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 THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN 
 
 ON 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND; 
 
 PAST, PRESENT, and FOTUEE. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED BY 
 
 THE LOED BISHOP OF LINCOLN 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 ON SUNDAY, 18th NOVEMBER, 1877. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JAMES PARKER AND CO., 
 377, STRAND. 
 
 1878.
 
 THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN 
 
 ON 
 
 "THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND;" 
 
 PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel; for the words are closed up and sealed till 
 the time of the end. Many shall be pnrified, and made white, and tried; but the 
 wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise 
 shall understand. — Daniel xii. 9, 10. 
 
 It is the manner of. the Holy Spirit in sacred prophecy to pass 
 rapidly from one future event to another foreshadowed by it, 
 however far off that other event may be. Thus in Psalm Ixxii., 
 after describing the peaceful monarchy of Solomon, He proceeds 
 to foretell the glory of the Kingdom of Christ, the Divine Solo- 
 mon, the Prince of Peace. So our Lord Himself, when sitting on 
 the Mount of Olives, having pre-announeed the national judg- 
 ment hanging over Jerusalem, goes on to predict His own 
 second Advent and the universal judgment of the world. Simi- 
 larly the prophet Daniel in the Scripture before us, having in 
 the eleventh chapter revealed the sufferings which the Plebrew 
 Church and nation would endure in the time of Antiochus Epi- 
 phanes, King of Syria, passes on by a quick transition to unfold 
 the trials which await the Christian Church in the latter days. 
 
 Brethren, bear with me for saying that to one whose retro- 
 spect in this place reaches back for fifty-seven years, it is a subject 
 for serious inquiry whether in the history of the Church and 
 the world during that time there has not been a gradual 
 tendency towards a fulfilment of this prophecy of Daniel. Look- 
 ing back on events which have occurred in the last half century, 
 I would now propose, with God's help, to use them as an occa- 
 sion for offering to you, my younger brethren, some suggestions 
 as to your own duty consequent upon them.
 
 And first, in reviewing the past, we may recognise a remark- 
 able change in popular opinion concerning the origin and claims 
 of Authority, both civil and ecclesiastical. After the great con- 
 flict at the close of tlie last century there still survived in the 
 public mind some belief that Authority is derived from God, as 
 St. Paul teaches in his thirteenth chapter to the Romans, and 
 St. Pet'er in the second chapter of his first Epistle; and that obe- 
 dience is due to lawful Authority in things not unlawful for the 
 Lord's sake, and that resistance to Authority in such things is 
 resistance to God himself. But this belief has now been greatly 
 weakened, and Authority is commonly supposed to be derived 
 from earth and not from heaven, and from man and not from 
 God, and to have no other claim upon allegiance than that which 
 depends on the voice of the People and not on the will of God. 
 
 This change having taken place, it is not surprising that many 
 ancient Dynasties on the continent of Europe should have been 
 uprooted, and that there should be little prospect of permanence 
 for those forms of Government which have succeeded them. In 
 one great neighbouring Country there have been more than six- 
 teen different forms of Government in rapid succession in the last 
 eighty years. It would seem as if Daniel's prophecy (ii. 40-43) 
 is now being fulfilled, that the Governments of the latter days 
 which were to grow up after the dissolution of the fourth or 
 Roman Empire would be like miry clay mingled with iron, but 
 not cleaving to it. Is there not a marvellous accuracy in this 
 prophetic description? Is it not true that some of these Govern- 
 ments are like miry clay, being of the earth, earthy, and brittle 
 as potsherds, by reason of their democratic element? And is it 
 not also true that they are mingled luith iron, as deriving power 
 not from moral, spiritual, and heavenly influences, but from the 
 earthly mineral and rigid iron of physical coercion and military 
 force? And is it not true also, that, like iron and clay, they 
 have no principle of cohesion and co-operation? 
 
 Together with this change in popular opinion as to the origin 
 and claims of Authority, two other Powers have grown up, and 
 have assumed fresh force in opposition to that authority. Men 
 crave protection and admire strength. If they cannot find it 
 in Monarchies, deriving their authority from God, they will 
 
 , UIUC . 
 
 \ /
 
 constitute supreme powers for themselves. Wherever tliey see 
 Power endued with vigorous energy, combined with well com- 
 pacted organisation, they gravitate towards it, especially if it 
 acts with devotion and faith, and seems to rely on the support of 
 what is unseen and eternal. 
 
 On one side, therefore, in this nineteenth century, some have 
 almost deified the Roman Papacy. They adore the Roman 
 Pontiff as the Vicegerent of God, as wielding the power of the 
 Most High, as disposing of the things of Time and Eternity, 
 and as having dominion over the human reason, conscience, and 
 will, and as the infallible Judge in matters both of faith and 
 morals (as was declared in the Vatican Council of 1870), and as 
 having supremacy over all Government, civil and ecclesiastical. 
 
 On the other side, by an excess of reaction, some have been 
 driven to defy all authority, whether temporal or spiritual, and 
 to cast away all belief in a personal Ruler of the world, and in 
 future rewards and punishments, and to place the People upon 
 the Throne of God. 
 
 Tliese two forces, being antagonistic, are now preparing for a 
 violent conflict. They are hostile to one another ; but both are 
 opposed to legitimate authority, and will do what they can to 
 subvert it. 
 
 Let us turn to our own Country. 
 
 The condition of the Church of England, as a National Estab- 
 lishment of religion, has been greatly modified by events in 
 the last sixty years. The changes in our Constitution have 
 affected the character of the Legislature. The admission into 
 the Legislature of persons who do not accept the doctrine and 
 discipline of the Church of England ; and the gravitation of 
 the population to our great towns, where the Church is weak 
 and where her work is opposed by a flood of cheap literature 
 hostile to religion and society, have led to the enactment of laws 
 altering the position of the Church. The union of Scotland, and 
 more recently of L'eland, with England has naturally exercised a 
 powerful influence on the Imperial Legislature. It may be 
 almost said that the destinies of the Church of England, in her 
 relations to the State, depend now not so much on England 
 herself, as on the opinions and desires of Scottish Presbyie-
 
 6 
 
 rianism, and Irish Ultramontanism, joined with sectarianism and 
 scepticism, leagued against her. This has been exempHfied in a 
 remarkable manner by recent debates and decisions in the Impe- 
 rial Legislature concerning the Burial-grounds of the Church of 
 England. The majority of 108 English votes in defence of our 
 English churchyards was reduced to 33 by Irish, Scotch, and 
 Welsh votes. But to return. The suppression of Ten Bishoprics . 
 in Ireland, the alteration of the tithe system in that country, the 
 disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1869, are some of the 
 ecclesiastical events there. The ease also with which Church 
 patronage has been recently abolished in Scotland (a.d. 1874) is 
 significant of the popular feeling there ; and the breaking up of 
 the kirk of Scotland into three separate forms of Presbyterianism 
 seems to augur ill for the maintenance of any one religious estab- 
 lishment in that country. In England the greater portion of the 
 revenues of our Cathedral and Collegiate Churches has been 
 alienated by recent legislative enactments, which did not provide 
 for the efficient discharge of capitular duties. Church rates have 
 ceased to be obligatory. The Marriage Law of the Church has 
 been set aside by the Legislature, and great facilities have now 
 been given to Divorce, and even to the marriage of the guilty 
 parties. The Parochial Schools of the Church can claim no sub- 
 sidy from the State, except by restricting the teaching of religion 
 within narrow limits of time; and the Elementary schools of the 
 State exclude all distinctive religious formularies from their 
 system of instruction. The changes made by recent legislation 
 in the reli<^ious character of our Colleges and Universities are too 
 well known to you to need any notice from me. 
 
 A vital question, to which I have already referred, and on 
 which the maintenance of the Establishment hangs, is now pend- 
 ing. A few years ago church rates were abolished, on the plea 
 that our churches and churchyards do not belong to the Nation 
 hut to the Church of England, and that it was unfair that persons 
 dissenting from the Church should be taxed for their support. 
 But now the argument is inverted ; and it is alleged by many 
 that our churches and churchyards do not belong to the Church 
 of England, but to the Nation, and that, since they are national 
 property, persons of any religious persuasion, or of no religious
 
 persuasion at all, ought to be permitted freely to officiate at burials 
 in our English churchyards. 
 
 It is candidly avowed by many who use this language that the 
 same principle ought to be applied to our English chuiches; and 
 if this avowal is made by them noio what will be their language 
 if their confidence is increased and their power aggrandized by 
 surrender ? We know that in the troubles of the seventeenth 
 century in England our churches were alienated, together with our 
 churchyards. May we not say that the surrender of our sacred 
 places, which have been solemnly dedicated to God, would be 
 followed by calamities similar to those which befel the Hebrew 
 Cliurch, when, according to Daniel's prophecy, her sanctuary 
 was profaned, in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, and when " the 
 abomination and desolation " was set up in the Temple of God ? 
 
 Brethren, these and other signs of the times are sufficient 
 to show that the Churcli of England is now beleaguered by a 
 formidable confederacy of powerful adversaries, who are resolved, 
 if they are able, to reduce her to the same condition as that to 
 which the Clmrch of Ireland has been lately reduced. And if it 
 should please God, for our sins, to humble the Church of England 
 in the dust, as she was humbled in the seventeenth century, it is 
 probable that her downfall would be followed by the ruin of 
 other national institutions (as it then was by the abolition of the 
 legislative power of the Peerage, and the Monarchy), and by the 
 spread of anarchy and confusion, of fanaticism and impiety; and 
 that England might be reduced to the miserable condition of 
 some other great nations of Europe. 
 
 What, then, is our own duty under such circumstances as these? 
 First, to endeavour to revive in the public mind a recognition of 
 the divine origin of Authority, as declared in Holy Scripture. 
 Is it not true that this feeling needs to be awakened in rulers as 
 well as in subjects? If parents, masters, and employers of 
 labour, and if governors,' civil and ecclesiastical, were resolved 
 to act in the consciousness that the authority with which they 
 are invested is received from God, and that He will call them to 
 a strict account at the Great Day how they have used it, then 
 they would reverence the authority they possess as a sacred 
 trust from heaven, and would never abuse it to gratify their own
 
 selfish desires, or for any other purpose than the glory of God 
 and the welfare of mankind. And if, on the other hand, children, 
 servants, and subjects, and all who are under authority, temporal 
 or spiritual, understood ichat authority is ; and whence it comes, 
 they would not '• despise dominion and speak evil of dignities " 
 (Jude 8), but would pray to God for them, and would cheerfully 
 obey authority in all things not unlawful, as doing what they 
 do, " not with eyeservice as menpleasers, but as to the Loird." 
 
 If this spirit prevailed, the Church of England would not be 
 weakened, as it is now, by intestine strifes, which are more 
 dangerous to her welfare than her bitterest enemies. We should 
 not see some persons, laying claims to superior sanctity, and yet 
 violating the laws of Christian charity by wilfully giving offence 
 to others, and breaking the bonds of Christian unity by preach- 
 ing doctrines and introducing cere*nonies alien to the faith and 
 worship of the Church, and driving others to the opposite ex- 
 treme, and endeavouring to hurry her onward to disestablish- 
 ment, as if it were a harbour of safety, and not rather a quicksand 
 of shipwreck. 
 
 Brethren, suffer me to say it, for the sake of our Country, of 
 our Church, and of our God, let us not be impatient. It may 
 be His will that disestablishment may come; but let us do 
 nothing to hasten it. It may be, that the temporal authority 
 may attempt to impose conditions upon the Church, which (if 
 she is loyal to her Divine Lord) she cannot accept; and then her 
 answer must be with the Apostles, " we ought to obey God 
 rather than men." The three children at Babylon were loyal 
 subjects, but they were content to be cast into the fiery furnace 
 rather than commit idolatry at the king's command. Daniel was 
 a loyal subject, but he would not obey the king's decree and omit 
 even once his daily prayers. We must indeed submit to man 
 for the sake of God, but we must not disobey God for the sake 
 of man. We must endeavour to maintain the Establishment for 
 the sake of the State, but we must never sacrifice the Church for 
 the sake of the Establishment. But while we thus act let us not 
 rush into temptation and lead others with us. The Established 
 Church of England is one of our greatest national blessings. 
 The Church of England, of all Churches in Christendom, is one
 
 of the best teachers of Loyalty, and one of the most faithful 
 guardians of Order, Liberty, and Law. For evidence of this, 
 examine her Liturgy, as compared with that of any other Church. 
 Her rule of faith is the written Word of God, not warped by 
 private opinions, but expounded and interpreted by the judg- 
 ment and practice of the Ancient Church Universal. She holds 
 the faith, neither more nor less, " once for all delivered to the 
 Saints," and declared in the ancient Creeds of the Catholic 
 Church ; she dispenses spiritual grace freely and fully in the holy 
 Sacraments instituted by Christ, and she derives the commission 
 of her Apostolic Ministry from the hands of her Divine Lord, 
 enthroned in heaven, and communicating that grace by the 
 unbroken chain of succession of that apostolic ministry for 
 eighteen centuries. 
 
 To disestablish such a Church as this, would be to inflict the 
 heaviest blow that could fall on the English Nation. Bear with 
 me for speaking feelingly on this subject. As having been en- 
 trusted, most unworthily, with the oversight of a large diocese 
 (indeed the largest) in England, mainly an agricultural one, I 
 know what Disestablishment would be. Whatever its ultimate 
 results might be (under the controlling and over-ruling providence 
 of God) its proximate effect would be to pauperise the priest- 
 hood, and to paganise the people. Methodism, the most respect- 
 able and vigorous form of Dissent, has worked actively in that 
 diocese, and is powerful in its toions, but it has no resident 
 ministry in its rural districts, which would lapse into a miserable 
 condition, socially, morally, and religiously, if they were deprived 
 of the personal presence and salutary influence of the parochial 
 clergy and of their families. 
 
 It is probable that the battle of the English Constitution will 
 have to be fought in agricultural dioceses, where the spirit of 
 loyalty is still strong. // that spirit were weakened there (which 
 it would be if the Church were disestablished and disendowed) then 
 there is reason to fear that the Constitution would eventually be 
 at the mercy of secularism, scepticism, sectarianism, republicanism, 
 and Komanism, and that its days ere long would be numbered. 
 
 Brethren, God only knows whether that time may come. Let 
 us do what we can by His help to avert it. We need much 
 prayer, courage, patience, and charity. Let us not close our
 
 10 
 
 eyes to the dangers we are in. Let us not be like those prophets 
 who daubed with untempeved mortar, and said, " Peace, peace, 
 where there was no peace ;" but let us " speak the truth in love." 
 In the days of the persecution of the Hebrew Church, as fore- 
 told by Daniel, the enemy began his attack upon it hy flatter itig 
 the priests, and by their means he invaded the sanctuary and 
 destroyed it.. As I have already said, a similar attack is now 
 beinof made against ourselves. Our adversaries are claiminor our 
 churchyards and our churches as national property, and un- 
 happily we are not united among ourselves in resisting the 
 attack. Our present position is probably without a precedent 
 in the history of the Church of England. The body is separated 
 from its head. On one side nearly 14,000* of the clergy have 
 now ioined too-ether in a manifesto aorainst the invasion of our 
 churchyards, and in declaring that, while they respect the con- 
 scientious scruples of others and are ready to co-operate in any 
 reasonable measures for the removal of real grievances, tliey are 
 of opinion that the compulsory introduction of other services than 
 those of the Church of England into her burial-grounds would 
 be an infringement of her rights, an encroachment on her pro- 
 perty, an infliction of a grievance on the consciences of her 
 ministers and members, and a precedent fraught with dangerous 
 consequences to the Church and Nation, and a contravention of 
 those religious purposes for which her churchyards have been set 
 apart by a solemn act of Consecration. 
 
 To this we may add that at the various Diocesan Conferences 
 lately held, wherever this question has been discussed, these 
 principles have been affirmed by the faithful Laity of the Church 
 with no less energy than by the Clergy, and the opinion of the 
 recent Church Congress at Croydon to the same effect could not 
 be misunderstood. 
 
 It was an axiom of the ancient Church, that nothing should 
 be done by the Clergy and Laity without the Episcopate ; 
 btxt it was also an axiom that nothing should be done by the 
 Episcopate without the Clergy and faithful Laity of the Church, 
 and still more that nothing should be done against them. May 
 it not, therefore, be hoped that now, after these clear and 
 
 * The number of signatures amounts now (Jan. 10, 1878) to li,561.
 
 11 
 
 decisive utterances of the Clergy and Laity of the Church, the 
 whole English Episcopate may henceforth be united with them 
 in this great question ? This, indeed, would be an unspeakable 
 blessing; then we might look forward to the future with hope; 
 and then, whatever the secular power may think fit to do to the 
 Church of England as an Establishment, she would be strong in 
 the unity and mutual confidence of her members, and in the 
 protection and blessing of her Divine Lord. 
 
 But to take a wider view. Brethren, it is not improbable, 
 that, in these latter days, to punish Nations for their sins, and to 
 show the divine power of Christianity, Ahnighty God may be 
 pleased to permit His Church to be left alone, not only indepen- 
 dent of temporal powers but with the temporal powers arrayed 
 against her ; and it is probable that the last age of the Church 
 may be like the first age of the Church when she was openly 
 assailed by the World. Certain it is, as Daniel has foretold, 
 that in the latter days there will be " a time of trouble such as 
 there never was since there was a nation," Certain it is, as St. 
 John in the Apocalypse warns us, that Satan's wrath will be 
 most fierce in proportion as his time is sliort, and as the day of 
 his doom draws near, and that Anti-Christ will rage most fiercely 
 on the eve of the coming of Christ. But even if this should be 
 the case let us not be dismayed. When Laws and Institutions 
 fail, then the courage of the faithful becomes more con- 
 spicuous. The dissolutions of national establishments of re- 
 ligion are great public calamities, but they are tests of per- 
 sonal devotion, faith, and zeal, and are ministerial to the growth 
 and exercise of personal holiness. The fall of Institutions is 
 a signal for. the rising up of individuals. When the Church of 
 Israel was disestablished, and false worship wa? set up in its 
 place, then the greatest of the prophets, Elijah, came forth and 
 stood upon Carmel, a witness for God against idolatrous prophets, 
 priests, princes, and people. You remember the parable of the 
 two baskets of figs, the one of bad and the other of good, in Jere- 
 miah. The one, the bad, represented the members of the Church 
 of Jerusalem who vainly gloried in themselves and said: " The 
 Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these." The 
 other basket of good figs symbolised the Jewish exiles who had
 
 12 
 
 been chastened and purified by their captivity at Babylon. 
 Ezekiel, not at Jerusalem, but an exile on the banks of the river 
 Chebar, saw the glory of the Lord. Daniel, not in the temple, 
 but an exile in Chaldea, had a revelation of Christ. St. John, an 
 exile in the Isle of Patmos, beheld the Apocalypse. If Antio- 
 chus Epiphanes had not raged against the Hebrew Church, where 
 would have been the glory of the faithful priests Eleazar and 
 Mattathias, and of the mother and her seven martyred children, 
 and of Judas Maccabeus and his brethren ? 
 
 May we not say that we ourselves have already been awakened 
 to a clearer sense of our own solemn responsibilities and spiritual 
 privileges by the chastisements we have lately suffered ? At the 
 beginning of this century, and for some years after it, many were 
 slumbering quietly in a torpid, bedridden orthodoxy. The ser- 
 vices of our Cathedrals were heartless, cold, and dreary. Canon- 
 ries of cathedrals were regarded as sinecures. In the collegiate 
 Church of Westminster, with which I was connected for twenty- 
 five years, only one month's residence in the year had for more 
 than a century been regarded as sufficient for the discharge of 
 canonical duties. In the collegiate church of Southwell, in the 
 diocese of Lincoln, only three months' residence in four years 
 was all that was considered requisite for its canons. In the 
 college chapels of our Universities daily attendance was required 
 of our undergraduates, but many of the persons who derived 
 their endowments from the bounty of the founders were rarely 
 seen worshipping there. In our parishes we relied on the legal 
 assessment of church rates, and not much was done for their 
 sacred fabrics by voluntary efforts. 
 
 But it has pleased God to arouse us by chastisements, and 
 new life has shown itself in later years. Our "vales of Achor " 
 have become to us *' doors of hope." The change for the better 
 in our cathedrals is visible to all. With regard to religious life 
 in our colleges you are better able to speak. This, however, 
 my younger brethren, permit me to say, that in proportion as the 
 rigour of academical laws has been relaxed, and your own private 
 liberty has been enlarged with regard to public religious observ- 
 ances, your own personal responsibilities in these respects have 
 been greatly increased. In a spirit of generous confidence you are
 
 13 
 
 thrown back on yourselves, and on your own consciences. Let 
 
 me entreat you to be a law unto yourselves. Emulate the spirit 
 
 of the golden age, as described by the Roman poet : — 
 
 Satumi gentem, baud vinclo nee legibus jequam, 
 Sponte sna veterisqne Dei se more tenentem. 
 
 And here we may thank God for having raised up examples in 
 our two ancient Universities of personal zeal and devotion, and 
 moral and religious courage and self-sacrifice, and self-dedication 
 to missionary work at home and abroad ; and we may tharrk God 
 also that this spirit is now animating many of our daughters and 
 sisters in Christ, who, in love of Him and the souls for which 
 He shed His blood, are giving themselves up with holy self-con- 
 secration to the work of educating the poor in schools, and to the 
 nursing of the sick in infirmaries and hospitals, and to missionary 
 labour at home and in foreign lands, especially in India and 
 Africa. .And with regard to our parish churches, we have to 
 record with thankfulness to God that about twenty-eight millions 
 sterling have been expended in the last forty years in their 
 restoration and enlargement, and in the building of new ones. 
 
 In other respects, also, our trials have been over-ruled for 
 good. The judicial decision of the Final Court of Appeal on 
 the doctrine of Holy Baptism has led to a more careful exami- 
 nation of the teaching of Holy Scripture, and of the Christian 
 Fathers, and of our own English Reformers, and of our Prayer- 
 book, and to a clearer enunciation of the truth concerning that 
 Sacrament. The recent legislative action of Parliament on 
 Ecclesiastical questions has led to a deeper consciousness of the 
 need of a revival of the Diocesan and Provincial Synods of the 
 Church; and if it should please God that the Church of England 
 should cease to be a national institution, we may be thankful 
 that our recent training in provincial Convocations and in 
 diocesan Synods and Conferences has made us to be better pre- 
 pared for such a catastrophe, than we should have been fifty 
 years ago. 
 
 Again, the quickening of parochial and diocesan life amongst 
 us has produced a sense of the necessity of an increase of the 
 Episcopate, which (let us say it with gratitude) Parliament itself 
 has lately recognised, and will soon, we trust, more fully recog-
 
 u 
 
 nise. A growing faith in the Divine constitution of the Christian 
 Church, as it existed from the time of the Apostles for fifteen 
 centuries, and in the blessings vouchsafed by AJraighty God to 
 the faithful, by means of the Word and Sacraments, dispensed 
 by the threefold ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, has 
 led to the foundation of many new Episcopal Sees in our foreign 
 dependencies. Our colonial and missionary Dioceses now amount 
 to sixty-two, and to these we may add the fifty-seven sees of the 
 United States of America, which are the offspring of the British 
 Church; sio that we can now count one hundred and nineteen 
 dioceses which have sprung into life since the year 1784. " This 
 is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." 
 
 On the whole, then, brethren, while there is much to warn, 
 there is also much to cheer us. It seems that each of the two 
 antagonistic forces of good and evil is developing itself with 
 greater energy; the good becoming better, and the bad becoming 
 worse. The spirit of prophecy reveals clearly that the last days 
 will be days of conflict between them. It seems to intimate that 
 the Church of Christ will be deprived of temporal supports. The 
 persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes will reproduce itself 
 with greater intensity in Christendom. The book of Revelation 
 prepares us for this trial. In the sixth chapter, at the eve of the end 
 of the world, it speaks of a great earthquake. In the sixteenth 
 chapter it describes that convulsion by a symbolical name, 
 "Armageddon'^ (the mount of cutting to pieces) ; in the twentieth 
 chapter it calls it by another symbolical name, derived from 
 Ezekiel, the rising up of the vast and diverse forces of Gog and 
 Magog against "the beloved City and Camp of the Saints." What- 
 ever may be the precise meaning of these words, they certainly 
 betoken struggles and confusions and assaults iipon the Church 
 of God. Our Lord compares the latter days to those before the 
 flood, and to those before the destruction of Sodom, and to those 
 before the fall of Jerusalem. Such revelations as these may well 
 excite our vigilance. They are words of warning to the Churcii 
 and Realm of England. " He that hath ears to hear let him hear." 
 
 My younger brethren, you will not suppose that by such 
 words as these I am intending to disturb the peaceful tenor of 
 your appointed studies in this place. No, on the contrary, let
 
 15 
 
 me rather say th;Vt the diligent pursuit of those studies is your 
 best preparation for the trials and troubles of public life. There 
 can be no better preservative against " the oppositions of science, 
 falsely so called," which are now leading many astray, than the 
 habit of exact reasoning, which is generated by the discipline of 
 Mathematical Science, especially when hallowed by that re- 
 verential spirit of true Philosophy which animated the mind of a 
 Bacon, a Newton, and a Barrow, and in our own days of a Whe- 
 well, a Sedgwick, and a Herschel, whose names are household 
 Avords in this University. And let me say of those Classical 
 Studies which also claim your attention here, as among the best 
 instruments of mental discipline; and in which the human intel- 
 lect freely ranges over the wide domain of the history, philosophy, 
 and poetry of the greatest nations of the ancient world, that you 
 will find in your future career that the continued cultivation of 
 Classical Literature (and I trust you will never cease to cultivate 
 it) will elevate and enlarge your views, and raise your minds 
 beyond the narrow limits and above the low level of ephemeral 
 things; and will impart to them a sweet solace in the cares and 
 sorrows of public and private life; and will soothe you with har- 
 monious melodies, and enrich you with noble recollections, and 
 adorn your minds with glorious imagery, and prepare you for the 
 study of the highest and holiest of all sciences, that of Theology — 
 " the Sabbath and haven of all human contemplations" (as Lord 
 Bacon calls it), and for daily devout meditation on God's Holy 
 Word, which will give you true wisdom, and without which the 
 theories of politics are often but illusory dreams, and the history 
 of nations a dark and unintelligible mystery. 
 
 My younger brethren, the destinies of your own Church and 
 Country depend mainly under God on the character and conduct 
 of the rising generation of England. They are in your hands. 
 The shadows of the latter days are falling upon us. You will 
 endeavour to avert the calamities which seem to be hanging over 
 us; but you will not be dismayed by them. You will regard 
 them as calls from God to arouse you to nobler deeds and heroic 
 sufferings for the truth. We have reason to hope and believe 
 that bright examples of Christian valour, not inferior to those 
 of primitive confessors and martyrs, and made more bright by
 
 16 
 
 the darkness of the contrast, will shine gloriously in the gloom 
 of the latter days. England may hope to see 'Christian Elijahs, 
 Christian Jeremiahs, and Christian Ezekiels. TV'e do not expect 
 new revelations. But is the Lord's arm shortened ? Why 
 should not the Church of the latter days see even the apostolic 
 courage, zeal, and calmness of a Paul, a Peter, and a John, of an 
 Ignatius, a Polycarp, and a Cyprian? "Many," says Daniel, 
 " shall be purified and made white and tried ; but the wicked 
 shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; 
 but the wise shall understand." " They that are wise shall 
 shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that 
 turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." 
 Earthly dynasties will pass away ; but the dissolution of earthly 
 things will wean your minds from this world, and make you look 
 upward to heaven and onward to Eternity. Earthly dynasties 
 will pass away, but the throne of Christ endureth for ever. His 
 kingdom will never be destroyed. Empires may be disestablished, 
 national churches maybe disestablished, but the Holy Scriptures, 
 the Christian Sacraments, the Catholic Creeds, the threefold 
 Ministry, tliese will never be disestablished. " The waves of the 
 sea may riseVmightily, and rage horribly, but the Lord Who 
 dwelleth on high is mightier. The Lord sitteth above the 
 water flood, the Lord abideth a king for ever. Jesus Christ is the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." He has promised to be 
 with us always, even to the end of the world, and that the gates 
 of hell shall never prevail against His Church, The Holy Ghost, 
 once given at Pentecost, will abide for ever with the Church. 
 " He that endureth to the end shall be saved." Therefore the 
 word of our blessed Lord to each one of yourselves is this: " Be 
 thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." 
 
 Westminater : Printed by J. B. Nichols and Suns, 35, Parliament Street.
 
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