THE PARO CHI A L S YSTEM. 
 
 A CHAKGE 
 
 DELCVERED TO 
 
 THB CLEKGY 
 
 DIOCESE OF LONDON, 
 
 at Iji'g iPrimarp ©'imitation 
 IN NOVEMBEB 1871. 
 
 By JOHN JACKSON, D.D., 
 
 BISHOP OF LONDON. 
 
 WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163, PICCADILLY. 
 
 187L
 
 LONDON : 
 
 II. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL.
 
 A CHARGE, ETC. 
 
 Dear Brethren in the Lord, 
 
 An illness last year, serious only as a warn- 
 ing, obliged me to postpone for twelve months 
 beyond its usual time the Visitation of this Diocese, 
 and thus enabled me to enlarge my acquaintance 
 with its Clergy and laity and their respective work, 
 and with our difficulties, dangers and needs, before 
 we met together, in this week of united prayer, to 
 review, as far as time permits, the present position 
 of the Church in our Diocese, its failure or success 
 in the past, our hopes, duties and responsibilities 
 for the future. 
 
 I could not, indeed, have claimed your indul- 
 gence as for one who entered as a stranger into your 
 diocese, having myself spent here many happy 
 years of my ministerial life; but I have keenly 
 felt, and still feel keenly, the need of it for one 
 who has returned to London, under a sense (God 
 grant it may not have been a mistaken sense) of 
 
 A 2
 
 4 
 
 duty wMcli miglit not be evaded, — in the wane of 
 life, when faculties are no longer plastic to the 
 impulse of new demands and power must needs be 
 husbanded, — to sustain, in days of singular dif- 
 ficulty, a crisis perhaps, in our Church's history, 
 the burden of the greatest diocese in Christendom. 
 Brethren, you have given me your prayers, I know ; 
 for your own sake, for the Church's, for mine, let 
 me have them still. 
 
 Nor was the difficulty of the position much 
 lessened by the circumstance that I was to occupy 
 the seat of one whose ability and geniality, fairness 
 and kindness, strong sense and wide sympathies, 
 power of work in himself and tact in enlisting the 
 assistance of others, had made his episcopate a 
 worthy sequel to that of his gifted and energetic 
 predecessor. It is true, indeed, that it is com- 
 paratively easy to keep in motion machinery which 
 another has framed; and I should be most ungrateful 
 if I did not acknowledge thankfully the wise plans 
 and useful associations which the Archbishop left 
 in operation or prepared. It is true, also, that I 
 have enjoyed, and, by God's mercy, still enjoy, the 
 advantage of his advice as well as of his example. 
 But comparisons must make themselves : and you 
 must have missed much. Brethren, which you were 
 accustomed to obtain. 
 
 I did not under-estimate the weight of the charge 
 I accepted. Its labour, its resp.onsibilities, its 
 anxieties, are such as I anticipated. But I did not 
 expect, — I had no right to expect, — the all but 

 
 universal kindness which I have received from the 
 Clergy and laity of this diocese, not only at first 
 when a welcome is rarely withheld, hut after there 
 had heen time for disappointment to he felt, and 
 for differences to develope. Differences of opinion 
 there must always he in a national and tolerant 
 Church hetween the various schools of thous^ht 
 which can fairly include themselves within the 
 compass of its formularies, and therefore there 
 must he such hetween a Bishop and some of his 
 Clergy; hat you have shewn, and I trust I may 
 never forget, that differences do not ohlige disunion : 
 and that diversities in doctrine and ritual, even 
 when grave in themselves and anxious as to their 
 results, need not, and therefore ought not, to break 
 the honds of charity or loosen the ties of brotherly 
 respect and esteem. 
 
 It is a result of returning to London after an 
 absence of more than fifteen years sj^ent in a 
 diocese in whicli the Church's work exists under 
 very different conditions, that the peculiarities of 
 oar own position here, as well as the changes whicli 
 have been taking place in the interval, become more 
 obvious. I am not now referring to the numerous 
 vacancies which death has made during those few 
 years, and the Avarnings and examples which they 
 suggest to work earnestly each at our own post, 
 while it is yet day. Such warnings and examples 
 are ever about us. Even in my brief episcopate 
 three members of the small Chapter of this Cathe- 
 dral Church have received theii* summons : Canon
 
 Melvill, one of tlie most eloquent of preachers and 
 humblest of Christians, who in the height of his 
 popularity, while crowded audiences were listening 
 with hushed attention to his brilliant and thought- 
 ful discourses, maintained unimpaired the simplicity 
 of a child : Archdeacon Hale, the friend and coun- 
 sellor of Bishop Blomfield, ever sagacious and active 
 in the business of the diocese and of the Societies 
 of the Church, kind, genial and sympathising, with 
 whom has perished a long-stored treasure of eccle- 
 siastical and legal lore : and Dean Mansel, whose 
 powerful and subtile intellect had traversed all sys- 
 tems and grappled with the most formidable prob- 
 lems of mental and moral philosophy, had drawn 
 from the armory which had supplied the Pantheist 
 and the Materialist, weapons to defend the truth, 
 and had proved that it is possible to have mastered 
 the transcendental metaphysics of modern Eurojje, 
 yet to retain a firm and simple faith in the Gospel. 
 Such changes, sad as they are, and instructive as 
 they should be, are ever taking place around us and 
 amongst us. Those to which I wish to refer are 
 such as long have been and are still in progress in 
 this diocese in the organization and character of 
 the Church's work, as compared with its normal 
 state in which it still exists in many parts of our 
 Rural dioceses and in small portions of our own. 
 These changes may be briefly characterised as a 
 gradual but great enfeeblement and disintegration 
 of the Parochial system, mainly arising from the 
 enormous and rapid increase of the population in
 
 the metropolis and its unequal distribution, but 
 accelerated also by recent legislation, by variations 
 of social and theological opinion, and, in some degree 
 perhaps, by overstrains put on the principle itself. 
 This is a process which deserves our most anxious 
 consideration, and will form the main subject of 
 my remarks to-day. Por the Parochial System is of 
 the essence, — not indeed of a Church, or even of 
 an established Church, — but of a truly National 
 Church : and while it economizes and concentrates 
 the Church's missionary work, it alone secures and 
 makes effective her pastoral ministrations. The 
 decay, therefore, of this system in any Church, or in 
 any part of a Church, not only tends to disqualify 
 it for its position as the Church of the nation, but 
 (which is of far graver import) enfeebles it as the 
 divinely appointed instrument for saving souls and 
 training them for heaven. 
 
 By this systejn the whole country is portioned 
 out into districts containing by hypothesis such 
 a population dwelling on such an area as can be 
 adequately ministered to by the Priest or Parson 
 of the Parish, to whom is committed by the chief 
 Ordinary the cure and government of the souls of 
 the Parishioners of the said Parish, for the dis- 
 charge of which he is responsible ecclesiastically 
 to the Bishop of his diocese, but in a far higher 
 and more solemn sense to the divine Head and chief 
 Pastor of the Church. According to this ideal 
 each Parishioner should be able to know his Pastor, 
 each Pastor every individual Member of his flock ;
 
 8 
 
 aiid as the Minister has his duties spiritual and tem- 
 poral, and his rights to his maintenance and to the 
 general government of the Church and Parish, so 
 have the Parishioners their rights to the use of their 
 Parish Church, to the services of public worship in 
 accordance with the laws of the Church and nation, 
 to their Pastor's public and private ministrations, 
 and to a share in the government of the Parish by 
 their representatives the Churchwardens and by 
 their voice in Vestry assembled. They have also 
 their duties to perform in maintaining the Church 
 and its services and, where necessary, their Minister, 
 in assisting his efiPorts for the welfare of his people, 
 and in aiding their poorer brethren, not only under 
 legal obligation but by the exercise of private 
 benevolence. 
 
 Such is the ideal : how different is the reality in 
 a large portion of this diocese I need not say. 
 "What has become of the rights of Priest and 
 people, and how are their relative duties ^practicable 
 when 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 souls are under the 
 charge of one or two Clergymen, and supplied with 
 a single Parish Church ? There are hundreds of 
 thousands who do not know in what Parish or 
 Ecclesiastical district they dwell — and this from no 
 fault of their Pastor — unless they have learnt it 
 from the rates they pay or from the quarter whither 
 they are sent to seek relief. 
 
 The main, and in itself an adequate, cause of this 
 prostration of the Parochial System is sufficiently 
 indicated by the fact, that while the population of
 
 9 
 
 London within tlie Bills of Mortality was," in 1801, 
 958,863, it is now, in 1871, 3,251,801. No doubt, 
 by strenuous and continued exertion provision might 
 have been made for the spiritual requirements of 
 this enormous increase as it was taking place. But 
 social evils are rarely felt till they have become 
 serious and inveterate. The first fifteen years of 
 the century were engrossed by foreign wars. 
 The earliest efforts for the provision of ncAV 
 Churches were made, at a cost out of proportion 
 to the results, for large and growing, but not the 
 most needy, populations, such as St. Pancras and St. 
 Marylebone : and by the time that Bishop Blom- 
 field and the energetic laymen who assisted him 
 had succeeded in arousing public attention to the 
 spiritual destitution of Bethnal Green and the 
 densely peopled parishes of the East, the problem 
 of overtaking the accumulated increase of the past 
 and of keeping pace at the same time with the 
 additions made by every succeeding year had 
 become very difiicult indeed. The duty, however, 
 of making provision for the spiritual wants of the 
 metropolis has never since been lost sight of: 
 special efforts have been made from time to time : 
 the Diocesan Church Building Society has done 
 valuable work : and during the last seven years a 
 great impulse has been given to the extension of 
 the Church and its ministrations by the Bishop of 
 London's Fund, the most vigorous and successful 
 effort yet made, whether we consider the amount 
 of money raised, the unAvearied and judicious
 
 10 
 
 labour expended upon it, not by Clergy only, but 
 especially by laymen of all ranks and every shade 
 of opinion, or the wisdom with which it has suc- 
 ceeded, not in building Churches merely, but, in 
 conjunction with our invaluable Diocesan Home 
 Mission, reconstructing, to some extent at least, 
 the lost Parochial System, by forming gradually 
 missionary districts into Ecclesiastical Parishes. 
 The Pund has granted since the last Visitation 
 £58,435 for Churches and Church sites, £31,033 
 for Schools, £58,571 for stipends, making a total 
 of £148,039 : and it has been in no small degree 
 instrumental in stimulating the expenditure from 
 other sources in the same period of £608,574 on 
 Church building and restoration, and of £240,701 
 on Schools and Mission Houses, making together 
 a sum of £849,275/ Por the good work thus done 
 my thanks are due first to God who promj)ted 
 it, and next to the energy and forethought of 
 my Predecessor and to the self-denying exertions 
 of those who have so liberally and perseveringly 
 laboured it out. 
 
 The conclusion of another decennial period 
 makes it desirable to review our present position, 
 to survey the extent of the deficiency still to be 
 dealt with, and to see what progress, if any, has 
 been made towards the restoration of the Parochial 
 System by the supply of additional Churches, 
 Clergy and manageable districts. This we can 
 do now only roughly and approximately. Time 
 ^ Appendix A.
 
 11 
 
 will not admit of detail ; nor will the returns of the 
 Census as regards separate Parishes and Eccle- 
 siastical districts be available before next year. 
 
 During this decennial period, and indeed since 
 the last Visitation, the area of our diocese has 
 been diminished by the transfer of the Deaneries 
 of GreenAvich, Woolwicli and Barking to the 
 diocese of Rochester. The population thus trans- 
 ferred is reckoned at above 300,000,^ and the 
 Parishes are for the most part poor and populous. 
 Now the population of the present diocese of 
 London — i.e. of Middlesex with the Deaneries in 
 Surrey of Newington and Barnes, is, by the Census 
 lately taken, 2,655,408, being an increase in the 
 ten years of 349,441. This increase, then, is 
 nearly balanced by the numbers transferred to 
 Bochester : and the population of the diocese may, 
 for practical purposes, be considered to be but 
 50,000 more than it was, Avhen Bishop Tait drew 
 attention to its spiritual destitution in his Visita- 
 tion in 1862. We have, therefore, the cheering 
 result that a large proportion of what has been 
 effected since that date, within the contracted area 
 of the diocese, may be reckoned as gain. It 
 appears that in the period of ten years, 102 new 
 Ecclesiastical districts have been legally con- 
 stituted^ (besides 11 in Parishes transferred to 
 
 ^ The Bishop of Eochester informs me that he considers the 
 population transferred to him was nearly 340,000. If so, our 
 relative gain upon the spiritual wants of the diocese as it is, is 
 greater than I have ventured to calculate. 
 
 2 Appendix B.
 
 12 
 
 Eochester), tliirteen of wliicli have at present only- 
 temporary or ■anfinished Cliurclies. The remaining 
 89 have duly consecrated Churches ; and 2 others 
 are nearly ready for consecration. The number of 
 "Ecclesiastical districts therefore, in which the 
 Parochial System is at least partially re-established, 
 is an increase of much over one-fourth, or 30 per 
 cent., while the increase of the population which 
 we have to provide for is only 15 per cent. There 
 have been 89 new Churches consecrated in the same 
 period, and 14 which have been completed or en- 
 larged. There are besides 28 Temporary Churches 
 or Mission Houses built or rented, to most of which 
 conventional districts are assigned, and for many 
 of which funds for erecting permanent Churches are 
 being raised. Nor must we omit, as an important 
 addition to the provision for public worship and 
 the preaching of the Word, 39 Chapels of Ease and 
 Proprietary Chapels, although, as their Ministers 
 have no cure of souls, they do not fall strictly 
 within the contents of the Parochial System. The 
 number of Clergy beneficed or licensed in the 
 diocese has increased from 888 in 1861 and 1,002 in 
 1866 to 1,081 at the present Visitation. 
 
 It was calculated on the Census of 1861 that 
 additional spiritual provision was needed for a 
 million of souls ; and that such provision ought to 
 be made at the rate of 1 Church and 2 Clergy- 
 men for every 4,000. Under the normal conditions 
 of the Parochial System this calculation is far from 
 excessive : but after making due allowance for the
 
 13 
 
 large and numerous places of worship of non-con- 
 formist bodies (as practically we must and ought, 
 though theoretically bound as a National Church 
 to supply Church room for all who have a riglit to 
 it), experience seems to have led to the opinion, 
 that under the exceptional circumstances of the 
 population of the Metropolis, its migratory 
 character in some districts and the large number 
 of Jews and foreigners in others, the Church of 
 England will have fairly discharged her duty by 
 providing one Church for every 6,000, assuming 
 that the services of the Church are supplemented 
 ordinarily by schoolroom, mission room, or other 
 like ministrations. On this ratio we shall have 
 succeeded during the decennial period, besides 
 providing for the accruing increase of population, 
 in supplying rather more than one-half of the 
 Churches needed, and so far in meeting the spiri- 
 tual destitution of one-half of the million be- 
 queathed to us by the neglect of the past. But 
 even in this branch of work to be done, and on 
 this imperfect scale, not only sustained, but much 
 increased, exertion will be needed. As there seems 
 no reason at present to anticipate a check on the 
 rate of the growth of the Metropolis, the additions 
 of each year will require 6 new Churches ; so that 
 if this decennial period is successfully to overtake 
 the arrears still remaining over from the last, 
 Churches should be completed at the rate of 
 14 yearly, instead of 9, the average hitherto. 
 But essential as is a sufficient provision of
 
 14 
 
 Churches for the restoration of the Parochial 
 system and the evangelization of this enormous 
 diocese, far more important is the living voice of 
 the Minister of the Gospel, — a due supply of men 
 qualified, commissioned and bound to preach the 
 word and administer the Sacraments, and to be 
 "instant in season and out of season" to win 
 souls to Christ. And here I do not think that any 
 deductions should be made from the calculations 
 on which the Bishop of London's Pund was based. 
 One Clergyman for every 2,000 is the lowest ratio, — 
 much indeed too low, — if pastoral work is to be 
 a reality, and every Parishioner is to have the 
 opportunity, as in theory he has the right, of the 
 personal counsel of his Minister. We are very far 
 from this. The number of Clergy in the actual 
 diocese has indeed increased in the decennial period 
 from 888 to 1,081 : but even noAv, if the popula- 
 tion were equally divided among all the Clergy 
 ministering in it, each man's pastoral charge 
 would be 2,500. As it is, after deducting a large 
 proportion of the City Benefices of which the 
 resident population is now very small, and a few 
 country parishes, the average in the remaining 
 districts is far beyond this. According to the 
 returns made to me last year, which it has not 
 yet been possible to check by the results of the 
 Census, the average proportion of Clergy to the 
 people under their charge in 79 of the most 
 populous Parishes was but one to every 4,244, 
 while there were 3 cases anion <? them of 1 to
 
 15 
 
 7,000, 2 of 1 to 8,000, 1 of 1 to 10,000, and one of 
 but 1 to 11,000. For these 79 Parishes alone 
 almost 300 additional Clergy would be needed in 
 order that each 2,000 of the population might have 
 one Pastor's undivided care. Here then is a 
 deficiency of serious magnitude, and one far more 
 difiicult to supply than that of Churches, involving, 
 as it does, the requirement of a further income of 
 at the very least £60,000 per annum. Por some 
 portion of this sum we may look, no doabt, to the 
 Ecclesiastical Commission to which this diocese is 
 already deeply indebted, and from which we 
 have received during the decennial period just 
 closed, grants for the endowment of Benefices 
 or stipends of Curates equal to a capital sum of 
 one million of money or an annual payment of 
 £30,000 a year, to which must be added above 
 £70,000 expended chiefly in the erection of Par- 
 sonage Houses and the cost of providing their 
 sites, and also Benefactions from non-ecclesiastical 
 sources of nearly equal amount made to the 
 Commission within the same period.' The Bishop 
 of London's Pund and the Diocesan Home Mission 
 may be enabled, I earnestly trust, not only to 
 maintain but to increase their expenditure for the 
 
 ^ The Common Fund of the Ecclesiastical Commission to ■which 
 these important results are due, was founded in 1840 mainly on 
 the advice of Bishop Blomfield ; and they justify tlie prediction 
 Avhich. he uttered when the measure was most warmly controverted, 
 "They blame me now, but they will hereafter confess that these 
 very measures have been the saving of the Church." — Memoir hy the 
 Mev. Alfred Blomfield, i. 227.
 
 36 
 
 employment of Missionary Clergy, to break up 
 the fallow ground more effectually in our still 
 enormous parishes, and to work up portions into 
 independent Ecclesiastical districts. From the 
 Additional Curates and Pastoral Aid Societies we 
 cannot expect a larger proportion from their 
 present incomes than they already contribute to 
 our diocese ; though they ought to be relieved by 
 the Parishioners of many of our less destitute 
 parishes of the grants they are making to these, 
 and set free to bestow them on districts where 
 there are none to help. But it is the laity of 
 the Church on whom we must learn to depend, 
 much more generally and systematically than we 
 have hitherto done, for the support of additional 
 Clergy. It is an unfortunate, though a natural 
 result of our position as an established Church, 
 that as the maintenance of the Clergy is, as the rule, 
 provided by endowment, the people liave not felt 
 the necessity nor recognized the duty of supporting 
 the Ministry of the word and sacraments in those 
 exceptional though by no means uncommon cases, 
 where, as in this Metropolis, the population has 
 rapidly and far outgrown the provision which has 
 been made, or by any possibility can be obtained, 
 by endowment. And it is a kindred result, that 
 we of the Clergy shrink from enforcing the duty, as 
 if it were our own interest for which we should be 
 pleading. And yet if it is a duty, — as surely it 
 is, — we are bound to inculcate it on our people, for 
 whom it must be a sin to neglect it and a privilege
 
 17 
 
 to discharge it : nor is it for the Clergy that we 
 plead, but for those thousands of souls for whose 
 spiritual needs a ministry is required which can be 
 supported from, no other source. It is, indeed, 
 becoming more and more evident, that if a staff of 
 Clergy is to be maintained in this diocese at all 
 adequate to cope with its requirements, it must be 
 by a much more earnest, general, and systematic 
 appeal to the laity of all ranks : and I trust that 
 there will soon be no Parish, rich or poor, in which 
 a proportionately ample fund is not raised yearly 
 for the support of additional Clergy, either for the 
 work of the Parish itself, or for that of more 
 destitute districts. 
 
 I should regret, indeed, if in any case the main- 
 tenance of the Incumbent of a Parish or district 
 were left entirely or mainly to voluntary sources. 
 The Weekly Offertory or the fees and oblations of 
 the people afford too precarious an income for him 
 whose Parish is to be his home, and who, as settled 
 there, ought to be free from family anxieties and 
 distracting cares : nor, as a matter of experience, 
 can these sources be relied on for a sufficient and 
 permanent income, save vol a few exceptional cases 
 and in wealthy neighbourhoods : but to supply 
 him or assist him with the stipends of his Curates, 
 the Incumbent ought to be able to look to such 
 offerings, and not in vain. 
 
 And here I must venture to touch on the subject 
 of pew rents, against which a crusade has been 
 preached of late by many good and earnest mev„ 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 and which they object to, not merely as inexpedient 
 and illegal, but almost as a kind of sacrilege and 
 trafficking with holy things. They have unfor- 
 tunately met sometimes with a success which they 
 would be the first to deplore; and have injected 
 conscientious sci'uples against the payment of pew 
 rents into the minds of some who have no scruple 
 at all in allowing their Clergyman and family to 
 starve for want of them. This movement has 
 truth for its base. Few practices have done more 
 to dislocate the Parochial System and to driA^e the 
 working classes from our Churches in town and 
 country, than that of appropriating, whether for 
 money or not, all the best parts of the Church and 
 the well-built and comfortable pews to the wealthy, 
 while the poor are left to seat themselves as they 
 may, in remote corners or on a few bare benches. 
 And it is true that every Parishioner has equally 
 his common law right to a seat in his Parish 
 Church. But it is equally true that it is the duty 
 of the Churchwardens to seat every Parishioner 
 who claims his right, and that it has long been 
 the practice in our Church, which founds the 
 Parish itself on the Household, to encourage and 
 enable husbands and wives, parents and children 
 to kneel and pray together. Hence, in the normal 
 state of a Parish, all the seats in the Church 
 are appropriated by the Churchwardens to all the 
 families in the Parish, whether they be rich or 
 poor. But we have to deal now wath an alto- 
 gether abnormal state, where the Church is far too
 
 19 
 
 small to contain all the Parishioners, and where 
 many of the Parishioners, from whatever cause, 
 have no desire to attend their Parisli Church. 
 What in such case is the wisest and most just 
 course ? * To have all the seats free and unappro- 
 priated,' we are told, * and to allow the Parishioners 
 to seat themselves as they please.' And no douht 
 there are districts, sometimes of the very rich, more 
 often of the very poor, where such an arrangement 
 is expedient. But in general it interferes, as much 
 as over-appropriation, with the Parochial System in 
 practice, and is almost as alien to it in principle. 
 
 In the first place, there are many, — in most 
 places the large majority, — who desire to have fixed 
 places in their Church ; who like to lie sure 
 that when they attend divine worship A\'ith their 
 families, they and their wife and children may 
 kneel together ; who are unwilling that those who 
 are feeble in health shall be precluded altogether 
 from the services of the Church, or shall be obliged 
 to incur the additional fatigue of a much earlier 
 attendance to secure a seat ; and who are not free 
 from the weakness, if such it is, of being aided in 
 their devotions by the associations of place, and of 
 being able to pray and listen better where they 
 have prayed and listened long. Are such feelings 
 unreasonable? At any rate they are very general, 
 and we shall be wise to consider them. • They 
 who cannot ol)tain in their Parish Church what 
 they feel the need of, and what in the ideal of the 
 Parisli system they are entitled to, will seek it 
 
 B 2
 
 20 
 
 elsewliere : and as we have alienated the working 
 classes from our Clmrehes by the appropriation to 
 others of all the hest constructed and best placed 
 seats, so shall we alienate some of the upper and 
 most of the great middle class, — who have the same 
 right to be considered, though no more, than 
 their poorer brethren, — by attempting to force upon 
 them free and open Churches. Kay among the 
 poor themselves there are many (as is found 
 l)y experience in some parts of the metropolis) 
 who will gladly pay a small rent in order to secure 
 a seat to resort to, which they may call their own. 
 On the other hand the free and open Church is un- 
 suited to the Parochial System, at least in the midst 
 of large populations divided into various Parishes 
 and districts, because it fails to secure the rights of 
 Parishioners. It is as free and open to others as to 
 them. And in proportion as the Preacher is elo- 
 q\ient and attractive, or the ritual beautiful or 
 novel, the Parishioners for whose sake the Church 
 was built and perhaps endowed, and whose souls 
 (not those of others) have been entrusted to their 
 Pastor's care, are excluded by strangers whom 
 curiosity impels, or freedom from home duties 
 enables, to arrive earlier than is possible to them. 
 It has been my experience, in my Episcopate, to 
 have been applied to several times by Church- 
 wardens for authority to appropriate seats in a free 
 and open Church, in order to secure Parishioners a 
 place in the Parish Church which non-parishioners 
 habitually occupied.
 
 21 
 
 On the whole I am of opinion, in a state of things 
 confessedly and for the present hopelessly ahnormal, 
 and making allowance for exceptional cases and for 
 the wishes in some instances of Parishioners them- 
 selves, that the nearest approach we can make ordi- 
 narily to the restoration of the Parochial System 
 in this respect, is by the appropriation to the 
 Parishioners of a certain nnmher of seats propor- 
 tionate to the character of the district, and the leav- 
 ing free and unappropriated all the rest, — in general 
 not less than one-half, — equally well built, equally 
 well situated, and only distinguished from the rest 
 by having no privilege of pre-occupation. And if 
 so, I am quite unable to see any objection in prin- 
 ciple to requiring from those who ask for and obtain 
 that privilege, a certain payment applicable to 
 the maintenance of the Incumbent, or even to the 
 expenses of public worship. The Parishioners in 
 unendowed or ill-endowed districts are bound to sup- 
 port their Minister : and there seems nothing either 
 unfair on those who pay, or derogatory to him who 
 receives, in throwing the weightiest portion of the 
 charge on those who have accepted an exceptional 
 advantage. This principle has long been admitted 
 by the Legislature which has sanctioned and regu- 
 lated the taking of pew rents : and though it must 
 be admitted that it has been too often so applied as 
 to make some of our Churches the property of the 
 rich, and no place for the poor, it would be equally 
 unreasonable and unwise to abandon a practice 
 which is capable of equitable regulation, which is
 
 22 
 
 practically at least as compatible with the true 
 Parochial System as is that of free and open 
 Churches, on which a very large proportion of the 
 incomes of the Clergy of this diocese now depends, 
 and from which some portion at least of the great 
 increase of endowment which we urgently need for 
 the future may he most readily obtained. 
 
 I must add, before I leave the subject, my earnest 
 hope that, in all those parishes in which the Church 
 has, under the pew system as formerly adminis- 
 tered, been virtually closed against the poor, imme- 
 diate efforts may be made, if not made already, to 
 supply them also with facilities for public worship, 
 for the preached word and the Sacraments. There 
 are wealthy parishes in which the spiritual advan- 
 tages of the working class are far less than in many 
 of the poorest. And you will not remedy this evil, 
 usually, by altering your present Churches, by 
 lowering the pews, removing their doors or even 
 abolishing the rents. All this may be improvement. 
 It may please the present »\'orsliippers in your 
 Church, or it may displease and alienate them. 
 But it will not draw those whom you wish to reach. 
 All old associations, all their prejudices are against 
 it. It never was their Church and it never will be. 
 You must provide them their own place of wor- 
 ship, be it schoolroom, or — much better — chapel 
 or Church. You must give them shorter services 
 and usually a ditferent style of preaching. And 
 you must appeal earnestly to your wealthier 
 Parishioners for the means for erecting the requi-
 
 23 
 
 site buildings and maintaining the additional ser- 
 vices. I do not think that such an appeal will at the 
 l^resent day often be made in vain. The work has 
 already been done in some great parishes : it is doing 
 in others. It will soon be effected, I trust, in all. 
 
 A large increase of the number of the Clergy 
 of the diocese, although an object to be kept 
 steadily before us, as essential to the restoration 
 of the Parochial System and to the evangelization 
 of the masses of the population, can only be 
 effected gradually and perhaps slowly. Mean- 
 while I thankfully observe a much larger amount 
 of lay help given to the Pastor in his work than 
 was usually found when I left this diocese eighteen 
 years ago, — help which no increase in the number 
 of the Clergy would allow us to dispense with, and 
 which is all-important in our present paucity. At 
 that date, indeed, w o had many of us — I can speak 
 gratefully for n^vself — the aid of many earnest and 
 judicious district Visitors and of some excellent 
 Sunday School teachers ; and the value of paid 
 Scripture Headers and other lay agents was gene- 
 rally recognized : but the band of lay helpers from 
 all ranks and of both sexes has now largely in- 
 creased ; hospitals and workhouses are visited ; 
 schools, clothing clubs and mothers' meetings 
 sustained : and, by much self-sacrifice of time 
 and toil, the poor of the east of the metropolis 
 are visited and cheered by the rich and noble of 
 the west. All this — though much more is needed 
 — is an advance in the right direction. An im-
 
 24 
 
 portant attempt, too, has been made to extend and 
 organize lay agency in the Church's work, to 
 direct it when necessary, and to create a feeling 
 of sympathy, brotherhood, and mutual intercession 
 among those engaged in it, by the institution of 
 the Lay Helpers' Association, which now carries on 
 its roll the names of 1,457 Members. I owe my 
 warmest thanks to those who have so zealously 
 conducted this movement. But besides the assist- 
 ance thus rendered in the ordinary work of 
 Christian charity, we have availed ourselves in this 
 diocese of the resolutions agreed to by the Bisho2)s 
 in 1866 with regard to the employment of Lay 
 Readers ; and I have had much satisfaction in 
 commissioning, after special prayer, being first 
 duly certified of their piety, soundness in the 
 faith and knowledge of the Scriptures, 31 laymen 
 to act under their respective Clergymen in visiting 
 and reading to the sick and infirm, and in con- 
 ducting religious services in schoolrooms or other 
 unconsecrated buildings. 
 
 Another form of lay help which, if it has not 
 altogether sprung into existence, has greatly ex- 
 tended since the date to which I am looking back, 
 is the institution of Sisterhoods. And here, if I am 
 obliged at all to qualify the expression of my 
 satisfaction, it is from no want of the truest appre- 
 ciation of the devoted lives and labours of the 
 ladies who, in these various societies, are discharg- 
 ing with a gentle zeal beyond my praise all the 
 offices of Christian charity. Such offices are
 
 25 
 
 especially ay omen's work : nor can there be any 
 reason why women, l30und by no family ties and 
 claimed by no family duties, should not unite 
 together for the more systematic and effectual dis- 
 charge of such offices, for mutual aid and encou- 
 ragement, and for united prayer. Tor such a 
 community a distinctive di'ess may be useful, 
 though perhaps not necessary, and a distinctive 
 name. Sisterhoods thus framed and for these objects 
 I gladly welcome as valuable auxiliaries to the 
 Church's work. But I cannot forget that th.^ family 
 is God's institution ; all such communities are but 
 man's : and I am jealous lest the human creation 
 should usurp the dues of the Divine ordinance. On 
 this account I must hold all vows unlawful. The 
 very imposition of a vow implies the possibility of a 
 conflict of duties : and the force of the vow is to bind 
 the conscience to prefer the humanly imposed duty 
 to that which is inherent in the institution of God. 
 It must be borne in mind, too, that all artificial com- 
 munities, however justifiable and useful, have their 
 peculiar tendencies and dangers : and it is not sur- 
 prising, if women severed from the duties, affections 
 and natural dependence of family life, as well as 
 from the innocent amusements of society, should 
 develope an inclination towards an ascetic dis- 
 cipline, a surrender of conscience and will to the 
 direction of others, the vanity of an eccentric dress 
 and the excitement of an excessive ritual. All 
 such tendencies should be judiciously and gently 
 checked, — never encouraged, — by those who have to
 
 26 
 
 control or advise sisterhoods, if they would not run 
 the risk of aiding or allowing the healthy life of 
 religion to degenerate into a narrow, feeble though 
 excited pietism. One word more before quitting 
 this subject. In the singular reaction towards 
 mediaeval tastes and practices which has found a 
 place in the midst of — perhaps on account of — the 
 material progress and intellectual rationalism of 
 the nineteenth century, we ought not perhaps to 
 be surprised if attempts are made or contemplated 
 to introduce the recluse life among members of the 
 Church of England. The attempt, no doubt, will 
 fail on trial. And ought it not to fail ? Is there 
 in the Gospel one single precept for the recluse 
 life ? one single example of it ? The i\.postles and 
 Evangelists were not recluse : Tryphena and 
 Tryphosa, • the beloved Persis, these were not 
 recluse. Our Lord's prayer for His own was not 
 that His Eather would take them out of the world, 
 but that He would keep them from its evil. In 
 the world we have each our work to do to be done 
 in an unworldly spirit. If freed from the necessity 
 of labouring for ourselves and families, we have yet 
 a thousand opportunities, each involving an obliga- 
 tion because sent by God, of relieving, instruct- 
 ing, benefiting others. To them are due the time, 
 strength, ability and means not needed for our own 
 allotted task; and we have no right, withdrawing 
 A\ ith these powers of usefulness into a seclusion 
 where they cannot be exercised, under the idea, 
 whicli for the most part proves delusive, of living
 
 27 
 
 there in closer communion with God, to say to our 
 afflicted brother, '' It is Corban, by wliatsoever thou 
 mightest be profited by me." 
 
 But to return. One most valuable resiilt of the 
 Parochial System, and, in its turn, one most 
 valuable element of it, has been the establishment 
 of our Church Schools. But for the Parish they 
 never could have multiplied since the beginning of 
 the century, till eight-tenths of all the children 
 under primary instruction were in them : the 
 Schools, on the other hand, have done much to 
 attach to the Parish and its Church both those who 
 supported them and those who have been taught 
 in them. This system has now received a rude shock. 
 Pai], no doubt, it did to some extent at both its 
 extremities. In very large populations, it was 
 sometimes unable to supply sufficient schools, but 
 oftener unable to bring the children into them : 
 in very small ones it was not possible to maintain 
 efficient schools excepting at a cost out of pro- 
 portion to the occasion and the results. There 
 came in also the religious difi6.culty, so formidable 
 in theory, so insignificant in practice, which, many 
 will now admit, was not always dealt with so 
 Avisely as it might have been. The consequence 
 was the Act of last year, Avhicli, in order to make 
 primary education universal and more efficient, is 
 to supplement by rate built and rate supported 
 undenominational schools — and which, while sup- 
 plementing, threatens to supplant — the denomi- 
 national Schools of our Parishes. The question.
 
 28 
 
 however, whether our Parochial Schools ought to 
 he maintained, notwithstanding and together with, 
 the system thus introduced, has received an un- 
 equivocal answer. Never has so powerful an 
 impulse heen given to the huilding and enlarge- 
 ment of denominational, and especially of Church, 
 Schools as by the Elementary Education Act of 
 1870. In some districts, no doubt, the effort 
 which has been made to build new Church Schools 
 and to enlarge old ones, has been aided to a certain 
 extent by the desire to retain local management and 
 to exclude that of a Board; but with every 
 allowance made for this motive, the large sums 
 raised for Schools within the last twelve months, 
 may be taken to measure the preference of the 
 country for a distinctively religious education over 
 one which must be creedless, and may be only 
 secular. In our own diocese, this indication of a 
 healthy feeling as to the importance of definite 
 religious teaching is very clear and satisfactory. 
 Eor the great proportion of it, for all the metro- 
 politan district, there must be a school board and 
 a school rate ; and all voluntary contributions for 
 schools must now be over and above what each rate- 
 payer is obliged to pay for the same object. All such 
 voluntary contributions, therefore, must be due to 
 a conviction, that it is the duty of Churchmen to 
 secure not education only, but a religious education, 
 for the children of those who will accept it. It is 
 very satisfactory, therefore, to know that the efforts 
 made in this diocese for buildinsi: and enlarorins-
 
 29 
 
 Church Schools within the last twelve months have 
 exceeded very greatly those of any preceding year. 
 The sum expended on this object cannot yet he 
 ascertained : hut some estimate may he suggested 
 by the fact that the grants in aid of voluntary 
 contributions, to which they bear of course a very 
 small proportion, made to us by the National 
 Society, amounted to £7,705 ; by the Christian 
 Knowledge Society to £1,080 ; and by the Bishop 
 of London's Eund to £29,219. 
 
 It still remains, however, a question not free 
 from anxiety, how far we shall be able to maintain 
 our Parochial Schools, when the pressure of the 
 Education rate begins to be felt, and when the 
 Board Schools become an object of public interest, 
 as they must from their novelty and from the im- 
 portance of the experiment in itself and in its re- 
 sults. And here let me be allowed to entreat the 
 manao-ers of Church Schools never to transfer their 
 school to the School Board unless under the pres- 
 sure of absolute necessity ; and in that case to be 
 careful to secure the use of the premises whenever 
 not required for school purposes, for their Sunday 
 School and other parochial uses. It is impossible that 
 such religious instruction as can be given under the 
 regulations of a Board School, even when supple- 
 mented by our own Sunday School and other addi- 
 tional teaching, can adequately supply the sound 
 religious education which it is the object and endea- 
 vour of our parochial schools to give. Every eflPort 
 then should be made to keep our schools in our own
 
 30 
 
 hands. In some cases it may be necessary to raise 
 the rate of payment by the chikh*en : in all cases it 
 will be iuiportant that the secular teaching shall be 
 made as efficient as possible : but the essential con- 
 ditions of the continued existence of our Church 
 Schools are, that the religious instruction in them 
 is sufficient and sound, and that there is adequate 
 guarantee and evidence that it is so. The only 
 ground on Avhich we can ask and expect the contri- 
 butions of those who are obliged also to contribute 
 l->y rate to Board Schools, is that in our schools that 
 sound religious instruction is given which the Board 
 Schools cannot give. Xot only then must such 
 religious instruction be really and effectively given, 
 — which can only be done (especially under existing 
 circumstances, when the attention of the Master 
 and Mistress is liable to he much diverted from it 
 by the importance and pecuniary results attached 
 to the secular teaching) by the personal exertions 
 of the Clergymen of the Parish, — but we must be 
 able to certify the subscribers that it is given, 
 which can only be done, as far as I can perceive, 
 by a system of careful, candid and judicious in- 
 spection. Inspection of such a character, I am 
 happy to believe, we have provided for our dio- 
 cese : and I look confidently to you, my Reverend 
 Brethren, as well to maintain and improve the 
 religious teaching in your Schools by your own 
 assistance and superintendence, as, by interesting 
 your Parishioners in the work and obtaining their 
 contributions, to enable the Diocesan Board of
 
 31 
 
 Education to stimulate and encourage the teachers 
 by kind yet accurate inspection, and, if possible, bv 
 the bestowal of well-deserved rewards. 
 
 The main cause of the failure of the Parochial 
 System in our diocese is of course, as we have said, 
 the rapid increase of population. But it may fail 
 also from lack of population. The Pastor may not 
 have a flock, nor his Church a congregation. And 
 such is actually the case in many Parishes within 
 the City of London, in which the inhabitants have 
 decreased by above 37,000, — nearly one-third,— since 
 the preceding Census. In most of these Parishes, 
 too, even the semblance of the Parochial System is 
 destroyed by the non-residence of the Incumbent. 
 It is true that in many there is no house or no fit 
 house of residence; and it is also true that in 
 several cases the Incumbent is most unwillingly 
 absent under the pressure of ill-health. But there 
 remain still instances enough of non-residence, 
 without any such valid excuse, to occasion scandal 
 and not unreasonable complaint. In our Church 
 no Clergyman is obliged to accept the cure of a 
 Parish ; and if he does accept it, it is voluntarily 
 with all its obligations. Of these one of the most 
 obvious and most essential to the Parochial System 
 is, that he and his family should live among his 
 peoj)le ; an obligation which is not fulfilled or com- 
 pensated for, by an occasional or even a daily visit, 
 while the home, the very centre and heart of all 
 good works in a normal parish, is far away. One 
 thing, however, is clear; if the population of a
 
 32 
 
 Parisli is so small, or its circumstances sucli, that 
 it does not require a resident Clergyman, while 
 there are in its close neighbourhood thousands for 
 whom no resident Clergyman is provided, it can 
 scarcely be a question whether the time is not come 
 when the Legislature should readjust the supply to 
 the demand, and should remove the endowments 
 from spots where there are not souls enough to need 
 a separate Pastor, to districts where there are poor 
 and isrnorant multitudes destitute of a Pastor's 
 care. The principle of such a readjustment, in- 
 deed, was admitted eleven years back, at a time 
 when the population of the City w^as one-third 
 greater than it now is ; but the Union of Benefices 
 Act ' was framed with a machinery so weak at once 
 and so cumbrous, that although much time and 
 labour have been bestowed upon attempts to apply 
 it, the first Church erected under its provisions in a 
 populous district, is not yet ready for consecration, 
 and only three more schemes of union have up to 
 this time received the E-oyal assent. It is much to 
 be hoped that another Session of Parliament will 
 not pass without the enactment of some measure, 
 which while it provides equitably for the rights 
 and compensation of all parties to whom they are 
 due, will no longer arm each claimant with a veto, 
 enabling him thus to extort concessions which maim 
 the benefits of the Union, or to stop a transfer in 
 which the spiritual interests of thousands are con- 
 cerned. It will be an important step towards the 
 1 23 and 24 Vic. c. 142.
 
 83 
 
 restoration of tlie Paiocliial System, if while the 
 Parishes of the City itself are so reconstituted 
 as to require and secure a resident Incumbent, 
 the same blessing can by the same means be 
 extended to many a populous district beyond its 
 bounds. 
 
 Another hindrance, not indeed, strictly speaking, 
 to the Parochial System itself, but to some of its 
 most important duties and advantages, arises from 
 the unequal distribution of rich and poor in different 
 parts of the metropolis. In the normal Parish the 
 various ranks of social life are found together, — 
 not of course always in the same proportions, — but 
 so as in each to give the poor the advantage of 
 neighbours who can help, and to afford to the 
 more prosperous the opportunity of discharging 
 duties imperative on every disciple of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, — visiting the sick, instructing the 
 ignorant, relieving the distressed. But in London 
 the classes are separated, not only in habits, occu- 
 pations and interests, but to a large extent, by 
 locality : and although there are Parishes in whicli 
 the proportion betAveen them is fairly maintained, 
 there are others in which the disparity is very 
 great. Whole districts in St. George's, in Kensing- 
 ton and Bayswater, may have scarcely any poor to 
 visit ; whole districts in Bethnal Green, Stepney and 
 St. George's in the East have, without doubt, very 
 few to visit the poor. Attempts have been made to 
 remedy this inequality, by the adoption by some 
 of the wealthier parishes of some of the more 
 
 c
 
 34 
 
 destitute, in order that those who have leisure and 
 means in the one may find the opportunity of 
 employing them for their brethren's good in the 
 other. The idea is admirable, and it has been in 
 a few instances not unsuccessfully realized. But 
 it must be acted iipon much more generally, if 
 we are in earnest to redress the evils Avliich 
 arise from massing the poor in districts remote 
 from those who ought to care for them and help 
 them, and to restore, as far as may be, in this 
 Metropolis, that most valuable but almost vanish- 
 ing feature of the Parochial System, by which duty 
 and opportunity are linked together, and the way 
 is made plain for doing what every one, according 
 to his ability, is bound to do. Most gladly shall I 
 be the medium of establishing^ such a communi- 
 cation of mutual benefit between districts which 
 need help and districts able to help them. And I 
 would ask you, in all seriousness, my Eeverend 
 Brethren, whether we are all of us doing justice 
 to ouirselves and to our j)eople, by urging suffi- 
 ciently the duty of personal exertion and self- 
 denial in good works, which, if there be truth in 
 our Lord's words and in the shadowing forth of 
 the day of judgment by the hand of the great Judge 
 Himself, is the very test which will discriminate 
 then between the saved and lost ? There are tens 
 of thousands of men and women, respectable in 
 their lives and respected, worshij^pers in our 
 Churches, and dwellers in homes replete with 
 comfort, elegance, luxury, who do absolutely
 
 35 
 
 nothing and give next to nothing, in discharge 
 of those offices of charity which, done or not done 
 to His brethren, are acknowledged as done or 
 reckoned as not done, to the divine Savionr Him- 
 self. And these tens of thonsands are amono^ the 
 sonls committed to our care. 
 
 Nor can I forbear adding, though diverging 
 slightly from my course, that these duties of 
 Christian charity are at the same time the dictate s 
 of the wisest policy. The worst peril of the near 
 future is the alienation of classes. The great gulph 
 widens, and disruption appears imminent. In 
 rural districts, indeed, old associations, more 
 frequent personal intercourse, some community 
 of interest, still link the grades of society to- 
 gether : but in large towns, and especially in this 
 metropolis, the separation is ever going on be- 
 tween labour and capital, employers and employed, 
 ricli and poor. Distance causes misapprehension 
 and exaggerates differences. The brotherhood of 
 humanity is lost in the narrower but more ener- 
 getic brotherhood of classes. Interests, in reality 
 closely connected, viewed from one side only, 
 appear antagonistic. Inequalities are felt as in- 
 justice, and misfortunes resented as wrongs. And 
 the classes of society on whose interdependence 
 and mutual interchange of offices depend the 
 well-being of each part and the stability of the 
 whole, — disunited in sympathies, opposed, as is 
 imagined, in interests, and drawn together by 
 none of the personal intercourse which is stronger 
 
 c 2
 
 3G 
 
 than theoretical differenceSj — stand in peril of mu- 
 tually destructive hostility. 
 
 It is our special duty, my Kevereud Brethren, as 
 we have special opportunities, to mitigate, if we can- 
 not cure this evil : — maiuly, no doubt, by preaching 
 faithfully to rich and poor alike that Gospel Avhich 
 alone can divest riches of their perils or support 
 poverty through its temptations ; Avhicli alone can 
 solve the perplexed enigma of the inequalities of 
 men's lot ; and which alone reveals and establishes 
 the only brotherhood which can bind regenerate 
 humanity into one, — the oneness of faith hope and 
 charity, of privilege here, of inheritance hereafter, 
 — in the one body of the Lord Jesus Christ. But 
 it is also our duty to give practical effect to this 
 teaching by .urging, eliciting and directing, as far 
 as possible, the exercise of personal good offices by 
 the one class towards the other, by interesting the 
 rich in the well-being, difficulties and wants of the 
 poor, and by assisting them to make that interest 
 practical; and thus by linking again the broken 
 chain, to enable the spark of charity, the current of 
 brotherly love, to circulate more freely between the 
 extremities of the social system, and to rekindle a 
 feeling that the many members are yet one body. 
 But our diocese is ill organized for such a work. 
 The classes are often locally separate as well as 
 socially. And therefore it is necessary to its suc- 
 cess to depart from the letter of the Parochial 
 System in order to secure its spirit ; and to engage 
 those who are livinii- in more wealthv districts to
 
 37 
 
 charge themselves with the wants and welfare of 
 the distant poor. The labour of course is greater 
 and calls for more self-denial. But the work can 
 be done : it is done by some of the noblest and 
 gentlest in the land. Xor is it Avithout its effect 
 and blessing. Each visit of sympathy breaks down 
 some prejudice and clears away some misapprehen- 
 sion. It helps the one class to feel, that in the 
 other, which it had looked upon with dislike and 
 envy, there are brothers' and sisters' hearts able 
 to sympathise and ready to help. And it may 
 well be doubted whether any legislation can do 
 so much to draw together the disunited members 
 of the body politic as the life of a man of education 
 and station, of strong sense and a large lieart, spent 
 among his poorer fellow-men, studying amidst its 
 tacts the problems of their position, — how to raise 
 witliout enfeebling, to relieve without pauperizing, 
 to aid by teaching how to aid themselves, — a life, 
 in a word, like the short life of Edward Denison. 
 
 There is one more cause of the decadence of the 
 Parochial System which I must not pass by ; though 
 to pursue it Ave must traverse delicate ground. I 
 do not hesitate on that account. You Avould far 
 more readily, I know, forgive me a frank expression 
 of opinion, however much it might prove to differ 
 from your OAvn, than a timid reticence on subjects 
 Avhich, in my judgment, it is important tluit Ave 
 should consider together. The cause to Avhicli I 
 refer is the gradual decay of the rights of the laity 
 in the Parish, and the consequent and unconscious
 
 38 
 
 extension of the autocracy of the Clergy. This 
 cause has been long in operation, and is by no 
 means confined to our own diocese; though here 
 the breaking up of Parishes into Ecclesiastical 
 districts under the provisions of the Church Build- 
 ing Acts has perhaps accelerated the process of 
 throwing the old machinery out of gear, and sub- 
 stituting the congregation for the Parish. In the 
 normal Parish every layman had his rights and 
 his duties; his right to the use of tlie Parish 
 Church and Churchyard, to the services of the 
 Church and the ministrations of the word and 
 Sacraments in the degree and manned prescribed 
 by law, and to the Pastoral Offices of his Parish 
 Priest : his duties to maintain the Church, Church- 
 yard, and services ; to contribute at least by dues 
 and offerings to the support of the Ministry ; and 
 to assist his Clergyman in his works of charity and 
 usefulness. These rights were protected and some 
 of these duties discharged by the Vestry, the true 
 Parochial Council, and by the aid of the Church- 
 wardens, who, though the Bishop's Officers, are the 
 rei^resentatives and executive of the Parish. The 
 symmetry and strength of the system, indeed, had 
 long been impaired by the growth of nonconformity, 
 when a proportion of the Parishioners began rarely 
 to claim their rights, and unwillingly, if at all, to 
 perform their duties : but it was maimed and 
 almost destroyed in many po23ulous Parishes by 
 the refusal or relinquishment of Church rates even 
 before their compulsory payment had been annulled
 
 39 
 
 by law. Thenceforth the Vestry ceased properly to 
 represent the Parish in Chnrch matters. It is con- 
 iined more and more to secular business : or if it 
 does interfere in anything belonging to the fabric 
 or the services of the Church, its interference is 
 not unnaturally resented by the congregation, as 
 proceeding from a body, which, as such, neither 
 participates in its ordinances nor contributes to 
 its support. Meanwhile, in some Ecclesiastical dis- 
 tricts the Churchwardens are appointed and the 
 business transacted by the renters of pews, not by 
 the inhabitants of the district.^ 
 
 The result is a weakening of the ties, and a 
 serious disturbance of tlie relations, between the 
 Incumbent and the Parish. The former, freed 
 from all kind of control on tlie part of his 
 Parishioners, loses also much of their support : 
 the Parishioners, having no longer rights, feel 
 little interest in their duties. They may, or they 
 may not belong to a congregation, and the con- 
 gregation is practically the Church. And in a 
 congregation the Minister may be, and often is, 
 autocratic. Por in the midst of large populations 
 congregations may be gathered from the neighbour- 
 hood or even from a distance, and not from the 
 Parish : indeed by such congregations Parishioners 
 may even be excluded from their own Church. And 
 this process takes place A'ery nearly in proportion 
 as the services or the teaching diverge from the 
 ordinary standard of each in the Church of England; 
 
 1 1 & 2 Will. IV., c. 38.
 
 40 
 
 from tlie traditional observance of the rubrics or the 
 received interpretation of the Articles and formu- 
 laries. Extreme mediaeval ritual or extreme puri- 
 tanical carelessness ; doctrines which verge on the 
 decrees of Trent, or reach the sternest conclusions 
 of Calvin, or are imbued with the latest specula- 
 tions of rationalism, have each their attraction for 
 certain minds : and he who has in any of these 
 ways alienated his parishioners for whose souls he is 
 responsible, and sent them, sorrowful or indignant, 
 to worship and to learn elsewhere, may yet with 
 entire impunity pursue his own course, and may 
 even point in justification to a Avell-filled Church 
 and, perhaps, to tlie zeal and liberality of interested 
 and attached followers. With entire impunity 
 here ; but is there not a very solemn question which 
 susrsrests itself? Are these the souls committed to 
 his care ? And what is being done for the souls of 
 the parishioners of his Parish, — the souls specially 
 and solely solemnly entrusted to him, and for whom 
 he must render his account Avhen the Chief Shep- 
 herd shall appear ? It is a good work when the 
 Incumbent of a Parish which has very few inhabi- 
 tants, succeeds by the earnest fidelity of his teach- 
 ing and the heartiness of his services in drawing to- 
 gether a large and attached congregation from that 
 numerous class in London who have no parochial 
 assistance and perhaps no room in their own 
 Churches; but that Pastor who has disregarded 
 the feelings of his own people, and driven them 
 away from their own Church, however he may have
 
 41. 
 
 filled their places with others more influential pos- 
 sihly in station or by intelligence, — if there be any 
 reality in the Parochial System or any meaning in 
 the solemn words of Institution, — has surely missed 
 his mark, and marred the very work W'hicli w^as 
 given him to do. 
 
 But the Parishioners have no redress. Their 
 Incumbent's concern is with his congregation : and 
 his congregation agrees with him. The Church- 
 wardens may, perhaps, apply to the Bishop : but 
 the Bishop can do little to help them. It would 
 be an imperfect and uncandid analysis of the 
 enfeeblement of the Parochial System which took 
 no account of the practical diminution of Episcopal 
 authority during the past forty years : and this 
 from no fault of the Bishops themselves. I say 
 this deliberately and without hesitation. No one, 
 indeed, can be more conscious than he who addresses 
 vou of manifold deficiencies for and in the dischara;e 
 of the Ofiice which by the inscrutable providence 
 of God he has been called to fill : and thankful he 
 is to believe that among those whom he addresses 
 there are many more highly qualified than himself 
 to fill it : but apart from self, whose individual de- 
 fects oaght not in justice seriously to affect the 
 estimate of the whole body, and allowing for the 
 different gifts given in different proportions to dif- 
 ferent men, I dare to affirm that in no period of 
 the same length has the Church of England pos- 
 sessed a bench of Bishops more deserving of respect, 
 esteem and deference from their learning, piety.
 
 42 
 
 consistency of life, moderation and earnestness, and 
 activity in the discharge of their duties. The causes 
 of the weakening of their authority must in fairness 
 be looked for elsewhere. And they may be found 
 partly in alterations of law ; principally in the 
 modifications in the idea of moral obligation which 
 have been taking place in various degrees in all 
 strata of society and in all schools of thought. 
 There is no doubt that, previous to the issue of the 
 Royal Commission in 1830 and the consequent 
 legislation, the laws of Ecclesiastical discipline were 
 in a vague, cumbrous and unsatisfactory state. 
 But their very vagueness was in some sort their 
 strength. Bishops had coercive jurisdiction, but 
 the limits were not very clearly defined. Their moni- 
 tions were supposed (whether rightly or wrongly I 
 am not now considering) to have the force of law. 
 They were seldom issued ; but the opinion of their 
 legal vigour, if issued, gave weight not only to the 
 Bishop's formal directions, but even to the informal 
 expression of his Avish. But when the Act of 1 & 2 
 Vic. cap. 106 had defined the law of pluralities, resi- 
 dence and the relations of Incumbent and Curate, 
 and the Clergy Discipline Act^ liad provided a 
 machinery for dealing with offences against the 
 laws Ecclesiastical, legal obligation to obedience 
 began to be measured by these two statutes, the 
 latter especially. The Bishop's authority was looked 
 upon as corrective rather than directive; as con- 
 fined to the punishment of offences instead of in- 
 
 ^ 3 and i Vic. cap. 8G.
 
 43 
 
 eluding monition to duties. The onus pi^obcmdi 
 Avas sliifted. Instead of requiring compliance with 
 his monitions unless shown to he unlawful, he was 
 to require proof that the law had heen hroken. 
 Not charges of erroneous doctrine, merely, or of 
 moral offences, hut complaints of neglect of minor 
 duties or slight alterations of ritual had, it was 
 supposed, to he dealt with hy the legal machinery 
 provided ; and Chnrch war dens and Parishioners 
 preferred to leave what they yet considered to he 
 their wrongs, unredressed, rather than seek a remedy 
 hy a long, uncertain and expensive suit at law. 
 
 But this cause Avould not have heen so ex- 
 tensively operative, were there not another run- 
 ning parallel with it of more suhtle and pervading 
 force, — the change which has heen silently taking 
 place amongst us in the ideas of moral ohligation. 
 These ideas at any given joeriod are, for the most 
 part, governed or at least modified hy what is, or 
 has lately heen, the dominant philosophy of the 
 greatest and most influential thinkers of the age. 
 '* The metaphysics of the few," if I may horrow 
 some sentences from a Charge delivered hy me just 
 ten years ago in another chair, " permeating hy 
 degrees the poetry, the history and the popular 
 literature of the day, reaches at length the theology 
 and morality of the many. In a neighhouring 
 country, a system, or rather systems, of mental 
 philosophy (themselves a reaction from the philo- 
 sophy of sensation dominant in the last century), 
 had long heen forming, and conflicting, and
 
 44 
 
 moulding public opinion. In the midst of great 
 divergences and contradictions, and arriving at 
 the same result by different roads, these systems 
 agreed in exalting the subjective above the ob- 
 jective, the ego above the non ego, the conscious 
 self above all that is not the conscious self. 
 Whether the thinking being be held the only real 
 subject, which, in becoming conscious pf itself, 
 implies, and thus necessitates, the existence of 
 that which is not itself; or whether Thought — 
 absolute, impersonal Thought — be tlie only real 
 being, which, in its efforts to realize itself, deve- 
 lopes into consciousness in man, with all the 
 phenomena of which thought in man is conscious ; 
 it equally results, that in the thinking being, the 
 self, resides the true, the good, the beautifnl, the 
 law and measure of all truth, and goodness, and 
 beauty. The truths, therefore, of religion and 
 morality are intuitions, rather than revelations ; 
 or if revelations, revealed to the individual con- 
 sciousness, rather than by external instruments 
 through the outward senses. Authority, testi- 
 mony, the evidence of history and facts, are of no 
 weight in comparison with the dictates of the 
 regnant self within. Doctrines, equally claiming 
 a divine origin, must be discriminated by ' the 
 verifying faculty ; ' duties, though professing to be 
 of divine obligation, must be accepted or rejected 
 in accordance Avith the intuition of the individual 
 conscience." 
 
 We know how these principles have wrought
 
 45 
 
 themselves out in theology ; — in Essays which, 
 professing to treat the Bible as any other book, 
 yet judge of its credibility by subjective as- 
 sumptions instead of by objective authority, 
 doubting of miracles because miraculous, and re- 
 jecting prophecies because fulfilled ; in Commen- 
 taries which, based on the postulate that there 
 is in every man an intuitive or divine light before 
 which every question of morals or of faith is to 
 be brought for judgment, not only question the 
 authenticity or credibility of much of the Old 
 Testament, but reject from the teaching of the 
 New the doctrines of original guilt, of the atone- 
 ment, of justification ])y faith, and of the in- 
 dwelling of the Holy Spirit otherwise than as 
 that Spirit teaches and dwells in all men : and 
 in Biographies of our blessed Lord and Saviour, 
 which, in place of the perfect portraiture of the 
 Gospels, give us, as in an illumined mirror, the 
 reflection of the writer's own conceptions, — not 
 what the divine Ptedeemer was, but what in his 
 ideal he ought to be. 
 
 But the same principles necessarily atfect also 
 the general tone of morality. In proportion as 
 truth becomes that which each one troweth, Avill 
 duty be that which each one listeth. That such a 
 process has been going on amongst us is painfully 
 witnessed by the lowering of the moral standard, 
 widely, though far from universally, in the upper 
 ranks of society, as testified by qualified and im- 
 partial witnesses ; by the character of the seuti-
 
 46 
 
 ments and incidents by which it is often sought 
 to give interest to fiction ; and especially by the 
 poetry of the day, — the truest test of the moral 
 atmosphere, — which, with very many healthy ex- 
 ceptions, tends to become nnspiritual, earthly, 
 sensuous, and is even dragged at times, without 
 altogether forfeiting readers or admirers, into depths 
 which recal the foulest strains of heathendom. In 
 quite anotlier sphere of thought and action it has 
 perceptibly modified the idea and obligation of law, 
 — not by reviving the wild doctrines of the six- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries that law is unne- 
 cessary or inconsistent with human liberty and 
 need not be obeyed, but by erecting self into 
 the judge of law, prompting the individual to 
 decide what is, or ought to be, law, and measur- 
 ing its obligation accordingly. Complaints are 
 rife of the spirit of self-assertion and insubordi- 
 nation which exhibits itself in every rank and in 
 most of the relations of life. It is not to be 
 expected that we should be altogether exempt. 
 There are very few men who are not afi'ected, how- 
 ever, unconsciously, by the spirit of the age they 
 live in. Even the most firmly rooted tree will 
 show the direction of the wind by the motion of its 
 boughs and leaves. Bishops may take their own 
 will for the rule they decide by ; and Clergy may 
 invalidate external authority by a strong persuasion 
 of the rectitade and rights of their own judgment. 
 Indications are not wanting of such a tendency. 
 Those who recollect the evidence given before the
 
 47 
 
 Eitual Commission, will remember that at least 
 one earnest and able man, when pressed with the 
 question who was to decide what were or were not 
 the " uses " of the Catholic Church which he felt 
 bound in conscience to employ in preference to the 
 " uses " of the Church of England, which is only a 
 National Church, admitted that the decision must 
 ultimately rest with himself.^ The provision made 
 for " appeasing all diversity and for the resolution 
 of all doubts concerning the manner how to under- 
 stand, do and execute the things contained in the 
 book of Common Prayer," by requiring that 
 " the parties that so doubt or diversely take any 
 thing, shall alway resort to the Bishop of the 
 diocese, who by his discretion shall take order for 
 the quieting and appeasing of the same," has been 
 reduced to a dead letter by the persistent denial 
 of the parties, at least on one side, that they 
 have any doubt whatever as to the point in ques- 
 tion. The promise made by the Candidate in 
 the Ordination Service that he will "reverently 
 obey his Ordinary, . . . following with a glad mind 
 and will his godly admonitions, and submitting him- 
 self to his godly judgements," and the oath taken by 
 every one instituted or licensed to a cure of souls, 
 that he " will pay true and Canonical obedience to 
 his Eishop in all things lawful and honest," w^ere 
 interpreted commonly, in the memory of some of 
 us, to bind us to obedience in all matters in them- 
 selves undetermined or indifferent, being neither 
 ^ Evidence before the Patnal Commission, 257.
 
 48 
 
 contrary to laAV nor unbecoming a Clergyman and 
 Christian. They are at present interpreted by men 
 of the highest character and altogether incapable of 
 an evasion, to oblige to obedience in such matters 
 only as can be enforced by law. I am not now in- 
 quiring which is the true interpretation ; although 
 if it be the latter, it becomes a question whether 
 the oath of Canonical obedience, being an unneces- 
 sary, and therefore bordering on a profane oath, 
 ought still to be required. I am only illustrating 
 and proving the position that the ideas of law and 
 of obligation to obedience have undergone, even 
 among ourselves, important modifications during 
 the period of little more than a generation : and I 
 have done so more at length, because the fact, if it 
 be a fact, duly pondered and applied, will prove 
 the key to other difficulties of our position, besides 
 the one immediately before us, which is the en- 
 feeblement of Episcopal authority, and the conse- 
 quent inability of the Bishop to assist Parishioners 
 to assert and maintain the rights which belong to 
 them in the true ideal of the Parochial System. 
 
 It might be thought uncandid to leave un- 
 noticed another theory, which is put forward 
 with a claim to be "both Avidely held and held 
 by persons of position, influence and character." ^ 
 It is stated that the authority of the Bishops is, 
 must be and ought to be impaired, because they 
 one and all accept the present condition of the 
 
 ^ See tlie Preface to " The Four Cardiual Yii'tues," by tlie iJev. 
 Orby Shipley, pp. xiii. — xv.
 
 40 
 
 Cliurcli in its relations to tlie State, as, on the 
 ■whole, justifiable ; because, as an Order, they have 
 pronounced against the " Catholic revival," as it 
 is called, " from beginning to end ; " and because, 
 consequently, " the Episcopal mind is out of har- 
 mony with the mind of the Presbyterate," who 
 have "been forced to choose between God and 
 man; and hence has been evoked what seems to 
 be lawlessness, but in truth is obedience to ^ 
 Mother law than Acts of Parliament." So far 
 as such a statement is not due to exaggeration, 
 what is it but saying that the Bishops, as a body, 
 have been faithful to the constitution, doctrine 
 and discipline of the Church of which they are 
 members, and have consequently and naturally 
 incurred the displeasure, the distrust and some- 
 times the disobedience of that portion of the 
 Clergy and Laity — (a small portion compared with 
 the great body of the Church, although large 
 enough to tempt them to encourage themselves 
 and confront others with the dangerous argument 
 of success), — who have been led on, unhappily, 
 step by step by various influences, some doctrinal, 
 some aesthetic, some almost purely political, to dis- 
 parage, first, and then to disavow the Reformation, 
 to revive many of the tenets and most of the prac- 
 tices which our Church at that time deliberately 
 laid aside, and to be discontented with the estab- 
 lished constitution of Church and State, the disci- 
 pline of which grates on their principles and the law 
 of which restricts their practices. Painful as such 
 
 1)
 
 50 
 
 antagonism is, this is not a position which will 
 tarnish the character or injure the influence of the 
 Bishops of the Church of England. We are 
 Bishops, indeed, of the Catholic Church : but we are 
 so, because we are Bishops of that pure and Apostolic 
 branch of it, the Reformed Church of England, 
 which is Protestant as against the usurpations and 
 corruptions of the Church of Bome, and Catholic 
 9,s holding the whole deposit of the primitive faith 
 and all the essentials of primitive discipline. We 
 are able, therefore, to sympathise with that theo- 
 logical movement which for forty years has been 
 leavening, rousing and dividing our Church, so 
 far as it has brought forward into due prominence 
 truths, which though always held, had been com- 
 paratively neglected ; so far as it has more fully 
 realized the idea of the Church as a divine Insti- 
 tution gifted with spiritual endowments, and has 
 abstracted it more distinctly from the accidents of 
 establishment and temporal privileges; so far as 
 it has obtained a wider and deeper recognition 
 of the necessity of the Sacraments as essential 
 means of grace, and has revived a belief in the 
 duty and blessings of worship as distinct from, 
 though combined with, prayer ; so far as it has 
 grappled successfully with the carelessness and in- 
 difference which had too much debased our public 
 services, has drawn attention to rubrics, has tausrht 
 order and reverence, has promoted daily prayer 
 and frequent communions, and, in alliance with 
 the aesthetic revival of the time, has powerfully
 
 51 
 
 tended in our Cliurcli to adorn its fabrics, to improve 
 its music, and to infuse into its various offices the 
 attractive and quickening influence of the beauty of 
 holiness. In or are we debarred, thank God, from 
 admitting and admiring the piety, zeal and self- 
 denying energy of many whom the current of this 
 movement is carrying, as we fear, beyond the true 
 limits of the Church of England and even the circle 
 of revealed truth. We can sympathise in their 
 efforts to save souls. Yre can love them for their 
 goodness' sake. But we may, we must, pray all 
 the more fervently, that He in whose hands are the 
 hearts of men, will, in His great mercy, dispel the 
 delusions which are around them, and save them 
 from a too probable fall into perilous error and 
 irremediable schism. 
 
 We can do this. But when we find the " Catholic 
 revival," so called, asserted as the antithesis and 
 antidote to the Keformation, which is deplored 
 as a misfortune if not a sin ; when its work is 
 admitted, and indeed avowed, to be to undo what 
 was then done ; when Holy Scripture is disparaged 
 as the rule of Faith unless as supplemented and ex- 
 plained by "Catholic teaching," and the thirty-nine 
 Articles are complained of as an unfair burden, put 
 aside as obsolete, or interpreted in a sense whicli, 
 if their Avords can be wrested into bearing, is 
 undoubtedly not that which they were intended to 
 bear ; when the doctrines of those who drew them 
 up, are disclaimed as uncatholic and almost con- 
 demned as heretical; when language is used, popu- 
 
 D 2
 
 52 
 
 larly and without qualification, on the suhject of 
 the Holy Eucharist, which, whether capahle or not 
 of being absolved, under qualification, of contradic- 
 tion to our formularies, is not only declared by 
 Protestants but claimed by Eomanists to be 
 identical with Transubstantiation ; when seven 
 Sacraments are again taught, and Confession with 
 absolution is enjoined, not as an occasional remedy 
 for excej)tional doubts and sorrows, but as the 
 ordinary rule of a holy life, and the needful 
 preparation for Holy Communion ; when Prayers 
 for the dead are recommended and Purgatory 
 more than hinted at ; when the cultus of the 
 Virgin and the invocation of Saints are intro- 
 duced into books of devotion, which are framed on 
 the Romish model, and adapted to, and distributed 
 among persons of all ages, ranks and occupations ; 
 when, finally, we are told, that in order to " sta- 
 bilitate the conquests over Protestantism and to 
 re-Catholicise the Church of England " it still re- 
 mains "to make confession the ordinary custom of 
 the masses, and to teach them to use Eucharistic 
 worship, to establish the claim to Catholic Ritual 
 in its highest form, to restore the Religious life " 
 (meaning the life of the Cloister), "to say Mass 
 daily, and to practise Reservation for the sick";^ 
 when this movement is thus developed in its 
 results or explained by its supporters, it is not 
 possible that it could be received by Bishops of 
 the Reformed Church of England with anything 
 ^ " The Four Cardinal Virtues," p. 221.
 
 53 
 
 but disapprobation, warning and sorrowful rebuke, 
 unless tliey were unfaithful indeed to their Office, 
 their vows, and their Master the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. There are, as we have seen, causes at work 
 which tend to limit practically and enfeeble the 
 authority of the Episcopate : but fidelity to the 
 distinctive principles, doctrines and discipline of 
 the Church of England is not one of these. It is 
 no source of weakness ; it is a ground and necessary 
 condition of strength. 
 
 However caused, in whatever ways deprived of 
 their safeguards and remedies, the loss or dimi- 
 nution of the rights of the laity in their respective 
 Parishes is a serious evil — an element of weakness 
 to the Clergy and the Church. With the rights of 
 the Parishioners must go much of their interest in 
 the Parish and much of the sense of their responsi- 
 bility. They are less disposed to work with their 
 Pastor in his efforts for the spiritual and temporal 
 good of his people and others ; less ready to defend 
 the Church and its interests against attacks from 
 without. And the laity are feeling their exclusion 
 and its evils. Witness the reception given in the 
 House of Commons to two Bills for the establish- 
 ment of Parochial Councils brought in, in suc- 
 cessive years, by a noble Lord, himself an earnest 
 Churchman, to whose prudence, energy and untiring 
 exertion this diocese owes much. And witness a 
 clause in the Private Chapels Bill of last session, 
 which, though not free from objection, was inserted 
 in one House and supported by a large minority in
 
 54 
 
 the other, because it appeared to provide for one 
 of those cases in which the autocracy of the Clergy 
 and the helplessness of the laity have been most 
 keenly felt. This is a subject, my Keverend 
 Erethren, which will, I hope, receive your early 
 and very careful consideration. It is one of no 
 little difficulty. The j)roblem is how to restore 
 the rights of the laity without impeding the 
 spiritual authority and the consequent responsi- 
 bility of the Incumbent ; to concede the claims of 
 Parishioners witliout interfering with the due 
 requirements of Churchmen ; to maintain, amidst 
 the numerous sects and opinions of the nineteenth 
 Century, the distinctive character of the Church 
 of England, without narrowing the area of a Parish 
 to the congregation of an individual Pastor. 
 
 I am quite aware that in dwelling at so great 
 length on the actual condition of the Parochial 
 System in our own diocese, on the fact and causes of 
 its failure, and on the various means by which we 
 may hope to invigorate it, if it cannot be restored, 
 I have been detaining you among the machinery, 
 so to speak, of the momentous work entrusted to 
 us ; and that far more important than all schemes 
 of organization, than the building of Churches and 
 the adjustment of endowments, is the piety, the zeal 
 and self-devotion of the Clergy, the faithfulness of 
 their preaching, the consistency of their lives, the 
 influence of their example. May God keep us all 
 ever mindful of this great truth. But how solemn, 
 how awful, is this Parochial Svstem of which we
 
 .55 
 
 have been speaking, as sjjread out before us in this 
 enormous diocese ! " The charge of an ever-growing 
 population of above 2,650,000 souls committed, in 
 the first instance, to the Bishop as Chief Pastor, and 
 by him subdivided among the Incumbents of the 
 various Parishes and Ecclesiastical districts, so that 
 to each belongs the cure and government of the 
 souls of a definite number of human beino-s dwell- 
 ing within a prescribed area. It is not as if each 
 Avere sent out as a Missionary into the mighty mass 
 of this teeming city to deliver his message as, and 
 to whom, he could ; when his labour would be 
 measured but by each day's strength, and his 
 responsibilities by each day's failure or success. 
 Every Parish Priest is the appointed Pastor of a 
 distinct flock, for which he is responsible and for 
 which alone, ordinarily, he is responsible : immortal 
 souls, each of whom is the purchase of Christ's 
 blood, each of whom must appear before Christ's 
 judgment seat, each of whom needs the regene- 
 rating, converting, sanctifying grace of God's word 
 and Sacraments, and most of whom at times require 
 the Pastor's warning, counsel, comfort or prayers. 
 It is true, indeed, — God be thanked for it ! — that 
 we do not serve a hard Master, and that He will 
 be merciful to those who in the midst of over- 
 whelming duties and numbers beyond their 
 strength, have " done what they could : " but it 
 is also true, that the Parish Priest is " never to 
 cease his labour, his care and diligence," — which 
 he never therefore can cease in this life, — "until
 
 . . 56 
 
 lie has done all that lieth in him, according to his 
 houiiden duty, to- bring all such as are committed 
 to his charge, unto that agreement in the faith and 
 knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfect- 
 ness of age in Christ, that there be no place left 
 among them either for error in religion or for 
 viciousness in life."' This high standard of duty, 
 — at least as a guide to our desires, prayers and 
 efforts, — is set ever before ns whose lot is cast and 
 labour allotted in the midst of numbers beyond 
 the reach of our time and strength ; of ignorance, 
 vice and misery; of moral and physical evils 
 mutually reacting on and increasing each otlier ; 
 of the systematized profligacy which is the curse 
 of large c-ities, — the tempters and tempted, the be- 
 trayers and betrayed ; — of multiform error in belief 
 and practice, of coarse infidelity, smiling sneering 
 scepticism, polite unbelief scarcely concealed be- 
 neath a decent conformity, and the wide hard 
 surface of indifference and worldly respectability, 
 so smooth, so level, but on which the fruit of the 
 Spirit cannot grow. "Who is suf&cient for these 
 things ? " There can hardly be in the whole vine- 
 yard of Christ's Church a plot which requires so 
 urgently as that Avhich we have to till, earnest 
 ceaseless endeavours, devoted holy lives, and the 
 patient fervency of prayer, if we are to do any- 
 thing in our day to supply the defects of the past 
 and to meet the evils of the present, to apply 
 the Gospel remedy to the sin-stricken multitudes 
 * Exhortation in Service for " Ordering of Priests."
 
 57 
 
 around us, and to establisli the Cliurcli of Christ 
 on a broad and stable basis, so -that all who will, 
 of those millions to whom we minister, may find 
 within her bounds the fresh springs for their souls' 
 thirst, the means and aid and guidance to train 
 them for eternity. 
 
 I am very far from implying that of these require- 
 ments there is in our diocese (excepting as regards 
 our numbers) any special deficiency. On the con- 
 trary, — notwithstanding faults, failures, evils which 
 we all deplore, notwithstanding the self-accusations 
 which most of us are conscious of — tliose most so 
 perhaps who are the least guilty, — there is, thank 
 God ! amongst the Clergy of the Metropolis — and 
 let me add amongst the laity who assist them, — a 
 very large amount of faithful earnest self-denying 
 labour, patiently and perseveringly bestowed often 
 when there are few to encourage or observe ; some- 
 times ill paid with barely a maintenance, and, as 
 far as this world's prospects go, not even requited 
 with hope. May God accept and reward it here- 
 after ! But while grateful for this, may I be par- 
 doned a jealous fear lest what is gained by energy, 
 should be imperilled or impaired by want of unity. 
 Even in the partial isolation of his Parochial duties 
 the Pastor is cheered and strengthened by the con- 
 viction that he is one of many, working the same 
 work on every side of him with mutual sympathies 
 and a brother's heart. And to meet attacks from 
 without, either of error against the truth or of 
 hostile principles against the Church, we liave need
 
 58 
 
 of serried ranks and shoulder joined to shoulder, 
 each covering other with the shield of charity. 
 In this respect the Clergy of the Metropolis have 
 always, perhaps, been at some disadvantage com- 
 pared with those of other dioceses. The engrossing 
 occupations of a large parish, the many interests 
 and pursuits which a city offers and the country 
 wants, the abundance of lay society which to some 
 extent it may be even a duty for each to cultivate, 
 make Clerical intercourse more rare and Clerical 
 intimacy less frequent ; and though general libe- 
 rality of sentiment may be expected, and will be 
 .found, in the midst of the intellectual activity and 
 ceaseless play of opinion which goes on around us, 
 there is less perhaps of that wholesome friction of 
 personal association which rul)s down the angles of 
 real or supposed differences and brings together 
 the broad surfaces of substantial a ""r cement. This 
 is, however, a defect which is capable of remedy, 
 and has been partially remedied, by Ruridecanal 
 Chapters, and by more frequent meetings of Clergy 
 for consultations and discussions such as are held at 
 Sion College and elsewhere. I am referring now 
 to elements of disunion arising from recent events, 
 which, whether reasonably or not, are as a matter 
 of fact, relaxing the bonds of brotherhood, and 
 rendering much more difficult and much less hope- 
 ful anv common effort ao^ainst the common foe, — 
 the infidelity, ungodliness and worldliness Avith 
 which we have to contend. 
 
 And here I must leave out of consideration the
 
 59 
 
 extreme differences on either side : those on the one 
 hand who dislike and disavow the Reformation, 
 teach many of the doctrines and revive many of the 
 pi'actices which onr Church tlien renounced, and 
 look forward to a corporate union with unreformed 
 Eome ; and those, on the other, in whose teaching 
 the truth of the atonement has shrunk into an 
 example and motive, the doctrine of the true 
 divinity of the Saviour seems to be in abeyance, 
 and the special grace of the Holy Ghost which 
 sanctifies the elect, is resolved into an universal 
 efiiuence of mental or moral gifts bestowed in 
 various degrees on all. The existence of such 
 errors within the Church does indeed impair its 
 unity and impede united action : nor is it easy for 
 loyal members of the Church of England to co- 
 operate cordially with those who hold them, even 
 Avhile they admire their piety and emulate their 
 zeal. Such errors must be left for their removal, 
 in God's good time, not, in my opinion, to judicial 
 proceedings, which, however justifiable and some- 
 times perhaps necessary as the layman's protection 
 against false teaching in his Parish Church, can 
 never stay the course of error, though they may 
 raise a prejudice in its favour ; still less to invec- 
 tive, misrepresentation, or the bitterness of contro- 
 versy; but to fair and considerate argument ever 
 distinguishing the man from the doctrine, to care- 
 ful patient inculcation of the truth, and to earnest 
 prayer to the God and Giver of truth, who ofttimes 
 in the Church's history, without any adequate
 
 60 
 
 human agency, has hy His Spirit — as hy the view- 
 less Avind, — swept away the clouds of error which 
 hung darkly over it, and restored the troubled sur- 
 face to light and peace. 
 
 But apart from these extremes, we must all be 
 conscious of a slackening of the ties between tliose 
 who, with whatever minor differences, are in 
 essentials one, occasioned by the progress of late 
 events and specially by the result of recent trials. 
 There is in the minds of many a feeling of dis- 
 appointment, perhaps of indignation, a sense of 
 having been wronged, almost of having been per- 
 secuted, and a sentiment of discontent with those 
 whom the decisions have satisfied, with the Court 
 which advised them, and with the constitution of the 
 Church in relation to the State which has rendered 
 them possible. There is nothing surprising in 
 this. It is natural; almost inevitable. Had the 
 judgments been the reverse of what they are, the 
 same effects would have followed, though the parties 
 affected would have been different. And as such 
 feelings are mitigated by time, it may confidently 
 be hoped that a calmer and juster view may be taken 
 of the circumstances which have excited them. 
 
 The course of events which has led to this issue 
 is easy to trace, though in some of its features 
 unfortunate. The progress of the movement we 
 have before alluded to, which though mainly 
 theological is partly aesthetic, had under both 
 influences carried on some to the belief that the 
 so-called Ornament E-ubric justified, at least, if it
 
 61 
 
 did not oLligOj— notwithstanding the disuse of 
 three centuries, — the introduction of the Vest- 
 ments and other ornaments of the Church and its 
 Ministers, — which were prescribed in the first 
 Prayer-book of Edward VI. They added, it was 
 thought, solemnity and beauty to the service : they 
 symbolized, it was said, certain important doctrines. 
 Under similar influences, a novel, even though it 
 had proved a correct, interpretation was put upon 
 other llubrics, such as that concerning the bread 
 to be used in Holy Communion and the position 
 of the Minister while celebratino; it. A few other 
 practices long laid aside were re-introduced on the 
 plea that, though not enjoined in post-Reformation 
 prayer-books, they were not forbidden. These 
 alterations, as was natural, aroused much feeling. 
 Many were ofiPended at their novelty ; many others 
 were alarmed at the doctrinal significance attri- 
 buted to them. " E-itualism," as it came to be 
 called, became a party. Both sides appealed to the 
 law. On the one hand the Bishops were loudly 
 called upon to put down the illegal innovations : on 
 the other they were warned not to interfere with 
 those who alone were loyally acting up to the law 
 of the Prayer-book. The questions raised were not 
 without their diflS.culty. The leading lawyers of 
 the land gave diverse opinions, not indeed on the 
 whole question duly argued out, but on the cases 
 submitted to them by either side. Many thought 
 then, — I must venture to think so still, — that at 
 that time, when all were appealing to the authority
 
 62 
 
 of the law, while few comparatively had committed 
 themselves to the altered usages, and men's feel- 
 ings were less engaged than afterv/ards, it would 
 have been wise to raise a suit, if it could not he 
 altogether friendly, at least as free as possible from 
 all personal bearings, and including all the disputed 
 points, to be carefully argued out on both sides 
 through all its stages, and finally decided only after 
 the fullest discussion. But a Royal Commission 
 had just dealt successfully with the difficult 
 question of Clerical Subscription ; and it was 
 not unnaturally hoped, that the same machinery 
 might also untie to the satisfaction of all parties 
 the knots of the Eitual difficulty. This hope 
 has not been fulfilled. The Church owes mucli, 
 I believe, to the Ritual Commission, — more than 
 she has yet realized. The new Table of Lessons 
 which comes legally into use, as you are aware, 
 with the beginning of next year, and will, I 
 hope, be universally accepted in this diocese, 
 will give the variety to repeated services, which 
 here especially we need; will make more prac- 
 ticable, because less lengthy, the observance of 
 daily prayer; and will help to extend the know- 
 ledge of Holy Scripture by bringing all the parts 
 of it more generally and certainly before all classes. 
 Other recommendations, which are now under the 
 consideration of the Convocation of Canterbury, are 
 intended to give freedom and elasticity to our ser- 
 vices, to supply some deficiencies in them, and to 
 adapt them more accurately to the wants of our day.
 
 63 
 
 But the special object for wliicli it was issued the 
 Commission has not accomplished. Composed, in 
 order to secure impartiality and confidence, of men 
 of every variety of opinion in the Church, it is not 
 surprising if it could not come to an agreement on 
 the points on which the parties in the Church are, 
 for the time being, most divided. It did indeed 
 in its first E-eport express an opinion that certain 
 excesses in E^itual should be restrained ; and in a 
 second Report, it suggested a process for restrain- 
 ing them without cost or delay : but these recom- 
 mendations have led to no results. But the 
 difficulties in the Prayer-book itself it has left 
 almost as it found them. The Ornament Kubric 
 is neither altered nor explained ; the directions in 
 the celebration of the Holy Communion, if ambi- 
 guous, are left ambiguous still. Meanwhile the 
 novel or revived ritual practices became more 
 widely accepted. Their legality was loudly asserted. 
 That their opponents or the Bishops had not 
 appealed to law was assumed to be a confession 
 that the law was in their favour; and certain 
 expressions in judgments on other points were 
 rashly taken to be decisions on points which had 
 not even been raised. Many who had no sympathy 
 whatever with the doctrines of the School of the 
 " Catholic E^evival" adopted some of their practices 
 in the belief that they were legal and right. At 
 length the crisis came. After trials and decisions 
 on one or two minor points, a suit was raised which 
 included almost every question in dispute; an
 
 • 64 
 
 undefenxled suit, imliappily, wliicli therefore threw 
 unfairly on the Judges the task of ascertaining for 
 themselves all that could have been pleaded on the 
 undefended side, and gave some colour to the 
 dissatisfaction of those whom the result displeased. 
 The decisions, however, either of the Dean of the 
 Arches or of the Tinal Court of Appeal, have pro- 
 nounced illegal almost all the revived Hitual, 
 whether drawn from the first Prayer-hook of 
 Edward YI. or from p re-Kef ormation usage ; have 
 declared, in brief, that the practice of the Church 
 of England for three hundred years has rightly 
 interpreted her own mind and rubrics. 
 
 It is impossible that a decision could be given 
 on such subjects at such a time without painful 
 results. Whichever way the verdict fell, the 
 smitten party must naturally feel disappointed, 
 dissatisfied and wronged; a feeling which time 
 and candid consideration alone can dispel or 
 mitigate. Meanwhile questions are raised which 
 interest far beyond the bounds of the party itself, 
 — old questions always underlying the complex re- 
 lations of the Church with civil society, which 
 circumstances ever and anon call into renewed 
 activity. So in the present case, many who have 
 never used the ritual which has been declared 
 unlawful and have little sympathy with the prin- 
 ciples with which it has become connected, are yet 
 disturbed by the process which has led to the 
 result. The State, it is said, usurps an office which 
 does not belong to it and infringes on the inalien-
 
 G5 
 
 able rights of the Church when it decides qtiestions 
 of doctrine and discipline ; and especially when it 
 decides them hy a lay Court before which such 
 questions have been improperly and accidentally 
 brought. Such decisions, whether right or wrong, 
 have an inherent flaw and can deserve little respect. 
 
 In such statements there will be founc^, I venture 
 to think, much confusion of thought. 
 
 The Church of England in its relation to the 
 State is based on two co-ordinate but not anta- 
 gonistic principles. On the one hand, "The Church 
 hath power to decree Eites or Ceremonies and 
 authority in controversies of faith :" ^ and this 
 power is limited only by the compass and authority 
 of " God's word written." On the other hand the 
 Crown is supreme, in this Eealm, over all persons 
 and in all causes ecclesiastical as well as civil : 
 and this power can be exercised in matters eccle- 
 siastical only when some " cause " arises ; i.e. when 
 the civil poAver is appealed to to protect some right 
 or to remedy some wrong. At the Reformation the 
 Church, under the necessities of the times, exerted 
 her authority in Controversies of Paith, partly in 
 the revision of the Prayer-book so far as such 
 revision was doctrinal, but principally by the 
 publication of the "Articles agreed upon by the 
 Archbishops and Bishops of both Provinces and 
 the whole Clersrv in the Convocation holden at 
 London in 1562," and again confirmed by the sub- 
 scription of the Convocation in 1571. These 
 • Article XX. 
 E
 
 Articles, in wliich the sufficiency of Holy Scripture 
 as the Rule of Paith was asserted, the authority 
 of the three Creeds affirmed, all the great Catholic 
 doctrines of our faith defined, and niediseval errors 
 and innovations condemned, have remained thence- 
 forth without alteration or addition. They, with 
 the Prayer-hoolv, are still the Church's test of 
 doctrine to which the teaching of her IMinisters is 
 to be conformed, and by which its soundness or 
 unsoundness are to be tested. But though the 
 Church has not again exercised her authority in 
 controversies of Eaith, she has not lost it. If 
 occasion requires, it is quite competent to her to 
 use it still. If, for instance, it should be held, 
 after the decision in the cases of the Bishop 
 of Salisbury v. Williams and of Eendall v. Wilson, 
 that our Church in the sixteenth century, having 
 then no experience or fear of errors on those sub- 
 jects, had not defined sufficiently the doctrine of 
 the Inspiration of Holy Scripture, or had removed 
 incautiously the safeguard against the tenet that 
 all men shall at length be saved, it is in the power 
 of the Church now, — whatever may be thought of 
 the expediency of using it, — in her Convocations 
 or Synods to enact additional Articles on these 
 points, although, for reasons which will appear 
 directly, she could not enforce tliem under penal- 
 ties without the sanction of the State. 
 
 At the Reformation, too, our Church exercised 
 her power to decree rites and ceremonies by the 
 several revisions of the Praver-book : and in so 
 
 I
 
 67 
 
 doing she not only laid aside those which were 
 deemed '•' contrary to God's word written " or had 
 their origin in superstition, but acting on the inde- 
 feasible right (according to Hooker's unanswered 
 argument) of every independent Church in the unity 
 of the Church Catholic, she omitted or varied others 
 which, however innocent and even primitive, by 
 change of time or circumstances, had lost their 
 suitableness or their meaning. That the mixture 
 of water with the Eucharistic wine, for instance, 
 though a primitive and innocent custom, was thus 
 discontinued, we have the authority of Dean Pield, 
 the cotemporary of Hooker and himself no Puritan, 
 who gives with the fact what may be termed the 
 common-sense reason, when he writes : " They {i.e. 
 Tertullian and the ancients) mingled water with 
 that wine which they consecrated in the blessed 
 Sacrament, because even in ordinary use their 
 wines being hot Avere wont to be so allayed : we 
 not having the like reason of mixture, mingle not 
 water with wine in the Sacrament, as likewise the 
 Armenians do not."^ Purther acts of the exercise 
 of this power took place in 1603-4, when the 
 Canons were enacted by Convocation, in 1662 when 
 the Prayer-book was revised, and last year when 
 the new Table of Lessons was accepted. It Avill be 
 another such act, if our Convocations should, as 
 I hope, adopt at least many of the recommen- 
 dations of the fourth Eeport of the Eitual Com- 
 mission. In the Articles, Prayer book and Canons 
 I ' Field "Of the Church," Appendix, pt. iii. (vol. iv. 554). 
 
 E 2
 
 68 
 
 therefore tlie Cliurcli of England lias used her 
 power to decree 'Rites and Ceremonies, and her 
 authority in controversies of faith. These are her 
 laws to which we are bound to submit, and which 
 her Ordinaries are to administer. 
 
 If the Church were not merely not established, 
 but entirely without endowment, then, and only 
 then, would she be wholly exemj^t from all civil 
 interference and control. She could not indeed en- 
 force her own laws on the unwilling, excepting by 
 the purely spiritual force of excommunication freed 
 froiu all temporal consequences. But the moment 
 an endowment however small, a right however tri- 
 fling, is created, a wrong becomes possible, and con- 
 sequently an appeal to the civil Court to redress it. 
 The Minister of tlie smallest sect, if he has a right 
 to a few pounds a year or to the use of a certain 
 room or pulpit on the condition that he teaches 
 the doctrines of that sect, may, if an attempt is 
 made to deprive him of it, seek the protection of 
 the law ; and the Courts may have to determine by 
 the comparison of his teaching with the doctrinal 
 standards of the sect, whether or not they are in 
 accord, and whether he has forfeited his rights or 
 not. Only pure voluntaryism on the one hand, or 
 entire absence of dogmatic symbols or disciplinary 
 rules on the other, can free a Church or any 
 religious body from judgments of the civil Courts 
 as to what are its discipline and doctrine. Es- 
 tablishment does not create this liability, nor 
 would disestablishment annul it. A Kational
 
 69 
 
 Cliurcli, indeed, touches the State at many more 
 points : their rights and duties are interlaced ; and 
 many more wrongs are therefore possible, Avhich 
 may require to be redressed. In the Parochial 
 System, for example, — the form into which a 
 National Church is naturally cast and on Avhich we 
 have to-day been dwelling, — the Minister, on the 
 one hand, has a right to his endowment, his House, 
 his Church, and his privilege of teaching and 
 ministering therein : his Parishioners, on the other 
 hand, have their rights to have the doctrines of the 
 Church of England and none other preached to 
 them, to have divine worship conducted and the 
 Sacraments administered in accordance with its 
 laws, and to be protected from a Clergyman who 
 should discredit his teaching and scandalize his 
 people by vice and immorality. The State, too, in 
 order to the maintenance of these wide- spreading 
 and, in theory, general rights, has given coercive 
 vigour to the Church's ordinances of doctrine and 
 discipline by statutory enactments, not thereby de- 
 creeing rites or ceremonies or exercising authority 
 in controversies of Paith, but adopting the Church's 
 laws into its own statute book, and thus enabling 
 rights arisino^ from them to be maintained or 
 wrongs connected with them to be remedied, not 
 merely by spiritual censures, but by civil conse- 
 quences. Por the same purpose it also arms the 
 spiritual Courts with these statutory powers, thus 
 making the Church's Courts the Courts also of the 
 Crown. '
 
 70 
 
 The position therefore of an established Church, 
 and that of a Church or other religious body not esta- 
 blished but not without endowment, are, as regards 
 the power of the interference of the State with their 
 doctrines and rites, in principle, the same. Both 
 may define their own doctrines, and ordain their 
 own ceremonies. A member of either body, be- 
 lieving himseK injured with respect to any right 
 which endowment has created, may appeal to his 
 country's Courts, the one to the temporal Courts, 
 the other to the spiritual Courts armed by the 
 State with coereive power. In either case the 
 Courts must take the dogmatic formularies, canons, 
 or other rules of the religious community, as the 
 rule of their judgment, must discuss their true 
 meaning and ajoplication, and decide accordingly. 
 In either case there is an immediate appeal from 
 these Courts to the Crown, as being in all causes 
 ecclesiastical as well as civil supreme. And in 
 either case the question before the Court, whether 
 in the first instance or on appeal, is in its 
 nature the same. It is not whether the doc- 
 trines contained in the dogmatic formularies of 
 the religious body are true or false, scriptural or 
 heretical, but only whether, being such as they are, 
 the teaching of one of the parties to the suit has 
 been so different from what appears to be their 
 true meaning as to forfeit his rights or to convict 
 him of a wrong, under the laws of the community 
 to which he belongs. It is not whether such a 
 rite or ceremony is edifying or superstitious,
 
 71 
 
 whether it symbolizes an important doctrine or 
 implies a serious error ; but whether it is or is not 
 ordered or permitted by the rubric, canon, or other 
 authoritative direction of the religious body ; and 
 whether, therefore, the party to the suit has, by 
 using or omitting it, broken its laws and wronged 
 those to whom he ministers. This principle has 
 always been distinctly laid down in our law Courts. 
 " This Court," are the words of the judgment of 
 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the 
 case of Gorham v. Bishop of Exeter, " has no 
 jurisdiction or authority to settle matters of faith, 
 or to determine what ought, in any particular, to 
 be the doctrine of the Church of England. Its- 
 duty extends only to the consideration of that 
 which is by law established to be the doctrine of the 
 Church of England upon the true and legal con- 
 struction of her Articles and Eormularies." " The 
 question we have to decide is not whether the 
 023inions under our consideration are theologically 
 sound or unsound . . . but whether they are con- 
 trary or repugnant to the doctrines which the 
 Church of England, by its Articles, Eormularies, 
 and E.ubrics, requires to be held by its Ministers, 
 so that, upon the ground of those opinions, the 
 appellant can be lawfully excluded from the Bene- 
 fice to which he has been presented." 
 
 The State, therefore, — or more accurately the 
 Court which administers the Church's laws with 
 coercive jurisdiction granted by the State, — does 
 not, in any manner which would be an usurpation of
 
 •72 
 
 the Church's proper province; decide questions of 
 doctrine and discipline. All questions of doctrine 
 and discipline which, it was contemplated, could 
 arise, the Church has decided already : and her 
 decisions are digested into her Articles and Prayer- 
 book, her E^ubrics and Canons, as the laws to 
 which her members are to conform. The Courts do 
 but decide whether, such being her doctrines and 
 discipline, this one or that of her Members has, 
 as it is alleged, forfeited his rights or committed a 
 ^vrong, by teaching at variance Avith those doctrines 
 or by actions in contravention of that discipline. 
 
 It is no doubt true, that such decisions may 
 occasionally dismiss a teacher of unsound doctrine 
 with impunity, or may punish for a breach of dis- 
 cipline which at the present time may be thought 
 unimportant ; and may thus aj)pear on the one 
 hand to sanction error, or on the other to be hard 
 and unfair. It wall be so, if the formularies 
 AAdiich constitute the law of doctrine are ambiguous 
 or deficient in precision, (in which case the accused 
 is entitled to the benefit of the doubt), or if the error 
 is one for which, being unforeseen, no corrective 
 has been provided ; and it will be so, if rubrics or 
 canons adapted to one state of circumstances are 
 left in force unmodified, when circumstances have 
 changed. But this consequence is not peculiar to 
 our Courts, as at j)i'esent established : it belongs 
 to all Courts which in such cases administer 
 justice justly. No Court, ecclesiastical or temporal, 
 whether the judges are lay or spiritual, has the right
 
 73 
 
 to alter or amend tlie law by wliicli it acquits or 
 coudemns. Such, alteration belongs to the Legisla- 
 ture, be it of Cliurcli or of State, and has its force in 
 the future, not in the past or the present. And if any 
 Court, either out of regard to truth or from fear 
 of consequences, were to condemn a Minister for 
 teaching the contrary, — not to what the Church's 
 authorized formularies say, but to what they 
 ought to say, — it would mistake its functions and 
 would do a wrong. The best theology might be 
 the greatest injustice. 
 
 And this consideration may lead us to pause 
 before we agree with those who hold it a grievance 
 that Ecclesiastical causes should be tried in Lay 
 Courts, meaning, I presume. Courts in which 
 laymen are judges. In the technical sense such 
 causes never do come into Lay Courts. The 
 Diocesan Court is Ecclesiastical; the Provincial 
 Court is Ecclesiastical ; and the Einal Court of 
 Appeal, being the Crown itself as supreme 
 over all Ecclesiastical causes, is, while deciding 
 such causes, Ecclesiastical. I am not bound nor 
 disposed to defend the constitution and modes of 
 procedure of our Ecclesiastical Courts, or of the 
 Einal Court of Appeal. They are liable to serious 
 objections, and are capable perhaps of much im- 
 provement ; and those persons who feel aggrieved 
 by their decisions, cannot turn their injured feelings 
 to more legitimate account, than by making 
 them a motive to examine the difficulties of a 
 very difficult question, and to suggest amend-
 
 74 • 
 
 ments, which, if they aj^prove themselves to the 
 public mind, it ayouIcI not perha2^s he difficult 
 to carry out. But in all such inquiries it 
 should he borne in mind, that if it is the duty 
 of a Court of Justice, as distinguished from 
 a legislative body Spiritual or Temporal, not to 
 make laws, but to administer them, and to decide 
 by lohat is, not by lohat ought to he, then will that 
 Court be the best, in which this rule of procedure 
 is most etfectually secured. Now we need not be 
 ashamed to confess, my Reverend Brethren, — for it 
 is not to our discredit, — tliat it is on many accounts 
 more difficult for us than for legally trained lay- 
 men, to form an unbiassed judgment in causes of 
 doctrine or discipline. I do not say that we are 
 not better qualified to decide what ouglit to be the 
 opinion of the Church on the points at issue, what in 
 other words is the teaching of Scripture or the most 
 correct inference from it, what is most in accordance 
 with the Paith once delivered to the Saints. But 
 this question is not and cannot be before the Court, 
 which has only to consider whether such teaching, 
 or such a practice, is or is not at variance with the 
 Church's formularies as they are. Por such bare 
 abstract comparison of the true grammatical 
 meaning of words and phrases we, on such a sub- 
 ject, hardly are, — perhaps hardly ouglit to be, — 
 impartial judges. Zeal for God's trutli, dread of 
 the danger and infection of false doctrine, jealousy 
 for the strict orthodoxy and sufficiency of our own 
 formularies, all may tend to give an unfelt bins
 
 75 
 
 to our judgment, may shift imperceptibly the 
 rightful issue, and may make us for the truth's sake 
 unconsciously unfair. Even then, if in the trial 
 of Ecclesiastical causes it is thought desirable to 
 have the help of Ecclesiastics as better acquainted 
 with the accurate and technical meaning of theo- 
 logical terms, with the history and development 
 of religious dogmas and their definitions as affected 
 thereby, it is surely important for the sake of the 
 party accused, and for the appearance at least, if not 
 for the security of impartiality, that there should be 
 among the Judges trained legal minds, accustomed 
 to examine questions in the abstract, freer at least 
 than ourselves from the disturbing influence of 
 strong theological convictions, and far less liable to 
 confuse unconsciously what law is with what law 
 ought to be. And there are few of us perhaps 
 who, if accused unjustly (as we should of course 
 believe) of teaching doctrine inconsistent with that 
 of our Church, especially in times of religious ex- 
 citement, would not prefer to have our trial before 
 a Court of which lay lawyers formed a part than 
 before the purely ecclesiastical tribunal of a Convo- 
 cation or a Synod. 
 
 It deserves also to be borne in mind, that in all 
 such ecclesiastical cases the rights of the laity, as 
 well as those of the Clergy, are at issue ; that their 
 main object, indeed, is not the punishment of the 
 Clergyman, but the protection of the Parishioners 
 from false doctrine, from defect or illegality of 
 ritual, or from the scandal of an evil life : and that
 
 76 
 
 a lay or mixed Court, therefore, and not a Synod, 
 is wliat the laity may not unjustly claim. 
 
 This advantage, at least, is possessed hy the 
 Judicial Committee of Privy Council, A\'liicli now 
 advises the Crown in the final appeal in all causes 
 Ecclesiastical, that it has the assistance of the 
 ablest and most experienced Judges of the land. 
 But it is objected that Ecclesiastical causes have 
 come before this tribunal unintentionally and as it 
 Avere accidentally : that its original purpose was 
 to hear appeals in Admiralty and Colonial cases ; 
 that it does not speak to us in the name of the 
 Church of England, nor has its jurisdiction ever 
 been formally recognized by the collective Church. 
 The principle that the Crown is supreme in 
 all causes and over all persons Ecclesiastical has 
 been formally recognized by the Church. Whether 
 in the exercise of this supremacy appeals to the 
 Crown shall be heard in Chancery or in Council, 
 whether the Crown shall be advised by the 
 Court of Delegates or by the Judicial Committee 
 of Privy Council, has never, indeed, been decided by 
 Synod or Convocation. It can hardly be claimed 
 that the constitution of Courts of Justice, either 
 Ecclesiastical or Civil, should be submitted to these 
 bodies for their acceptance. But short of this, it 
 is difficult to imagine any tribunal which owes its 
 origin more to Ecclesiastical persons, or was oc- 
 casioned more by Ecclesiastical considerations, than 
 the Judicial Committee of Privy Council. It was a 
 Boyal Commission appointed in 1830 to inquire
 
 77 
 
 into tlie Proceedings and Suits and other matters 
 instituted and carried on in the Ecclesiastical Courts 
 of England and Wales, on which sat Archbishop 
 Howley, Bishops Blomfield and Kaye, Sir John 
 Nicholl, Sir Herbert Jenner and Dr. Lushington, 
 which, as its first act at the beginning of the next 
 year, reported that it would be expedient to abolish 
 the jurisdiction hitherto exercised by Judges Dele- 
 gate and to transfer the right of hearing appeals 
 to the Privy Council. An Act passed in the next 
 year enacted the transfer ; ^ and another Act in the 
 subsequent year, which the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury supported, and which was assented to by the 
 other Episcopal Members of the Commission, sup- 
 plied the machinery by which the Privy Council 
 was to hear the appeals already transferred to it, 
 as well as others now first brought before it, by 
 the establishment of the Judicial Committee." It 
 is true that in this Act no distinct mention is made 
 of Ecclesiastical causes, which however were neces- 
 sarily included among the appeals transferred, nor 
 are the Episcopal members of the Privy Council 
 placed on the Committee. The reason for this 
 omission may be easily inferred. The Einal Court 
 of Appeal formed but a small and almost incidental 
 portion of the matters dealt with by t]ie Eoyal 
 Commission of 1830. It presented in 1832 an 
 elaborate Report, in which, besides repeating 
 the recommendation that the appeal in Ecclesias- 
 
 1 2 and 3 \YilI. IV. c. 92. 
 
 2 3 and 4 Vrill. IV. c. 41.
 
 78 
 
 tical causes sliould bo transferred to the Privy 
 Council, it dealt at length ^-ith the subjects 
 of the Ecclesiastical Courts, of Pluralities, Non- 
 residence and the correction of criminous Clerks; 
 and it was the declared intention of the Prelates 
 Avho sat on the Commission, to embody its re- 
 commendations as soon and as far as possible, 
 in Acts of Parliament. The first legislative 
 result of the Commission was the statute 1 and 
 2 Tie. c. 106, usually known as the Plurality 
 Act ; but this being administrative, and not touch- 
 ing on the action of the Ecclesiastical Courts, 
 could contain no reference to the Einal Court of 
 Appeal. The constitution, indeed, of the Eccle- 
 siastical Courts themselves was never dealt with, 
 owing to inherent difficulties which have not 
 yet been overcome; but two years afterwards, in 
 1840, was passed the Clergy Discipline Act,^ which 
 prescribes the manner of trying and correcting 
 Clerks accused of offences against the laws Eccle- 
 siastical, including, of course, charges of false 
 doctrine as well as of breaches of discipline or of 
 immorality ; and in this Act, being the first and 
 only Act in which occasion was given, it is pro- 
 vided that for the purpose of hearing appeals from 
 the Ecclesiastical Courts every Archbishop or 
 Bishop who is sworn of the Privy Council, shall 
 be a member of the Judicial Committee. What- 
 ever then may be thought of the competenc}'' of 
 the Judicial Committee to decide Ecclesiastical 
 
 1 3 and 4 Vic. c. 86.
 
 Appeals, it is an error to suppose that they come 
 before it unintentionally and accidentally. The 
 recommendation of the Commission in 1831 and 
 1832 was carried out in the Act of 1810. The 
 framers of the Act had been members of the 
 Commission, and they had been labouring at the 
 subject during the whole interval. The words of 
 Lord Brougham, indeed, and of Bishop Blomfield 
 in the debate on the Bill brought in by the latter, 
 on June 3d, 1850, have been quoted frequently, but 
 not always quite accurately, in support of the 
 opposite opinion. Lord Brougham is reported to 
 have said that " he could not help feeling that the 
 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had been 
 framed without the expectation " — (not of '• eccle- 
 siastical questions," as is often stated, but)— "of 
 questions like this which had produced the present 
 measure," i.e. the Gorham case, "being brought 
 before it :" and it may rightly be inferred that his 
 Lordship, who was not a Member of the Ecclesias- 
 tical Courts Commission from whicli the recom- 
 mendation emanated, but who, as Chancellor, would 
 carry it out with a vicAv mainly to such appeals as 
 he was himself most conversant with, naturally 
 enough did not anticipate the case of questions of 
 doctrine being submitted to it. Bishop Blomfield's 
 words are thus reported : " The necessity of some 
 change in this department of our Ecclesiastical 
 Jurisprudence " — i.e. the final Court of Appeal in 
 cases of false doctrine, — " was felt long before the 
 recent appeal, at a time when tlie probability of
 
 80 
 
 such an appeal was not in contemplation. It is 
 only surprising tliat it was not clearly perceived 
 at the time when the Judicial Committee was sub- 
 stituted for the old Court of Delegates. But no 
 such necessity was then alluded to. The reason of 
 which, I suppose, was this : that the appeals to that 
 Court in suits involving questions of doctrine had 
 been so exceedingly rare — not more than three or 
 four from the first institution of that Court " — the 
 Court of Delegates — '' that the contingency of such 
 an appeal came into no one's mind ; and as to all 
 other kinds of appeal in ecclesiastical suits the 
 Judicial Committee appears to be an unobjection- 
 able tribunal, with one exception only, that its 
 members are not necessarily, as they ought to be, 
 members of the Church of England."^ Bishop 
 Blomfield, then, held the Court of Delegates and 
 the Judicial Committee to be alike unsatisfactory 
 final Courts of Appeal in cases of false doctrine ; 
 he was surprised that their unsuitableness was not 
 perceived when the latter was, on the recommenda- 
 tion of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission, sub- 
 stituted for the former ; and he accounted for it for 
 his own part, and, speaking generally for others, 
 (as for instance for Bishop Kaye, who made a 
 similar statement in his Charge in 1852), by the 
 supposition that the case of appeals on questions 
 of doctrine had not occurred to them, probably on 
 account of their previous infrequency. While, 
 however, it is admitted, that the contingency of 
 such cases did not occur to those very able Prelates^ 
 
 1 Hansard, vol. cxi. (June 3, 1 850).
 
 81 
 
 it is difficult to conceive that it could be altogetlier 
 absent from tbe minds of such practised ecclesias- 
 tical laT\yers as Sir J. Nicholl, Sir Herbert Jenner 
 and Dr. Lushington, who yet did not feel the neces- 
 sity of excepting such cases from the. Court, the 
 establishment of which they were recommending. 
 
 The late decisions which have occasioned so much 
 excitement, were not on doctrine but on ritual, 
 which probably Bishop Blomfield himself would 
 not have been anxious to exclude from the jurisdic- 
 tion of the Judicial Committee. It is urged indeed 
 that Ritual may, and often does, imply doctrine ; 
 and that doctrine may be attacked through the side 
 of Eitual. And this must be admitted : but it 
 must also, I think, be admitted, that those who 
 attach arbitrarily a doctrinal significance to an un- 
 authorized Eitual Act, have no right to throw over 
 that Act the sacred shield of doctrine. This, how- 
 ever, would seem to have been done by some whose 
 opinions and feelings deserve every respect, in 
 regard to the vexed question of the position of the 
 Minister while reading the prayer of Consecration. 
 Whatever may be thought of the judicial inter- 
 pretation of the Eubric on which the question now 
 turns, and which it would not become me to discuss 
 here, the history of the question itself in the Ee- 
 formed Church of England is sufficiently clear. 
 That till the first quarter, at least, of the seven- 
 teenth century had passed, the position of the 
 Minister must have been at the north side or end 
 of the Holy Table, is demonstrated by the warm
 
 82 
 
 controversy which raged respecting the position of 
 the Table itself. On any other hypothesis the ar- 
 guments employed on either side would he nuga- 
 tory and unintelligible. But when this controversy 
 subsided, and the Communion Table, under the 
 influence of Archbishop Laud, generally stood, 
 as now, against the east wall of the Church, even 
 during the celebration of the Sacrament, then for 
 the first time appeared instances of the eastward 
 position of the Minister while consecrating the 
 elements. Laud enjoined it in the Rubric of the 
 Scottish Liturgy; Bishop Wren practised it; Cosin 
 was accused of it. It was an innovation, and all 
 three were called to account. The two former 
 solemnly disclaimed any reason for the change but 
 mere convenience : the last denied " that he did 
 ever oflS.ciate with his face purposely towards the 
 east," though as the elements were " usually placed 
 in the middle of the table, which is about seven 
 feet in length, which otherwise he could not con- 
 veniently reach," he might haply have consecrated 
 eastward.^ The rising controversy was swept away 
 
 1 " Yet they say ' this very remove of the Presbyter during the 
 time of Consecration upon trial imports much.' The Eubric 
 professes that nothing is meant but that he may use both his hands 
 with more ease and decency about that work. And I protest in 
 the presence of Almighty God that I know of no other intention 
 herein than this." — Laud, History of Troubles. (Works, vol. iii. 
 p. 346.) Bishop Wren's disclaimer is quoted in the judgment 
 on Hibbeit v. Purchas : that of Cosin will be found in the appen- 
 dix to the '' Acts of the High Commission Court of Durham, 
 1628-39," published by the Surtees Society, p. 218. 
 
 See Appendix C.
 
 83 
 
 together with the Church and Monarchy: hut at the 
 Hestoration and the Revision of the Prayer-hook 
 it is not an improhahle theory which sees in the 
 Ruhric then added, a result of Cosin's own experi- 
 ence ; a provision introduced hy one of the ahlest 
 and most influential of the Revisers, to remedy the 
 difficulty himself had felt, and to reconcile the re- 
 cognized Anglican position of the Consecrating 
 Priest at the north end of the Tahle with liberty 
 to change his place in order so to arrange the 
 elements as to bring them conveniently within his 
 reach. However this may be, there is no doubt 
 that onwards from the date of the Revision, and 
 initiated apparently by the Revising Bishops and 
 Clergy themselves, the practice of consecrating at 
 the north end of the Table was the generally un- 
 broken custom of the Church of England for 180 
 years ; and even if it can be shown that during 
 that period a few Clergymen here and there may 
 have interpreted a not clearly-worded Rubric for 
 themselves, the more important fact remains, that 
 from the Reformation till a recent date no doc- 
 trinal significance appears to have been attached to 
 the eastward position of the Minister, even by 
 those who held strongly the tenets now supposed 
 to be symbolized. If, therefore, the decision as to 
 the true meaning of the Rubric touching the posi- 
 tion of the Minister is now thought to reflect upon 
 any doctrine, this result must in fairness be attri- 
 buted to those who have connected that doctrine 
 with their own interpretation of the Rubric, 
 
 F 2
 
 84 
 
 without autliority from the Church or from the 
 framers of the Ruhric themselves. 
 
 On another objection to the decisions of the 
 Judicial Committee that (as contradistinguished, I 
 presume, from those of other Courts) they are 
 governed by personal bias and political considera- 
 tions, I must decline to dwell. I would only beg 
 of those who have hastily adopted it, to ask them- 
 selves, whether — strong though their own convic- 
 tions might be, or plain their perceptions of conse- 
 quences, — they would on any account lohatever 
 allow such motives to obscure their duty or 
 the obligation of their oath, or to divert their 
 judgment from the simple issue before them, — 
 what is the actual law on such or such a point, 
 and is the case a breach of it or not ? And the 
 measure they mete to themselves let them extend 
 also to others. 
 
 But I hold it rio'lit to allude to a co2^nate com- 
 plaint of partiality, alleged, not against the inter- 
 pretation of law, but against the administration of 
 it. Why, it is asked, is compliance required witli 
 some rubrics, while others are violated or neglected 
 with impunity ? The brief answer is, that in the 
 one case a wrong is felt and complained of, in the 
 other it is not. All rubrics in themselves are in 
 law equally binding ; all unauthorized additions to 
 the service are equally illegal. But some rubrics are 
 obsolete, having been found unsuited to the times 
 or inconvenient in practice; and some additions 
 have been consecrated by long usage. Who would
 
 85 
 
 now wisli to compel " the Curates of every Parish 
 often to admonish the people that they defer not 
 the baptism of their children longer than the first 
 or second Sunday next after their birth ? " ^ or who 
 would care to jorohibit the doxology before the 
 Gospel, or to forbid the use of metrical Psalms and 
 Hymns ? Other omissions or practices, unlawful in 
 themselves, are tolerated, — sometimes unhappily, 
 — and even encouraged by the people. Here then 
 is no wrong felt and no complaint made ; and the 
 Ordinary's exercise of authority is not called into 
 action. It is true that the Bishop may direct 
 proceedings mero motu ; but this power, which, if 
 Churchwardens accurately and fearlessly did their 
 duty, and provision Avere made for the expenses of 
 prosecutions, would be almost unnecessary, he will 
 usually reserve, if he is wise, for scandalous offences 
 against morality or gross cases of erroneous teach- 
 ing. But Parishioners have their rights, and may 
 call upon the Bishop to maintain them in them : 
 and although he has a certain discretion as to 
 putting the law in motion, — to be exercised, I 
 presume, when the accusation appears vexatious 
 only, or when the complainant has no locus standi 
 and no rights, or when the charge, though consistent 
 with the letter of the law, is at variance with its 
 spirit ; and although it forms no part of his duty 
 to encourage suits ; yet he cannot, in my opinion, 
 without injustice refuse to entertain the reasonable 
 complaint of Parishioners who declare themselves 
 
 ^ Eubric before tlie Office of the ^Ministration of Private Eai'tism.
 
 86 
 
 aggrieved by the illegal conduct of their Parish 
 Priest. The imequal enforcement of the law is 
 governed, then, not by the will or caprice of the 
 Bishop, but by the requirements of the Parish- 
 ioners : and knowing as we do, the ordinary dislike 
 to the change of old customs, and that an altera- 
 tion in order to comply with law will often give 
 more ofPence than a customary illegality, we cannot 
 be surprised if complaints are most rife, when acts 
 which are innovations have also been declared to 
 be unlawful. 
 
 I do not say that this is a satisfactory state of 
 things. It is quite the reverse. It perpetuates 
 division, gives its banners to party, irritates ill 
 feeling where there should be only charity, and 
 hinders united action, when it never was needed 
 more, against ignorance, vice, and ungodliness. 
 And I earnestly hope that when the recommen- 
 dations of the Uitual Commission, or many of 
 them at least, having been accepted by Convocation 
 and legalized by Parliament, shall have cancelled 
 obsolete and inexpedient rubrics, amended others, 
 and supplied such as are wanting, we shall all of 
 us, laying aside all party associations and personal 
 preferences, loyally adopt and act upon the declared 
 law of our Church, and thus at last abolish one 
 powerful, but most unworthy cause, of keeping 
 those who ought to be at one, asunder. 
 
 Meanwhile let me ask the co-operation of those 
 (not very many perhaps now, but still too many) 
 who, sensitive often to excess of Ritual in others,
 
 87 
 
 either from jealousy of it or from carelessness allow 
 themselves to neglect E-ubrics which have their 
 use and obligation still. Neither uniformity nor 
 unity will ever be attained by lawsuits. Moral 
 influence is that alone which can be both extensive 
 and lasting. And a Bishop's moral influence in 
 moderating excess of Eitual is seriously impaired, 
 so long as those whom he addresses can point 
 to others of their Brethren who are habitually 
 ignoring Bubrics neither obsolete nor unimportant. 
 May not a Clergyman, for example, when rebuked 
 for the introduction of some unauthorized cere- 
 mony, feel some natural indignation when he ob- 
 serves his neighbour continually violating the 
 Bubric Avhich provides that " when there is a Com- 
 munion, the Priest shall tJien {i.e. after presenting 
 the Alms and before saying the prayer for the 
 Church Militant) place upon the Table so much 
 Bread and Wine as he shall think sufiicient"? This 
 Bubric is perfectly plain and undoubtedly binding. 
 If it had at one time fallen considerably into 
 desuetude, its vigour has been revived in a decision 
 of the Binal Court of ilppeal.^ It is practically 
 without dif&culty under almost any conceivable 
 circumstances. It has about it no taint of supersti- 
 tion. Bather, while it is the intentional revival of 
 
 1 Liddell v. Westerton. " In practice they — i.e. the Bread and 
 Wine — are usually placed on the Communion Table before the com- 
 mencement of the service, but certainly this is not according to the 
 order prescribed." Since this judgment in 1857, the Rubric has 
 been much more generally observed.
 
 ss 
 
 one of the most beautiful customs of the earliest 
 Liturgies, in which together with alms from our 
 worldly goods, oblations of the fruits of the earth 
 are presented thankfully to Him who gave them 
 both, — la aa Ik twv go^v — it is also the protest of 
 primitive times against the innovation of later days 
 in which the consecrated Bread and "Wine, transub- 
 stantiated in consecration into the substance of the 
 Body and Blood of Christ, are ojffered as a pro- 
 jutiatory Sacrifice for the quick and the dead. 
 
 The directions concerning daily Prayer stand on 
 somewhat different ground. " The Curate that 
 ministereth in every Parish Church or Chapel 
 being at home and not being otherwise reasonably 
 hindered shall say the same in the Parish Church 
 or Chapel where he ministereth." It is probable 
 that this Bubric could not be enforced. A 
 "reasonable hindrance" is a vague condition in- 
 capable of being strictly defined: nor is it clear 
 whether the Ordinary or the Clergyman's con- 
 science is to be the judge. But while it is admitted 
 that the omission of the daily services is contem- 
 plated as possible and, under certain circumstances, 
 excusable, it is evidently the intention of our 
 Church that the performance of them should be 
 the rule. The Parishioners of any Parish there- 
 fore, have, if they please, a right to them, which if 
 it cannot be enforced at law, has at least a strong 
 stress of moral obligation. Nor do I believe that 
 any Incumbent who provides for his people those 
 privileges which the Church thus promises them,
 
 89 
 
 will fail to reap the fruit. Eesicles the refresh- 
 ment of his own soul in the daily worship of the 
 Sanctuary, he will gather around him usually in 
 that little flock which meets him there, those who 
 are his most devoted fellovz-labourers in his works 
 of charity, those who leaven most effectually the 
 character of his congregation and parish, those 
 whose consistent life and growth in grace cheer him 
 most gratefully amidst the cares and disappoint- 
 ments of a Pastor's toil. It is true that at present 
 the length of our daily services prevents many 
 from attending them who would otherwise be 
 worshippers : but this obstacle will be diminished 
 })j the adoption of the new Table of Lessons, and 
 removed, if the recommendations of the E^itual 
 Commission should become the law of the Church 
 and the land. There will then, let me trust, be 
 very few Churches in this diocese in which, not 
 two or three only, but a goodly brotherhood of 
 Christian worshippers, will not meet together habi- 
 tually for common prayer and praise. 
 
 One more point only. I am asked what is the 
 duty of Clergymen with respect to the dress of 
 the Preacher in the services of the Church. On 
 the law on this subject I do not presume to 
 give a confident opinion. It is probable that the 
 late Judgment, in which the point itself was not 
 raised, did not decide it conclusively. It con- 
 firmed indeed the authority of the 58tli Canon, 
 which enjoins that " every Minister saying the 
 public prayers or ministering the Sacraments or
 
 90 
 
 otJier rites of the Churcli, shall use a decent and 
 comely surplice ; " but it does not determine 
 whether preacliing, which at the period when the 
 Canons were passed, was often separate from the 
 public prayers, is included among ^' the other rites 
 of the Church." The same doubt hangs over the 
 application to this ordinance of the term '' at all 
 times of their ministrations " in the Ornament 
 Eubric of 1662 and in the Visitation Articles which 
 so generally adopted the phrase. The Sermon or 
 Homily, indeed, is placed in the Communion Ser- 
 vice ; and it is a fair argument that the dress worn 
 by the Minister in that Office was intended to be the 
 dress of the Preacher also. That it often became 
 so is probable : but a mere inference like this can 
 hardly have the force of a prohibition of the black 
 gown or other dress of the Preacher, even in the 
 morning service, supposing such gown or other 
 dress to be otherwise lawful ; while at other times 
 it would be inapplicable. On the legality or ille- 
 gality, then, of any other dress than the surplice 
 I give no opinion. It might prove upon trial that 
 the black gown was legal ; it might prove that it 
 was illegal, or that it was illegal in the morning 
 service and legal at other times : or it might be 
 held that the Church has laid down no rule for 
 the dress of the Preacher : but it is beyond doubt 
 that the surplice is legal ; this vestment at least is 
 never forbidden the Minister within the walls of 
 his Parish Church ; in this, at all times of his 
 ministrations, in which he is quite at liberty to
 
 91 
 
 include preaching, lie is safely within the law, and 
 runs no risk of being compelled to change his 
 practice after the irritation of a lawsuit and at 
 the dictation of a formal decision. On this ground, 
 although not prepared to pronounce the surplice 
 to he the only admissible dress for the Preacher, 
 I am anxious to counsel its adoption whenever it 
 is found practicable. I should be glad to believe 
 that the time was come when, on this point at 
 least, we might advance to uniformity, and that 
 one well-worn banner of disunion might be furled. 
 Objections to the surplice must surely now have 
 lost their old significance, — the echoes of an obso- 
 lete controversy. And though I do not require, 
 or even advise, the adoption of the surplice in the 
 pulpit when at variance with the decided feeling 
 of the Parishioners who have the right to have 
 even their prejudices respected when not opposed 
 to law, I shall be very thankful to see the present 
 diversity of practice, if it may not at once, at least 
 gradually pass away, at a time when there are 
 comparatively few who care to maintain it, and 
 before the embers of the dying flame are stirred 
 by a legal contest and a judicial sentence. 
 
 Pardon me, my Keverend Brethren, the length 
 at which I have detained you. I have been anxious 
 to survey with you the present position of our 
 diocese, and the hindrances arising from its special 
 circumstances, from the state of the law and the 
 temper of the times and from elements of disunion 
 existing among ourselves, to the realization and
 
 92 
 
 restoration of the Parocliial System amongst us, and 
 to that great work of which the Parochial System 
 is but a means and instrument, the united warfare 
 of the Church against ignorance, error and sin, and 
 the sanctification and salvation of the souls com- 
 mitted to our cure. This my first opportunity may 
 he my last. Pour years is a long period to count upon 
 in the evening of life : and how many changes may 
 have passed over the Church and ourselves in the 
 interval ! It is certain that we shall not all meet 
 here together again. Before the Bishop again visits 
 this diocese some of us will have been called to 
 render our account before tlie Chief Shepherd, the 
 orreat Head of the Church. Oh ! in the heart- 
 searching light which beams from that awful 
 tribunal, how small and trivial will appear most 
 of the cares and controversies and interests which 
 excite and engross us now ! how infinitely im- 
 portant the worth of souls, — of our own souls and 
 of those over whom we were set to watch and warn 
 and teach and save ! No question will there be 
 then of ceremonies and rites, however needful in 
 these our days of weakness ; none of subtle defini- 
 tions of dogma now forced upon us by the arts of 
 error ; none of the delicate balance of the rights of 
 Church and State which arise when a Kingdom not 
 of the world is in the world. The quest will then 
 be for the fruits of the Spirit in our own selves 
 and in those for whom we are answerable : for 
 believing, loving souls, washed in the tears of re- 
 pentance and cleansed by the blood of the Lamb ;
 
 93 
 
 for "joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
 faitli, meekness, and temperance;" above all for 
 love, cliarity, wliicli is to glow on for ever when 
 faith and hope have faded in the light of certainty, 
 and without which, even here, orthodoxy is dead, 
 munificence and self-denial graceless, and the 
 tongues of men and of angels but as sounding 
 brass and a tinkling cymbal. O may we each 
 stand, Brethren, in that ■ day " accepted in the 
 Beloved," and enabled by His grace Vv'hich has 
 vouchsafed to work even by our feeble, imperfect, 
 possibly erring, ministry, to present before Him the 
 flock entrusted to us, — souls sanctified and saved 
 — " our hope and joy and crown of rejoicing in 
 the presence of our Lord Jesns Christ at His 
 comincr.' 
 
 " 1 
 
 1 1 Thes?. ii. 19.
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Statement of Sums voluntarily expended since Nov. 1866, exclu- 
 sive OF Grants from the Bishop of London's Fund. 
 
 Fulham 
 
 Kensington 
 
 Barnes 
 
 S. George's, Eloomsbury. 
 
 Chelsea 
 
 Ealing 
 
 Enfield 
 
 S. George's, Hanover Sq^uare 
 
 Hampton 
 
 Harrow 
 
 S. Martin's-in-Fields . . 
 
 S. Maiylebone 
 
 Paddington 
 
 S. Pancras 
 
 Staines 
 
 Uxbridge 
 
 S. James, Westminster . 
 S. Jolin, Westminster . 
 S. Margaret, Westminster . 
 
 Newington 
 
 East City 
 
 West City 
 
 Hackney 
 
 Islington 
 
 S. Sepulchre 
 
 Shoreditch 
 
 Spitalfields 
 
 Stepney 
 
 ' Church 
 Building and 
 Kestoration. 
 
 £ 
 
 11,073 
 
 9G,670 
 
 9,426 
 
 2,000 
 
 29,990 
 42,319 
 18,505 
 
 2,011 
 23,211 
 
 1,000 
 25,315 
 27,523 
 30,094 
 
 4,062 
 
 6,550 
 11,712 
 
 26,640 
 10,000 
 34,430 
 48,653 
 44,275 
 27,624 
 28,749 
 12,164 
 34,578 
 
 608,574 
 
 Schools, 
 School Class 
 and Mission 
 
 Houses. 
 
 £ 
 
 1,575 
 
 16,390 
 
 7,081 
 
 4,500 
 
 2,905 
 
 11,277 
 
 13,944 
 
 13,830 
 
 2,037 
 
 8,491 
 
 4,100 
 
 21,768 
 
 13,099 
 
 14,787 
 
 1,836 
 
 4,849 
 
 4,500 
 
 1,150 
 8,650 
 
 2,361 
 
 39,827 
 
 9,451 
 
 6,220 
 
 13,075 
 
 12,998 
 
 240,701 
 
 Total. 
 
 £ 
 
 12,648 
 
 113,060 
 
 16,507 
 
 6,500 
 
 2,905 
 41,267 
 56,263 
 32,335 
 
 4,048 
 31,702 
 
 5,100 
 47,083 
 40,622 
 44,881 
 
 5,898 
 11,399 
 16,212 
 
 1,150 
 35,290 
 10,000 
 34,430 
 51,014 
 84,102 
 37,075 
 34,969 
 25,239 
 47,576 
 
 849,275
 
 95 
 
 APPEXDIX K 
 
 LIST OF ECCLESIASTICAL DISTRICTS FORMED IX THK DIOCESE OF 
 LOXDOX FR03I 18G1 71. 
 
 1862. 
 Agar Town, S. Thomas. 
 Barnsbuiy, S. Clement. 
 Charterhouse, S. ISIary. 
 Gray's Inn Eoad, S. Jude. 
 Holborn, S. Alban. 
 Hornsey, Christ Church. 
 Hoxton, S. Saviour. 
 Islington, S. Thomas. 
 Shoreditch, S. Michael. 
 W^estminster, Upper Garden 
 Street, S. James the Less. 
 Whitton, S. Philip & S. James. 
 
 1863. 
 
 Camden Town. 
 
 Clapton, S. James. 
 
 Haggerston, S. Augustine. 
 „ S. Chad, 
 
 „ S. Colomba. 
 
 Hoxton, S. Andrew. 
 
 Kentish Town. 
 
 Kilburn, S. Mar}^ 
 
 S. Pancras, Parish Chapel. 
 
 Eoxeth, Christ Church. 
 
 1864. 
 
 Bishopsgate St., All Saints. 
 
 Brentford, Old, S. Paul. 
 
 Bromley, S. Michael and All 
 Angels. 
 
 Hampstead Pioad, S. James. 
 
 Hampton Hill. 
 
 Islington, S. Michael. 
 
 Kentish Town, S. Martin. 
 
 dotting Hill, S. Mark. 
 
 Nutford Place, S. Luke. 
 
 Paddington, S. Mary Magda- 
 lene. 
 
 Paddington, S. Michael and 
 All Angels. 
 
 Pinilico, S. Saviour. 
 
 "Whitechapel, Dock Street, S. 
 Paul. 
 
 1865. 
 Bethnal Green, S. Paul. 
 Campden Hill, S. George. 
 Clerkenwell, S. Paul. 
 Hackney, South, S. Michael and 
 
 All Angels. 
 Haggerston, S. Stephen. 
 Hampstead, All Souls. 
 Haverstock Hill, S. Andrew. 
 Hillingdon, S. Andrew. 
 Hornsey Pise, S. ^Nlary. 
 Hoxton, S. Auue. 
 Hoxton, S. Mar}^ 
 Islington, S. Bartholomew. 
 Marlborough St., Great, S. John 
 
 the Baptist. 
 May Pair, Christ Church. 
 St. Pancras, S. Sa\'iour. 
 Windmill St., Great, S. Peter. 
 
 1866. 
 Clapton, L^pper, S. Matthew. 
 Highbury, S. Saviour. 
 Hornsey Eoad, S. Barnabas. 
 Knightsbridge, Holy Trinity. 
 Marylebone, S. Barnabas. 
 
 ,, S. Cyprian. 
 
 Xewington, All Saints. 
 Pimlico, S. Barnabas. 
 Shoreditch, Holy Trinity. 
 "Wood Green, S. Michael. 
 
 1867. 
 Brockley Hill, S. Saviour. 
 Brondesbury, Christ Church. 
 Clay Hill, S. John the Baptist. 
 Hackney, South, S. Augustine. 
 Holborn, S. John the Evangelist. 
 Kensington, S. Clement. 
 Kensington, South, S. Peter. 
 Kilburn, Holy Trinity. 
 London Dock, S. Peter. 
 Poplar, S. Matthias. 
 Poplar, S. Stephen.
 
 96 
 
 1868. 
 Fulham, Moore Park, S. James. 
 Kensington, Soutli, S. Stephen. 
 Xewington, S. INIatthew. 
 Paddingtou, S. Lnke. 
 Penton Street, S. Silas. 
 Somers Town, Christ Church. 
 Tufnell Park, S. George. 
 
 18G9. 
 Bromley, S. Gahriel. 
 Holloway West, S. David. 
 Hoxton, S. Peter. 
 Kensington, South, S. Augus- 
 tine. 
 Kentish New Town, S. Luke. 
 
 1870. 
 Bethnal Green, S. Barnabas. 
 Hampstead, S. Stephen. 
 HoUoway, Upper, S. Paul. 
 
 Kilburn, S. Augustine. 
 
 INIile End Old Town, S. Luke. 
 
 ^rillwall, S. Luke. 
 
 Eegent Street, S. Thomas. 
 
 S. John the Evangelist in the East. 
 
 Stepney, S. Benet. 
 
 Walworth Common, S. Stephen. 
 
 Walworth, East Street, S. Mark. 
 
 1871. 
 Dalston, S. INlark. 
 Earl's Court, S. Matthias. 
 Highbury, 8. Augustine. 
 Hounslow Heath, S. Paul. 
 dotting Hill, S. Michael and 
 
 All Angels. 
 Paddington, S. Peter. 
 Tollington Park, S. Anne. 
 Westbourne Park, Upper, S. 
 
 PhQip. 
 Clapton, Christ Church. 
 
 21ie following have since been tramfcrred to the Diocese of Rochester. 
 
 1862 Charlton, S. Paul 
 
 1863 Aldborough Hatch, 
 
 Peter.' 
 Lee, Holy Trinity, 
 
 1864 Greenwich S. PauL 
 Plumstead, S. Nicholas. 
 Victoria Docks, S. Mark 
 
 1865 Lewisham, S. Stephen. 
 S. Shooter's Hill, Christ 
 
 Church. 
 Stratford New Town, S. 
 Paul. 
 
 1866 S3'denham, Holy Trinity. 
 Erockley HiU, S. Saviour. 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 The whole passage is as follows : — " Denieth that he ever did 
 officiate with face purposely towards the East, but he constantly 
 stood at the North side or end of the Table to read and perform 
 all parts of the Communion Service there : saving that the bread 
 and wine being usually placed in the middle of the Table, which 
 is about 7 foot in length, he might haplj^ do as others did there 
 before him (though he remembereth not to have done so this 12 
 years) and step to the former part thereof to consecrate and bless 
 which otherwise he could not conveniently reach." 
 
 Acts of the High Commission Court within the Diocese of 
 Durham. Appendix A, 218. Surtees Society. 
 
 lomion: r. clav, so:;p, and taylor, printkrs.
 
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