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 A CHARGE 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 THE ORDINARY VISITATION 
 
 ARCHDEACONRY OF CHICHESTER 
 
 IN JULY, 1845. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY EDWARD MANNING, M.A., 
 
 ARCHDEACON OF CHICHESTER. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET; 
 
 AND WILLIAM HAYLEY MASON, CHICHESTER. 
 1845.
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,, STAMrOKD STEEET.
 
 THE CLERGY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ARCHDEACONRY OF CHICHESTER, 
 ©Ibis <Bf)nx%ty 
 
 PRINTED AT THEIR REQUEST, 
 
 IS INSCRIBED 
 
 BY THEIR AFFECTIONATE BROTHER AND SERVANT, 
 
 H. E. M.
 
 A few passages, omitted in delivery, are marked with brackets. 

 
 A CHARGE, 
 
 My Reverend Brethren, 
 
 Last year, after a lapse of no less than six years, 
 we received once more the instruction and admoni- 
 tion of our Bishop in visitation. 
 
 This year it falls again to my office to meet you 
 in this place ; and I derive no little strength and 
 encouraoement from the recollection that we have 
 all alike so lately received counsel and guidance 
 from our common Superior, under whom it is my 
 happiness to act. 
 
 I have not thought it necessary to begin as yet 
 a second parochial Visitation of the Archdeaconry, 
 because the objects of such an inspection have been 
 so widely anticipated, and because, through the 
 efficient visitation of the Rural Deans, so ready a 
 channel of communication with each several parish 
 is always open. It is not necessary for me to repeat 
 to the churchwardens my request that they will at 
 all times apply to me whensoever I can render them 
 assistance in the duties of their office. For the 
 
 B 2
 
 6 
 
 same reasons I have thought it better to lay aside 
 the intention of which I gave notice to the church- 
 wardens at the Visitation of the year before last. 
 1 then said that I would issue to you, in a separate 
 form, certain suggestions which at that time ap- 
 peared to me to be necessary. I have not done so, 
 not through any omission or forgetfulness on my 
 part, for I so far fulfilled the promise I made you 
 as to prepare them ; but on consideration I found 
 that they had become so little needed, that they 
 were already so generally both known and acted 
 upon, that I thought it better to leave the further- 
 ance of a work so well begun to your own sense of 
 duty and of Christian devotion. 
 
 We know who has said " them that honour me 
 I will honour." The Book of the Prophet Haggai 
 will bring this great law of God's kingdom before 
 you. When the people of God should have raised 
 up His house from ruin and desolation, they 
 turned to a careful building of their own houses, to 
 their tillage and their seeding, to their harvest 
 and their hoard. And what was the end of it? 
 They turned their face from God, and He turned 
 His face from them. Nothing prospered in all 
 their daily toil. Upon every thing there was a 
 blight. " Ye have sown much, and bring in little ; 
 ye eat, but ye have not enough ; ye drink, but ye 
 are not filled with drink ; ye clothe you, but there 
 is none warm ; and he that earneth wages earneth
 
 wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith 
 the Lord of hosts : Consider your ways. Go up to 
 the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house ; 
 and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glori- 
 fied, saith the Lord. Ye looked for much, and, lo, 
 it came to little ; and when ye brought it home, I 
 did blow upon it. Why ? saith the Lord of hosts. 
 Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run 
 every man to his own house. Therefore the 
 heaven is stayed over you from dew, and the earth 
 is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought 
 upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon 
 the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, 
 and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, 
 and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the 
 labour of the hands."* Prosperity, indeed, is no 
 certain proof of righteousness. The lands of the un- 
 righteous are often fruitful, and the righteous man 
 sometimes reaps a bare soil in harvest ; but there is 
 a law fixed and sure. If we wait on God, and love 
 His worship and His service, He will bless us so far 
 as is for our good in all the hopes and toils of life. 
 The surest remedy of all our laborious and anxious 
 care for this world is to live righteously and to re- 
 verence the sanctuary of God. " He that soweth 
 righteousness shall have a sure reward." I leave 
 this work, therefore, in full confidence to your faith 
 and good will. 
 
 .* Haggai i. 6 — 11.
 
 8 
 
 Let me now refer to a few topics which seem 
 naturally to suggest themselves at such a time as 
 this. 
 
 In the Session of 1844 an unpretending and very- 
 useful law was passed, entitled " An Act for the 
 better Regulating the Offices of Lecturers and Parish 
 Clerks."* 
 
 The objects of this Act are two : first, to in- 
 crease the number of the pastoral clergy, by con- 
 verting lecturers, whose office at present is confined 
 to preaching certain occasional sermons, into assist- 
 ant curates; power being given to the Bishop, 
 with consent of the incumbent of any parish, to 
 require such preachers to undertake a share of 
 parochial duties. A provision is also made for the 
 appointment of persons in Holy Orders to the 
 office of parish clerks, with all privileges and 
 emoluments, and for placing them on the footing 
 of stipendiary curates. 
 
 The next object of the Act is to provide a prompt 
 remedy for neglect or misbehaviour in parish clerks. 
 The prescribed mode of proceeding is as follows : — 
 The ordinary is empowered to summon the parish 
 clerk offending to appear before him, to examine 
 witnesses on oath, and at his judgment to suspend 
 for a time, or to remove altogether, any party con- 
 victed of misconduct in his office. 
 
 I would especially call the attention of the 
 * 7 & 8 Victoria, cap. lix.
 
 9 
 
 Churchwardens to this part of the Act. The morals 
 and conduct of these parochial officers fall directly 
 within your care. Among the scandals which 
 have affected the public worship of the Church, few 
 have been more frequent, pernicious, and difficult 
 of correction than misconduct in parish clerks. You 
 have it now in your power to correct them to a 
 great extent. Faithfulness on your part, in bring- 
 ing cases of offence before the ordinary, will soon 
 raise a higher standard, and by awakening in 
 them the consciousness that they will be held to 
 answer for misbehaviour, the necessity of instituting 
 proceedings, together with the scandal, will be 
 taken away. 
 
 [It is greatly to be lamented that an office of so 
 much sacredness should have fallen into so low 
 esteem. Next to the clergyman no one bears a 
 charge of more public example, or one more nearly 
 related to the highest blessings, than the clerk who 
 is appointed to take part in the services of paro- 
 chial worship. The very name is a witness that 
 he is the Lord's servant. It has come to pass in 
 the smaller, that is in most parishes, that the clerk 
 has sunk into the sexton. But it is manifest that 
 in the Book of Common Prayer, when the clerk 
 or clerks are spoken of, an order of men in every 
 way higher, and more nearly approaching to the 
 quality of tbe clergy, is intended. By the Canons 
 of 1603 it is required that the clerk " be of honest
 
 10 
 
 conversation, sufficient for his reading, writing, 
 and also for his competent skill in singing, if it 
 may be :"* a part of his office being to respond to 
 the officiating minister, and to lead, under him, in 
 the parochial choir. At the very mention of the 
 parish choir our minds are filled w^ith painful recol- 
 lections of discord and irreverence. It has become 
 a proverb of parish feuds ; and yet there can hardly 
 be conceived anything more truly Christian and 
 devotional than the free service of a body of parish- 
 ioners, chosen for their skill in music, and for their 
 religious fitness, to assist their pastor in the worship 
 of the parish church. To encourage a love of 
 sacred music, and to induce our people to con- 
 secrate their gifts to the public service of God, 
 has been found, from the earliest times, one of the 
 readiest and surest means of promoting deeper 
 habits of devotion. It is greatly to be regretted 
 that people of standing and education, who culti- 
 vate God's gifts for their own indulgence or for 
 the ear of the world, do not render this service, 
 I will not say to their pastor, but to God. It is 
 strange that men whose life has few alleviations 
 from daily toil should fail to see how high and 
 pure a source of refreshment is open to them in 
 the worship of the Church. f] 
 
 * Canons, 91, 1603. 
 
 t We know how the first peer of the realm once found 
 the first lay subject in his parish church singing in the public
 
 11 
 
 In an old political society like our own, where 
 the Church pervades the whole frame and action 
 of the State, it is hardly possible that any one por- 
 tion of our internal order can be touched without 
 effects, whether designed or no, upon the system 
 or functions of the Church likewise. Certain mea- 
 sures having these effects are at this moment under 
 consideration ; and so great is their importance, 
 and so intimate their relation to the deepest and 
 highest offices of our ministry, that I shall need no 
 other justification for adverting to them. 
 
 The first is a Bill intitled " An Act to Consoli- 
 date the Jurisdiction of the several Ecclesiastical 
 Courts in England and Wales into one Court ; and 
 to enlarge the powers and authorities of such 
 Court ; and to alter and amend the law in certain 
 matters Ecclesiastical."* 
 
 The outline of the Bill is as follows if — It creates 
 
 service. The biographer of Sir Thomas More says : — The 
 Duke of Norfolk " comminge on a tyme to Chelsey to dine 
 with him, fortuned to find him at church, singing in the quiere, 
 with a surplus on his backe : to whom, after service, as they 
 went home together arme in arme, the Duke said, .... 
 ' My Lord Chancellor, a parish clarke, a parish clarke, you 
 dishonour the King and his office.' ' Nay,' quoth Sir Thomas 
 More, smilinge upon the Duke, ' your Grace may not tliinke 
 that the Kinge, your master and myne, will with me for serving 
 God his master be offended, or thereby count his office dis- 
 honoured.' " — Roper's Life of Sir Tliomas More, p. 29. 
 
 * Presented by the Lord Cottenham, April 25, 1845. 
 
 t During the time in which the above was written and deli- 
 vered the bill in question underwent certain amendments. I
 
 12 
 
 a new court, to be called Her Majesty's Court of 
 Probate. It abolishes all courts, except the Con- 
 sistories of the Archbishops and Bishops. It trans- 
 fers to the Court of Probate, together with the 
 power of excommunication, all jurisdiction now 
 exercised by the Ecclesiastical Courts, except cer- 
 tain specified branches of jurisdiction, namely, such 
 as monitions, faculties, sequestrations, licenses, dis- 
 pensations, and the like — matters simply formal, 
 technical, and secular. It then forbids the New 
 Court of Probate to exercise such portions of its 
 newly received jurisdiction as relate to incest, 
 adultery, fornication, and other criminal offences. 
 
 Let us now sum up the effects of these provisions. 
 
 I pass by the probable inconvenience which may 
 hereafter arise to parties engaged in testamentary 
 questions by the extinction of the local courts ; and 
 the ill effect of taking away the professional practice 
 which now affords a scanty remuneration to the legal 
 advisers of the bishops and to the officers of the con- 
 sistory courts. We will go to graver objections. 
 
 This new court, it is to be observed, is in no real 
 sense an Ecclesiastical, but a purely Royal and secu- 
 
 think it right and just to retain the original outline of the 
 measure, to show into what extraordinary proposals high-minded 
 and well-intentioned men conversant only with the secular aspect 
 of ecclesiastical subjects may be led. There is no need of point- 
 ing at the incalculable evils to which the Church must be 
 exposed from such legislation.
 
 13 
 
 lar court. It represents the Crown alone. It is 
 necessary to the existence of an Ecclesiastical court 
 that it represent a spiritual person. The Crown, 
 at the highest stretch of prerogative lawyers, is no 
 more than a mixta persona* partly lay, and partly 
 ecclesiastical, that is, in no sense Spiritual, which 
 element is, by the Thirty-nine Articles t of the 
 Church, carefully excluded from the supremacy of 
 the Crown. The court is therefore ecclesiastical, 
 less the spiritual element of a Church court ; or, 
 in other words, it is purely secular in authority, 
 though it take cognizance of ecclesiastical causes. 
 To this purely secular court is transferred the pri- 
 mary and entire jurisdiction now exercised by the 
 Church ill matters of marriage and divorce. By 
 the Report of the Commission in 1832 these are 
 described as " purely questions of civil right between 
 individuals in their lay character, and are neither 
 spiritual, nor affecting the Church Establishment. "J 
 Surely this is going further than was either needed 
 or intended. 
 
 By the universal doctrine of the canon law the 
 essence of marriage is held to be the consent or con- 
 
 * Coke's Reports, Caudrey's Case, p. Iviii., et passim. The 
 double use of the word Spiritual has led to endless confusion. 
 The maxim, " Reges Sacro oleo uncti sunt Spiritualis jurisdic- 
 tionis capaces," means only inforo exteriori, i.e., Ecclesiastical, 
 as distinct from Spiritual in its first and pure intention. 
 
 f Article xxxvii. 
 
 I Report on Ecclesiastical Courts, &c., p. 12.
 
 14 
 
 tract between the parties. The solemnizing of this 
 contract in the face of the Church conferred on it 
 the character of Holy Matrimony : the civil courts, 
 for their own uses, took cognizance of that solemniza- 
 tion and character as the complete proof of lawful 
 and perfect marriage. Let it be admitted that the 
 essence is not in the benediction, but in the contract; 
 that a civil tribunal, as Parliament, may now, as a 
 fact in law,* proceed at once to divorce without 
 sentence of the Church in its courts. Will this 
 
 *, By the law of England at this moment the bond of mar- 
 riage is indissoluble. What are commonly called divorces are 
 either — (1) Separations of the parties a mensd et thoro, the 
 bond {vinculum matrimonii') remaining undissolved — or (2) Sus- 
 pensions {i.e. violations) of the law by Act of Parliament, called 
 divorce a vinculo, which are only privilegia in individual cases 
 for which the principles of the law, common, statute, ecclesias- 
 tical, have no place or warrant. See Report from the Select 
 Committee of the House of Lords on the Ecclesiastical Courts 
 Bill, with Minutes of Evidence, Session 1844, pp. 24, 25, 26, 
 27 ; Evidence of Sir S. R. Lushington and Sir J. Stoddart. 
 The indissolubility of the marriage bond is founded on the sanc- 
 tity of the Divine institution (Sanchez de S. Matrim., lib. ii,, 
 Disp. xiii., 8). For the same cause it has always been held to 
 be matter of spiritual cognizance. Van Espen, tom. iii., p. 
 640. Sanchez de S. Matrim., lib. x. disp. viii. 15. This makes 
 the subject of divorce by Parliament to be a matter of the gravest 
 kind. The first absolute divorce by special Act of Parliament 
 was no earlier than 1668 (see Rogers's Eccl. Law, p. 324, and 
 note a). It is a practice at variance with the law as it existed 
 down to that time, founded on no principle recognized by the 
 Church, nor as yet defined by any statute. It appears to rest 
 on nothing but the omnipotence of Parliament — a dictum which 
 has lost somewhat of its moral force.
 
 15 
 
 suffice to make marriage and divorce " purely 
 questions of civil right between individuals in their 
 lay character " and questions " not spiritual ?" Is it 
 no spiritual question whether " a man shall leave his 
 father and mother to cleave unto his wife, and they 
 two shall be one flesh ?" or, inversely, whether that 
 union shall be again dissolved ? Are there no con- 
 tracts entered into with God : no obligation of the 
 spiritual life : no laws of conscience subject to the 
 pastors of the Church : no relations to the Holy 
 Sacraments, and other Christian offices ? Surely this 
 is to make dower and alimony, and legitimate issue 
 to be every thing, and the sanctities which make 
 wedlock holy to be nothing. We grant that civil 
 questions of the greatest magnitude are involved 
 in these causes ; nevertheless the least precept in 
 the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than they. If 
 divorce be a question " between individuals in their 
 lay character," in what is marriage holy ? It does 
 not follow, because the essence of marriage is in 
 the verbal contract of the parties, that such a con- 
 tract is only a civil contract. It is first a natural 
 contract, founded on the personal will of the parties : 
 in a Christian state it is also a contract of conscience, 
 founded on the laws of revealed morality, and of 
 the divine origin of marriage. The Church takes 
 up and blesses that contract : the State recognizes 
 it when so blessed, and it becomes then among us, 
 that is in a state Christian, and at no time before, a 
 public and civil contract. Strip it of its civil re-
 
 16 
 
 cognition, and of the spiritual benediction, it then 
 reverts to the personal religious contract of two par- 
 ties binding themselves consciously by the divine 
 law, to a divine institution. Even in a Heathen 
 state marriage is not a mere civil contract. It is in 
 its essence immutably religious. If the tribunal to 
 judge and give sentence of divorce be a civil tribunal, 
 why may not the Legislator who shall define the 
 sufficient and justifying causes of divorce be also a 
 civil Legislator ? The effect of this has been already 
 ascertained. The laws of Prussia at this day are 
 an example. And in France, when the laws of 
 divorce were relaxed at the first Revolution, in the 
 three first months of 1793 the number of divorces 
 amounted to 562 in Paris alone. The marriages 
 were 1785, so that the divorces were to the mar- 
 riages as one to three. All the divorces in Doctors' 
 Commons for a whole century before that date did 
 not amount to much more than one-fifth of the 
 number in Paris alone in these three months.* 
 
 It is deeply to be feared that the transferring of 
 jurisdiction in divorce from the tribunal which is 
 founded upon the conscience and laws of divine 
 revelation, is only the first step towards opening in 
 the Legislature the grounds and conditions on which 
 divorce shall be permitted in the State.f 
 
 * Burke's Letters on a Regicide Peace. Works, vol. viii., 
 p. 104. 
 
 \ For the dangerous increase of the tendency to have recourse 
 to Parliament for sentence of divorce the following facts will 
 suffice : —
 
 17 
 
 It needs but little imagination to suppose a case 
 in which the State may divorce parties whom the 
 Church must still regard as man and wife : it 
 needs less to point out the universal confusion of 
 all spiritual relations which must then ensue. I 
 know of no subject more likely to bring on here- 
 after the worst collisions between the civil and 
 spiritual powers: the worst, because of a kind in 
 which the State will not, and the Church can- 
 not, give way. 
 
 Waiving all discussion of abstract questions as to 
 the reasons for which causes of marriage and divorce 
 have from the earliest ages of Christianity been sub- 
 ject to the cognizance of the Church, it is plain that 
 public morals, the purity of private and social life, 
 are all alike concerned in opposing every thing 
 which can strip the marriage bond of the sanctities 
 which make it both strong and sacred. If the 
 State no longer desire the intervention of the 
 Church, and certainly, for her own sake, the Church 
 does not desire to intervene, in the matrimonial 
 questions of those who are not united at her altars, 
 this at least we may claim on the lowest grounds of 
 
 The Divorce Bills from the Reformation to George I. 5 
 
 From 1714 to 1776 
 
 „ 1776 to 1800 
 
 „ 1800 to 1830 
 
 „ 1830 to 1844 (14 years) 
 * Thoughts on the Law of Divorce/ &c 
 20. 
 
 . 60 
 . 70 
 80 to 90 
 53 
 , by Dr. R. Phillimore,
 
 18 
 
 toleration, and the highest grounds of justice, that 
 no purely civil judge shall interpose to put asunder, 
 without cognizance of the Church, those whose con- 
 tract it has witnessed, whom it has declared to be 
 " man and wife together in the name of the Father, 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 By the 55th section of the bill, as it was originally 
 drawn, it was proposed to give to this purely secu- 
 lar court the power of enforcing its proceedings by 
 sentence of excommunication, which shall have 
 " force and effect of definitive sentences, such sen- 
 tences being pronounced as spiritual censures for 
 offences of ecclesiastical cognizance." The follow- 
 ing section takes away all civil consequences of 
 such excommunication, except imprisonment for 
 six months.* 
 
 It is here then proposed, first, to retain the 
 penalty of excommunication, against which so 
 much has been spoken and written as oppressive 
 and invidious : next, to continue the odious con- 
 sequence of imprisonment attaching to it: and 
 lastly, to commit the highest spiritual chastisement 
 in Christ's Church to a secular judge, for the en* 
 forcement of merely secular proceedings, and for 
 secular ends.'f" If this be not a prostitution of the 
 discipline of Christ, what can be ? 
 
 But further, the 68th and 80th sections together 
 
 * Bill, &c., sect. 55, 56. 
 
 •j" This has been since ■withdrawn.
 
 19 
 
 have the effect of forbidding all tribunals, whether of 
 the State or of the Church, to excommunicate any 
 persons living in incest, adultery, or fornication : 
 so that this same bill which arms the Court of Pro- 
 bate with power to repel from the Holy Com- 
 munion, and from all Christian rites, persons 
 offending in matters of wills and legacies, disarms 
 the Church of the power to excommunicate per- 
 sons guilty of adultery and of incest. 
 
 And if the Act should pass in this form, there 
 would exist within this Christian realm of England 
 no punishment, spiritual or civil, for incestuous and 
 adulterous persons as such. This bill, at a time 
 when every daily paper is loaded with details of 
 profligacy, is equivalent to a proclamation of abso- 
 lute impunity for offences of this most heinous 
 character. There would exist no tribunal em- 
 powered to repress such vices by punishment, or 
 by chastisement, or in any way to take cognizance 
 of them : our law would become a scandal among 
 nations. 
 
 [One vicious principle runs through the whole 
 Bill. The framers of it have treated the ecclesias- 
 tical jurisdiction as one simple and uncompounded 
 authority emanating from the State. The source 
 of this error appears to be in a hasty use of the 
 great principle that the fountain of all jurisdiction, 
 both civil and ecclesiastical, is ultimately the 
 Crown alone. Now there is a sense in which this 
 
 c2
 
 20 
 
 is altogether true ; and a sense in which it is par- 
 tially, but most vitally, false. It is true thus far. 
 In every state the right of jurisdiction (i. e. jus 
 dicendi)^ of declaring and enforcing rights, resides 
 in the supreme civil power. But even in a heathen 
 state there are rights of nature antecedent to the 
 defined forms of social law, which the civil power 
 may adopt, clothe with legal accidents, and perpe- 
 tuate as law in the commonwealth, but may not in 
 one jot or tittle either abrogate or contravene. In 
 a Christian State (that is, a State which has entered 
 into communion with the Church) all the powers 
 which inhere from the beginning, and inalienably, 
 in the spiritual constitution of the Church, become 
 clothed in forms recognised by the tribunals of the 
 civil government ; and are the subject-matter of a 
 concurrent jurisdiction. For instance: excommuni- 
 cation, which was exercised in forms purely spiritual 
 by the Church of the first ages, afterwards became 
 clothed in legal forms, and was followed by civil 
 consequences. It is fully competent to the civil 
 ruler to abolish both those consequences and that 
 clothing, for both emanate from the supreme foun- 
 tain of civil jurisdiction ; but it is not competent to 
 any or all the civil powers on earth to hinder or 
 forbid the purely spiritual jurisdiction of the Church 
 over its members in all matters of sacraments and 
 offices of the Christian life. Limiting, then, the 
 word * jurisdiction' to the secular forms in which the
 
 21 
 
 spiritual power of the Church has in Christian states 
 been clothed, there can be no difficulty in assenting, 
 in its fullest breadth, to the principle that the ulti- 
 mate fountain of all coercive jurisdiction, in foro 
 ecvterioriy is the Crown. But this is not broad 
 enough to carry the conclusion for which it is laid. 
 In the Consistory Court of every bishop, and there- 
 fore in the whole system of our ecclesiastical law, 
 there are two perfectly distinct elements united in 
 one form and process. The spiritual tribunals of 
 the Church existed before there was a Christian 
 state to clothe them with civil jurisdiction; and 
 they survive the abolition of those superadded privi- 
 leges. For the souls' health of its own flock it 
 must still sit, judge, and pronounce. No power can 
 forbid it. Whether or no the State take cognizance 
 of adultery and incest, as social evils, the Church is 
 bound to deal with the offender for the salvation of 
 his soul.] 
 
 It is therefore earnestly to be hoped that the Bill 
 now before Parliament may yet be laid aside for a 
 more mature consideration. There is something 
 very instructive in the fact, that the Report of 1832, 
 one of the ablest, most detailed, and elaborate ever 
 framed on this subject, running, as it does, to a 
 great length, and treating copiously of wills, and 
 matrimony, and all secular and pecuniary causes, 
 devotes to the highest and most intimately vital 
 parts of the whole subject, — the spiritual cor-
 
 22 
 
 rection of the Church, out of seventy-three folio 
 pages not quite three ; and it is there mentioned 
 only to be abolished. The testamentary and matri- 
 monial jurisdiction may well be thought sufficiently 
 treated : on the corrective jurisdiction, which touches 
 the sanctity and life of the Church, nothing less 
 than a new investigation and Report, by spiritual 
 persons, is required. 
 
 In a system so ancient and complex as our eccle- 
 siastical law, it is impossible to foresee all the effects 
 of the slightest changes. Principles of the deepest 
 action are so interwoven in all its parts, that when 
 we seem to be removing only a disease, we may be 
 cutting through provisions that are necessary to the 
 functions of life. Every alteration unmasks new 
 consequences, and runs out into numberless rela- 
 tions on all sides. By the most superficial changes 
 we may paralyse members which we never thought 
 to be implicated in the experiment. For this rea- 
 son, changes long delayed, reforms often defeated, 
 improvements long waited for, are for the most 
 part wisest and best. It has been true in the case 
 before us. The very difficulties which have hin- 
 dered, year by year, the successive Ecclesiastical 
 Courts Bills have been our safeguard. [Every de- 
 feat has remanded them for further inquiry : and if 
 any one be tempted to be impatient at the slowness 
 with which our old ecclesiastical institutions yield 
 even to improvements, let us look at the condition
 
 23 
 
 of the Church in a neighbouring country, where the 
 whole antient ecclesiastical law, with all its tribu- 
 nals, has been swept away. There is hardly a 
 social relation which does not exhibit some false 
 position, some direct contradiction, whether between 
 the Church and State, or the Episcopate and the 
 Government, or the bishops and the parochial 
 clergy, or both, with the heads of families, or the 
 parochial clergy with the municipal authorities, the 
 local proprietors, the agents of the Minister of 
 Public Instruction, or the like,* The whole is a 
 jarring contact of two incongruous systems, giving 
 opportunity day after day for needless and danger- 
 ous collisions. 
 
 There is safety even in the mere dead weight and 
 passive resistance of old institutions. It seems to 
 be a providential law that every age should retain 
 a tenacious hold upon the next succeeding, so as to 
 preserve it from the full momentum of the social 
 forces which impel it onwards. An abrupt se- 
 vering of two generations is a revolution. In the 
 Church this is especially true. Its most perfect 
 condition is at all times made up of things old and 
 new, mutually tempering each other. Our true 
 strength is in our historical traditions ; in the 
 sum of past centuries which is contained in the 
 
 * See the collection of Facts and Documents given in the 
 English Review, No. IV., Article 2, on 'The Church and State 
 in PVance,' and in the Foreign Intelligence in No. VI.
 
 24 
 
 Church of England. This is the principle of our 
 public stability ; and by this it is our highest prac- 
 tical wisdom to abide. The popular strength of the 
 English Church, apart from the spiritual action of 
 its pastors, is in its unwritten prerogatives ; in pri- 
 vileges which are recorded in no statute, which are 
 read in no roll of Parliament ; in usages, customs, 
 and acknowledged prescriptions surrounding the 
 spiritual throne of every bishop and the altar of 
 every parish priest.] 
 
 It is therefore greatly to be desired that this vast 
 subject of our Ecclesiastical courts, which has its 
 roots in the English and Norman and Saxon ages 
 of our Church, may be once more referred to a 
 deeper and more penetrating investigation, both 
 by men eminent as lawyers and by persons skilled 
 in the spiritual practice of the pastoral office, before 
 the assent of Parliament be again asked to any 
 measure of reconstruction. 
 
 Another Bill intimately affecting the condition 
 of our poor, and their relation to the clergy and to 
 the religious offices of the Church, is the Parochial 
 Settlement Bill. It appears to have been designed 
 upon principles of political economy, with a view 
 to the price of labour and the distribution of rates. 
 Perhaps nothing was more remote from the inten- 
 tion of the framers of it than to affect the moral 
 and religious welfare of the people. Such, how- 
 ever, I believe must be its effect. The only part of
 
 25 
 
 it I need refer to, is the power given by the 35th 
 and 36th sections to the Poor Law Commissioners 
 to declare any union of parishes to be an union for 
 the purposes of settlement, that is, to substitute for 
 settlement in a parish, settlement in an union. Now 
 the objections to this seem obviously to be these. 
 First, it must break through the relations of charity 
 and dependence which ought to bind, and in some 
 measure do bind, the poor in each several parish to 
 the owners and occupiers of the soil. These bonds 
 need nothing to relax them further. The operation 
 of this measure tends finally to dissolve them. 
 Every parish clergyman will feel what is here at 
 stake. One of our chief duties — one of our most 
 earnest endeavours at this very moment — is to re- 
 awaken the sense of local responsibility and the 
 consciousness that possessors of land are natural 
 guardians of the poor who live and die upon their 
 soil. The laws of property are altogether second 
 in the scale of God's providence, compared with these 
 laws of local and personal obligation. No increase 
 of financial or economical efiiciency can compensate 
 to the population of England for the loosening of 
 these moral bonds. Rather than weaken them by 
 the removal of the lightest traditionary sanction, 
 our care should be applied to strengthen them by 
 every association of the past. There is a grace of 
 life which is more real than political economy, 
 more living, active, and beneficent than efficient
 
 26 
 
 management and statistical exactness — I mean the 
 love of home and the soil of our fathers, the sym- 
 pathies of long neighbourhood, and the mutual ties 
 of many generations. 
 
 And further, this sinking of parishes in unions 
 must greatly weaken the relation between the 
 pastor and his flock. It tends to make the homes 
 of our poor less fixed and stationary ; and we all 
 know how difficult it is to deal with what I may 
 call the shifting element in our parishes, that is, 
 the households who come and go, without ever 
 forming any definite relation to the parish Church 
 or to our pastoral ministrations. Already the paro- 
 chial system has been superseded in the distribution 
 of relief; partly, again, in the scheme of registra- 
 tion ; and now it is proposed to lay it aside in a 
 matter which, more than any other, gives perma- 
 nency and a sense of home to the poor man. It 
 may be true that for the publication of banns, the 
 solemnization of marriage, for baptism, holy com- 
 munion, burial, and the like, actual residence is 
 now the foundation of a claim upon our spiritual 
 ministry ; and yet how distinctly perceptible is the 
 sense of hereditary attachment and duty on the 
 part of our people to their parish Church and 
 minister ! Everything that lessens this, lessens the 
 conventional, and ultimately the actual, hold of 
 religion upon the people. The parochial system of 
 England is the foundation of some of the deepest
 
 27 
 
 and strongest laws of pei'sonal and social duty. 
 Every step already taken in the direction of super- 
 seding it is to be deplored, and every new step, by 
 all fair and Christian opposition to be resisted. 
 It is to be feared that parish Churches and parish 
 priests will find little sympathy in Union settlers. 
 
 The following statement has been lately made in 
 Parliament, with all the circumstances of public 
 responsibility : — " Those incessant witnesses against 
 ignorance and neglect — the gaol returns of the 
 kingdom — have again borne fearful testimony to 
 the extent of moral darkness which still broods 
 over large portions of our population. Of the 
 criminals of Berkshire one-third have been again 
 found unable to read ; in Cambridgeshire and Staf- 
 fordshire one-half were in this condition ; in Den- 
 bighshire, two-thirds ; in Devon, out of 71 offenders 
 under sixteen years of age, only four could read 
 well ; in Essex, one-half were in total ignorance ; 
 while of 212 convicted prisoners, 48 had never been 
 at a school at all, 40 had been there less than one 
 month, 45 less than two months, 43 less than four 
 months, and only 36 above six months ; in Hereford, 
 out of 385 prisoners, only one could read well ; in 
 Sussex, out of 877 prisoners, 141 did not know the 
 Saviour's name, 498 just knew His name and no 
 more, 179 had a confused acquaintance with His 
 history, and only 6 per cent, of the whole number
 
 28 
 
 had any reasonable knowledge of the Christian 
 faith."* 
 
 Now what are the chief causes by which the 
 school-time of poor children is shortened ? I be- 
 lieve every one familiar with the working of a 
 parish will answer, frequent removal of dwelling, 
 and too early employment in farm and other labour. 
 It is needless to point out how directly the Bill in 
 question would go to increase this evil, first, by 
 weakening the moral relation between the em- 
 ployers of labour and the children of their labour- 
 ers ; next, between the clergy and the parents ; and 
 lastly, by increasing for the poor man the facilities 
 and inducements to a change of residence, with a 
 view to carry his labour to a better market, regard- 
 less of the local and moral advantages of his child- 
 ren. The necessities of life are already strong 
 enough in this direction, as we know whose daily 
 office it is to counteract them. 
 
 It is, moreover, to be well weighed how long 
 
 dioceses will stand as land-marks to the national 
 
 life of England when parishes have been effaced; 
 
 and, in the end, when the boundaries of parishes 
 
 and of dioceses grow faint, how long the national 
 
 character of the Church will still be a reality. 
 
 These few and very superficial remarks are thrown 
 
 out that you may consider how far the clergy will 
 
 act wisely in taking prompt steps to bring these 
 
 * Speech of Lord John Eussell, May 26, 1845. Reported by 
 ' The Times.'
 
 29 
 
 objections to bear on those with whom it rests to 
 pass or to reject this measure. 
 
 And this naturally leads to a kindred subject. 
 Seeing that the decided tendency of political events 
 for years past has been to weaken the hold of 
 our parochial system upon the population of the 
 country, it is our plain wisdom and duty to counter- 
 work against so great a national misfortune, by 
 using all our powers to restore it to its fullest effi- 
 ciency. 
 
 This, of course, my Reverend Brethren, is to be 
 done chiefly by the spiritual functions of our pas- 
 toral office. But into that subject it is not my in- 
 tention now to enter. I refer to it only that I may 
 not seem to pass it over. 
 
 The branch of our pastoral care of which it is 
 my purpose to speak, is that which relates to the 
 temporal welfare of our people. 
 
 Since the change in the Poor Law they have 
 been thrown in a great degree upon their own in- 
 dustry and upon private alms-giving. In these 
 respects the operation of the law has been beneficial. 
 It has also strongly marked out our duties in two 
 special points — the one, that we should use means 
 to elicit and to support provident habits in our 
 poor ; the other, that we should awaken and instruct 
 the charitable sympathies of all our people. 
 
 These arguments were strongly pressed by some 
 of the chief advocates of the Poor Law Amendment
 
 30 
 
 Act, at the time of its passing through Parliament, 
 and in some cases the clergy took them at their 
 word, and by restoring more frequent parochial 
 collections for the poor, formed funds of no incon- 
 siderable amount. Good were it if this had been 
 made universal ; but golden opportunities are sel- 
 dom seen till gone. We must now work in this 
 direction at greater cost, and with less reward. 
 
 There is, however, another kind of remedy still 
 in our hands, I mean the formation of Benefit or 
 Provident and other like Societies for each several 
 parish. 
 
 And this leads me to speak of the benefit clubs 
 now in existence. The evils which generally attach 
 to them are notorious. They are briefly these two : 
 insolvency and immorality. As to insolvenc}?", it 
 is believed that for the most part they are actually 
 bankrupt ; that a period of forty years is enough, 
 by arithmetical laws, to destroy them by a simple 
 process of exhaustion. 
 
 As to immorality, the yearly feast often exhibits, 
 or is followed by, a scene of riot and excess which 
 converts the solemn service by which the day is 
 opened into a profanation. Many clergymen even 
 refuse on grounds of conscience to officiate. Mul- 
 titudes among the members of such clubs are at 
 this moment desiring to withdraw ; and many are 
 holding aloof from joining them on the ground of 
 these gross excesses.
 
 31 
 
 By the last return ordered by the House of Com- 
 mons relating to friendly societies enrolled in Eng- 
 land and Wales, it appears that in the county of Mid- 
 dlesex there are 346 friendly societies, of which 31 1 
 are held in public houses ; in the city of London 
 there are 53, of which 46, that is, out of a total of 
 399, 357, that is, seven-eighths, are held in public 
 houses. 
 
 The total of these societies is 9152, and, if we 
 may apply the same rule of proportion, nearly 8000 
 are held in public houses.* This one fact is enough 
 to account for the double evil of immorality and 
 insolvency. 
 
 It is unfortunately for the interest, as it is also 
 in the power, of those at whose houses club-feasts 
 are kept, to encourage the worst parts of the system ; 
 I mean the spending of forfeits, and of a certain 
 fixed sum by each member, whether present or 
 absent, sometimes 3^?., sometimes 6d., in drink, 
 every quarter or monthly night. It is supposed 
 that 20 or 25 per cent, at least on the funds of 
 many of the clubs is so expended, imrmr bt fif\ 
 
 In a friendly society, apparently under more than 
 usual observation and care, the whole expenditure 
 of the year ending April, 1845, was 71/. 19^., made 
 up of the following three heads : — 
 
 * So stated by the Society for the Improvement of the Condi- 
 tion of the Labouring Classes, in its paper for April, 1845.
 
 £. s. 
 
 d. 
 
 28 9 
 
 1 
 
 12 12 
 
 3 
 
 30 17 
 
 8 
 
 ^71 19 
 
 
 
 32 
 
 1. Dinner (132 at 3^. 6d.), band, &c. 
 
 2. Expenses of management and salaries 
 
 3. Benefit in relief, &c. ... 
 
 So that the head of benefits exceeds the head of 
 dinner by 21, Ss. 7d., 35 persons being relieved, 
 and 132 attending the feast ; but the two heads of 
 dinner and management together exceeding the 
 item of relief by 10/. 3s. 8d., that is by one-seventh 
 of the whole expenditure. This is probably a very 
 fair and creditable example. 
 
 The present moment, then, is most favourable 
 for some effort to replace these societies by others 
 on a sounder financial principle, and with a higher 
 moral character. 
 
 You are all well aware, my Reverend Brethren, 
 how often this matter has been discussed among us 
 in private, and in our Rural Chapters. I have it 
 also in my power to say that some of the first per- 
 sonages among the laity of this diocese are anxious 
 to give their aid and sanction to any well-considered 
 proposal on this subject. 
 
 In what I am about to add there will probably be 
 little or nothing that is new to you. I am myself 
 indebted for most of my information to others who 
 have with great kindness given me the benefit of 
 their knowledge and experience. I trouble you 
 with it on this occasion, because it seems the readiest
 
 33 
 
 mode of opening a general consideration of the 
 question with a view to the adoption of measures 
 in practice. And it is obviously of great im})ortance 
 that whatsoever we do should be done with a full 
 knowledge of what is on foot in other parts of the 
 archdeaconry. Already in one or two instances 
 this want of communication has given rise to causes 
 of subsequent regret. I shall feel very thankful 
 to any of my brethren who will forward to me 
 any information and advice as to the course to be 
 pursued. 
 
 There are three principles which appear of tlie 
 first importance in forming a benefit society : — 
 
 First, that it be based on computations made by 
 some eminent actuary, and enrolled under Act of 
 Parliament : 
 
 Next, tliat no portion of the funds shall, on any 
 pretence, be expended in feasting, or at public 
 houses : 
 
 Thirdly, that the expenses of management shall 
 be defrayed, if possible, out of funds distinct from 
 the contributions of the members, that is to say, 
 out of voluntary donations and subscriptions from 
 honorary members, or out of the income of invest- 
 ments made by such donations. 
 
 Let me in a very few words state to you the 
 benefits held out by three such societies now in 
 operation. 
 
 D
 
 34 
 
 The first is a benefit society, founded in 1842, 
 for the town and county of Cambridge. 
 
 It admits among its members men, and women, 
 and children. 
 
 It gives allowances in sickness and in old age. 
 
 It provides for sums payable at death, or at certain 
 fixed ages : in the latter case being available for 
 apprenticing, or settling children in employment or 
 trade. 
 
 The benefit of allowance in sickness, old age, and 
 the payments at death, or otherwise, may be ob- 
 tained either separately, or in combination, at the 
 option of the contributor. 
 
 The payment may be either monthly, or in one 
 sum, as a perfect qualification. 
 
 A member may at any time either reduce or 
 increase his payment and allowance. 
 
 Medicine and attendance in sickness may be in- 
 sured from year to year for individuals or families.* 
 
 * The advantages of the branch for providing medical attend- 
 ance and medicines in sickness may be obtained on the following 
 terms : — 
 
 Annually. 
 
 For a man and his wife 6s. Od. 
 
 For every one of their children under 16 years 
 
 of age, not exceeding four in number ..20 
 All such children above four in number are to 
 
 be attended without extra payment. 
 For every single person above 1 6 years of age 3 
 
 For each case of midwifery 10 6 
 
 I y^ttencjance in cases of fracture or dislocation are not included 
 
 ^ J. , ^ ^..if^.the 9.bove payments. 
 
 Thirteen
 
 35 
 
 Provision is made for the reception of existing 
 benefit societies in a body. 
 
 The new contributors are entitled to receive 
 allowances at the end of six months, instead of 
 twelve, as in other clubs. 
 
 For a sample of the rate of benefits, the following- 
 will suffice : — 
 
 For a man of 21 years old the monthly pay- 
 ment to obtain 7,v. QcL in sickness, for life, is 1.9. 
 3</. a-month. 
 
 To obtain the same up to 65, and 5s. a-week 
 sick or well, working or not working, after that 
 age, l.v. 9c?., that is onl}^ 6</. more. 
 ^'{To obtain from the age of 21 10*. a-week in sick- 
 ness, for life, \s. 7^d. •• 'f"^'« 
 
 To obtain the same up to 65, and 5*. a-week sick 
 or well, working or not working, after that age, 2s. 
 a-month, that is only 4^f/. more. 
 
 And in this latter case there is included a sum of 
 4/. at death. 
 
 For the additional monthly payment of one half- 
 penny to obtain an allowance for life after 65, the 
 monthly payment will cease at 60 years of age 
 
 Young persons may put in upon the lowest scale 
 and gradually raise their payment and allowance 
 to the highest scale. 
 
 Thirteen or fourteen medical practitioners are in this way united 
 to the Society ; and the members contributing to this branch may 
 select any one of them they may prefer to attend them for tlie year. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 
 
 A payment of l*-. 8^. a-month, for a child under 
 one year of age, will secure 16/. at the age of 
 14. 
 
 And if the child should live beyond that age a 
 sick allowance of 10*. up to 65 years, and 5s. 
 a- week, sick or well, afterwards, for life, may be 
 purchased, /?'<?(? of all monthly pay merits y with about 
 the same sum of 16/. 
 
 If the child die under 14 years of age the whole 
 deposit will be returned. 
 
 A deferred life annuity of any amount, up to 
 100/. a-year, may likewise be secured : for instance, 
 a person aged 21 paying 26-. a-month, or 20/. 
 9*. 2d. at once, secures 10/. a-year (3*. \0d. a- 
 week) after 55 years of age, by a payment of 2s. 
 lie?, a-month : the money deposited will be returned 
 in case of death to the family of the depositor. 
 
 The higher benefits have reference of course to 
 persons above the labouring poor, such as house- 
 hold servants, small farmers, tradesmen, and others 
 of the middle classes residing in country towns. 
 
 This society is founded upon perfect security, 
 and enrolled under an Act of Parliament. 
 
 The branch of this society obviously the most 
 important is that of the deferred annuities. It is 
 impossible to go further into detail at this time; 
 but one suggestion will suffice. The purchasing of 
 an annuity is to the poor man, what investment is 
 to the rich. It becomes to him in after-life an in-
 
 37 
 
 come upon his capital, that is, upon his long years 
 of labour.* 
 
 The expense of management is defrayed by ho- 
 norary members. 
 
 Another very excellent society, the rules of which 
 have been supplied to me by the kindness of one of 
 our own brethren, was established at Bath. 
 
 In some respects it is less comprehensive than 
 the last; but it is equally secure and v/ell con- 
 ducted. 
 
 To obtain 5s. a-week in sickness, and 2s. 6d. 
 a-week after 65, and 51. at death, a man of 
 21 pays monthly l.v. 2c?., or 12/. 13*. 7d. in one 
 sum. 
 
 Ten shillings in sickness, and 5;?. a-week after 
 65, and 10/. at death, is secured at the age of 21 
 by a monthly payment of 2*. 4d., or in one sum of 
 25/. 7*. Id. 
 
 Children are not admitted to receive benefits. 
 I cannot leave this part of the subject without 
 mentioning the Westbourne Friendly Society, esta- 
 blished in 1 836, of the good effects of which I have 
 had opportunity of judging. It consists of 154 
 
 * I cannot do more than refer to a very useful paper, pub- 
 lished by the Labourers' Friend Society, containing the substance 
 of two lectures delivered by the Rev. W. J. Butler, on ' Provi- 
 sion for the Decline of Life,' in which the plan of Deferred 
 Annuities is shown to be far more advantageous than the plan 
 of ordinary sick-clubs, and to the present restricted form of tlie 
 saving's' banks.
 
 33 
 
 members; 102 men, 52 women, and 25 children, 
 endowed with its benefits. 
 
 A member may enter for relief in sickness ; for 
 a pension or annuity after 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, or 
 65 years of age, well or ill ; for a sum payable at 
 death ; and for sums payable to children at the 
 ages of 14 and 21, or for any of these benefits. 
 
 Members disabled by sickness, but not wholly 
 unable to work, are entitled to half pay. ^(^lidet* 
 
 The society has a capital of 1208/. in the Bank 
 of England. Nothing is spent at public-houses, 
 and the cost of management is defrayed by volun- 
 tary donations, or interest accruing upon such do- 
 nations, bsmfiidu 
 
 In the last year the sum expended in relief, &c., 
 was 96/. 18^., the members of the club being 154 ; 
 whereas in one before adverted to, having at least 
 132 members, the amount of relief appears to have 
 been only 30/. 175. 8^. 
 
 The rate of allowance offered by this society is as 
 follows : — 
 
 For an allowance of 4*. a- week in sickness, with 
 2s. a- week after 65, and 4/. at death, a man of 21 
 will pay monthly, up to 65, 10^^. (tenpence one 
 farthing), or, in one sum, 9/. 0^. 5d. 
 
 For a sick allowance of 4*. a-week for life, a per- 
 son of 21 will pay Q^d. (sixpence halfpenny) a- 
 month, or, in one sum, 51. 18s. 5d. 
 
 For a pension of 2s. a-week after 60 years of
 
 39 
 
 age a person of 21 will pay monthly 7^d. (seven- 
 pence farthing), or, in one sum, 6/. 10*. Id. 
 
 For 21. at death three farthings a-month, or, in 
 one sum, 13*. 9^d. 
 
 A monthly contribution of 6d., begun at 21, and 
 continued to 65 years of age, will secure to the de- 
 positor 51. 8s. lOhd. B lot io US: bns-M ia at^oh 
 
 I have stated these very mi'niite details to show 
 how easily the benefits of this society may be 
 reached even by the poorest of our people. 
 ' Before I leave this part of the subject I would 
 add that, by the operation of the savings' banks, 
 annuities, either immediate or deferred, may be 
 obtained of the value of 4/., and rising to 20/. a- 
 year. 
 
 A person of 21 years of age may obtain an an- 
 nuity of 20/. a-year on attaining the age of 60 
 years, at a yearly sum of 3/. 5s. Qd., the money be- 
 ing returned in the event of the depositor's death 
 before the age of 60. 
 
 Now, upon all these several systems there is one 
 remark to be made. They are all equally capable 
 of receiving a strictly parochial character. The 
 societies in question are in no way tied to any 
 locality; they have no anniversaries, or meetings 
 at any central spot. For the management of them 
 it is unimportant where the officers reside. By 
 having many local secretaries they, in fact, lose
 
 40 
 
 their restriction to any locality. There may be a 
 branch in any parish, grafted upon the whole sys- 
 tem at large, and under the visitation of proper 
 medical and other officers; but the members are 
 never drawn, as a body, out of the boundaries of 
 the parish. For this reason it is perfectly easy for 
 any person, whether the clergyman, schoolmaster, 
 or any other, to accept the office of parochial, that is 
 local secretary. In this way, with all the financial 
 security of the widest system, it may be interwoven 
 with our ordinary parochial charities, such as cloth- 
 ing clubs and the like, and its moral character 
 made to depend upon our own pastoral care. 
 
 Two benefits would, I think, follow on such a 
 course. It would, first, be a powerful stimulant to 
 the private charity of our lay brethren, whose 
 heartiest and fullest co-operation in this and all 
 good works it is most important to obtain. 
 
 There are many ways in which charitable per- 
 sons of all ranks in our parishes may assist such a 
 branch society. They may join in defraying the 
 little cost of management, if there be any ; they 
 may assist parents in enrolling their children at 
 the earliest age, and therefore at the greatest ad- 
 vantage ; they may aid in giving, or in peculiar 
 cases may wholly give, in one sum, the qualification 
 necessary for certain benefits ; and this is obviously 
 a wise and lasting reward for deserving boys or
 
 41 
 
 girls, or for meritorious farm servants, especially as 
 age draws on ; in this way the whole rising gene- 
 ration may be gradually enrolled ; they may en- 
 able members of the older clubs to transfer them- 
 selves into the new at a rate of equivalent advan- 
 tage, and thereby help to absorb the insecure and 
 declining societies. In these and many more ways, 
 suggested by the manifold tables and operations 
 of such a society, we may induce all classes of 
 our richer brethren to assist in a Vvork of charity 
 which is so manifestly solid, reasonable, and per- 
 manent. 
 
 The other benefit is the only additional point I 
 will touch on in connexion with this subject. It 
 must not be supposed that, in objecting so strongly 
 to club-feasts, any objection is raised to a yearly 
 day of meeting and recreation. It is within the 
 discretion of the parish clergyman, and members of 
 the societ}^ among his flock, to hold any such anni- 
 versary, provided only that no funds of the society 
 be applied to that purpose. This has been already 
 done in some parishes with complete success, by 
 each member, at his own will, contributing a shil- 
 ling, and the balance, a very unimportant re- 
 mainder, being defrayed by honorary members. 
 So far from discountenancing a day of recreation 
 for our poor, 1 believe every one would desire to 
 promote it. A true parish holiday is very different 
 from a tumultuous assembly of people, drawn from
 
 42 
 
 their natural and social relations, without guide, 
 without even the wholesome restraint of the eye 
 and ear of neio;hbours and of friends. When men 
 become masses they lose all moral consciousness, 
 all self-respect; they are, in fact, out of society, 
 that is, morally outlawed, withdrawn from all that 
 governs and supports their daily sense of order and 
 obligation. Now, this would meet its correction at 
 all points within the precincts of a parish, where 
 all stand related to each other by bonds of charity 
 and of duty. It is very common already to give a 
 holiday and a feast to the parish schools, and upon 
 this might be grafted a gathering of the members 
 of any parochial societies. The service of the pa- 
 rish church would no longer be an inauguration of 
 tumult and excess, but a solemn and grateful meet- 
 ing of the pastor and his flock. 
 
 It is of the greatest moment that all parishioners 
 of every rank in life should take part in such a 
 festival. There is hardly a more active negative 
 cause of the licentious degeneracy of recreation 
 among the poor than the withdrawal of superiors. 
 It is quite a mistake to suppose that the poor desire 
 to be free from the restraint of tlieir presence. 
 Their kindly aspect and sympathy in a day of en- 
 joyment is unspeakably grateful to our people. 
 
 At the very mention, however, of a parish holi- 
 day there arises a remembrance of the revelling 
 and tumult of fairs and village feasts. The wakes
 
 43 
 
 and church-ales of our past history make us natu- 
 rally fearful of laying again the seeds of such dis- 
 orders. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are facts in our social state 
 which cannot be gainsayed. We have a people 
 straitened by poverty — worn down by toil ; they 
 labour from the rising to the setting of the sun ; 
 and the human spirit will faint or break at last. 
 It is to this unrelenting round of labour that the 
 sourness so unnatural to our English poor, but 
 now too often seen, is chiefly to be ascribed. There 
 is something in humanity which pines for a season 
 of brighter and fresher thoughts, and becomes 
 sharp and bitter if it be not satisfied. What is the 
 fact ? Except Sunday and one or two days — such 
 as Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Ascension 
 Day, which, through the Christian kindness of 
 many landlords and farmers in this neighbourhood, 
 has of late, without loss of wages, been given to 
 their labourers — our poor have no days of relax- 
 ation for mind or body. Time must be redeemed 
 for the poor man. The world is too hard upon 
 him, and makes him pay too heavy a toll out of 
 his short life. And the result of this over-labour 
 is now acknowledged by witnesses of every colour : 
 politicians, speculators, economists, physicians, com- 
 missioners of factories, even officers recruiting for 
 the army. All with one voice declare that the na- 
 tional spirit, and even the standard of bodily
 
 44 
 
 strength and stature, is sensibly depressed. In offi- 
 cial Reports, formally made to Parliament, instruc- 
 tion and recreation are pointed out as two things 
 absolutely needed. Indeed, it is impossible to say 
 how great a corrective of some among our worst 
 immoralities might have been in this way provided : 
 how many, for instance, might have been saved from 
 the sottish habits of a beer-shop by being taught 
 and guided in days of relaxation to find happiness 
 in a purer form. How should our people spend 
 such little leisure as they have "with discretion, if 
 they are never taught to use leisure well ? I know 
 that one day will not do much, but it recognises a 
 principle, and establishes a precedent. Those who 
 have lived, as it is our blessing to do, among the 
 agricultural poor, well know that, with some rude- 
 ness of address, and with faults not to be denied, 
 they are still a noble-hearted race, whose sincerity, 
 simplicity, and patience we should buy cheap at 
 the cost of our refinements. But little is needed 
 to make their holida3\ The green fields, and tools 
 idle for a day, the church-bell, an active game, 
 simple fare, the sport of their children, the kindly 
 presence and patient ear of superiors, is enough to 
 make a village festival.* I am not now speaking 
 of towns, which have difficulties of their own kind, 
 and need a separate treatment. 
 
 * I cannot touch on this subject without an expression of 
 thanks to one who has made it peculiarly his own. No one,
 
 45 
 
 It is worthy to be considered whether we may 
 not, by the formation of parochial branches of such 
 societies as I have spoken of, and by attaching to 
 them any other kindred funds and charities, form 
 a centre round which the confidence and interest of 
 our flocks ma}'^, with the kindly sympathj^ and 
 countenance of all, be drawn to meet. 
 
 These suggestions have been thrown out in the 
 belief that means are thus afforded to us of ao-ain 
 attaching our people to our parochial sj'^stem by new 
 and constraining principles of association ; and that 
 the eflect of such societies will be not only beneficial 
 to the temporal welfare of the poor, but will tend to 
 confirm sound moral habits, to awaken sympathies, 
 to stimulate almsgiving, and to strengthen b}^ all 
 secondary means the spiritual exercise of our pas- 
 toral ofiice. 
 
 I will leave it, therefore, with an earnest hope 
 that it will be taken up, and maturely considered 
 with a view to practice, at our Rural Chapters. Such 
 papers as I have collected shall be at the disposal 
 of an}^ of my brethren who may desire to take im- 
 mediate steps. 
 
 There now remains one only subject more on 
 which I will ask you for awhile to bear with me. 
 
 whatever may be his judgment on the point, can read the letter 
 of Lord John Manners on National Holidays without acknow- 
 ledging that it exhibits a happy example of true English benevo- 
 lence, and of that higliest nobleness, a lowly and loving care for 
 the poor of Christ's flock.
 
 46 
 
 The mutual confidence and brotherly love happily 
 subsisting among us gives to every one a share and 
 a right to participate in the convictions, encourage- 
 ments, and hopes even of the least in our body. 
 I claim for myself no other place in speaking on a 
 subject so momentous as the present condition of 
 the Church in England, as it stands affected by the 
 internal and external action of the last ten or fifteen 
 years. In one word, then, every year, both by its 
 prosperous and by its adverse events, has deepened, 
 with a force for which I can find no adequate ex- 
 pression, the belief — if I dared I would rather say 
 the consciousness — that the Divine Presence and 
 Power is with us in our pastoral office, in our sacra- 
 ments, and in our whole spiritual being ; restoring 
 us, I trust, to a higher and holier life, and moulding 
 this branch of the Catholic Church to be the channel 
 of a great effusion of God's love not only to ourselves, 
 but to the nations entrusted to our spiritual charge. 
 This conviction does not arise from an uncon- 
 sciousness of our many and miserable sins as a 
 Church and nation; nor from any insular pride 
 with which we are perhaps not unjustly reproached ; 
 neither is it founded on private theories, nor on 
 proofs that exist on paper. It rests upon the broad 
 and accumulating tokens of God's mercy and over- 
 ruling care ; and upon the marks of gracious and 
 gentle chastisement with which He now is visiting 
 us. We must all acknowledge that any confidence
 
 47 
 
 founded on what we are, or on what we are doing, 
 or on any worldly or intellectual position we may 
 occupy as a Church, is probably little better than a 
 Pharisaical illusion. And, again, comfortable per- 
 suasions, founded upon a mere sanguine temper 
 which will not stay to appreciate really existing 
 corruptions, or to deal truly with hostile facts, are 
 altogether intoxicating and dangerous. But there 
 are two marks of God's favourable presence in 
 which we may confidently trust — the fruits of re- 
 pentance, and the visitations of correction. If any 
 man cannot see these upon the Church of England 
 now, we may well spare to reason with him. 
 
 Let us first turn to the tokens of God's mercy and 
 over-ruling care during these last years of peculiar 
 trial. When we look to the strong and sudden 
 movements, both political and theological, which 
 have burst simultaneously, both from within and 
 from without, upon the Church, it is impossible to 
 refer our present balanced state to any other cause 
 than the immediate Providence which from the 
 beginning of the Church has so poised the currents 
 of human action as to preserve the integrity of His 
 own kingdom. Its whole history might be exhi- 
 bited in illustration of two great laws : one, that of 
 the human mind oscillating between extremes ; and 
 the other, that of the Divine economy so limiting 
 the results of that oscillation as to combine it with 
 the safety and perpetuity of the Church. We all
 
 48 
 
 recognise the former law in the common proverb 
 " one extreme begets another ;" and the latter is 
 manifestly revealed to us in every century of Chris- 
 tendom. I will not weary you by going through 
 the earlier examples of this fact You know them 
 better than I. It is enough for our present use to 
 take the history of the English Church since the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century ; that history is 
 a series of reactions. First in every successive 
 reign, from Henry to Edward, from Edward to 
 Mary, from Mary to Elizabeth. Then, again, the 
 Puritan excess was a reaction upon the reigns of 
 James and Charles I. ; and the ecclesiastical move- 
 ment of Charles and James II. was a reaction upon 
 the Puritan excess. 
 
 There was perhaps no moment when the ten- 
 dency of public events towards the Church of Rome 
 was more advanced than in the reign of James II. ; 
 and no period when the contrary tendency received 
 so sudden and formal a development as at the ac- 
 cession of William III. 
 
 The same law is traceable in slower operation, 
 and at longer periods, in almost every country in 
 the north and west of Europe ; and has continued 
 in activity down to this day. The last twenty years 
 of peace have set in motion individual and social 
 forces which tend powerfully in one ecclesiastical 
 direction ; and changes, both jjolitical and religi- 
 ous, in this country have been first the results and
 
 49 
 
 then the causes of a movement among ourselves in 
 which is alike our safety and our danger. If such 
 complicated effects may ever be referred to a single 
 proximate cause, it may without doubt be said that 
 the powerful awakening of the theological princi- 
 ples which mark the last ten years may be ascribed 
 to certain legislative acts, by which the Church in 
 England was thrown for support upon her own in- 
 ward and spiritual constitution.* 
 
 Every step of withdrawal on the part of the State, 
 whether by acts directly affecting the Church, or by 
 the admission of all religious communities into an 
 almost co-ordinate relation, has been followed by 
 an inward awakening of its own dormant laws, a 
 necessary, but in part an over-active, and there- 
 fore morbid self-introspection, by which individual 
 minds have suffered, and some have been lost to us. 
 In the violent sway of intellectual and spiritual 
 causes which have been upon us, it is a miracle of 
 God's mercy that multitudes have not been hurried 
 away. It is probable that we are upon the first 
 launch of a reaction, equal in reach and duration 
 to the period which has just come to an end. And 
 let us not shut our eyes to any facts of an anxious 
 
 * It is remarkable that in France the act of the State in 
 divorcing the Church, in 1830, has almost extinguished the old 
 Galilean spirit. The Church, shaken from its support in France, 
 has fallen back for maintenance on Rome. It has become, to 
 a great extent, ultra-montane. 
 
 E
 
 50 
 
 kind. The condition of theology on the Continent, 
 especially in Germany and France (I mean both 
 Roman and Protestant), must, intimately and more 
 actively, every day affect the state of theology in 
 England ; and this, combined with the systematic 
 exertions of communions, whose members sincerely 
 think they do God service in assailing the English 
 Church, must every year render more anxious and 
 difficult the exercise of our pastoral office. 
 
 All this has been advancing in the last fifteen 
 years. Now it is precisely during that period of 
 time in which more adverse public events have 
 come upon the Church, and greater inroads have 
 been made into its political establishment, and in 
 one sense even its religious peace, than during the 
 whole century and a half preceding, that the 
 greatest energies have been put forth, and the 
 greatest works have been accomplished. 
 
 Fifteen years ago the Church of England rested 
 upon its old constitutional foundations. It was pri- 
 vileged and protected by the whole force of the 
 Statute Book ; Acts of Parliament were passed ; 
 grants of public money voted for its extension ; the 
 whole weight and influence of the State went with 
 it; and there are many who look back to those 
 times with a fond regret, as to the period of its 
 highest security and strength. And yet up to that 
 very time secessions to every form of dissent were 
 numberless ; conversions from among Dissenters
 
 51 
 
 comparatively rare ; multitudes nominally in the 
 Church were really members of dissenting commu- 
 nities ; the number of Churches built exceedingly 
 small ; the increase of clergy hardly appreciable ; 
 the standard of almsgiving, especially to spiritual 
 works, not only low in itself, but acknowledged 
 only by a few ; our missions languished ; our colo- 
 nial Churches hardly existed ; public opinion was 
 estranged and hostile ; the hearts of the poor, if 
 with us at all, were but faintly attached to the 
 pastors of the Church. Such, of course with local 
 exceptions, in the times of its external apparent 
 strength, was its real internal weakness. 
 
 Fifteen years, certainly adverse to the external 
 clothing of the Church, have passed over us, and 
 the phenomena of our condition are exactly reversed. 
 The Acts of 1828 and 1829 reduced the old theory 
 of establishment almost to a name ; every successive 
 year has brought fresh departures from our ancient 
 principles, such as the recent laws relating to mar- 
 riage, registration, tithes, relief of the poor, and the 
 like; this is so much of public recognition withdrawn 
 from the Church ; grants for the building of Churches 
 for our destitute millions have ceased; the few 
 paltry thousands to maintain clergy in the colonies 
 withdrawn ; the whole active theory of the regale, 
 as defined at the Reformation, has been abdicated 
 in silence ; and direct countenance and support ex- 
 
 £ 2
 
 52 
 
 tended both abroad and at home to relig^ious bodies 
 in perpetual conflict with the Church. 
 
 And yet, despite of all this, there has arisen 
 within the Church, our enemies themselves being 
 judges, an energy and power of expansion never 
 seen before. I am speaking not of the work of any 
 one body or party within the Church, but of all 
 men, of whatever hue or form of opinion, who have 
 spent and been spent for Christ and for the souls 
 for whom He died. We have the issue of all their 
 labours now. What have been the fruits of these fif- 
 teen years of adverse events ? A thousand Churches ; 
 a work of almost universal restoration, never to be 
 estimated; an increase of clergy, probably far exceed- 
 ing the increase of Churches ; a number of congre- 
 gations newly formed, exceeding the number of indi- 
 vidual minds which have been drawn from us ; more 
 than half-a-million of money in the last five years 
 offered to the work of national education ; a whole 
 system of institutions for training school teachers ; 
 the reorganization of almost every diocese on the 
 principle of its spiritual unity and government; 
 the founding of ten colonial Churches, pregnant 
 with works of faith and of the Spirit ; colleges and 
 cathedrals rising in the far east and west; a two- 
 fold and growing number of missionaries and cate- 
 chists among the Heathen ; and now, to give an 
 unity and head to our work of missions, a college
 
 53 
 
 for missionary pastors, founded by the side of the 
 Meti'opoHtical Church of Canterbury, a main source 
 of restored Cliristianity to ourselves, by acts of 
 private munificence on a scale worthy of a work so 
 noble. If such be the comparative benefits of a 
 state of external peace and of external conflict, 
 may the shadows of worldly adversity for ever 
 hang' upon the Church of England ! 
 
 But these are only material and external fruits, 
 capable of being produced by mere excitement, false 
 zeal, political rivalry, ambition, and the like : and 
 even if they be purely Christian in their source, they 
 are no more than fruits meet for repentance after 
 long and sinful neglect of Christ's flock both abroad 
 and at home. Yet, as fruits of repentance, they 
 are, we humbly trust, acceptable to Him, and 
 tokens that He is with us. But they are not all 
 that He has given us. And yet. Brethren, I do not 
 know how to speak of deeper things. We can 
 hardly trust ourselves to say more than this, that He 
 has been pleased, by manifold indications, to show 
 us that there are realities more vital than all that I 
 have spoken of. By the labours of many, diverse in 
 many things while on earth, but now all one in Him, 
 He has taught us that the standard of a conven- 
 tional religion is a poor substitute for the Sermon 
 on the Mount ; and that the proprieties of personal 
 and domestic life are but cold approaches to the 
 Communion of Saints. May we not trust that He
 
 54 
 
 has revealed to unknown multitudes among our 
 flocks a broader rule of sanctity, and stirred them 
 with a higher aspiration after the life that is " hid 
 with Christ in God ?" 
 
 The other token we possess of God's favour and 
 presence with us is to be seen in the marks of cor- 
 rection which are visibly upon the Church. 
 
 Every adverse event may be regarded as a chas- 
 tisement for some failure in our stewardship. When 
 we so read it, adversity becomes our strength. The 
 national prerogatives of the Church would never 
 have been abridged had it not ceased to guide the 
 will and spiritual life of the nation. The bitter and 
 unrelenting conflicts which some time past were car- 
 ried on among ourselves, often about nothing : the 
 seduction of members from our communion : the un- 
 settled faith of others : the coldness and unbrotherly 
 temper too often seen in our own body — what ai'e 
 all these but warnings mercifully sent to bid each 
 one of us to " repent, and do the first works?" 
 
 Whatever remedy there be for our many ills, 
 verbal disputation will be found to have no health 
 in it. We need humility, not dispute : not argu- 
 ment, but action. Our diseases lie deeper than the 
 intellect : and by a deeper treatment, if at all, they 
 must be healed. There are two great fields of con- 
 troversy : one which is in the past, and is carried 
 on by literature, learned criticism, historical in- 
 quiry, abstract reasonings : another, which is strictly
 
 55 
 
 in the present, and has its whole existence in action, 
 patience, and charity. Of these two kinds the 
 former is addressed to the intellect, and is subtle, 
 entangling, unpersuasive : the other is addressed to 
 the spiritual intuition, and is direct, unambiguous, 
 convincing : the one speaks to the few, the other 
 to all men alike. 
 
 It is the peculiar and morbid disposition of this 
 day to stimulate the first kind of controversy, and 
 to evade the second. And it is precisely in this 
 that we shall most prevail. We have too much of 
 rash speculation, and headlong assertion. The 
 deeper movements of men's hearts need other argu- 
 ments. Self-denial and silence are overwhelming 
 answers even to the intellect. Controversial reasons 
 weigh little against devotion, or historical difficul- 
 ties against visible sanctity of life. And these best 
 of arguments are most in our power. 
 
 Let us look at all adverse events as admonitions to 
 mutual forgiveness — to greater devotion — to a more 
 chastened spirit. If we had one thing we should 
 have all things : without this one thing we have 
 nothing, though we have all beside — love one to 
 another. In whatsoever may be permitted to fall 
 upon us, let us read the warning of Him that 
 dresseth the true vine, rebuking us for our barren- 
 ness. And yet in that rebuke let us read also our 
 happier destinies : " Every branch that beareth not 
 fruit He taketh away " Such, God be thanked, is
 
 m 
 
 not yet our doom, though we have deserved it. 
 " And every branch that beareth fruit He purgeth 
 it," with sharpness and the knife, " that it may 
 bring forth more fruit." The last few years have 
 given many a sign both of purging and of increase. 
 We need no controversial learning to tell us that 
 ours is a living branch. There is no room for ar- 
 guments when fruits are to be gathered. Men 
 argue when they cannot see them. 
 
 My Reverend Brethren, I believe I speak all 
 your hearts when I say that, for myself, I humbly 
 thank God that He has permitted me to be a mem- 
 ber of a Church in which I am not worthy to keep 
 the door. It is not unnatural amono; brethren so 
 closely related, so intimately joined by common 
 duties and habitual co-operation, that we should 
 pass in review at such a time as this the great spi- 
 ritual realities which overpower all the verbal 
 and intellectual objections of scholastic controversy. 
 There are difficulties which are best answered by 
 living facts, as the sophism about infinite motion — 
 sohitur ambulmido. We rest upon a basis of facts, 
 laid by the Providence of our Divine Head ; and 
 on that basis we believe firmly that the Church of 
 England is a true and living member of the Holy 
 Catholic Church ; neither heretical in dogma, nor 
 schismatical in the unhappy breach of Christen- 
 dom ; in will and desire united to all Christ's 
 members upon earth ; her faith the baptismal faith
 
 57 
 
 of all saints from the beginning ; her cause austere, 
 but just ; and her plea valid in the Court of Hea- 
 ven. And if this be so, then in virtue and power 
 she shall be, as she has been, a mother of saints — 
 a root of churches in east, west, and south ; at 
 this time, it may be, peculiarly tried, and yet there 
 hath no trial come upon us but such as is common 
 to the Church. Many more threatening signs even 
 now are hanging over almost all other Churches — 
 signs of conflicts yet to be endured, with doubtful 
 issue* — through which, by God's help, we have 
 been saved, "yet so as by fire." Be our trials 
 what they may, every year deepens in thousands 
 of contrite hearts the tokens of Christ's presence — 
 every year quickens and unfolds, against all anta- 
 gonist powers, the spiritual life and fruitful energy 
 
 * There is no branch of the Roman Catholic communion in 
 the North and West of Europe which does not at this moment 
 exhibit signs of conflict, and some of a truly alarming kind. Pass- 
 ing over the lesser contest in the Tyrol, and even in parts of 
 Belgium, of which the Jesuits are the subject, it is enough to 
 mention France and Germany. In the former a strong move- 
 ment against the Eoman Catholic Church has appeared in the 
 dioceses of Verdun, Chalons, Limoges, Poitiers, La Rochelle, 
 Bordeaux, Frejus. In the last, ten parishes have almost unani- 
 mously renounced Romanism. In La Rochelle it is said that 
 twenty -five parishes are desiring to be placed under Protestant 
 pastors. As to Germany, the late schism has formed forty -eight 
 communities, and is still spreading. The state of Germany, 
 both among Protestants and Roman Catholics, gives warning of 
 a fearful future. While we are listening at home to every word 
 and footfall, it may be that events are near elsewhere which shall 
 make the whole Church to ring.
 
 58 
 
 of the Church which bare us. And shall any be 
 tempted to mistrust ? Shall we ask proofs of our 
 regeneration, or of our waking consciousness, or 
 of the reality of our own soul ? There are things 
 which go before all proof — all reasonings rest upon 
 them: logical defences cloud their certainty. Such 
 are our pledges of His presence. They are the to- 
 kens of no hand but His ; and " if God be for 
 us, who can be against us?" 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFOED STBEET.

 
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