the name."^ 4. As we move down the record of history we find the Church in different parts of the world assuming different characteristics. In the West, where the Roman genius prevails, the special characteristic is that of order and discipline. In Alexandria Christianity is regarded primarily as the truth, which is to attract, to satisfy, to edu- cate, the intellect and life of man. But this variety in the local characteristics of cliurches only throws into higher relief the common under- lying creed and conception of the visible Church. In regard to the Church, its sacraments, its min- istry, there is no hesitation. The idea of a num- ber of individuals combining to form a church of their own with an organization developed out of themselves is one which, if heard of at all, as among the Montanists, is heard of only to be repudiated. Of the common doctrine of the Church I will quote only one specimen, and it shall be from Tertullian — a passage in which he ^ Igii. ad Trail. 3, Liglitfoot's trans. THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 15 declares that, whatever doctrine may be matter of dispute, this at least cannot be. " Christ Jesus, our Lord," he sa^-s,! >'gQ long as He was living on earth, spoke Himself either openly to the peo- ple, or apart to His disciples. From amongst these He had attached to His person twelve especially, who were destined to be the teachers of the nations. Accordingly, when one of these had fallen away, the remaining eleven received His command, as He was departing to the Father, after His resurrection, to go and teach the nations, who were to be baptized into the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. At once, then, the Apostles, -whose mission this title indicates, after adding Matthias to their number, as the twelfth, in the place of Judas, on the authority of the prophecy in David's Psalm, and after receiving the promised strength of the Holy Ghost to enable them to work miracles and preach, first of all bore witness to the faith in Judgea and established churches, and afterwards, going out into the world, proclaimed the same teaching of the same faith to the nations, and forthwith founded churches in every city, from which all other churches in their turn have received the tradition of the faith and the seeds of doctrine ; yes, and are daily receiving, that they may become churches ; and it is on this account that they too will be reckoned apostolic, as being the offspring of apos- tolic churches. Every kind of thing must be 1 TertuU. depraescr. 20. 16 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH referred to its origin. Accordingly, many and great as are the churches, yet all is that one first Church which is from the Apostles, that one whence all are derived. So all are the first, and all are apostolic, while all together prove their unity ; while the felloAVship of peace, and the title of brotherhood, and the interchange of hospitality remain amongst them — ■ rites which are based on no other principle than the one handing down of the same faith." Ill "I believe in one Holy Catholic Church." This act of faith puts us in opposition to current "undenominationalism," and, as we hold it in the Anglican Church, to the exclusive claim of the Roman communion. Both oppositions must be briefly considered. Undenominationalism. By this name I refer to the theory Avhich represents men as first becoming Christians by an act of individual faith, and, after that, combining into Christian societies, greater or smaller, as suits their predilections. ^ This, you observe, is the opposite of the theory that men become Cliristians, in the first instance, by incorporation into the one Christian society, and then, after that, are bound to realize individ- ually their Christian privileges. This second theory, if what I have been saying is true, is the 1 See app. note_2. THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH IT one which alone is sanctioned in the original documents of Christianity. Whether it seems therefore at any particular moment advantageous or disadvantageous — in any case we are not re- sponsible for it. It is part of that which comes to us from Jesus Christ our Master; but yet the objections to it on the undenominational side are sufficiently clear to demand that we should con- sider what they mean. " This doctrine of the Church seems reasonable enough, as you state it," people say, "and we recognize the strength of its appeal to the New Testament and primitive Christian traditions. But if it comes seriously to believing it, one must ask, Is it not in too manifest conflict with facts ? This suggestion of exclusive channels of grace, does it square with facts, with the wide and promiscuous diffusion of spiritual excellence as the record of history and the experience of life present it? Nay! I must have a freer theory. Verily, 'the wind bloweth where it listeth ' — so is the movement of the free Spirit." Ah, yes ! who could deny it? The Spirit breatheth where He listeth. All life is His in nature and in man. There is no being which lies outside the action of the eternal Word or His Spirit. Every move- ment of good in man anywhere is of His breathing. Everywhere, under His inspiration, men are seek- ing after God, " if haply they may feel after Him and find Him," and "in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness," feareth 18 THE MISSION OF THE CHtJECH and worketh with the help of the Holy Spirit, and in Him is accepted of God. Thus, though in Hooker's words,i "It is not ordinarily God's will to bestow the grace of sacraments on any, but by the sacraments " ; yet God is not tied to any special channels. There are no such things as exclusive means of grace, means of grace as to which one can say, "God worketh here, not elsewhere." But this, after all, is no novel con- cession. "Deus non alligatur sacramentis suis," it was said of old. " His ordinances are laws for us, not for Him."^ In all ages thoughtful theolo- gians of almost all schools have seen that this truth is involved in the recognition of the father- hood of God, and His all-rectifying and impartial justice. But then, the rejoinder comes, what is it you claim for the sacraments ? Just what is involved in the idea of "covenant," and in the idea of " the household " of God. The state of covenant carries us into a region beyond that of dim and anxious seeking. It involves a clear dis- closure of Himself by God, and, corresponding with this, clear and distinct bestowals and prom- ises of grace. A household is a place where food and nurture is definitely and systematically pro- vided. The joy of Christians is the joy of sons in their father's household, children of the cove- nant. This is what we claim for sacraments : not that they are exclusive channels of grace, so that God cannot give except through them the gifts of 1 E. P. V. 57. 4. 2 See app. note 3. THE MISSIOM OF THE CHURCH 19 His love; but that through them only, as elements ill His unique covenant, are definite graces pledged and guaranteed by the Divine fidelity; so that the faithful Christian transcends the conditions of anxious enquiry and passes into the region where he faithfully welcomes the assured gift, and fear- lessly uses it as indeed given. And if you press the question further, and ask, "Does not your theory of the security of the covenant involve the conception of 'valid sacra- ments ' ^ — sacraments, that is, that are only valid when they are celebrated by persons properly ordained in the due transmission of apostolical authority? and does not this theory leave out of account what is, at least in Anglo-Saxon Chris- tianity, an immense and solid part of the working force of Christianity?" — I answer. We must hold to this doctrine of apostolic succession as bound up with the validity of some at least of the sacra- ments. The idea of an ordained stewardship of divine gifts is inseparably associated both in idea and in history with the sacramental system. But what is meant by valid sacraments ? The Greek word ySe'/Sato?, and the Latin word "validus," have a definite meaning. The opposite of secure or valid is not non-existent but precarious. The fact that God promises to give in one way does not destroy His power to give in another. It were blasphemy, then, to deny the Spirit's action where we see the Spirit's fruits. It is impossible for one who thinks seriously to ignore or under- 20 THE JIISSION OF THE CHURCH rate the vast debt which English Christianity owes to nonconformist bodies, to bodies wliicli have fallen quite outside the action of the apos- tolic ministry. But was there not a cause? If we consider the sins, the scandalous neglect and sluggishness of the Church, is it so very wonder- ful that God should have worked largely and freely outside the appointed and authorized min- istries? We should think it blasphemy, then, to deny the spiritual experience of the past or of the present as to the freedom of the divine action, even when the spiritual experience is only viewed from outside. Still less could we dream of asking any one who is not himself a Churchman to be false to his own experience. But we may ask men to be completely true to the whole of experience. Now one part of experience is surely the disas- trous present effect of our divisions. No serious Christian can fail to desire most earnestly restored fellowship among Christians. Something is so very wrong at present that we must ask over again, and more and more as circumstances throw back each man upon first principles, What is the divinely intended basis or form of the Christian religion? And the answer is "by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body." The one body — you view it in history, you trace it back to apos- tolic days — certainly its main lineaments are throughout unmistakeable. There have been many partial developments and causes of division, and local beliefs and changing customs and laws. THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH 21 But there is the one tradition of the faith in its central features constant and original: there arc the apostolic scriptures, the canon of which grad- ually takes the place of the living authority of apostolic teachers, as the ultimate court of Chris- tian appeal : there is the system of the sacraments : there is the apostolically commissioned ministry, with its stewardship of the gifts of truth and grace. ^ These, as parts of the organism of the Spirit, constitute for the whole of the first fifteen centuries the fabric of Christianity. Since the Reformation it is not too much to say that histori- cal enquiry in general, and in our own days, biblical criticism, have rendered it increasingly difficult to tear the Bible out of the structure of the Church, out of the organism of which it forms a part. Nor is it possible to find in original Christianity a " liberty of prophesying " which left men independent of the visible Church: not in apostolic days, if the Acts of the Apostles and the Pastoral Epistles and the Epistle to the Corinth- ians are true witnesses : not in later days, unless Ave do violence to the existing evidence and make of Montanism the truly conservative movement. ^ In regard to the doctrine of apostolic succession, I must say one other word. It has been, in his- tory, too much identified with the threefold form of the ministry. 3 I believe myself that the evi- 1 See app.' note 4. 2 See Tlie C'lutrch and the Ministry, pp. 207-213, and app. notes H and I. 3 See further, The Church and the Ministry, pp. 72 fl. 22 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH dence, as we have it at present, points cogently to this conclusion : that since apostolic days there have been always three orders of the ministry ; not only deacons and presbyters (or bishops according to the earliest use of the term), but also ministers of the apostolic order, superior to the presbyters, such as Timothj' and Titus, or those "prophets" of whom we hear in the earliest Christian litera- ture. I believe that what occurred was the grad- ual localization in particular churches of this apostolic order of ministers which previously had not usually been so localized, and that there was no time when presbyters or presbyter bishops had either the supreme authority of government or the power to ordain ; the change which took place consisting only in the localization of an order of men previously exercising a more general super- vision, and the reservation of the name " bishop " to these localized apostolic officers. But there are certain facts which have led some good authorities to suppose that, at one time, all the presbyters in some churches held together the chief authority in government and the power to ordain, the "episcopate" being as it were "in commission " among them. Now this theory has, I think, from the point of view of ecclesiastical principle, been too much discussed. It does not affect the principle of apostolic succession in the least. The principle is that no man in the Church can validly exercise any ministry, except such as he has received from a source running back ulti- THE MISSION OP THE CHURCH 23 mately to the apostles, so that any ministry which a person takes upon himself to exercise, which is not covered by an apostolioally received commis- sion, is invalid. Now, if the order of presbyters at any time held the right to ordain, that was because it had been entrusted to them by apostolic men. It no more disturbs the principle of apostolic succession than if your lordship ordained all the presbyters in this diocese to-day to episcopal functions. There would ensue a great deal of inconvenience and confusion, but nothing that would violate the principle of apostolical succession. On the other hand, the departure from this principle is mani- fest when presbyters in the sixteenth or subse- quent century took upon themselves to ordain other presbyters. They were taking on themselves an office which, beyond all question, they had not- received — which was not imparted to them in their ordination. There had been a perfectly clear understanding for many centuries what did and what did not belong to the presbyter's office. This is the principle which it is essential to main- tain, and its title-deeds lie in the continuous record of Church history. IV We stand, then, repudiating the undenomina- tional conception of Christianity. On the other hand, we Anglican Churchmen stand repudiating 24 THE MISSION OP THE CHURCH the claim of Rome. When you state the doctrine of the visible Church, sacraments and ministry, people sometimes tell you that the Roman Church is the only logical expression of that theory. Now, historically, the Roman Church is not the develop- ment of the whole of the Church, but only of a part of it; and this historical fact would not matter so much if spiritually the Roman Church represented the whole of Christianity — the whole of Chris- tianity as it finds expression in the first Christian age, or in the New Testament. But the more accurately any one studies the subject, the more clearly he must, I think, come to see that the Roman Church, whatever be its graces, powers, and excellences, is a one-sided development of Christianity: a development of certain qualities in Christianity with which the Latin genius had special affinity, its disciplinary and governmental powers, but a development which ignored other qualities at least as certainly belonging to Chris- tianity, such as the strengthening of individuality which it is intended to promote, the responsibility which it inculcates for personal enquiry, the love of the bare truth, the considerateness, the fairness which it ought to foster. The Roman Church does not represent the whole of Christianity, nor the whole spirit of Scripture or of the early Church. To some of us this will seem under- stating the truth ; but a statement of the truth as far as it goes it certainly is. Now it is not only the case that the Roman THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 25 Church does not in fact represent the whole of the Christian spirit, but it is compelled by its principles to exorcise part of it, and cast it out as evil. It has committed itself to unhistorical doc- trines, e.g. that the pope not only is, but has always been, infallible, that Mary was immacu- lately conceived, and that these doctrines have alivays ieen recognized elements in the Catholic faith. These dogmatic positions it puts outside the region of free enquiry and criticism. Thus it is com- pelled by these unhistorical dogmas to condemn the free appeal to history on matter defined by the Church, and to repudiate the responsibility of a private, i.e. personal, judgment on matters of faith. And this repudiation is bound up with a deficient appreciation of the claim of truth, intel- lectually and morally, for its own sake no less than for its results. For some minds Rome is, so to speak, put out of court by positive abuses, e.g. the withdrawal of the chalice from the laity, exaggerated devotion to St. Mary and other saints, obligatory confession to the priest, compulsory celibacy of the clergy. To other minds it appears a more convincing con- sideration that Rome is not, and cannot be, the whole of Christianity. For it is certainly true that Christianity was not meant to be narrowed as it came down the ages, or to become less and less applicable for the freeing of the whole of our manhood. And I want to make it plain to you that this 26 THE MISSIOK OF THE CHURCH narrowing of Christianity by a development which however powerful is one-sided, coincides with the abandonment of the ancient rule of faith. The ancient rule of faith involved an appeal to Scrip- ture as the ultimate criterion in matters of doc- trine and morals. Nothing could be required of a Christian as an article of faith which could not be proved out of Scripture. This great principle secured the Church from the danger of an accumu- lation of dogmas such as the Roman development has in fact brought with it. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the doctrine of the Treas- ury of Merits, with its cori'elative in Indulgences, have the effect of narrowing the appeal of Chris- tianity by excluding large classes of minds who desire historical evidence for historical facts, and Avho resent the undue accumulation of spiritual power in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities. But these doctrines could not have been pro- pounded as articles of faith so long as the appeal to Scripture was legitimately retained. There is nothing in Scripture which can even with specious pretence be appealed to on their behalf. Thus it is that the maintenance of the ancient appeal to Scripture is the main security that the faith shall not be narrowed as the centuries go on. It shall develop but not narrow. It is by this appeal to Scripture that Anglicanism stands or falls in its controversy with Rome. Yes, and it is able to make it stand. We have no cause to apologize for our position ; THE MISSION OF THE CHITRCH 27 we have cause rather to be thankful for it. Angli- canism represents a combination which, if Chris- tianity is to do its work, must exist and be amongst the most beneficent forces of catholicity in the world. It is the glory of the Anglican Church that at the Reformation she repudiated neither the ancient structure of Catholicism, nor the new and freer movement. Upon the ancient structure — the creeds, the canon, the hierarchy, the sacraments — ■ she retained her hold while she opened her arms to the new learning, the new appeal to Scripture, the freedom of historical criti- cism and the duty of private judgment. No doubt she made mistakes. But in the main she approved herself a wise steward, biinging forth out of her treasury things new and old. Therefore it is that she stands in such a unique condition of promise at the present moment among the Churches of Christendom. I believe then in one Holy Catholic Church. This visible structure of the Church is imperfect as you see it at present; imperfect in its unity, because human arrogance and impatience have brought about division; imperfect in catholicity, because human slackness has left so large a part of the world still outside its area; imperfect in sanctity through the lawlessness of human sin. Still it is this structure which has been given to us, in and through which to work for God. In its authorization and in its possibilities it remains divine. 28 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH Can I express the reality of our responsibility for the Church, or the limits to our responsibility, better than in words we read yesterday ? " Mor- decai said to Esther, If thou altogether boldest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlarge-- ment and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed; and who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"i That is, first: We cannot destroy the Church of God. As that lies outside our respon- sibilities in its structure, so it lies outside our power to destroy it. The gates of death shall not prevail against it; and no failure or sin on our part can imperil it. However we behave "En- largement and deliverance shall arise to the Jews — to the Israel of God — from another place." But in our own particular district of responsibility, or within ourselves, we can destroy the Church of God. "Thou and thy Father's house shall be destroyed." And if there is trial here, is there not opportunity also? "Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" 1 Esther iv. 14. LECTURE II UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND "But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy." — 8t. James iii. 17. Reverend Father in God, my brethren of the clergy and of the laity, — The Church, we saw, is a visible society ; that is, an organized body with distinctive rites, officers, conditions of member- ship. But the elements in her constitution which render her a visible society do not disqualify her for permanence or catholicity. Her definite creed, her fixed canon of sacred books, her sacraments, her ministrj', belong to no particular epoch and no particular race or kind of men; they belong to what is simply human in us; they are as well fitted for one age as for another: that is to say, they are elements in an institution intended for universality — the Catholic Church. They belong to us therefore to-day, in our special opportunities and difficulties, as truly as they belonged to any section of the Church in past time. Now, if with this conviction we look around and ask ourselves 29 30 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH whether the Church here and now is making full use of the materials with which God's bounty has supplied it for the conversion and edification of mankind, or if not, why not, we are struck at once with what is obviously the main present hindrance to our effectiveness — I mean our divisions. The acuteness of the divisions inside our own Church is less, I suppose we may say with thank- fulness, than it was some years ago. Parties in the Church have been brought more together. It has been the main advantage, perhaps, of Church meetings, whether diocesan or general — Diocesan Conferences or Church Congresses — that they have brought men of different schools to know, understand and tolerate one another better; and there is undoubtedly, speaking generally, less strain iia England among religious parties than there was. They are merging more the one into the other. They are learning more the one from the other. The great streams of Church revival are undoubtedly fusing in their result, their issue, their influence. In a word, we are less divided than we were ; but still far more divided than we ought to be. Internal divisions still constitute an immense hindrance. We are to consider them this afternoon. The Church of England provides us with a definite limit to division — or at least to legiti- mate division — in providing us with a rule of UNITY WITHIN THE CH0RCH OP ENGLAND 31 faith. What is this Anglican rule of faith in principle, and to what does it appeal ? I cannot answer this question better than by recalling to your minds the fact that the Convocation which imposed on the clergy subscription to the Articles of Religion, issued a canon to preachers enjoining them to " teach nothing in their sermons Avhich they should require to be devoutly held and believed by the people except what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments and what the ancient fathers and catholic bishops have collected out of the said doctrine." The English Church appeals in some sense to Holy Scripture and Catholic tradition. If we examine the earliest document of Chris- tianity we find that the Apostles taught a certain body of truth which was to be the mould of Chris- tian character. This was called from the first "the tradition," "the apostles' doctrine," "the faith once for all delivered to the saints."^ St. Paul recognizes in this tradition a limit even to his own teaching: "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. "2 This tradition, then, was the thing handed over once for all to the Church. The Church was to be "the pillar and g'-ound of the truth, "3 because, as a visible society, she was 1 2 Thess. iii. 6 ; Gal. i. 9 ; Acts ii. 42 ; Jude 3. Cf. Rom. vi. 17. 2 Gal. i. 8. "1 Tim. Hi. 15. 32 THE MISSION OP THE CHURCH entrusted with the task of handing on this tradi- tion of faitli and life.^ If we now pass beyond the apostolic period we find this tradition of the faitli — which later down was embodied in the Creed — being taught in the sub-apostolic churches; so that when the Chris- tians of this period were confronted with the Gnostic heresy, they met the loose and shifting form? of idealism which are grouped under this name by an appeal to the consent of the apostolic churches. "Look," they said, "at the various churches, and you find them teaching the same creed. They cannot have got to such agreement by accident." So Tertullian put it in his incom- parable epigram: "Is it possible that so many -churches of such importance should have hit, by an accident of error, on an identical creed? "^ This tradition constitutes the primary teaching for Christians. Look at the New Testament: you find it is not intended for primary teaching. Every book of the New Testament is manifestly written for the edification of people who had been already instructed in the doctrine of the Chiirch. Thus if you look at the preface to St. Luke's Gospel, you find that St. Luke's object in writ- ing is that Theophilus may know more accurately and more fully what he had already become fa- miliar with by oral instruction. So St. Paul, St. 1 See app. note 5. ^ Bepraescr. 28 : " Ecquid verisimile ut tot ao tantae (ecole- siae) in unam fldem erraverint, " UNITY WITHIN THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 33 Peter, St. James, St. Jude, St. John, and the anthor of the Epistle to the Hebrews imply that they write to remind or recall or edify those who had been already instructed in the rudiments of faith and life.^ The Church, then, is the primary teacher; the Church tradition is to constitute the first lesson. What, then, is the function of Holy Scripture ? It is to be the perpetual criterion of teaching. It is the quality of tradition that it deteriorates, it becomes one-sided. Thus there is no doubt that Christian doctrine would have undergone consid- erable alteration if there had been no court of ajDpeal. The departure from primitive doctrine which in fact took place in the mediaeval Church was, as I have said, mainly due to the fact that the Church abandoned this constant appeal to Holy Scripture as that which is the sole final cri- terion of the faith. The Church, then, is the primary teacher; the Bible is the final court of appeal in all matters which concern the faith and morals of the Christian Church. " The Church to teach, the Bible to prove" — that is the rule of faith. II On the basis of this rule of faith, let us now consider what in fact is the doctrine which the Church of England sets before us as authoritative. 1 See 1 Cor. xi. 23 ; xv. l-o ; Gal. i. 8-9 ; Heb. v. 12 ; 2 Peter i. 12 ; James 1-19 [R. V.] ; Jude 3 ; 1 John ii. 20. 34 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 1. She sets before us, first of all, the Creeds. The Creecb give us the doctrine of God; God as He is revealed in Christ; God in His triune being, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Also the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God, who being God, for our sakes was made man. Also the doc- trine of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church — one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Also, finally, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and of eternal judgment. Now all these are parts of the universal and prim- itive tradition of the Church, and they respond to the requirement of the appeal to Scripture. We do not get them from the Bible in the sense that each one picks his religion for himself out of the book ; but, taught by the Church, we find them in the Bible. 2. Passing now beyond what is given us in creeds, we come to the Catechism. The Cate- chism lays down what is to be known and believed by every Christian at starting. Therefore it incor- porates and interprets the creed. It gives us also a moral rule of life in the Ten Commandments, Avith their interpretation. Then a rule of worship and sacramental life. The Lord's Prayer is rightly treated not as one prayer among many, but as a pattern and type of all Christian prayer. And the sacraments are interpreted for us in the in- stances of Baptism and the Eucharist, as ordained modes of communion with Christ. All these ele- ments in the Catechism have formed part of the UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND SF) tradition of tlie Churcli from the first ; and asraiii they are justilied by reference to the New Testa- ment. The same may be said of the doctrine implied in tlie services with which all are intended to be acquainted — the services of Baptism, Con- firmation, Matrimony, Ordination — Avhich more or less supplement, on the sacramental side, the teaching of the Catechism. 3. Beyond this, we have the Articles. Of the Articles you find a certain number, and those the most definite, are occupied with restating the truths of the Creed. ^ Four others^ are occupied with laying down the principles of the rule of faith — ■ the authority of the Church in matters of doc- trine, the truth of the Creeds, and the necessity of the appeal to Scripture. Whilst the inspira- tion of Holy Scripture is implied, there is no special doctrine laid down in regard to its particu- lar nature or limits. In other Articles ^ we have clear statements as to or,iginal sin, on the principle of justification by faith, and on other matters of less importance. If you look further you will find, the more carefully you study them, that in many respects their language is studiedly vague. It is the purpose of a dogma to define. For exam- ple, when the Arian controversj' arose, and the Greek Creed was remoulded to repudiate the teachinof which undermined the Godhead of our Lord, the effort was to seize the exact point of the controversy, and, by the selection of the most 1 Artt. I-V. 2 Artt. VI- VIII and XX. ^ Artt. IX-XI. 36 THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH definite term possible, to exclude and condemn what was regarded as subversive of the whole basis of Christian doctrine and life. On some central points the Church of England possesses, as has just been pointed out, definite and explicit dogmas ; but in regard to many mat- ters which were in controversy at the period of the Reformation, on points which belonged respec- tively to the Calvinistic, Lutheran, and Triden- tine positions, you find that, as a matter of fact, the Articles appear to have been intended not as definite solutions but rather as " articles of peace " ; they aim at shelving rather than defining ques- tions. You have quite definitely Calvinistic articles formulated at the period of the Reforma- tion and Lutheran articles and Tridentine decrees : but the Articles of the Church of England on points then in controversy lack the definiteness of the Lutheran, or Calvinistic, or Tridentine deci- sions. And we may be thankful the Church of England did not commit herself. Indefinite /orm- ulce are not indeed satisfactory. They may appear to say much and in fact sa)- little. This is, I think, the case with many of our articles. But none of greater definiteness drawn up at that moment could have failed to commit us to what, in the great issue, would have imperilled our posi- tion. The moment was one of transition and movement. It is very untrue to call it a moment of settlement. This is apparent in retrospect. What has become of definite Calvinism and defi- UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 37' nite Lutheranism all over Europe? Has Rome stopped at the Tridentine position ? Had the sixteenth century the materials at its disposal which are necessary for understanding the early history of Christian doctrine? However unsatis- factory then the articles are positively as state- ments of truth, they are satisfactory in what they are not. It is the very fact that the Church of England at the Reformation did not commit her- self to any one of the three, then dominant ten-, dencies, which leaves us now at the present moment in a unique position of hopefulness among the Churches of Europe. We are left standing firm on the Creeds, the Sacraments, the apostolic succession of the ministry; and on that basis we are to rise with the help of the clearer knowledge we now have, to the full apprehension and presentation of the ancient faith. Thus for example in the case of the Sacraments, if we seek to know what the Church of England lays down for our acceptance, you find certain broad limits of belief clearly marked, and within these a space which is left without further defini- tion. On the one hand, the Church of England in the latter part of the Catechism, in the offices of Baptism and Holy Communion and in the 25th Article, excludes the Zwinglian view, according to which the sacraments are merely symbols. In repudiation of this view the article accepts the mediaeval definition of sacraments as "effectual signs of grace" (efficacia signa gratiae), i.e. sym- 38 THE MISSION OF THE CH0ECH bolic acts which not only symbolize but also effect or convey Avhat they symbolize — God Himself, according to His promise, working invisibly on the occasion of each visible ceremony. ^ On the other hand, the Church of England repudiates cer- tain current medigeval doctrines in regard to the sacraments; as, for instance, the mediaeval doc- trine of Transubstantiation, which is declared, among other things, by denying the reality of the outward part of the sacrament of the Eucharist, to overthrow the nature of a sacrament, which has an outward and natural as well as an inward and supernatural part. Once again, in regard to Holy Orders, the Church of England requires the maintenance of the apostolic succession. Slie confines her min- istry to those who have been actually ordained in this manner. She does not require the reordina- tion of Roman Catholic priests who join the An- glican communion, but she does require ministers of religious bodies who have not received episco- pal ordination to be ordained afresh. Thus she requires that men should in fact have received their ministry by apostolic succession, Avhereas on the other hand she does not require any exact or exj)licit expression of belief in regard to it.^ Once more, in regard to Confirmation, the language of the service implies the bestowal of the Holy Spirit on the occasion — ^the gift of the Spirit and the Spirit's gifts ^ — but there is no exact expression 1 See app. note 6. ^ xbid. note 7. UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 39 of belief required in regard to the nature of the bestowal. Obviously, whether we like it or not, we are left with certain clear limits of belief laid down, and within these limits a considerable space is left open within which different opinions are permis- sible and possible. For my own part, it seems to me a very tolerable state of things that a Church should subsist on a very limited amount of positive dogmatic require- ment, on the basis of which the individual teacher and the individual learner shall grow together into a fuller perception of the whole meaning of the Catholic faith. Ill On the basis of dogmatic requirement which I have thus endeavoured to state let us consider what is the position of the most conspicuous par- ties in the Church of England. I mean those three traditional parties of which we have been accustomed to speak as High, Low, and Broad. Speaking generally, their genesis and character- istics are sufficiently apparent. The High Church party has been traditionally identified with the assertion and maintenance of what we should call ecclesiastical, sacerdotal and sacramental princi- ple. The Evangelical party has been specially associated, on the other hand, with the mainte- nance of principles such as circle round the doc- trine of justification by faith, and the necessity of 40 THE MISSION OF THE CHITRCH conversion. The less-defined Broad Church party has had for its most characteristic positive func- tion — ^by distinction from Avhat it has disparaged or denied — ^to emphasize good moral living as the one end and test of Christianity : to maintain the principle that all truth which is preached, all ordinances ministered, are to be judged by the tendency to promote good Christian living. Obviously each of these three positions is rooted in something which the Church of England un- doubtedly maintains. What is presumably the case is that the maintenance of truth in each case has become by reaction more or less one-sided, and there has been consequently antagonism through want of correlation. This suggestion will be worth our Avhile to consider in some detail. I will start from the point of view of sacrament- alism — -the point of view of the High Churchman. He maintains the principle that the system of the Church, with her apostolic ministry and sacra- ments, is the divinely appointed framework of the spiritual religion. This principle I will endeav- our to interpret, and show its relation to the points of view identified respectively with Evan- gelicalism and Broad Churchmanship. The "spiritual" religion. What is meant by this term? In religious discussions among us the term is always being used and yet not very often defined. In the ordinary English mind the term "spiritual" still carries with it associations of indefiniteness. The "spiritual" is supposed to be UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 41 opposed to the "material," and so to anything tan- gible, visible, definite; or "spiritual" is opposed to what is " literal " in interpretation — it is meta- phorical, and so again indefinite. Thus external ordinances, because they are external, rules that are definite, because they are definite, truths that are exactly stated, because they are exactly stated, are more or less commonly supposed to be unspiritual and contrary to the character of the spiritual religion. Now this state of mind is in fact due to a fundamental mistake which a little steady think- ing ought to uproot. To consider the question as a matter of lan- guage. " Spiritual " in the New Testament is never, in fact, opposed to what is material or visible, but only to what is carnal — to that in which the higher part of our nature is dragged at the heels of the lower. ^ Thus the birth of Isaac is spiritual — "he was born," St. Paul says, "after the spirit " ; while the birth of Ishmael is carnal "after the flesh, "^ not because the birth of Isaac was one whit less visible or material than the birth of Ishmael, but because it came about so as to express a spiritual and divine purpose, and not as the outcome of mere physical passion. Or, again, what is spiritual may be opposed to what is formal — to an act, that is, which is external only and has no moral meaning behind it. So St. Paul speaks of circumcision which is " in the 1 See app, note 8. 2 Qai. jy. 29 ; cf. 1 Cor. x. .3, 4. 42 THE MISSION OF THE CHUKCH letter," that is, in external form only, and not "in the spirit," as having nothing moral, corre- sponding to itji but, on the other hand, the supremely spiritual act, the act of Christ when " in His eternal spirit He offered Himself without spot to God," gains its meaning through its being visible and enacted in the flesh — it was an " offer- ing of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."^ Once again there is one passage where "spirit- ually" means metaphorically or allegorically in the matter of interpretation, the passage in the Apocalypse in which the city is spoken of, " which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, "^ where it is implied that these sinful places have a mystical meaning, because their sinfulness represented a principle wider than themselves. But this use of the word "spiritually" is unique in the New Testament, and in itself it only implies that cer- tain definite outward objects and incidents en- shrine eternal principles. Positively, then, what does the New Testament language teach us to understand by the spiritual religion, as opposed to what is carnal or formal or unreal? The central idea of the spirit is that of life : the Christian Church is spiritual because in a unique sense she, on her pentecostal birthday, received the communication of divine life, in its threefold form of power, of knowledge and of love. The spirit is power: as for the "letter" — the written laws of the Old Covenant — it could effect 1 Rom. ii, 29. 2 Heb. ix. 14 : x. 10. » Rev. xi. 8. UNITY WITHIN THE CHITECH OP ENGLAND 43 nothing. It conld inform the conscience or ter- rify it, but it could not strengthen the will and make it effective for good; but the Spirit gave life, so that the " requirement of the law " is "fulfilled in us who Avalk after the Spirit. "^ Again, the Spirit is knowledge : as for the ritual ordinances of the old law they were dumb forms ; they carried with them little information, or such information as witnessed to their own inadequacy ; but the Spirit fulfils the heart of the Christian with a joyful intelligence of the mind and char- acter of God, a happy insight into the meaning of all he is required to do. Once more, the Spirit is love : as for the old law, it laid injunctions upon men, which had to be obeyed, simply as they were enjoined, with nothing more than the obedience of slaves; but the men of the New Covenant have received the Spirit of God, and, one spirit with Him, they act in consciotxs correspondence with His redemptive purpose, and serve in the glad co-operation of loving sons. Power; intelligence; love; power from God, intelligence of God and His purposes, love to God in Himself and in His creatures — these make up the content of spirituality. But power, intel- ligence, love, as they are represented in human beings, beings of body and of soul, beings linked to one another in outward fellowship, can be in no sort of opposition to the world of matter and form. So holy is this human flesh, this thing of 1 Rom. viii. 4. 44 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH matter and form, that the Son of God has taken it for ever into His own person, and glorified it in the Godhead. Acts the most spiritual, then, like the sacrifice of Jesus, are not one whit less spirit- ual because they are external; truth, the more spiritually it is known, is so known as to be expressed the more exactly; life, the more spirit- ual it is, becomes the more definite in purpose and concrete in result. The acceptable worship, the worship "in spirit and in truth, "i is as much an external worship as that supreme worship which the Son of Man offered to the Father in the sacri- fice of Calvarj', or offers still at the glory of the right hand; but it is worship which enlists all the full energy of will, and intelligence, and love. The Christian Church had very early in her career an opportunity of showing that she did not conceive spirituality to be in any antagonism at all to external religion. She came out in her earliest history into a philosophical atmosphere impregnated with what is called "dualism" — that is, the assertion of the antagonism of the flesh and the spirit. Greek philosophy in its youth, in spite of its intense realization of the beauty of outward form, never succeeded in shaking off this delusion : upon its old age it returned with power- ful reinforcements and brought it into captivity. The reinforcements lay in that wave of Oriental influence which in the early centuries of our era flooded our Western world. All the then preva- 1 St. John iv. 24. UNITY WITHIN THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 45 lent sects of Gnosticism, and Manicli?eism, all the forms of philosophical dualism, had this in com- mon — ^they thought of evil as lying, more or less completely, in the material world, in the flesh; they thought of the material world as too low, too vile, to be in direct contact with God or the direct work of His hand ; they thought that true religion lay not in the consecration of material and com- mon things, but in getting aloof from them and separate from them. To get away from the body was to get near to God, and the highest religious state was that rapt ecstasy in which the soul, hav- ing become unconscious of all external surround- ings and independent of all bodily affinities, could contemplate God. The Church's primary and great conflict was with this temper of mind as represented in Gnosticism. There is, I believe, no later struggle in which her true principles emerge so clearly, as certainly there was none in which she had to struggle so hard for very life. The opposing principles came to the front in a fourfold theory : — (1) that the material world could not be directly the handiwork of the good God, the Father of Jesus Christ. (2) that God could not exactly by incarnation have taken into Himself the human flesh and been born and suffered and died. (3) that the Old Testament, as earthy and sense-bound, could not be the work of the same God as the New. 46 THE MISSION OP THE CHUROH (4) that the acceptance in faith of a definite creed and definite ordinances and definite scrip- tures miglit be good enough for the vulgar and ordinary Christian, but the inner circle of the perfect and the illuminated, the spiritual men, soared above those restrictions and were inde- pendent of them. To these positions the Christian Church in its different parts returned a blank negative (1) The whole world, they said, material and spiritual, is of one creation : it is rebel wills that are the source of moral evil, not material nature, which is God's work, and rightly used is verj- good. (2) So good is material nature, that God has really entered into it and assumed for ever the human flesh. (3) The Old Testament is of one piece with the New, and is to be interpreted on that principle of gradual development which is a conspicuous law of the divine working, and by which the spiritual destiny of the universe gradually appears. (4) The outward ordinances, the fixed tradition and Scriptures, the ministry, sacraments, and dis- cipline of the Church, are part of her essence and belong to her glory. They are her glory. You in the pagan world, or you who borrow the pagan principle, may have one sort of religion for the intellectual and another for the simple. But it is the glory of our religion that she puts them on the same basis ; declares every man susceptible of UNITY WITHIN THE CHXJECH OF ENGLAND 47 spiritual perfection, and holds them altogether from birth to death — high and low, rich and poor, one with another. ^ Life in God, knowledge of God, communion with God, may be to the pagan only the ultimate goal of the rapt ecstatic, or the privilege of a philosophic self-abstraction from the things of sense possible to a very few : we say to all men. Take it as the gift of God, made tangible and visible in common ordinances ; the submitting to be taught a creed, the reception of a washing of water and a laying on of hands ; the common par- taking of bread and wine, these are simple unos- tentatious acts, which all are capable of, which all can approach. But through these common things of the common world our God, who took, and wears, our common flesh, still communicates His hidden essence. This Avas the boast of the Church; and these sacramental principles, we are bound to note, antedated long the development of ritual. Elab- orate ritual is to the Catholic Churchman, who knows his principles, never more than a matter of variable expediency. At least, in early days a Christian like TertuUian was not less sacramental for being somewhat puritanical. People are scan- dalized, he says, by the simplicity of our sacra- ments : they contrast the commonness of the means with the greatness of the gift promised. The heathen rites, on the other hand, gain imposing- 1 See app. note 9. 48 THE MISSION OP THE CHUECH iiess by pomp. But with us a man descends into the water, and a few words are spoken, and he is washed, and there is no apparatus or elaboration ; and for this very reason it seems improbable that the gift of eternal life should have been conveyed. But what a miserable incredulity, cries Tertullian, have we here, which denies to God His proper attributes — simplicity and power ! ^ The Church then is the home of the spiritual religion because she, in special and pre-eminent sense, is endowed with the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of power and intelligence and love. And the manifold gifts of this Spirit are distributed in such a way as befits the "household of God," in which men are to be "fed with their portion of meat in due season." Each stage of life has its special need: each special need has its appropri- ate gift; and the appropriate gift has its ordained channel: all is ordered and simple as befits a household of security and peace. The beginning of the new life, which Christianity perpetuates from Christ, lies in that regenerating act of God upon the soul, in which by the Holy Spirit's action it is united to Christ and admitted into the fellowship of His holy body ; and this regenerating act is ministered through an outward channel which is symbolical and also more, the ordinance of Avashing, which symbolizes and also conveys the cleansing gift of the new life. And next to birth comes strengthening. The strength of the 1 See app. note 10. X^NITV "WITHIN THE CHURCH <^F ENGLAND 49 Christian, as also liis consecration to share in the priesthood and. royalty of Christ, lies in the inward presence of the Holy Ghost, and this gift of the Holy Ghost is communicated since apostolic days by the laying on of hands. And the life imparted must be nourished : and again the perpetual nour- ishing of the new life out of the fulness of the Christ is effected through the operation of the Holy Ghost upon the simple symbolical elements of bread and Avine, mingling the heavenly with the earthly things. It is by the same principle that the general human instinct which is recognized in Christian marriage has its benediction in a special ordinance giving definiteness and sanctity to the mutual engagements of man and wife. So also that orig- nal distinction in the Christian society of the pastor and the flock is emphasized by a special ordination which solemnly conveys in outward form the consecrating and empowering of the man to his share in the apostolic ministry; and through the outward form is pledged the accompaniment of the inward qualifying gift. Once more, the scandalous sin which outrages the Christian com- munity, or the secret sin which burdens the troubled and perplexed conscience, has its appro- priate remedy in the special discipline of peni- tence, which, first public and then private, at one time voluntary, at another compulsory, at one time occasional, at another normal, has ever remained a permanent fact of the Church tradition — an out- 50 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH ward ceremony of penitence and restoration, which is accompanied by a spiritual and heavenly acquit- tal, and is a part of that rich storage of graces with which the Church encompasses our varying needs, and leads us on from the font where she has baptized us to the death-bed where she still with holy rites ushers us into the unseen world. The Church is the home of the Spirit, whose man- ifold gifts are ordered and distributed in corre- spondence with our advancing needs: as she is also the home of a definite disclosure of God, Who has communicated Himself to man, and revealed Himself in the person of His Son.^ This idea of the Church, as one states it, seems most credible, most natural. The strength of its appeal to tradition, to the earliest traditions of many Churches, is undoubted. Its sanction, in the language of the New Testament, is hardly more open to question; while, once again, it is in conspicuous agreement with the needs of men, and with what one may call the principle of the Incarnation — the dignity which the Incarnation gives to material things. But there is no idea so true as not to admit of being abused. And, in fact, this Church idea has so degenerated at times into formalism, or materialism, or tyranny, as to account for, if not wholly to justify, reactions — reactions which are one-sided. It is only so that it could have come about — as conspicuously it has come about in our own country — that St. 1 See app. note 11. UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 51 Paul's doctrine of Justification by Faith could be ])ut into opposition to what is also St. Paul's own doctrine of Church and Sacraments,^ and identified with a party of its own, while it has been left to another less defined party to reiterate that all reli- gion has after all no other end or test than the production of good living. What is it but a mis- erable and foolish one-sidedness that can ever have put these truths into antagonism one to another? For St. Paul's doctrine of Justification by Faith, what is it? It means that what justifies a man, or puts him into a relation of acceptance with God, is not anything material, or external, like circumcision, or any methodical observance of a prescribed rule like the Jewish Law, but some- thing more true to man's fundamental dependence upon God; it is the surrender of man's being into the hand of God considered as making in Christ the simple offer of His love. Wearied with his efforts to justify himself, wearied with his own false independence, man at last, within or without the discipline of the Jewish Law, learns to find his true peace in surrendering at discretion to God, and simply accepting the offer of His love. This is justifying faith; it establishes the right relation of the soul to God. But it is the begin- ning, not the end, of that relation. The man grows "from faith to faith"; or (again in St. Paul's words) he "has access by faith into that 1 See Rom. vi. 3 ; Tit. iii. 5 ; Acts xix. 1-7 ; 1 Cor. x. 16 ; xi. 23-34 ; 2 Tim. i. 6. 52 THE MISSIOlSr OF THE CHURCH grace wherein" for the future "he stands."^ That is, the believing soul, whose simple sur- render to God's promises has removed all the obstacles to his justification, is baptized in the "bath of regeneration," "baptized into Christ." He receives the Spirit, he enters into the com- munion of the body and blood of Christ. In this new position, the function of his faith is changed. Intellectually it dwells upon the person of the Redeemer, and passes from faith into knowledge ; morally, it keeps hold of God who has appre- hended the soul ; also it becomes a perpetual cor- respondence with the movements of the Spirit whom it has received; a perpetual assimilation, manducation, appropriation of spiritual gifts. Christians in the New Testament are never regarded as persons who need to ask for the Spirit as if they had not already received Him ; but they are called upon to stir up, to use the gift which is already in them, or to abstain from grieving the Spirit whom they already possess.^ The function of faith in the Christian life is to draw upon or realize its existing resources. But all this doctrine of faith is in no kind of antagonism to the doctrine of the Church and the sacraments, rightly understood. Everywhere life and growth consists in an appropriation by an organism of what is supplied to it from Avithout. This holds good in the spiritual life. The Church is, in recent language, the environment of the 1 Rom. i. 17 ; V. 2. ^ See app. note 12. UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 53 sovil, the sacraments constitute the external supply. The supply is real. The sacramental gifts are valid through the Spirit's action without any effort on our part. They are God's gifts simply. But their whole effect on us depends on the degree of assimilative and appropriative effort — the de- gree of faith — which we exercise. According to our faith is it done to us. This was the law of Christ's physical healings during His life on earth. The instrument of healing was the power or virtue which went out from His sacred person, but the effect in each case was dependent on the response of faith. Where there was no faith, there was no healing. According to their faith it was done to them. Their faith it was that made them whole. So it is with our Lord's work of spiritual re-creation now that He is at the right hand of God. The restorative power, of which His sacraments are the ordained channels, depends for its efficacy in each case (not for its reality, I say, but for its effect) on the response of faith. Nor is it that the gift from without is God's, and the response from within simplj^ our own act. No! Within us and without it is the Spirit's action. From without He comes to us with gifts of grace in all the organized system of His Church: within us He works to quicken our coldness, and to overcome our wilfulness, till we exhibit the free and eager response of a converted' heart to the offer of God. And all the external supply of grace, and all the inner response of faith, 54 THE MISSION OP THE CHUKCH is but a means to that which is the only end of all religion — the renewal of the soul, of the whole man into the image of Him who created it. Brethren, need we be for cYer in reactions ? Let us who believe profoundly in the sacraments see to it that we never let them, so far as lies in us, be spoken of, or treated, or used as charms. Let us give no countenance, for instance, to any use of baptism such as would allow children, who are not in immediate danger of death, to be baptized when there is no fair prospect of their being brought up to understand the meaning of their Cliristian vocation — a practice, I believe, utterly contrary to fundamental Christian principles. ^ Let us see to it that on our side there is no failure to preach the necessity of the faith which alone jus- tifies, and of the converted will. Let us see to it that we never allow in our thoughts or our lan- guage any other measure of ecclesiastical success than the promotion of holiness, the promotion of goodness, in the actual lives of men. Let us see to it we are not one-sided; and then we may have better hopes of reunion among ourselves in our own Church of England. For to St. Paul the three aspects of truth which, more or less roughly, have been identified with three parties in our Church, are not opposites but correlatives. Tliree times he states the essence of the true religion in antithesis to the externalism of the Judaists, and three times in different terms. "Circumcision," 1 See app. note 13. UKITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 65 he cries three times over,i"is nothing, and uncir- cumcision is nothing, but . . . faith working by love." Do you ask what is tlie essence of true religion viewed as the response of man to God? It is operative faith. And again "... the keep- ing of the commandments of God." Do you ask what is true religion considered in its end and fruit? It is actual conformity of our lives to the divine requirements. But once again "... a new creature." Do you ask what is the essence of true religion considered from the side of God? It is that new creative act — the new creative act of grace — which in all its stages finds its expres- sion in the Church, and its instruments in the sacraments. The system of grace, the response of faith, the result in obedience — brethren, these are not opposites; they are the correlatives the one of the other. They are all of the essence of the one spiritual religion. IV Let me summarize the conclusions to which I have endeavoured to lead you. 1. The Church of England has certainly a dogmatic basis. Any one who would dissolve that basis of dogma — for example hj suggesting that men should be admitted to the ministry who do not in simplicity of heart hold the Creed — is undermining thereby the basis of our religion 1 Gal. V. C ; vi. 15 ; 1 Cor. vii. 19. 56 THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH as a whole ; for our religion rests upon the word of God, the self-revelation of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. 2. The Church of England insists upon a limited amount of dogma, and beyond that admits a considerable degree of divergence of opinion. It seems to me very possible that this is the ideal of Church government; — that whilst it was nec- essary there should be certain definitions, and that the limits of Church communion should be laid down up to a certain point, possibly it was not desirable that exact definition should proceed far. In matters of ordinary civil government, we recognize that some external legislation is neces- sary, but over-legislation we think a bad thing. The same may be the ideal in Church government also. In any case it is the fact that the Church of England, in Creed, Catechism, and Articles, fairly interpreted, makes certain dogmatic claims ; and beyond the point to which they extend admits of a considerable degree of divergent opinion. 3. Beyond the point to which the dogmatic requirement reaches we are still responsible; re- sponsible for completeness of knowledge and of teaching. Each one of us starts with certain fa- vourite doctrines and views of truth. There are parts of the Bible we like to read; parts about which we feel uncomfortable. Starting with such predilections we are, I say, responsible for advanc- ing, by prayer and efforts of spiritual apprehen- sion, till those parts of triTth least congenial to UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 57 our nature are really appropriated. We are to put ourselves to school impartially at each of the books of the New Testament. "We are to grow to an intelligent grasp upon the Catholic faith, and to remember that we are the merest slaves if we are satisfied with bare orthodoxy. What is actu- ally prescribed is but the starting-point for spirit- ual apprehension. 4. The temper of theology ought to be the temper of appreciation. A great deal in life depends upon the temper of mind in which we approach the opinions of others ; upon whether we endeavour to see as much good in them as possi- ble, or, on the other hand, approach them in the attitude of criticism, to find what we can take hold of and find fault with. And of these two tempers of mind there is no doubt which is the more Christian; for "the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, considerate, persuasible, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by them that make peace." LECTURE III THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO INDEPENDENT AND HOSTILE OPINION "Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have re- ceived mercy we faint not. But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor liandling the word of God deceitfully ; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God."— 2 Cor. iv. 1, 2. Reverend Father in God, my brethren of the clergy and of the laity, — We have been occupied in considering the divine mission of the Church as a whole, and the doctrinal basis on which we rest in the Church of England in particular; this afternoon we are to go on to consider the relation in which we stand towards independent or hostile forms of thought in the world without us. What in general is to "be our attitude towards opposition ? Is it to be in the main an attitude of controversj^ ? I answer, no. I remember when I was being ordained priest, the late Bishop of Oxford was interpreting to the candidates for ordination St. Paul's advice to Timothy and Titus — "Let no man despise thee," "let no man de- 58 ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 59 spise thy youth"; and he said this did not mean that we were to go about asserting ourselves every- where, but that it did mean that we were to be the sort of men whom people could not despise. Now this lesson for the individual priest applies also to the Church. "Let no man despise her." This does not mean that she is to be towards all alien or independent societies in a perpetual attitude of controversy and self-assertion ; but that living by her own proper principles, she is to be her true self, the sort of body, having for her representa- tives the sort of men, that people cannot despise. We must bear our witness, teach the truth com- mitted to us, and do our duty; and certain it is that by teaching positively what we have to teach, and being positively what God means us to be, we shall find ourselves in the_ right relation towards hostile or alien modes of thought. We are to teach positively what we have to teach. On this some emphasis needs to be laid. One often hears alarming things said about the forces opposed to us. People get into a condition of panic and express their alarm by denunciation ; but in fact, our strength lies in looking to our own household, and setting it in order. For example, one sometimes hears alarming things said about the progress of the Roman Church in England. I do not believe, in fact, that the 60 THE MISSION OP THE CHURCH Roman Church in England, as judged by its own statistics, can be said to advance. But, from time to time, you hear no doubt of people becoming Roman Catholics. Now when you inquire into such cases, or have the circumstances brought under your notice, you find generally that the cause of such secessions, at least among the laity, lies in our not having done our duty by them in the Church — in the Church of the place where they lived not having really shepherded them. Either the penitent soul -was not quite frankly offered those opportunities of confession which the Prayer-book would desire that it should be given ; or the anxious and inquiring spirit was not met with the advice and solicitude which it had a right to ask for. It was either that we clergy met some suggested " difficulty " by ridicule or evasion, not being ourselves sufficiently equipped to give the advice or counsel needed, or that they of the laity had not, in fact, been instructed as they ought to have been in the case of which we have no kind of reason to be ashamed — -the case, positive and negative, for the Church of England. If you turn in another direction, and dwell upon the rise and progress of Nonconformity, there can be no question at all — it is, in fact, hardly ques- tioned — that it was due in the past, not to any spirit of schism, but, at least in the great majority of instances, to the fact that the Anglican Church was not behaving as the true mother of the people. You know this was the case in the Church of ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 61 Wales. Let her become again but the true mother in Israel, and we may be quite sure that gradually — not at once, for evils of long standing are not rectified at once — the children will come to recog- nize their mother. I say then that the prevalence of forms of thought or belief alien or hostile to the Church of England, is to lead us, first of all, to be more true to our own principles, and to teach with more positive plainness what the Church commissions us to teach. We are not to be denunciatory, but positive. But to be this involves a good deal of study, thought, and prayer. It is easy to indulge in vague denunciations in the pulpit; and easy again to give ourselves to general moral exhorta- tion. Our people are given too much vague denunciation of what is, or is supposed to be, evil, and they are too much exhorted. What they need is to be taught positively, clearly, and scriptur- ally. I am sure there is a danger at present that advance in the conduct of services, advance in ritual, should outrun the real advance in positive teaching. No one who is wise would undervalue reverent worship. I may remind you of the sen- tence of Hooker: "Duties of religion performed by whole societies of men ought to have in them, according to our power, a sensible excellency cor- respondent to the majesty of him whom we wor- ship." Who could deny this? But there is a danger that solicitude about services should out- run solicitude about teaching, and that we should 62 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH be over-easily satisfied with "getting a good ser- vice." Let me exemplify the lack of positive teaching in the matter of Holy Communion. An exhortation to Communion is introduced constantly at the end of a sermon. But what is the use of such reiterated parenthetic exhortations ? People will be ready enough to come to Com- munion if they understand what its inestimable benefits are. But in fact they do not understand the scope of the Eucharist as communion, as sacri- fice, as worship. If they are to understand it, we must not be satisfied with a parenthetic reference, but must supply thorough and systematic teach- ing. We ought to devote entire sermons to par- ticular subjects, not selected in accordance with our own proclivities, but following impartially the order of teaching suggested by the Creed and Catechism, always supporting the teaching of the Church by constant and obvious reference to Holy Scripture — "teaching out of the Bible." To do this involves study on our part. It is only by study that we can do our duty. And it is all- important that our teaching should be, not accord- ing to the partiality of the individual, but, fully and systematically, the whole of Avhat the Church puts into our hands to teach. It has been one- sided teaching, or the neglect of parts of the truth, that has been in past history the excuse, if not the justification, for schisms. We are, then, not to be primarily controversial; but to be occupied in positive teaching. And yet. ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 63 without being controversial, we shall find ourselves in opposition to alien and hostile forms of thought of different sorts in different directions. Thus we must be combatants, for we are to "try the spirits," and "even now in the world are there many antichrists." Do not let us give way to effeminate complaints of the forces now opposed to us, talking about "the good old times," and contrasting them with the times in which we live ; for, in fact, if there is one thing which history makes more certain than another, it is that there never were any good old times. Think, for exam- ple, of the circumstances of the apostolic age; ' tliink of the Epistles of St. John to the Seven Churches, or the Epistle of St. Jude, documents which belong to the end of the apostolic age and speak of the dangers which then threatened the Church. Were those good times? Or pass into the second century, and study the struggle against various forms of Gnosticism. Hear Celsus, from without, saying that Christianity was already split into so many sects that there was nothing in common among them but their name;^ and Tertullian, from within, regretting that "the most faithful, the wisest, the most experienced in the Church were for ever going over to the wrong side."^ Were those good times ? Or, the age of the Councils; the age to which we owe the Creeds, strong, clear, masterful formulas? That was an age of wild controversy; and, amid the 1 Grig. c. Gels. iii. 12. ^ De pr'aescr. .3. 64 THE MISSION OF THE CHUKCH din of jarring voices, people seemed hardly able to hear the notes of certain truth at all. That was not a "good time." How was it with the Middle Ages? People talk about the "ages of faith." Certainly, there was more credulity, more readi- ness to accept what was proclaimed on authority, whether true or false ; but, so far as faith implies some moral effort, there is no reason to think that there was more of it than there is now. Read St. Bernard, and you will see he did not look on his times as good times. Once more, take the age of Bishop Butler. "It is come," he says, "I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject for inquiry ; but that it is now, at length, discovered to be fictitious. And, accordingly, they treat it as if in the present age this were an agreed point among all persons of discernment; and nothing reinained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." Were those good times? Or, take the generation immediately behind our own. A good old churchman who died not many years ago, used to protest, if he heard men of a 3'ounger generation complaining of the evils of the time: "If you had been born when I was, you would wonder that there was any Church of England left." It is- the fact that in every age Ave have to struggle for a truth that seems hardly bestead. ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 66 II In this connection we ought to study more, perhaps, tlian we do the message of the Apoca- lypse. It is the book of the New Testament which conveys one particular lesson — the les- son that the Bride of Christ is for ever passing through those same phases of fortune that Christ in His human life passed through: the cause the same, the seeming defeat the same, the same the passage through the grave and gate of death to a joyful resurrection. 1 The Apocalypse lays down the main conditions and principles of our per- petual spiritual conflict. Under symbolical forms we have set before us the great drama and the dramatis personce. On one side, the forces of God — God, Who sitteth upon His throne, the sover- eign; and the Lamb, crucified and triumphant, God's revelation to men of the victory of meek- ness and self-sacrifice; and the seven Spirits before the throne, representing the universal, secret workings of God; and the Bride, the New Jerusalem, representing the true humanity, the true society, which God has been gathering, and which will be at last supreme. And, on the other side, symbolical forms of evil : " The old serpent, called the Devil and Satan," Satan setting himself up in opposition to God ; and the great Beast, the beast of violence and persecution, the counterpart 1 Eev. xi, 7-12. 66 THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH of the meek Lamb who yields Himself to sacrifice, and through sacrifice triumphs; and over against the seven Spirits the second Beast, the beast who represents the deceitfulness of sin, the spirit of worldliness and false philosophy; and over against the Bride, the New Jerusalem, the woman, the harlot, representing false human society, whose characteristics are gathered from all corrupt forms of civilization Avith which the Bible presents us, Sodom, Babylon, Egypt, Rome — the persecuting empire of Rome — and Jerusalem, the apostate Church, rejecting and crucifying Christ. These "persons " of the spiritual drama are exhibited to us in conflict, and the spectacle of conflict passes into that of the divine victory. And the whole succession of spectacles teaches us the conditions of our own present struggle — the nature of the antagonism we are to expect, and the weapons of conflict which we are to use, and the issue which lies before us. Sometimes evil will present itself in the form of persecution; sometimes with "the deceitfulness of sin, "no longer as the lion, but as the adder, in the subtle influences of worldliness and disbelief. And the method of defence — the method of the Lamb and His martyrs — is to be the method of mingled loyalty and meekness. We are to be like Christ, who rode out because of the word of truth and righteousness, but truth and righteousness linked by meekness. Only through meekness can we triumph; truth and righteous- ness not linked by meekness can never represent ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 67 the cause of Christ. In the spirit of Christ's meekness we are to bear witness, to bear witness (if it be so) even unto death, and in the confidence of His resurrection to loolc forward to the certain issue. For the kingdoms of the world are to become tire kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ. Through the grave and gate of death the Church passes to her triumph. in We are to bear our witness, then, as Church- men, in tlie face of alien and hostile forms of thought. Let us consider this — to-day only as concerns our witness to theological truth; for the consideration of our moral witness we will reserve for to-morrow — first as it affects us at home, and secondly with reference to the mission field. First, as it affects us at home. And whilst it is impossible to survey in any sense the whole field, I would call your attention to four points on which, it seems to me, we are especially called to maintain our witness at the present crisis of thought. 1. We are to bear witness to the principle of faith. People in many directions are disposed to disparage faith, and to complain of its being required of them. The complaint is in the air: it influences men almost without their knowing it. They have an idea that it is "unreasonable to believe what cannot be proved." It is not 68 THE MISSION OF THE CHUKCH unreasonable. And in vindicating the principle of faith it is of great importance that it should be set in antithesis not to reason but to sight. The popular antithesis of faith and reason is a very dangerous one, and it is unscriptural. In the New Testament faith is opposed always to sight, never to reason; and the difference is significant. "Faith is the evidence (or test) of things not seen." Faith is the faculty in us by which we pass out beyond present experience, and lay hold upon eternal realities and grounds of confidence. But this faculty for going beyond present ex- perience is a faculty of our reason. It is in order to be rational — that is, in order to give rational account of the world and our own nature, in order to realize all that our nature is capable of — it is in order to be rational that we travel beyond what we can see and are brought, more or less fully, into contact with God and eternity. The principle of faith is brought into exercise to some extent in all- human life and knowledge. Thus the ultimate postulates and principles on which physical science depends — such as the unity of all things, the universality of law, the persistence of force — these are not truths that can be proved. They are assumptions that science is bound to make.^ Thus there is something akin to faith necessary in the very beginnings of scien- tific inquiry. But its necessity is much more apparent in social relations. Human life is based 1 See app. note 14. ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 69 on the principle of faith. You must go far beyond what you can prove as to people's trustworthiness; you must trust the instinct of sonship and brother- hood. And speaking generally you find your trust justified. On the whole, " according to our faith, so is it done to us. " The man who goes furthest in be- lieving in humanity is the man who draws most out of it, whilst the most sceptical and cynical is most often deceived. In the sphere of personal moral- ity the requirement of faith is still more apparent. If we would be moral we must throw ourselves upon the right, in the supreme confidence that what ought to be can be. And faith is only find- ing its true home and justification when it goes one step further on and realizes its personal rela- tion to God. For "unto Thyself, O God, hast thou made us, and unquiet is our heart until it rest on Thee." Still our faith is rational. It is not without reason that we believe. God has not left Himself without witness in nature and con- science; still more in Jesus Christ. But witness is not demonstration. We need the venture of faith to "see him who is invisible." Our Lord develops this faculty in His disciples — our Lord who is the Master of our true humanity. He, I say, whilst giving the disciples grovinds for believ- ing in Himself, and in the Father through Him, does obviously encourage and develop in them the faculty of faith. We then are not to be ashamed of it, or apologize for it, as if it were unreason- able. Nor, inasmuch as it is the noblest of our 70 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH faculties, shall we be surprised if its exercise is sometimes difficult. It is hard, as it is supremely noble, to "endure as seeing him who i« invisible." It would not be worth all it is worth if it was not often difficult to believe. Nor is it, any more than any other truly human faculty, a power which we can exercise without God's help. "No man can say (or continue to say) that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Ghost." Faith is difficult then, and a habit which requires divine assistance ; but it is rational. It is rational, I say, because it and it alone enables us to give a rational account of all the facts of the world, of all that science and history discloses, and also of all that lies hid, half realized, half concealed, in the depths of our own being; of all that spiritual men have shown our humanity to be capable of in sonship to God. Faith enables us to move through the whole world of nature and of man as those who have the clue to its secrets; who are at home in it; who are "not afraid of any evil tidings, for their heart standeth fast, trusting in the Lord." Indeed the spirit of Christian sonship is the only true ration- ality. 2. We are to bear witness to the Being of God, and that in an intellectual atmosphere which, under the influence of a school of scientific inquirers, exhibits some tendency towards Agnos- ticism — -that is, the denial that we can know of the existence of God at all, or anything about Him. We maintain, then, in the face of this ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 71 tendency, that we have grounds for knowing — in part knowing, and in part believing — that God is, and what He is. Ought it to distress us that we should find ourselves confidently affirming what the represent- atives of physical science — that is, the represent- atives of the branches of knowledge in which the greatest recent advances have been made — not seldom deny? I answer, on the whole, no: in part because the agnosticism of men of science is exaggerated; and when they are, as very many of them are, earnest believers, their freedom in the facts of science is not one whit diminished by their Christian faith. In part because it is a fact conspicuous in the history of mankind that, whereas the representatives of great intellectual movements at different epochs have interpreted truly the movement which they represented in itself, they have been strangely blind to the place which it was destined to hold in the whole of human knowledge or human life. Thus the great Greek philosophers interpreted truly Greek institutions, and estimated aright their positive value, but were blind in thinking these institutions final and the last word of social progress in the world. The representatives of the Eoman empire, again, knew the real dignity and value of that empire, but were blind to the rela- tive place it would hold by the side of its despised contemporary the Christian Church. The Ee- formers, once again, had real truth on their side ; 72 THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH there were real principles ■whicli they were vindi- cating, real abuses against which they were pro- testing; but how extraordinarily blind, speaking generally, were the Reformers to the sum of posi- tive religious forces with which they had to reckon. What a surprise to them would the religious history have been which links their time with ours! They were as blind surely to the forces of Catholicism as were the Deists of the last century to the real if dormant strength of supernatural Christianit}'. Once again, and for the last time, the Radical reformers of the earlier part of this centuiy set their minds on certain reforms which are now practically accomplished. They estimated rightly the necessity and the pos- sibility of the reforms they advocated; but how short-sighted they were as to the good that would be effected in human life as a whole by the mere external enfranchisement of individual action. I learn then from past experience that I must attend with great respect to the positive teaching in their own department of any body of men who represent with tolerable unanimity a great advance in knowledge or power. I must attend with great respect to the scientific teaching of scientific men. But I shall not anticipate that representatives of one particular movement are likely to estimate rightly the place it will take in the whole of human life. Thus I shall not listen with the same respect to the representatives of science when they pass from teaching science to denounc- ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 73 ing theology or depreciating religion. Those inside a movement cannot generally see suffi- ciently clearly what lies outside it. Those whose interests are less specialized are more likely to estimate the place it will take in the whole of human life. We must regret, I think, that theologians were unduly slow to recognize the vast amount of evi- dence on which reposes the scientific theory of evolution through natural selection. But in pro- portion as people lose their fear of it and come to accept it, they will surely perceive that the claim made for it by agnosticism, the claim that it enables us to account for the development of the world without postulating throughout the action of mind, is an altogether exaggerated claim ; it is altogether to over-estimate the function of natural selection. ^ Science has, in fact, taught us a great deal as to the method of creation — how continuous it has been, how gradual, how even tentative — but it has done nothing at all to explain the origin of force, of matter, of life, nothing at all to dissolve the conviction which belongs to the rational mind of man, that this world of universal order and law and beauty, this world which " while it works as a machine also sleeps as a picture," is the work of mind and spirit like ours — mind and spirit which is the vast whole of which ours is but the tiny product or reflection. 1 See app. note 15. 74 THE MISSLOK OF THE CHURCH 3. We are to maintain a historical religion — a historical revelation of God in Christ; and this in face of a destructive criticism. In the Church Congress in this diocese last year yon had a discussion of the Church's gains fi-om Biblical criticism. The discussion dealt almost entirely with criticism as ajoplied to the Old Tes- tament. XoAv criticism as applied to the Old Testament presents us at present with a great many unsolved problems and some fairly certain conclusions which seem to demand rather unex- pected changes in our conception of the literary character of some of the books, and of the process by which they took their present shape. That subject was dealt with from this place at large and very ably by Professor Kirkpatrick last year.^ We need not suppose, as his lectures sufficiently indicate, that the change of position ultimately required of us will be such as the extremists among critics would desire. The existing evi- dence in fact points in two directions. If, on the one hand, literary analysis emphasizes the com- posite character of the "books of Moses," and historical inquiry enforces the belief that the Mosaic law was the result of a gradual process of development and centralization ; on the other hand, oriental archpeology discloses the existence of the knowledge of writing, and considerable develop- ment of literarj^ skill, both in Palestine and ' The Dirine Library of the Old Testament (Macmillan, 1891). ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 75 Egypt, a century before the Exodus. Such dis- coveries as those at Tel-el-amarna make it easy to suppose that some written law and written records go back among the Jews to the period of Moses. ^ Certain changes, however, will be required of us. We must remember, as St. Augustine has expressed it, that, if it be wronging the Old Tes- tament to deny that it comes from the same God as the New, on the other hand, it is wronging the New Testament if the Old is placed on a level with it. The Old Testament represents the grad- ual method by which God led men on, " in many parts and many manners " through a process of education preparing the way for Christ. The meaning of the Old Testament is to be sought in the partial witness which each book bears to the central truth of the Incarnation. Now it seems to me unfortunate that the dis- cussions at your Church Congress dealt so dispro- portionately with the Old Testament. For surely, when we are thinking of our "gains from Biblical criticism," our attention is more naturally directed in the first instance to the New Testament. Surely, it is here that our gains are most conspic- uous. Those who are alarmed at the tendencies of Old Testament criticism, sometimes ask where it will stop, whether it will not go on to the New 1 On this subject, and on the questions connected with Old Testament criticism generally, I have endeavoured to speak more at length in Lux Mundi (John Murray, 12th ed. 1891), pp. 247 ff. and Pref . to 10th ed. 76 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH Testament. But, in fact, such a question shows an ignorance of the situation. Criticism began with the New at least as soon as with the Old Testament. The New Testament documents have been sifted by the most thorough criticism which can be conceived; and, so far from having been invalidated, they stand in a stronger position than that in which they stood fifty years ago, in pro- portion as the examination has been more thor- ough. Trace back the Synoptic Gospels to the two primitive documents which so many critics postu- late — the original collection of discourses repre- sented in St. ^latthew, and the original narrative of events represented in St. Mark's Gospel. When you consider the Christ depicted in these, do you find that you have got any nearer to a merely " natural " or human Christ, to one who by gradual accretion was raised into a supernatural figure ? No : the fundamental narrative of events is permeated by miracles which resist all attempts to explain them away; and the original collection of discourses represents in all its unmistakable force the strictly divine claim of our Lord. In- vestigation, again, shows us at the very roots of St. Paul's teaching the doctrine of the Incarna- tion, as a matter not in dispute, any more than the fact of the resurrection, between him and the Judaizers. Investigation once again leaves the strength of the evidence on the side of the authen- ticity of the fourth Gospel. And, as Professor ITS BBLATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 77 Sanday has very recently said, "we cannot help being reminded that scarcely one of the discov- eries of recent years has not had for its tendency to bring back the course of criticism into paths nearer to those marked out by ancient tradition. "^ Certainly historical evidence is not generally demonstrative, and the historical title-deeds of our faith do not appear to be intended to force conviction upon any man's mind; but they do support it and justify it. I am sure that I am vsrithin the mark in saying that in view of recent criticism of the New Testament, it is those who deny and not those that affirm the faith of the Church who do violence to the evidence.^ There are other issues, even in the New Testa- ment, which are secondary and less decisive. But in regard to the central facts on which our histori- cal religion depends, the historical witness stands with unimpeachable strength. We are not then to go about decrying criticism. We are to invite criticism to do all it can, and ask only for justice. We must remember further that our historical religion — our religion which looks back to a dis- closure of God, through a historical incarnation, in the person of Jesus Chiist — ^ gives us another great advantage as rational men. The doctrine of the triune being of God, which is unmistakably involved in our Lord's language about His rela- 1 See Two Present Day Questions (Longmans, 1892), p. 37. 2 See this argument at greater length in Bampton Lectures, 1891 (Murray), Leot. III. 78 THE MISSION OP THE CHUKOH tion to the Father and the Holy Ghost — this doc- trine of the triune being enables us to maintain a rational Theism. Theism requires us to think of God as an independent, eternal, spiritual Being. Indeed there is an end to the humility or reality of religion if God is thought to depend upon us in order to have some one to know and to love. But you cannot think of an independent, eternal, spiritual life in God, if the being of God is blank and monotonous unity. The life of spirit, the life of will and knowledge and love, involves relationship. For love there must be a lover and a loved; for thought there must be a thinker and an object of thought ; for fruitful will there must be the perpetual passage of will into effect. And it is thus the doctrine of the Trinity, though we could not have invented or discovered it for ourselves, which makes our thought of God ra- tional, and real, because it shows us God not in isolation, but in perpetual fellowship within Him- self. The eternal being of the Father passes out into its adequate self-expression in the eternal Word or Son; and the Father in the Son knows Himself and loves Himself; and the fellowship of the Father and the Son finds its perfection in the Holy Ghost who is the eternal product and joy of both. We are to maintain, then, the historical Christ as the disclosure of God to us, and as the founda- tion of an intelligible Theism.^ 1 See Bampton Lectures, Lect. Y. ITS KELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 79 4. Lastly, have we not need to maintain "the Gospel " in view of reactions against what is called "old-fashioned Evangelical Christianity"? This old-fashioned Evangelicalisnr dealt almost exclusively with the doctrine of atonement and the vicarious aspects of Christianity. And these were preached in a way that did violence to the moral sense of mankind. There has come, and rightly, a great reaction ; but it appears to be imagined in some quarters that we are almost to abandon the preaching of the doctrine of atone- ment and of the vicarious aspect of Christianity, confining ourselves to the doctrine of the Incarna- tion and its extension in the sacraments of the Church. Now nothing that has taken such hold of the human heart as the doctrine of atonement could ever pass into oblivion. It may have been put into undue prominence, and we must rectify the balance ; but no more. There are two elements in the Gospel : there is first, Christ for us — our example, our sacrifice, God's simple gift to us from outside ; and, secondly, Christ in u.s, renew- ing our lives inwardly by His Spirit into union with His own. Now it is not a question of whether we shall preach the one or the other of these elements in the Gospel. If we would be true to the New Testament, we must preach and hold them both. For it is Christ in us that makes intelligible Christ for us ; and it is Christ for us who prepares the way for Christ in us. It is Christ for us in 80 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH awful solitude "treading the wine-press alone" who lives the true human life and offers the per- fect human sacrifice to the divine righteousness. This is God's gift to us which, in utter repudia- tion of any merits of our own, we are simply to accept in faith. But Christ can thus act " for us " because He proceeds to act "in us." His Spirit comes forth out of His ascended and glorified manhood and links us on to Him ; henceforth it is Christ in us imparting His life to us and identi- fying us with Himself. If then ^\'e are to bear a complete witness, if we are to appeal to the con- sciences of men both as they desire pardon for sin and as they desire actual righteousness, we shall not preach one or other of these elements in the Gospel, but the truth of both. Here are four ways in Avhich our witness is required : — as to the principle- of faith : as to the being of God: as to His revelation of Himself in the historical person of Jesus Christ and the events of His human life : as to the full meaning of the Gospel which is embodied in Christ's per- son, our sacrifice as well as our example and our new life. IV I have left myself but little time to speak of the witness which the Church must bear abroad among the heathen. It is the same witness but under different conditions — ■ in face of Hindu, Bud- dhist, Mohammedan forms of thought, in India, ITS RELATION TO INDEPENDENT OPINION 81 China, Japan, and. the region of the Turkish Empire lost to the Church, and in face of less developed forms of belief among less civilized tribes. Not nearly half of the world, we must remember, is yet Christian. It is the catholic mission and claim of the Church that we are called upon to vindicate. This means that Christ is adequate for all races, and can satisfy all forms of human need. Already in the history of Chris- tianity it has appeared how each fresh race as it has been brought within the Church, has both itself found its sanctification there, and also has brought out some fresh aspect of the full meaning of Christ. It was but a very small part of Chris- tianity which emerged in the purely Jewish Church. The Greek race, with its unique powers of intellect, had for its vocation to bring out the treasures of wisdom which lay hid in Christ. To it in the main we owe our theology. The Roman race, with its wonderful powers of discipline and organization, built up the mediseval Papacy, that glorious witness to the governing and disciplining forces of Christianity. The Teutonic race has surely taught the world much that it would not otherwise have known, of the power of Chris- tianity in consecrating individual character. And there still remain great and rich gifts for conse- cration ; the subtilty of the Hindus, the patience of the Chinese, the geniality and gentleness of the Japanese. Here are great qualities not yet, except in small measure, sanctified in Christ; and 82 THE MISSIOiSr OF THE CHUBCH we shall not see the full glory of Christianity till these alien races are brought inside the circle of the Church, to bring unsuspected treasures of wis- dom and beauties of character out of the same old and unchanging creed. Such considerations may fire our imaginations : but, prior to them and more simply cogent there lies upon us the injunction of Christ: "Go ye into all the world," "make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Brethren, here then is our paramount duty. It is a shame how long, to how wide an extent, with what disastrous results, we have forgotten it. We are to proclaim Cliristianity as superseding all other religions by a method not so much of exclusion as of inclusion. For Christ "the light which lighteneth every man, " the Word in every man's heart, has left Himself nowhere, in no reli- gion, without witness. All religions contain more or less considerable elements of truth. And Chi'istianity, I say, supersedes other religions by including the elements of truth which belong to each in a vaster and completer whole. It super- sedes them as daylight supersedes twilight; aye, makes the twilight by comparison to be as the night. In part then it is by direct opposition to what is positively evil, in part by sympathetic recognition of the elements of truth in alien systems, that we have to bear our witness in heathen countries. ITS EKLATION TO INDEl'KNUENT OPINION 83 And when we think of it, do we not, many of us, find ourselves in the wrong in this matter? Do we not need to have it more on our consciences, and in our prayers, to take more pains to interest our parishioners in some particular mission and to see that they know all about it? Nay more; do we not need to ask ourselves whether it may not be our own privilege to offer ourselves for foreign mission work? There can be no question that there are a vast number of divine vocations to this work missed, simply because people never troubled themselves to ask whether they may not them- selves be called npon to do it. Can I then show cause why I should not be a missionary? Brethren, in the Apocalypse there is set before us the picture of the perfected Church. It is completely catholic — "a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues " ; it is absolutely one — "the city that lieth four-square," and from within its walls goes up the harmony of perfected praise. Again, it is wholly pure ; the Bride of Christ, in white raiment, the perfected righteousnesses of the saints. Lastly it is triumphant and acknowl- edged of all, as "the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour into it." Catholic, one, pure, triumphant ^ — ^we shall behold her, but not now; we shall see her, but not nigh. It is the vision of heaven, but it is the hope of earth. Meanwhile the vision is for an appointed time; 84 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH and though it tarry we are in wait for it and to have it constantly in view. It is certain, that joy towards which we move. There is certain tri- umph before the cause of Christ. Conscious of this, we are to bear our witness, to suffer and to endure. It is hard to go on patiently to the end of life without letting our ideal fade and vanish ; and yet it is herein that Christianity lies. And for such as endure, as bear their witness to truth faithfully and fully in suffering and amidst oppo- sition to the end, we know the reward. " Ye are they who have continued with me in my tempta- tions; and inasmuch as my Father appointed a kingdom unto me, I appoint unto you to eat and drink at mj- table in my kingdom ; and ye shall sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."! 1 St. Luke xxii. 29, 30. LECTURE IV THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN SOCIETY ' ' For the wMch caxise I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up (stir into flame) the gift of God, which is in thee through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness ; but of power and love, and discipline." — 2 Tim. ii. 6, 7 [R.V.]. Reverend Father in God, my brethren of the clergy, and of the laity, — We are to consider the Mission of the Church in Society: its mission to teach men moral and social principles by which they are to live according to the mind of Christ. If you read consecutively the Pastoral Epistles, you will be struck with the extent to which St. Paul conceives it to be the function of Timothy and Titus to be moral rulers. And this kingly office in the Church means not only, or chiefly, that we are to teach people to be true to their consciences, but even more, that we are to inform their consciences. For the cause of our unsatis- factory moral condition is not only that men do 85 86 THE MISSION OF THE CHUKCH not do what they know to be right, but that they have so imperfect a moral ideal. God has en- dowed men with a perception, more or less instinc- tive, that they must do the right. But their knowledge of what the right is — ^ their "con- scientia " — is not instinctive. It requires in- forming. Thus in fact you find infinite variety in the moral standards of mankind: and that because God has left it as the responsibility of men to inform their consciences according to the different degrees of opportunity which in different ages He has given them. Now we Christians have a perfect standard set before us. We have the opportunities of thorough moral knowledge. Thus our responsibility as Christians is to keep our own consciences enlight- ened; and our responsibility as teachers is to enlighten the consciences of others. But this leaves us a great deal to do. What strikes us, I repeat, in nominally Christian society is not so much that people do not follow their consciences, as that they are so frequently deficient in moral knowledge, and more than this, blind to the responsibility they are under of keeping their consciences responsive to the word of God. When we look back over history we wonder at the slackness of men's consciences in the past on points which seem to us clear enough. We exam- ine the instruments of torture in some old house of the Inquisition, and marvel how men could ever have been so blind to the spirit of Chris- MISSION OF THE CHUKCH IK SOCIETY 87 tianity as to tolerate religious persecution at all, or, in particular, such methods of persecution. Or, to come to times nearer our own, we profess the greatest astonishment that members of our Houses of Parliament should have allowed them- selves to accept bribes almost without conceal- ment, as in fact the history of the last century records that they did. Or we read the history of the Church in Wales, in the sadly recent days when bishops were constantly non-resident, and we can hardly conceive how such a standard of conscience as to spiritual duties could ever have prevailed. We wonder at the blindness of the consciences of men in past times; but we forget that, unless we are very careful, we are in danger of exactly the same blindijess, and that perhaps on points to which the mediaeval conscience or the conscience of the past century was more sensitive than ours. At any rate it is a constant law of moral deterioration, as applicable to ourselves as to men of other ages, that conscience sinks to the level of practice. It is not pleasant to mention particular points on which our conscience to-day seems to need re-adjustment to the standard of Christ, but I can hardly evade the necessity. Thus it seems to me a conspicuous instance of moral blindness, that people should fail to see that in investing their money they make themselves — within reasonable limits, but really — responsible for the use to which their money is put: that to put one's »« THE MISSION OP THE CHURCH money, or allow it to be put, into any " concern " without inquiry into the moral or social tendency of the concern, is to serve mammon at the expense of Christ. "We cannot, in fact, hedge off any department of our life, and conduct it on what we call "purely commercial principles " without refer- ence to moral considerations. The "mammon of unrighteousness," the money that has been too long appropriated to unrighteous uses, has to be used by the servant of Clirist to make to himself friends for eternity — in view therefore of eternal interests. In buying and selling, as in other respects, we are to "seek first the kingdom of God." And no one can tell what a difference it would make in the commercial world if it was known that the ears of Christians were alert to the calls of justice — that they would at once recognize it as their duty to refuse their support to any business the conduct of which involved oppression or unfairness. Let me take quite a different instance. How extraordinarily blind are multitudes of Church people, in the highest not one whit less than in the lowest classes, to their responsibility for the religious education of their children, for seeing that their children really are instructed in those matters which form the contents of the Church Catechism, and in Holy Scripture. It would not be hard to multiply instances of a defective conscience; but it is enough to notice these two, in which we seem to have fallen below MISSION OP THE CHURCH IN SOCIETY 89 the standard of past Christian ages. Who, I ask, could read the New Testament for the first time and imagine that Christian people, the people who pro- fess to follow the teaching contained in it, could be indifferent on the points which I have mentioned ? II How then and on what authority are wo to seek to instruct men's consciences on the Christian moral law ? That law has, in principle, been laid down for ns by our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, and the New Testament is full of comments on this moral law of Christ. Further, you find that the Church was plainly invested by our Lord with the power of re-apply- ing, from age to age, this moral law to the varying needs and circumstances of different generations. In other words, our Lord endowed the Church with the power of binding and loosing. He gave this power to the Church in the person of the representative apostle Peter; He recognized it also in the community as a whole.-' In what different senses the power inheres in the Church and in the apostolic ministry we are not now con- cerned to inquire. We can be satisfied with the fact which lies plainly on the surface of Holy Scripture: the Church was endowed with this power of binding and loosing. And there is no doubt what this means, because 1 St. Matt. xvi. 19 ; x-viii. 18. 90 THE MISSIOiSr OF THE CHUECH binding and loosing were perfectly well-known terms in our Lord's day. They Avere terms used of the Rabbis or Jewish masters. To bind was to prohibit a thing; to loose Avas to allow a thing. A strict Rabbi was said to "bind," or forbid, what a Rabbi of a laxer school would "loose " or allow. ^ Our Lord then endowed the Church Avith this legislative and judicial power to bind and loose; and though, no doubt, behind all mistakes of the Church there lies the- corrective justice of God, Avhich He never can surrender out of His own hands, yet the Church was intended to exercise this power, and that with a spiritual or super- natural sanction. " Whatsoever je shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." In a Avord, the Church in every age is to apply or re-apply with a spiritual or supernatural sanction the religious and moral truth which our Lord intended to be for all time the basis of her life. On the basis of this moral legislation, there was to be a moral discipline which is expressed in the absolving and retaining of sins.^ The Church was to decide who could and who could not be admitted to baptism, to that "baptism for the remission of sins," which is the primary absolution. And when persons Avho had been baptized were guilt)' of notorious breaches of the Christian law, they were to be excluded from the priA'ilege of the 1 See Edersheim, Jesus the Messiah (Longmans, 2nd ed.), ii. p. 85. ^ St. John XX. 23. MISSION OP THE CHUECH IN SOCIETV 91 Cluistian society — there was to be a "retaining" of their sins; and again, when tlae Churcli was satisfied of their repentance, a re-admission to the Christian status, or a renewed "absolution." So tlie Church was to exercise a disciplinary author- ity over her members. We can see examples of this authority in exercise plainly enough in the New Testament. Thus in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we have an instance of how the Church exercised the binding and loosing power when circumstances required it, " loosing " the gentile converts on the question of circum- cision, whilst she " bound " them on certain other points, on the eating of things strangled and things offered to idols; and on a sin conspicu- ously associated with idolatry, the sin of fornica- tion. Or again we see the disciplinary authoritj^ ajDplied to a person in the case of the incestuous man at Corinth. The Corinthian Christians, in what we may call the spirit of weak good-nature, were disposed to tolerate the sinner and his sin in their society. St. Paul sternly rebukes them. He tells them that while it is not the Christian function to "judge those that are without," they were bound to exercise judgment upon those within. Thus he requires them to exclude the offender from the Christian communion, until ^ — as we seem to find in the Second Epistle — he had exhibited marks of true repentance; and then, "lest he be swallowed up with over-much sor- row," he desires him to be received back, and he 92 THE MISSION OP THE CHUEOH himself admits him. " To whom ye forgive any- thing, I forgive also : for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ. "^ The Christian society, then, is constantly to enunciate and re-apply the moral law, and to exercise discipline on the basis of this law ; to exclude from fellowship those who are notoriously living in violation of it, and to re-admit them to fellowship when they again show themselves Avorthy of it. Ill How is it that such obvious principles of the Christian society have fallen into abeyance? I would point to two main causes of this disorder. 1. The first is to be sought in the history of penitential discipline in the middle ages. At first this discipline had been exercised in part publicly, in part privately; later on, for suffi- ciently obvious reasons, it became generally pri- vate. Still later, this private confession was made compulsory after having been voluntary for man}' centuries. In being made compulsory, its moral level was necessarily lowered. As a result of this lowering of the moral level of penitence, casuistry — which means the application of the general moral law to particular cases — came to be almost entirely what it ought not to have been — a negative thing; not an enunciation of how 1 1 Cor. V. ; 2 Cor. ii. 5-11. MISSION OP THE CHT7ECH IN SOCIETY 93 Christ would have men act, or of what Christians ought to do; but rather an attempt to minimize the moral requirement, to reduce it to its lowest possible terms, to find the easiest possible basis on which the priest could give absolution to the penitent. It was but a step from this that cas- uistry should become, what the casuistry of the Jesuits had in great measure become when Pascal exposed it in his incomparable Lettres Provin- ciales, an evasion of the plain moral requirement of God in order to keep slack consciences within the communion of the Church. 2. But the cause of the decay of moral disci- pline in our own Church has been a different one — the peculiar relation in which the Church stands to the State, a relation which demands a word of explanation. As you look at the New Testament, you see, without doubt, that the Church and the State are both divine institutions. The ministers of State are called God's ministers,^ as the ministers of the Church are called God's ministers. Both are divine institutions, but they exist on different planes, and for different objects ; the State to be the minister of justice in the society of men gen- erally; the Church to be the minister to the sons of faith of the fuller and deeper blessings included in Christ's redemption. Subsequent history has shown how difficult is the adjustment of the relations of these two soci- 1 Eom. xiii. 1-6. 94 THE MISSION OF THE CHUKCH eties. At first they were obviously independent; and Christians had no doubt at all about the duty of recognizing that the powers of civil society, "pagan" as it was, were ordained of God. On the other hand, civil society — that is, the Roman Empire — came to look suspiciously upon the Christian Church, an "imperium in imperio" as it seemed to be, and in the age of persecution attempted to stamp it out by mere violence. We know how that attempt failed. The tables were turned. Later on, in the great days of the Papacy, we become witnesses of the rival attempt to reduce the State into subordination to the Church. Again the attempt failed. The obvious logic of facts was too much for the theory of the papal sovereignty on which it was based. There follows another attempt, which had its chief expression in England, and especially at the period of the Reformation, the attempt to regard the Church and the State as in fact the same soci- ety in different aspects. Such a theory has found its noblest expression in the pages of Hooker. At bottom it rests upon the assumption that, inas- much as the State is committed to Christian prin- ciples, the Church can go far towards merging herself in the State, and, in great measure, allow her administrative independence to be taken from her in return for national position. It was a noble ideal; but an ideal on which subsequent events have cast a sinister light. To how small an extent can it be said that the Eng- MISSION OF THE CHUECH IN SOCIETY 95 lish monarchy or nation has held itself bound by the principles of the Church. We live now under democratic influences. The law of the State depends on the will of the majority of the nation. What likelihood is there that the will of the majority should submit itself to the law of Christ ? And if it be unlikely, what right had the Church to hamper her liberty to express and enforce by moral discipline on her own members the unchang- ing law of Christ? In fact, it has come about that the English State law, as for example by the Divorce Act, has traversed the law of Christ. And the calamitous thing is this — ■ that in nominally Christian soci- ety, there is extraordinarily little apprehension of the fact that, as Christians, men are under another law besides the law of the State. They are citi- zens, and as citizens they are bound to obey the State law in what belongs to State law ; but they are Christians also, and as Christians they are bound to obey another law, the law of the Church ; and it is no excuse for them, as Christians, that the law of the State does not enforce the law of Christ. They will be judged as Christians by the Christian law. It is, then, at the present moment one main duty of the English Church to recall to the mind of her own members, and so to the minds of others, that there is an authority committed to her which is fundamentally independent of the func- tions and authority of the State ; that, in the last 96 THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH issue, the duty of teaching and guarding the prin- ciples of Christian doctrine, discipline, and wor- ship, was committed by Christ to one divine society, the Church; and not to that other divine society, with separate functions, the State. IV In view of the situation and perils which I have now described, we have, I think, two obvious duties over and above the general reassertion of the ecclesiastical principle : — 1. We must get people to recognize the prin- ciple of Christian moral discipline. It is a plain fact, that Christ enunciated unchanging moral principles. The laws of men, the opinions of society, the policies of statesmen, all may change ; but the mind of Christ for His disciples does not change. He is " the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." And it is by the principles which He once for all enunciated that He will judge the world. We have to get men to recognize this. And in proportion as this is recognized, will there arise the possibility of legitimate Christian dis- cipline. This revival of Christian discipline on the basis of the moral law is a hard thing to accom- plish — nay, it may appear impossible, bvit dili- gent voluntary effort can, I believe, accomplish it. Think what voluntary effort has done in the last fifty years in the revival of theology. Whether you a2jprove or do not approve of the MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN SOCIETY 97 Tractarian revival you can learn one great lesson from it ; you can learn the almost boundless power of a voluntary combination of Christian men pro- foundly in earnest. The circumstances looked hopeless enough for the revival of definite Church doctrine when the Tractarians began their work; but, as a matter, of fact, that voluntary combina- tion has accomplished to a surprising degree and in spite of crushing disasters what it desired. Dr. Pusey in his old age used to look back on the history of his life, with all its vicissitudes, and sum up his experience in the words of the Psalm- ist : " Thanks be to God that he hath not cast out my prayer, nor turned his mercy from me." Now we want a similar sort of voluntary combination for the assertion of the moral law of Christianitj^ and the restoration of that discipline, which is, I believe, a necessary part of the healthy life of any Christian society. No Christian society can be healthy unless there is some obvious means by which those acting in open defiance of Christian law shall forfeit, not the privileges of citizenship, but the privileges of Christian communion. 2., In order to this end we need to formulate anew, to apply anew. Christian morality: for the principles which by word and example our Lord laid down for His Church need constant re-appli- cation in view of new circumstances. We want a new casuistry, which will not be a statement of the minimum requirement, but an exposition of how Christians ought to act in the different depart- 98 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH ments of social life. This new casuistry will need to be formulated by voluntary effort in the first place, and might afterwards be taken into consid- eration by the authorities in the Church. I will endeavour to specify some particular departments of life in which the Christian moral law needs to be reapplied or at least reasserted. First, then, in regard to the indissolubleness of the marriage tie. Here it is true we are not with- out quite recent guidance. The last Pan-Angli- can Conference, leaving open one disputed point, laid down a certain number of clear principles. ^ Here then something still needs to be done in the way of enunciating the law; and, when this is done, we want every Churchman to understand clearly what the Christian marriage law is, and that it is the law for Christian men and women, not merely as individuals in private life, but as members of the Christian society, who are bound to " judge " their fellows in respect of it so long as they are claiming to be members of the Church of Christ. 2 And, secondly, in regard to commercial moral- ity. That is a matter of much more delicacy and difficulty. We know that a great deal contrary to Christian honesty, contrary to the laws of charity and brotherhood among classes, goes on in the commercial world. And as Christian teachers we are deterred from speaking out on the subject not only by fear of offending, but by a worthier 1 See app. note 16. 2 1 Cor. v. 12, 13. MISSION 01? THE CHURCH IN SOCIETY 99 motive — the fear of speaking ignorantly on a matter on Avhich ignorant invective is sure to do a great deal of harm. We Avant tlien to organize on these matters all enlightened Christian opin- ion. The first step to this is to form small con- sultative bodies of men who know exactly what life means in workshops, in different business circles, among employers of labour, among work- men ; they must be men who combine a profound practical Christianity with thorough knowledge of business ways. Such men could supply really trustworthy information as to what is wrong in current practice, and as to the sort of typical acts and refusals to act in which genuine Christianity would show itself. Such consultation on an extensive and systematic scale is a necessary pre- liminary to any adequate Christian casuistry, and to the organization of a legitimate Christian moral opinion. Thirdly, we clearly need careful re-statement for Christians of the responsibility of wealth. Strong and solemn are St. Paul's words. " Hav- ing food and raiment, let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all evil ; which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through willi many sorrows." 1 One of the most distinguished 1 1 Tim. vi. 8-10. 100 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH of living men I once heard say that luxury was like the strings with which the Liliputians tied Gulliver ; each thread was weak in itself so that any one could break it, but together they held him fast more tightly than strong cords. So with the little things of luxury; they grow upon people, the things we say we "cannot do without." In their accumulation they tie society down, and make us the slaves of innumerable wants not really requisite for life, or health, or happiness. We want to re-state the obligation of Christian simplicity. "We want to press upon Christians the conviction that wealth is not a justification of selfish luxury, but a solemn trust for the good of mankind. Beyond all question, whatever may be the function of the State in regard to wealth, it is the function of the Christian Church to emphasize the responsibility which it involves upon the con- sciences of its members more, very much more, than has been done in the past. Lastly, in regard to the position of women in view of the modern movement for what is called her emancipation. Obviously this is a matter on which the Christian Church is bound to have clear teaching, and to make it heard. I believe that no society or system could put women so high as Christianity puts them, or could give so great a dignity to womanhood as Christianity gives it. But Christianity dignifies womanhood not by ignoring or confusing the differences, physiologi- cal and moral, which obtain between men and MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN SOCIETY 101 women; but by assigning them distinct spheres, in view of the distinctive characteristics, which all experience at least justifies us in attaching to the sexes. What is the position of women in Holy Scrip- ture? There is the position of the wife, that position at the head of the household which is held up to our admiration in the memorable pan- egyric upon the mistress of the household in the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs. Is there any position in life more dignified ? Is there any priesthood higher than the ministry of the mother of the family ? And then there is that ministry of mercy, belonging in a measure specially to unmar- ried women and widows. These, St. Paul says, are in a special sense free to consecrate themselves to the service of Christ and His poor. This is the second position for women that Holy Scripture recognizes. It was the shame of our societj^ fifty years ago that it had so largely taken away the dignity of unmarried life or failed to recognize it. Besides the normal positions of women, we must also recognize exceptional cases : — there are in the New Testament prophetesses, like Philip's daughters. This position, I suppose, corresponds more or less to what we see in the case of a St. Catherine or a St. Theresa, if not to the extraor- dinary mission of a Joan of Arc. These are clearly exceptional cases. The position of a pub- lic preacher, or active politician, the Church would not, I suppose, normally recognize as ap- 102 THE MISSION OP THE CHIJECH propriate to women. The inclination to such positions she would, I think, with the authority of the New Testament behind her, keep under severe restraint, and would only allow of such missions when there was an over-mastering sense of divine vocation. I do not want to go into details. My object has been rather to quicken our consciousness of the moral mission of the Church. But I have endeav- oured to specify four departments in which we need to think out and re-state what is the Chris- tian moral law. The Church ought to be giving clearer teaching than in fact she is giving in regard to the law of marriage, in regard to commercial morality, in regard to the responsibility of wealth, in regard to the position and true dignity of women. In the past sixty years there has been a great advance among us along what one may call the lines of personal sanctification, and also in devel- oping special forms of religious self-dedication. Wonderful, surely, has been the development of the nursing profession, and of sisterhoods, the revival of spiritual discipline, of the ideal of the priesthood and of the evangelical freedom of the celibate life. All this that God has done among us gives us the greatest cause for encour- agement. What now seems to be needed, is that we should pay special attention to the sanctifica- tion of common social life,i l^^jing down in clear 1 See in the Dublin Eeview, July, 1892, an article by Dr. BaiTy on the life of Fr. Heoker, pp. 80-2. MISSION OF THK CHUECH IN SOCIETY 103 terms the moral law of Christianity and pressing its fuller ohservance upon the conscience of Churchmen. Thus the world will understand that, as the Church has a distinct creed and a dis- tinct worship, so she has also a distinctive moral law for social life, which is to he her character- istic mark in all sorts of societies' and under all sorts of conditions. V This moral law, unchanging as it is, we are to seek to commend to the consciences of all men, specially hy finding its affinity to the moral ten- dencies and aspirations of oi^r own time. We are to discern the signs of the times, for good as for evil: always to keep our eye on the unchanging law of Christ, and also always on the changing wants and aspirations of men round ahout us ; so shall we fill the office of interpreters translating the ancient precepts into current language, bring- ing forth out of our treasures, like wise stewards, things new and old, commending our message to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Why do we not discern the signs of the times ? If we look abroad and ask what is the meaning of the current body of right social aspiration in the world to-day, you find it such as is not infre- quently expressed in the word socialism. Now socialism is generally taken to imply a certain policy in regard to the functions of the State, 104 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH with which we need not now concern ourselves. In the New Testament the function assigned to the State is that of administering the divine law of justice among men, and for the realization of this function among ourselves a good deal still remains for political reforms to accomplish. Whether the Christian law, so far as it may be said to go beyond the law of justice, can ever become the law of the State is another question. But socialism expresses not only a state policy but also a moral ideal. As a moral ideal it is pro- foundly Christian, and I believe that the great Christian principle of the brotherhood of man as based upon the fatherhood of God sums up all that is best in the social and moral aspiration of our time, whether it does or does not call itself Christian. In past ages we have allowed Calvin- ism to rob the imagination of Christians of that rich treasure, that master-thought, of the father- hood of God — His impartial, individual, disci- plinary love for all men whom He has created: also we have allowed the love of luxury and power in privileged classes to rob us of the correspond- ing truth of the brotherhood of men — the capacity of all men for brotherhood and the realization of that capacity in the "brotherhood" of the Church. The time has come to restore to men's minds and hearts the full vivid power of these central con- ceptions. It is a department of this work of restoration, to bring back into general recognition the origi- MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN SOCIETY 105 nally representative and fraternal character of the institutions of the Church. Thus the Christian ministry, the Christian episcopate, runs back behind the association with which it has become encrusted in days of English aristocracy and medi- aeval feudalism. It runs back to what one may call the constitutional fraternity of the early Church. In the Church of the Empire the epis- copate, and indeed the presbyterate also, had a representative character. Real representative gov- ernment may be said to have had its origin in the Christian ministry. These Church officei's were indeed ordained from above, in accordance with the principle of apostolic succession; but they were elected in correspondence with the represent- ative principle. And patristic writers emphasized this representative character of Church officers sometimes, it seems, almost as much as the neces- sity of due and proper ordination and succession. ^ These are principles to which we cannot return hurriedly, and their application at this particular moment is complicated by a dominant fallacy — the identification of the Christian layman with the English citizen. Now it is in every organiza- tion of men a fundamental principle that social rights only correspond to social duties done. Where people are not living by their Church principles, and doing their duty as Churchmen, they lose the rights and privileges of Churchmen. But when this misunderstanding has been cleared 1 See The Church and the Ministry, pp. 97-107. 106 THE MISSION OF THE CHUKCH away, and the layman is recognized to be one fulfilling his Church obligations, the principle of representation ought to be applied. We do, then, need to watch and pray and labour for the recovery of that more truly representative character which did belong to Church institutions in early times. I have come to the end of that small portion of a great task which it has been possible even to attempt to accomplish in four lectures. I have been speaking of the nature of the Church's mis- sion and of some of the tasks which lie before her. Before we separate let me say a word of the power in which we go forth to our duty. YI We believe that Christ, on whom our faith and hope and love are fixed, is the master of all ages and of all men. It is true of every great man that he passes in a measure beyond the conditions of a particular age, and gains a certain universal- ity; it is true in a unique sense of Christ. He was very God. He took our manhood into His divine personality. The result is a character which is truly human, but which has none of the limitations which narrow human nature. He took those limitations which belong necessarily to humanity — the limitations which make possi- ble the exercise of a really human faith and virtue — not the limitations which characterize an Eng- lishman, or a Chinaman, or a particular age, or MISSION OF THE CHUECH IN SOCIETY 107 sex, or class. Jesus Christ is tlie catholic man ; His appeal is to all men of all ages. His example is universal; His teaching is applicable to all time; and the grace which makes it possible for us really to correspond to His appeal, to follow His example, to accept His teaching, is nothing short of the communication to us of His own unchanging self, His own eternal and His human spirit. It is the inward presence of Jesus Christ, the inward relation in which we stand to Him, that makes His example always, for the sons of faith, practical and realizable. For Jesus who is "passed into the heavens," "made higher than the heavens," is yet by the Spirit brought nearer to us than ever He was to the Apostles on earth; the Spirit links the humanity of every member of the Lord's body to Him as He sits in glorified man- hood at the right hand of God. The Spirit's presence is the presence of Jesus, as the presence of Jesus is the presence of the Father, for the holy persons of the Trinity are in inseparable unity. Thus the Christ, God in manhood, is present in the Christian, in as true a sense of the word "presence " as that word can bear, by spirit- ual force and reality. Christ in us is the hope of glory. And He, whose example we have before our eyes in the pages of the Gospels is working inwardly in our hearts, to purify us gradually and mould us into His own incomparable likeness. This which is the source of our own encouragement gives us also our hope for men. It is the great 108 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH privilege of the Cliristiau to look behind all dis- couragements on the surface of humanit}-, to fasten upon its hidden capacity for God, and to hope for every man who does not obstinately and persist- ently refuse the divine offer. They are few, we may hope, who thus finally refuse God. We are willing rather to think of men as weak and wan- dering, and to have hope for them. We have ground of hope because we know what the love of God for each soul means, what is the infinite self- sacrifice of the Son of God. And if there is any turning towards God in the heart of a man, though it be tentative and inchoate, we believe that there is eternity, there is the world beyond the grave, for the purpose of God to take full effect. We shall lose heart and courage in our ministry except so far as our mind is constantly fixed upon Christ ; both as giving us our inoral ideal for men and as supplying the forces of recovery. With our eyes fixed upon Christ, and upon eternity, we have justification for believing beyond belief, and hoping beyond hope for the souls of men ; and, in fact, our power of recovering men depends on our power of hoping for them and believing in them. If you have ceased to believe in any human soul you have, by that very fact, lost all chance of helping it towards recovery. Your power of re- covering men depends on your power of believing in them; and your power of believing in them depends on the constancy with which you eontem- MISSIOK OP THE CHUKCH IN SOCIETY 109 plate the mind of Christ towards them and the eternal destiny which lies before them. It is not our wealth, or position, or the historical dignity of our Church which will save men. It is simply the power of Christ. And, in fact, the real spirit- ual power of the Church has not risen and fallen with its secular position. There is a famous answer attributed, I believe, to St. Thomas Aquinas when, on the occasion of some Papal Jubilee, the bags of gold were being carried past into the treasury of Peter, and the Pope said to him — "Peter could not say now, 'Silver and gold have I none'": "No, you.r Blessedness," replied Thomas, "Nor can he say, 'In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. ' " It is in the strength of Jesus then truly and literally that we are to go out comforting others with the comfort wherewith we ourselves are com- forted of God.i And, oh! do not narrow that word comfort. We are to minister to the ■ broken-hearted, the sick, the weary, the dying; we are to comfort them in the ordinary sense of comfort, with abso- lution, and solace, and peace. But we have not only to do with the broken, the feeble, the ex- hausted, but also with the young, the high- spirited, the enthusiastic and energetic. The mission of the Church applies just as much to these as to those. It is as much our privilege and our duty to put courage and confidence, and a 1 See app. note 17. 110 THE MISSION OP THE CHURCH sense of service and hope, into the hearts of the enthusiastic and promising, as it is to console penitents, and to bind up the broken-hearted. " As a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee." We must be inspired by the spirit and meaning of the Church, so that we can present her to men as something that can enlist their hopes and energies, and vitalize all their highest faculties. "They that seek the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary ; they shall walk, and not faint. " We have a great work before us ; a work for the doing of which divine encouragements are given ; but it is a work that needs all the best energies that humanity has to offer. APPENDED NOTES Note 1, to p. 13. The witness to the doctrine of the visible Church in Clevtent and Ignatius. " Clement," says Prof. Pfleiderer truly (Hib- bert Lectures, p. 252), "most characteristically connected the new law of the Church with the two models of the political and military organization of the Roman state and the sacer- dotal hierarchy of the Jewish theocracy " (i. e. it was to his mind an organized, and divinely organized, body) : but the Professor is not justified in regarding this as in opposition to St. Paul's teaching of justification. See above pp. 68 ff. and The Church and the Ministry (Longmans), pp. 49 f., also on Clement, pp. 309 f. 316 f . The witness of Clement is very explicit to the Church in its general idea. The witness of Ignatius is much more emphatic to the threefold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons. This he regards (1) as essential to the existence of a Church, (2) as based on the ordinances of the Apostles, (3) as coextensive with the Church. See Ch. and Min., p. 300 f. This testimony is quite compatible with that afforded by the Didache and by Clement if it be recognized that the superior apostolic, prophetic, or (in the later sense) episco- pal order was in some districts not localized in particular Churches till a subsequent date : see above pp. 29, 80, and Ch. and Min., pp. 333 ff. Note 2, to p. 16. Archdeacon Sinclair, in his recent charge, The Church, Invisible, Visible, Catholic, National (Eliot Stock, 1892), ap- pears to put the individual relation of the soul to God first, 111 112 THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH to regard it as logically prior to, and independent of, chui'ch- membership, and to make the association of Christians into societies a subsequent act. See p. 2. " But just as believers having this personal relation to their Lord would be in a spiritual sense as the branches to the vine, as the limbs to the head, so they would naturally form, under the Divine guidauce, a society among themselves in their relation to each other on earth." May I call attention on this subject to some words of the present bishop of London in a noble sermon entitled "Individualism and Catholicism." See Twelve Ser- mons preached at the consecration of Truro Cathedral (Wells, Gardner & Masters, 1888), pp. 17-20. "We are sometimes asked to think that the Church only exists in the union of believers, and has no reality of its own. Now, it is perfectly clear that in the New Testament the idea of the Church is not that. Men talk sometimes as if a church could be constituted simply by Christians coming together and uniting themselves into one body for the purpose. Men speak as if Christians came first, and the Church after ; as if the origin of the Church was in the wills of individual Chris- tians who composed it. But, on the contrary, throughout the teaching of the Apostles we see that it is the Church that comes first and the members of it afterwards. Men were not brought to Christ and then determined that they would live in a community. Men were not brought to Christ to believe in Him and His Cross, and to recognize the duty of worship- ping the Heavenly Father in His name, and then decided that it would be a great help to their religion that they should join one another in that worship, and should be united in the bonds of fellowship for that purpose. In the New Testament, on the contrary, the Kingdom of Heaven is already in existence, and men are invited into it. The Church takes its origin, not in the will of man, but in the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. He sent forth His Apostles ; the Apostles received their commission from Him ; they were not organs of the congregation ; they were ministers of the Lord Himself. He sent them forth to gather all the thou- APPENDED NOTES 113 sands that they could reach within His fold ; but they came first, and the members came afterwards ; and the Church in all its dignity and glory was quite independent of the mem- bers that were brought within it. Everywhere men are called in ; they do not come in, and make the Church by coming. They are called in to that which already exists ; they are recognized as members when they are within ; but their membership depends upon their admission, and not upon their constituting themselves into a body in the sight of the Lord. . . . " This individualism of which I speak has too much truth in it to fail in strength. It cannot be counter-balanced by anything but insisting on what the Church of the New Testa- ment really is; making men everywhere understand that the Church is a body which lives from age to age : adapting itself to all times and all circumstances : finding spiiitual life for all characters ; supplying the means of grace for every variety in humanity. It is for this that we insist upon the succes- sion of the ministry, because we find the Church from the very beginning flowing out of the ministry. He distorts that conception of the ministry who ever allows it to be the means of separating clergy from laity, and making men think that the great body consists of the clergy only, or that the clei-gy only are the life of the body. The purpose of that succes- sion is to link the Church of the present from generation to generation, back, by steps that cannot be mistaken, to the first appointment of the Apostles by the Lord. The purpose of that succession is to make men feel the unity of the body as it comes down the stream of history, and, if possible, to touch their hearts with some sense of that power which the Lord bequeathed when He ascended up on high and gave gifts to men ; with some sense of that grace which He prom- ised when He said that He would be with us always, even to the end of the world ; some sense of that undying life which shall still, until He comes again, unite those who love Him with Himself, and spread the knowledge of His name through- out the human race. To this persistence of the Church as a 114 THE MISSIOiSr OF THE CHURCH living body a Cathedral ever bears a silent but visible wit- ness ; the seat of Bishop after Bishop, not ruling in his own name ; not by virtue of his own abilities ; not giving to pos- terity the narrow legacy of his own opinions nor institutions that shall for ever represent himself, but each in succession handing on the life and power of the Church of Christ." Archdeacon Sinclair makes much of the " invisible " and "ideal" Church, of which we are constitiited members by faith. No doubt this idea took powerful hold of the minds of the Reformers and of later Protestants ; yet as the Lutheran Rothe pointed out (see Ch. and Min., p. 19) it does not represent the thought of the early Church, nor does it that of the New Testament. It is true (1) that- part of the Church, i. e. that in Paradise, is invisible to us : and (2) that many conscientious good men are not members of the Church now, who yet will, we trust, become members of the Church in Paradise. Also (3) that all baptized per- sons are as such members of the one Church on earth,- even though they are living in very broken relation to it. Also (4) that the Church does not represent the whole sphere of the divine action, and is not therefore simply identical with the kingdom of God. But the Church so far as it is on earth, means nothing else than the visible organized body of baptized persons, worthy or unworthy. The word " Church " throughout the New Testament stands for the same thing, and not at one time for a visible society, at another for an ideal or invisible relation. Note 3, to p. 18. Necessity of sacraments not absolute. See St. Thorn. Aq. P. iii. Q. 68. Art. 2. " Deus . . . cuius potentia sacr'amentis visibilibus non alligatur, cf. S. Aug. Quaestt. in Levit. 84. Proinde colligitur invisibilem sanctificationem quibusdam affuisse et profuisse sine visibilibus sacramentis . . . nee tamen ideo sacramentum visibile contemnendum est : nam contemptor eius iuvisibiliter sanctificari nullo modo potest." APPENDED NOTES 115 See also Andrewes in Libr. of Angl. Cath. TheoL, Sermons vol. V. p. 92 "Gratia Dei non alligatur mediis." Note 4, to p. 21. Irenaeui on the elements of the Christian religion. The language of Irenaeus, the great representative in the second century of the pi-inciple of apostolic tradition, is very striking. C. Haer, iv. 33, 8. " The true knowledge (the Christian religion) is the doctrine of the Apostles and the ancient system of the Church in all the world ; and the character of the body of Christ according to the successions of the bishops to whom they (the Apostles) delivered the Church in each separate place ; the complete use moreover of the Scripture which has come down to our time, preserved with- out corruption, receiving neither addition nor loss ; its public reading without falsification ; legitimate and careful exposi- tion according to the scriptures, without peril and without blasphemy ; and the pre-eminent gift of love." Note 5, to p. 82. The contents of the New Testament "tradition." We should gather from the New Testament that the original "catecheti- cal teaching " contained (a) instruction in the facts of our Lord's life, death, resurrection, &c., cf. Luke i. 1-4; 1 Cor. xi. 23, XV. .3-4. (b) Instruction in the meaning of sacred rites, baptism, laying on of hands, eucharist, Heb. vi. 1-6 ; cf . Kom. vi. 3 ; 1 Cor. x. 15-16, xi. 23 ff. ; cf. Acts ii. 38. This would have included the learning of the Lord's Prayer, see Didache, 8. (c) Instruction in the moral obligations of "the way " and in the " last things " Heb. vi. 1-2 ; 1 Thess. iv. 1-2, V. 2. We nmst add to this, what I think almost all New Testament writings would imply, (rf) instruction in the meaning of " the Name " — the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. (The Judaic, semi-Christian, character of the instruction in the Didache, whether moral, doctrinal. 116 THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH or sacramental, see the Ch. and the Min., pp.411 f., makes its emphatic witness to the Threefold Name (see c. 7) the more important.) In all cases the references I have given above are not references to the teaching of the New Testa- ment books, but the teaching which those books imply to have been already given. Note 6, to p. 38. The Anglican doctrine of the sacraments. Nothing surely can be richer or better than Hooker's teaching on the sacraments in principle. E. P. v. 50, 56 fE. If all parties could agree on what he teaches positively, it would be well for the Church of England. And it is not to be forgotten how strongly, and surely rightly, Hooker, with the older Catholic writers, insists, against some more recent schoohuen, that God is the direct agent in the bestowal of grace on the occasion of each sacrament — "solum Deura producei-e gxa- tiam ad praesentiam sacramentorum." E. P. vi. 6, 10-11. Note 7, to p. 38. The Anglican rejuirement of the apostolic succession. On this subject let me refer to the careful language of Prof. Stanton , The Place of A uthority in Religious Belief (Long- mans, 1891), pp. 204 ff., and 225 ff. See also the Catena of Anglican Divines in Tracts for the Times, No. 74. One may recognize that as a fact the Anglican divines of the seven- teenth' century admitted exceptions to thp necessity of episcopal ordination without either thinking their teaching on this head seriously dangerous, or on the other hand regarding it as quite adequate to ancient standards. Arch- deacon Sinclair does not, to my mind (1. c. pp. 55 ff.), use these Anglican divines quite fairly. To mention two points : they are speaking of Protestants who "want an ordinary succession without their own fault, out of invincible ignorance or necessity,'' or " where bishops could not be had." Now APPENDED NOTES 117 these qualifications greatly limit the application of their words. Secondly, they show no tenderness at all to schis- matics in their own country. If I were a Nonconformist I would sooner be dealt with by a modern High Churchman than by a Caroline divine, though the modern High Church- man taught by experience has returned to the simpler ancient doctrine of the apostolic succession as necessary not indeed to the salvation of an individual, but to the constitu- tion of a Church. Note 8, to p. 40. The meaning of the word " spiritual." Cf . Milligan, Resur- rection of our Lord (Macmillan, 1st ed.), note 15, p. 247: " An element of confusion is introduced into all our thoughts upon this subject by the ambiguity of such words as ' spirit ' and 'spiritual.' We are apt to think of them as antithetical to ' body ' and ' bodily.' How far this is from the view of the New Testament the single passage 1 Cor. xv. 44 is suffi- cient to prove. The antithesis of scripture is not of the spiritual and the bodily, but that of the spiritual and the carnal." It is of course the case that "spirit" as applied to God or to the angels, carries with it (e. g. St. John iv. 24) associations of immateriality, but the glorified Christ in His risen body is also called simply "spirit" 1 Cor. xv. 45, and the adjective " spiritual " (see 1 Cor. xv. 44) or the phrase " according to the spirit " carries with it no sort of opposi- tion to materiality : that is spiritual which is according to the law of the spirit, or the expression of spirit. Note 9, to p. 47. Gnostic esotericism and Christian universality. On this subject see Lightfoot's note on Col. i. 28; and Neander's Ch. Hist. (Bonn's trans.), ii. pp. 3.3, 34. The effect of the Gnostic controversy on the sacramental and ecclesiastical teaching of Christianity appears most clearly in Ignatius' letters, Irenaeus B. iii. 1-4, iv. 17-18, v. 2-3. Tertullian, De Res. Cam. 8 and De Praescr. 118 THE MISSION OP THE CHtJECH Note 10, to p. 48. Tertullian on the simplicity of Christian sacraments. See De Bapt. 2. " Nihil adeo est, quod tarn obduret mentes hominum, quam simplicitas divinorum operum quae in actu videtur et niagnificentia quae iu effectu repromittitur : ut liic quoque quoiiiam tanta simplicitate sine pompa, sine apparatu novo aliquo, denique sine sumptu homo in aqua demissus et inter pauea verba tinctus non multo vel nihilo mundior resurgit, eo incredibilis existimetur consecutio aeternitatis. Mentior, si non e contrario idolorum sollemria vel arcana de suggestu et apparatu deque suraptu fidem et auctoritatem sibi exstruunt. Pro misera inci-edulitas, quae denegas Deo proprietates suas, simplicitatem et potestatem." Note 11, to p. 50. Goethe on the sacramental system. There is a very remark- able passage in Goethe's Autobiography (^Dichlung und Wahrheit, see Bohn's Trans., vol. i. p. 24.5-248), where, com- plaining of the paucity of Protestant sacraments, he writes : " In moral and religious, as well as in physical and civil matters, a man does not like to do anything on the spur of the moment ; he needs a sequence such as results in habit ; what he is to love and perform, he cannot represent to him- self as single or isolated, and if he is to repeat anything willingly, it must not have become strange to him. As the Protestant worship lacks fulness in general, so, if it be investigated in detail, it will be found that the Protestant has too few sacraments, nay, indeed, he has only one in which he is himself an actor — the Lord's Supper: for bap- tism he sees only when it is performed on others, and is not greatly edified by it. The sacraments are the highest part of religion, the symbols to our senses of an extraordinary divine favour and grace. In the Lord's Supper earthly lips are to receive a divine Being embodied, and partake of an heavenly under the form of an earthly nourishment. This APPENDED NOTES 119 idea is just the same in all Christian churches ; whether the sacrament is taken with more or less submission to the mystery, with more or less accommodation to what is intel- ligible ; it always remains a great and holy action, which in reality takes the place of the possible or impossible, the place of that which man can neither attain nor do without. But such a sacrament should not stand alone ; no Christian can partake of it with the true joy for which it is given, if the symbolical or sacramental sense is not fostered within him. He must be accustomed to regard the inner religion of the heart and that of the external church as perfectly one; as the great universal sacrament, which again divides itself into so many others, and communicates to these parts its holiness, indestructibleness, and eternity." This is followed by a wonderfully appreciative account of the sequence of sacraments, adapted to all stages of human life, in the Catholic Church. Note 12, to p. 52. Christians have no need to ask for the Spirit. See Moule, Veni Creator (Hodder & Stoughton, 1890), pp. 222-3. The Christian Church has in fact habitually invoked the Holy Spirit — "Veni, Creator Spiritus " " Veni, sancte Spiritus " — and such language has a clear meaning in view of the fact that what God has given He is still perpetually giving. But the fact about the New Testament language is as stated in the text. See Eom. viii. 9, 15, 16 ; Gal. v. 25 ; Eph. iv. 30 ; 1 Thess. v. 19 ; Heb. vi. 4 ; 1 John iii. 24 ; cf. 1 Tim. iv. 14; 2 Tim. i. 6. KoTE 13, to p. 54. Infants who are proper subjects of baptism. It is the general teaching of the Church that the children of non-Christian parents, are not, till they come to years of discretion, fit sub- jects of baptism, unless their parents give them to the Church. See St. Thorn. Aq. Summa Theol. P. iii. Q. 68. Art. 10. (This 120 THE MISSIOK OP THE CHURCH decision he bases on the fact that they have not yet in them- selves the exercise of will ; that it is against the will, and so against the natural right of the parent: that it generates scandal through relapses.) On the other hand, the Church since St. Paul, regards the children of a Christian parent, as fit subjects for baptism. See 1 Cor. vii. 14. The children are " holy," i. e. as Tertullian interprets, " designati sancti- tati ac per hoc etiam saluti" {De An. 29). The reason is that the faith of the parent offers the child for baptism, and truly represents it. Thus the 68th canon (of 1603) decrees the penalty of suspension for three months upon any minister who refuses to christen according to the form of the Book of Common Prayer any child that is brought to him upon Sun- days or Holydays to be christened. Besides the faith of the parents a guarantee is also provided in the faith of the spon- sors who represent the Church. " Children," says St. Augus- tine, " are presented to receive spiritual grace not so much by those who bear them in their arms — though by them too if 'they are also good Christians — or by the whole society of the faithful" (^Ep. 98.5). The principle in all this is that faith is to be required when baptism is to be administered ; either the faith of the person to be baptized or, in the case of a child, of those who under- take for him, his parents or the Church. This representative faith, which guarantees the Christian education of children, is plainly demanded by our baptismal office, as a condition of baptism. We violate then a fundamental principle, and degrade a sacrament to the level of a charm, if we get chil- dren to be baptized indiscriminately, i. e. without reference to their Christian bringing up. It must be wrong to put undue pressure upon parents to have their children baptized whei'e it is even reasonably certain that they will not either act towards them, or allow the Church to act, as Christian parents should. Some initiative on the part of the parents, or some guarantee on behalf of the Church, ought to be asked for : see, on the general subject, Maskell, Holy Baptism (Pickering, 1848), pp. 336-348. APPENDED NOTES 121 Note 14, to p. 68. Science cannot proceed without assumptions. See Herbert Spencer, First Principles (Williams & Norgate, 5th ed. 1887), pp. 137 f. "In what way, then, must philosophy set out? The developed intelligence is framed upon certain organized and consolidated conceptions of which it cannot divest itself : and which it can no more stir without using than the body can stir without help of its limbs. In what way, then, is it possible for intelligence, striving after Philosophy, to give any account of these conceptions, and to show either their validity or their invalidity? There is but one way ; those of them which are vital, or cannot be severed from the rest without vital dissolution, must be assumed as true provision- ally. The fundamental intuitions that are necessary to the process of thinking, must be temporarily accepted as unques- tionable : leaving the assumption of their unquestionable- ness to be justified by the results. How is it to be justified by the results ? As any other assumption is justified — by ascertaining that all the conclusions deducible from it, cor- respond with the facts as directly observed — by showing the agreement between the experiences it leads us to antici- pate and the actual experiences. There is no method of estah-' lishing the validity of any belief, except that of showing its entire congruity with all other beliefs." I have italicized the last sentence, and would compare with it an admirable passage on the relation of philosophy to ordinary assumptions, scientific and religious, in E. Caird's Philosophy of Kant (Maolehose, Glasgow, 1877) pp. 34-5. The line of thought may be pursued in Holland's Logic and Life (Longmans) Sermons i-iii, and in Newman's Univ. Sermons, " Implicit and Explicit Reason." Note 15, to p. 73. Evolution and its relation to Religious Thought. See an excellent work, with this title, by the distinguished Ameri- 122 THE MISSION OF THE CHUKCH can man of science, Prof. Leconte (Chapman & Hall). The first two parts of the book are occupied with the statement of the theory of evolution and of the evidence on which it rests. The third part considers the relation of the theory to Theism in general and Christianity in particular. (From the theological point of view Prof. Leconte's remarks upon the theory of moral evil are surely inadequate, ed. 2. pp. 369 fE.) Note 16, to p. 98. The resolutions of the Conference of Bishops of the Anglican Communion (July 1888) in regard to Divorce. See Encycli- cal Letter with Resolutions and Reports (S. P. C. K. 1888) Resol. 4. " (1) That inasmuch as our Lord's words expressly forbid divorce, except in the case of fornication or adultery, the Christian Church cannot recognize divorce in any other than the excepted case, or give any sanction to the marriage of any person who has been divorced contrary to this law, during the life of the other party. " (2) That under no circumstances ought the guilty party in the case of a divorce for adultery, to be regarded, during the life-time of the innocent party, as a fit recipient of the blessing of the Church on marriage. " (3) That recognizing that there always has been a difference of opinion in the Church on the question whether our Lord meant to forbid marriage to the innocent party in a divorce for adultery, the conference recommends that the clergy should not be instructed to refuse the sacraments or other privileges of the Church to those who, under civil sanctions, are thus married. " (4) That whereas doubt has been entertained whether our Lord meant to permit such marriage to the innocent party, the Conference are unwilling to suggest any precise instruction in the matter." The Bishop of the diocese is to decide " whether clergy would be justified in refraining from pronouncing the blessing of the Church on such unions." APPENDED NOTES 123 These Pan-Anglican Conferences are not legitimate synods, provincial or general, and the language of this resolution implies the recognition of this fact. But the resolutions represent fairly the present mind of Anglican bishops, given with a due sense of spiritual responsibility. For " the differ- ence of opinion which there has always been in the Church " on the respect of the re-marriage of the innocent party, reference may be made to the Library of the Fathers, l^er- tuUian, Note O. pp. 431 f. It is interesting to note that Dr. Liddon, in a letter to the Guardian of Sept. 19, 1888, recording Dr. Dbllinger's general satisfaction at the results of the Pan-Anglican Conference writes : " To advert to a point which has caused some anxiety — the Conference was, as he believed, right in recommend- ing that the clei'gy should not be instructed to refuse the sacraments to the innocent party who remarried after a divorce for adultery. He still had no doubt that iropvua in St. Matt. v. 32 and xix. 9 could not mean fwi-)(ua but must refer to something that had taken place before the marriage contract. The decision of the Conference was, however, jus- tified by the history of opinion in the Church, about which he had more to say than could be compressed into a letter." But the Anglican 107th Canon of 1603, with the Western Church as a whole, takes the stricter line of forbidding the re-marriage of either party in a divorce and separation " a thoro et mensa " during each other's life. This line is undoubtedly more logical, but there does not seem to be adequate authority for enforcing it. Note 17, to p. 109. Christ our example and our inward life. The Collect for the Octave of the Epiphany expresses this thought very beautifully : — " Deus cuius unigenitus in substantia nos- trae carnis apparuit, praesta, quaesumus, ut per eum, quern similem nobis foris agnovimus, intus reformari mereamur : qui tecum vivit." CHURCH HISTORY. THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY. With a View of tho State of the Roman World at the Birth of Christ. By GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Church History in Yale College. 8vo, $2.50. THE BOSTON ADVERTISER.— "Prof. Fisher hag Oisplayefl In this, as In blB previous pnbllstiea ■writings, that catholicity and that calm jufliclal quality ol mind which are so indispensable to a true historical critic." THE EXAMINER "The volume is not a dry repetition ol weU-Known facts. It bears the marts of original research. Every page glows with freshness ol material and choiceness of diction." THE EVANGELIST.— "The volume contains an amount of information that mates it one of the most useful ol treatises lor a student tu phUosophy ana theology, and must secure for it a place in his library as a standard authority." HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. By GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale University. 8vo, with numerous maps, S3. 50. This work is in several respects notable. It gives an able presenta- tion of the subject in a single volume, thus supplying the need of a complete and at the same time condensed survey of Church History. It win also be found much broader and more comprehensive than other books of the Mnd. The following will indicate its aim and scope. FROM THE PREFACE.— "There are two particulars in which I have sought to mate the narrative specially serviceable. In the first place the attempt has been made to exhibit luUy the relations ol the history ol Christianity and of the Church to contemporaneous secular history. » • • I have tried to bring out more distinctly than 13 usually done the interaction ol events and changes in the political sphere, with the phenomena which belong more strictly to the ecclesiasti- cal and religious province. In the second place it has seemed to me possible to present a tolerably complete survey of the history ol theological doctrine. • » • " It has appeared to me better to express frankly the conclusions to which my Investigations have led me, on a variety of topics where differences of opinion exist, than to take refuge in ambiguity or silence. Something of the dispassionate temper of an onlooker may be expected to result from historical studies li long pursued ; nor Is this an evil, 11 there is kept alive a warm sympathy with the spirit ol holiness and love, "wherever it is manliest. "As this book is designed not lor technical students exclusively, but for intel- ligent readers generally, the temptation to enter into extended and mmute discui" ftloua on perplexed or controverted topics has been resisted." fiTANDARD TEXT BOOKS. HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. By PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D. New Edition, re-wrltten and enlarged. Vol. I.— Apos- tolic Cliristianity, A.D. 1—100. Vol. II.— Ante-Nicene Chris- tianity, A.D. 100—325. Vol. III.— Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity, A.D. 311-600. Vol. IV.— IVIediaeval Christianity, A.D. 590-1073. 8vo, price per vol., S4.00. This work is extremely comprehensive. All subjects that properly belong to a complete sketch are treated, including the history of Chris- tian art, hymnology, accounts of the lives and chief works of the Fathers of the Church, etc. The great theological, christologioal, and anthropological controversies of the period are duly sketched ; and in all the details of history the organizing hand of a master is distinctly seen, shaping the mass of materials into order and system. PROF. GEO. P. FISHER, Of Tale College.— "Dr. Seiiaff has thoronglily and Buccesafnlly accompllstied liis task. The volomea are replete witti evidences of a careful study of tlie original sources and of an extraordinary and, we migbt say, unsurpassed acquaintance with the modem literature — German, French, and English— in the department of eccleslaatlcal history. They are equally marked by a fair-minded, conscientious spirit, aa well as by a lucid, animated mode ol presentation." • PROF. ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D.D.— "In no other single work of Its kind with which I am acquainted will students aud general readers find so much to instruct and Interest them." DR. JUL. MULLER, of Halle.— "It is the only history of the first six cen- tnilea which truly satisfies the wants of the present age. It is rich in results of original investigation." HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, IN CHRONOLOGI- CAL TABLES. A Synchronistic View of the Events, Charac- teristics, and Culture of each period, including the History of Polity, Worship, Literature, and Doctrines, together with two Supplementary Tables upon the Church in Americaj and an Appendix, containing the series of Councils, Popes, Patri- archs, and o-iher Bishops, and a full Index. By the late HENRY B. SMITH, D.D., Professor in the Union Theologi- cal Seminary of the City of New York. Revised Edition. Folio, $5.00. REV. DR. W. G. T. SHEDD.— " Prof. Smith's Historical Tables are the best that I know of in any language. In preparing such a work, with so much care and research. Prof. Smith has f amishea to the student an apparatus that will te cl life-long service to him" REV. DR. WILLIAM ADAMS.— "The labor expended upon such a work is immense, and Its accuracy and completeness do honor to the research and scholarship of its author, and are an Invaluable acquisition to our Utcraiuie.'' CHARLES SCRTBNER'S SONS' LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. With Maps and Plans. New Edition from New Plates, with the author's latest revis- ion. Part I.— From Abraham to Samuel. Part II.— From Samuel to the Captivity. Part III.— From the Captivity to the Christian Era. Three vols., 12mo (sold separately), each $2.00. The same— Westminster Edition. Three vols., 8vo (sold in sets only), per set, $9.00. LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE EASTERN CHURCH. With an introduction on the Study of Ecclesiastical History. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. New Edition from New Plates. 12mo, $2.00. LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOT- LAND. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. 8vo, $1.50. In all that concerns the external characteristica of the scenes and persons described, Dr. Stanley is entirely at home. His books are not dry records of historic events, but animated pictures of historic scenes and of the actors in them, while the human motives and aspects of events are brought out in bold and full relief. THE LONDON CRITIC— "Earnest, eloquent, learned, wltn a style tliat Is never monotonous, but luring tlirougli its eloquence, the lectures will maintain his lame as autbor, Bcholar, and flivluo. We could point out many passages that glow with a true poetic fire, but there are hundreds pictorlally rich and poetically true. The reader experiences no weariness, for in every paje and paragraph there is something to engage the mind and refresh the soul." THE NEW ENGLANDER.—" We have first to express our admiration of tha grace and graphic beauty of his style. The felicitous discrimination in the u-e of language which appears on every page is especially required on these topics, where the author's position might so easily be mlstaSen throa^h an unguarded statement. Dr. Stanley Is possessed of the prime quality of an historical student and writer— namely, the historical feeling, or sense, by which conditions of lifs and types of character, remote from our present experience, are vividly con- ceived of and truly appreciated." THE N. Y. TIMES.— "The Old Testament History Is here presented as It never was presented before ; with so much clearness, elegance of style, and his- toric and literary Illustration, not to speaK of learning and calmness of judgment, that not theologians alone, but also cultivated readers generally, are drawn to its pages. In point of style it takes rank with Macaulay's History and the beaS chapters of Fronde." CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES AND HOMILETICS. THE GROUNDS OF THEISTIC AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF. By Prof. GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale College. Crown 8vo, $2.50. FROM THE PREFACE.—" Thin volume embraces a discussion ol tlie evidence^ of both natural and revealed religion. Prominence is given to topics having special interest at present from their connection with modem theories and diffl- cultles. The argument of design, and the bearing of evolutionary doctrines on Its validity, arc fully considered. I have sousht to direct the reader Into lines of reflection which may serve to impress him with the truth contained in the remark that the strongest proof of Christianity is afforded by Christianity itself, and by Christendom as an existing fact. I venture to Indulge the hope that they may derive from it some aid in clearing up perplexities, and some new light upon the nature of the Christian faith and its relation to the Scriptures." JULIUS H. SEELYE, President o/ ^mTi^rst CoZteffe.—" I And it as I should ex- pect It to be, wise and candid, and convincing to an honest mind. I congratulate you upon its publication, in which you seem to me to have rendered a high public service." PROF. JAMES O. MURRAY, o/ i^nceton Con<>ffe.—" The volume meets here a great want, and meets it well. It Is eminently fitted to meet the honest doubts of some of our best young men. Its fairness and candor, its learning and ability In argument, its thorough handling of modern objections— all these qualities fit It for such a servi 3e, and a great service it Is." ESSAYS ON THE SUPERNATURAL ORIGIN OF CHRISTIAN- ITY. By Prof. GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale College. 8vo, new and enlarged edition, S2. 50. THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.—" Able and scholarly essays on the Super- natural Origin of Christianity, in which Prof, risher discusses such subjects as the genuineness of the Gospel of John, Baur s view of early Christian History and Literature, and the mythical theory of Strauss." THE NEW YORKTRIBUNE.— "His volume evinces rare versatUity of Intellect, with a scholarship no less sound and judicious In its tone and extensive in its attainments than It is modest in its pretensions." THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REViEW.—" We know not where the Student wlB find a more satisfactory guide in relatioa to the great questions which have grown up between the friends of tlic Ciriitian revelation and the most able of its assail »nt8, within the memory of the present generation." CHARLES SGRIBNER'S SONS' THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF THEISM. An Examination of the Personality of Man, to Ascertain his Capacity to Know and Serve God, and the Validity of the Principle Underlying the Defense of Theism. By SAMUEL HARRIS, D.D., LL.D., Pro- fessor of Systematic Theology in Yale College. 8vo, $3.50. Dr. Harris embodies in his work the results of his long meditation on the highest themes, and his long discussion and presentation of these truths in the class-room. His fundamental positions are thor- oughly in harmony with soundest modern thought and most trust- worthy modern knowledge. THE INDEPENDENT,—" It is rare that a work, wMcli Is ol necessity, so severely metaphysical In both topics and treatment, is so enlivened by the varied contributions cl a widely cultivated mind from a liSeral course ol reading. His passionate and candid argument cannot fall to command the respect of any antagonist ol the Atheistic or Agnostic schools, who will take the pains to read his criticisms or to review his argument. In respect to coolness and dignity and self-possession, his work Is an excellent model lor scientists, metaphysicians, and theologians ol every complexion." TH; HARTFORD COURANT.— "Prolessor Harris' horizon-lines are uncon- traoted. His survey of the entire realm he traverses is accurate, patient, and considerate. No objections are evaded. No conclusions are reached by saltatory movements. The utmost fairness and candor characterize hi3 discussions. No more thoroughly scientlflc work In plan or method or spirit has been done in our time. On almost every page one meets with evidences ol a wide and reflec- tive reading, not only of philosophy, but of poetry and fiction as well, which enriches and illumines the whole course ol thought." THE SELF-REVELATION OF GOD. By SAMUEL HARRIS, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Systematic Theology in Yale Col- lege. 8vo, S3.50. In this volume" Dr, Harris presents a statement of the evidence of the eiistence of God, and of the reality of His revelation of Himself in the experience or consciousness of men, and the verification of the same by His further revelation of Himself in the constitution and ongoing of the universe, and in Christ. PROF. WM. G. T. SHEDD, D.D., in TIw PresiyteHan Review.— "Sach a work is not brought out in a day, but is the growth of years of professional study and reflection. Few books on apologetics have been recently produced that will be more Influential and formative upon the mind ol the theological or philosophi- cal student, or more useful. It is calculated to influence opinions, and to Influence them truthfully, seriously, and strongly." BISHOP HURST, In TTw Northwestern CTirisMan ^dKocate.—" We do not know a better work among recent publications than this one for building up old hopes and giving a new strength to one's faith. The book Is thoroughly evangelic, fresh, and well wrought out. It la a valuable contribution to our American theology." STANDARD TEXT BOOKS. THE THEORY OF PREACHING | or, Lectures on Homiletics. By Professor AUSTIN PHELPS. 8vo, $2.50. This work is the growth of more than thirty years' practical ex- perience in teaching. The writings of a master of style, of broad and cathoUc mind are always fascinating ; in the present case the wealth of appropriate and pointed illustration renders this doubly the case. THE NEW YORK CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE.— " lIlnlBters Of aU denominatl 5ns and of all degrees of experience wUl rejoice In It as a veritable mine of wisdom." THE INDEPENDENT.—" The volume Is to t.e commended to young men as a superb example of tlie art in wblcli it alms to Instruct t&em." THE WATCHMAN.— "Tlie reading of it is a mental tonic. Tlie preaclier cannot but feel often Us heart burning within him under its Influence. We could wish it might be In the hands of every theological student and of every pastor." MEN AND BOOKS; OR, STUDIES IN HOMILETICS. Lectures Introductory to the "Theory of Preaching." By Professor AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D. Crown 8vo, S2.00. Professor Phelps' second volume of lectures is devoted to a dis- cussion of the sources of culture and power in the profession of the pulpit, its power to absorb and appropriate to its own uses the world of real Ufe in the present, and the world of the past, as it lives in books. PROFESSOR GEORGE P. FI3HER.— "It l3 a live book, animated as well as sound and instructive, in which conventionalities are brushed aside, and the author goes straight to the marrow of the subject. No minister can read it without being waked up to a higher conception of the possibilities of his calling." BOSTON WATCHMAN. — " We are stire that no minister or candidate for the ministry can read It without profit. It is a tonic for one's mind to read a book so laden with thought and suggestion, and written la a style so fresh, strong, and bracing." A TREATISE ON HOMILETICS AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY. By W. G. T. SHEDD, D.D. Crown 8vo, S2.50. In this work, treating of the main points of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, the author handles his subject in a masterly manner, and displays much original and highly suggestive thought. The Homileti- cal part is especially valuable to ministers and those in training for the ministry. Dr. Shedd's style is a model of purity, simplicity and strength. THE NEW YORK EVANGELIST.— "We cannot but regard it as, on the whole, the very best production of the Hnd with whlci we are acquamted. The topic? discussed arc of the first Importance to every minister of Christ engaged In active servloc, and their discussion U conducted by earnestness as well as ability, and La a styl^ which for clear, vigorous, and unexceptionable English, is itself a modeL"" THE CHRISTIAN INTELLIGINCER.— "The ablest booK on the subject whlca tie generation has produced." . .. — ^ ^ . « . .«./« +< If. .u (.mhHiiAi, «