Liverpool and England (part 2 of 2)

(2) Another black cloud is the growth and progress in our midst of a party of Churchmen who seem anxious to throw overboard all creeds, articles, and fixed principles, and, under the specious names of free ‘thought,’ ‘liberality,’ and ‘broader views of truth,’ to do away with the distinctive doctrines of Christianity.

I believe the danger from this quarter to be very great. If the old dogmatic paths about inspiration, the atonement, the work of the Holy Ghost, and the world to come, are once forsaken, it is difficult to see what backbone, or nerve, or life, or power is left to the Gospel which our forefathers handed down to us. To the grand old doctrines I have just named we are undoubtedly indebted for any good which Christianity has done in the world, and I have yet to learn that the modern broad principles which are so loudly cried up in this day have ever done any evangelizing work either at home or abroad, or have produced any real, solid, good result in any town or country on earth. But it is vain to shut our eyes to the fact that the leaven of the Sadducees is silently working among us, as well as the leaven of the Pharisees, and that we all need to be on our guard. I have seen a picture of American Broad Church Theology of such a graphic kind, in an extract from a Chicago paper, that I think it worth while to copy it in the form of question and answer.

1. What are the Holy Scriptures?--A useful book to be read discriminatingly--an authority when it accords with our reason--to be believed when it pleases us.

2. What is man?--A creature whose antecedents are somewhat doubtful, who perhaps descended from Adam and perhaps not.

3. What is human depravity?--Something in man to be got rid of, but nothing serious.

4. What is the Atonement?--A moral influence that makes us think less horribly of God than we otherwise would, and that gives us the highest idea of self-abnegation and self-sacrificing love.

5. What is the future life?--A state after death in which every man can have another chance.

Such is American Broad Church Theology! I wish I could believe there was nothing like it on this side of the Atlantic.

(3) One more black cloud is the continued effort of well-meaning but mistaken Liberationists to effect the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England. This is a movement which I always regard with great pain. I believe the promoters of it are utterly ignorant of the little cause they have to complain of the existing state of things, and of the certain disappointment which would be the result of their success. There are no people who are so entirely free from disabilities, and enjoy such a large measure of freedom, as English Nonconformists. They have a perfect plethora of liberty; they may build where they please, preach what they please, worship God in any way that they please, without any one interfering. There is hardly an avenue to distinction in any profession, or to the highest offices under the Crown, which is not open to them as well as to Churchmen. What more would they have? They tell us in reply that they want perfect religious equality! It is truly surprising that they cannot see that, so long as the immense majority of landed proprietors and men of wealth are Churchmen, so long the ‘religious equality’ they speak of cannot possibly be obtained. A dissolution of the union of Church and State would certainly not procure it. If disestablishment were to come tomorrow, the Episcopal Church, though separated from the State, would still be by far the largest and most influential body in the country, and as such its members would always take a certain precedence in Parliament, in business, in the learned professions, and in every department of social life. However, I suppose it is useless to dwell on this. It is a painful subject, and I gladly leave it alone. But I leave it with the expression of my deliberate conviction, that while disestablishment would not injure the Church of England in our great towns, it would tend to paganize our rural districts; and while it would confer no advantage on Nonconformity, it would be most displeasing to that Almighty Being by whom kings reign, and on whom our national prosperity depends.

In spite, however, of the three black clouds which I have just mentioned, I must again repeat my conviction that we have very much to be thankful for in the present condition of the Church of England. When we look over the land from north to south and east to west, we must be blind if we do not see many things for which we ought to be very thankful. We have only to look back a hundred years, and compare the England of 1784 with the England of the present day, and the gloomiest pessimist must confess that in many respects there is a vast improvement. It is no longer thought a fine, manly, honourable, and gentlemanlike thing to swear, or to get drunk, or to fight duels, or to break the seventh commandment. The clergy are no longer content to have one service a Sunday, and the Lord’s Supper once a quarter, or to preach sermons which are mere moral essays, and in which Christ and the Holy Ghost are not even named. The lower orders are no longer sunk in barbarous ignorance, unable to read or write, and knowing no recreations much better than bear-baiting, bull-baiting, cockfighting, and the like. Without controversy and beyond doubt, the whole moral standard of the nation is greatly raised, and we ought to be deeply thankful for it. Of course much remains which is most unsatisfactory, both among rich and poor, and there is great room for amendment. Enormous luxury, extravagance, self-indulgence, mammon-worship, gambling, betting, intemperance, and a perfect idolatry of dress and outdoor amusements, are sorrowful marks of our times. But, after all, the state of the nation must be judged by comparison. Our condition, compared with that of a hundred years ago, affords much ground for thankfulness, and among many improvements in the last century I am bold to say that not the least has been the improvement of the Church of England.

There are, however, three points to which I feel it my duty, as your Bishop, to call your attention. For want of a better name, I must call them tendencies or proclivities among the clergy, from one end of our Church to the other, which appear to me to demand very serious attention, because they contain in themselves the germs of much mischief. They are tendencies, you will distinctly understand, not peculiar to our own Diocese, but forcing themselves on the notice of observing persons in every Diocese in the land. On each of them I propose now to make a few remarks.

(1) In the first place, I think there is a disposition throughout the Church to expect too much from legislation about ecclesiastical discipline. We all remember that a Royal Commission was appointed more than three years ago in order to examine the whole question of our existing Ecclesiastical Courts, and to offer suggestions for their improvement. That Commission devoted itself to its work in a most praiseworthy manner, and presented a very elaborate Report, containing many recommendations, more than two years ago. I am afraid, however, that a large body of Churchmen expected more from the Commission than they had any right to do. Some appear to have thought that it would settle all the disputed points about what is commonly called Ritualism, which have been the subject of so much angry litigation for many years. Some appear to have indulged in the pleasing dream that we were about to have an authoritative interpretation of the famous Ornaments Rubric, and that not a few of the decisions of the Committee of Privy Council were about to be reversed or modified. I need hardly say that there was nothing to justify these expectations, and that the Commission most properly left disputed points entirely untouched, as being ultra vires, and confined itself strictly to the inquiry for which it was appointed. In short, the notorious disputed points are exactly where they were, and I fear that many people have been bitterly disappointed. But unhappily this is not all the measure of disappointment. Even the recommendations of the Committee for the reform and reconstruction of our Ecclesiastical Courts have not found universal acceptance. However learned and carefully drawn up, they have met with a great deal of unfavourable criticism. Nothing has yet been done to carry out the plans and suggestions of the Commission by an Act of Parliament, and at the end of two years we are pretty much where we were. Of course I do not mean to say that legislation on the lines recommended by the Commission will not be attempted, and I think it not unlikely that a Bill will be brought into Parliament in order to obtain an Act. But will that Bill be carried? This is a very serious question, and he would be a very bold man who would give an affirmative reply with confidence. Nothing can be done in this day without the consent of the House of Commons, and not everything without the House of Lords. The zealous advocates of church independence may not like this, but so long as the Church of England is an Established Church, they must accept the condition of things, and make the best of it.

Now, will the suggestions of the Commission pass the fiery ordeal of the House of Commons, a House which is proverbially jealous of ecclesiastics, and regards any movement which gives the Church more power with great suspicion? Will the House of Commons allow the Bishops to have a veto on proceedings against any criminous clerk? Will the House of Commons entrust a large amount of judicial power to Bishops, who notoriously have their own private opinions on all the disputed points of the day, and can hardly be called impartial judges? Will the lawyers in both Houses of Parliament ever admit that retired Lord Chancellors and learned Judges are not just as competent to decide what the written formularies of the Church meant her clergy to be, to do, and to hold, as any Bishop on the bench? All these are awkward questions, and I marvel at the off hand coolness with which some Churchmen answer them. They seem to me to forget that we are living in the 19th and not in the 17th century, in the reign of Queen Victoria and not under Tudors and Stuarts. We have to deal with a reformed House of Commons, and composed of very heterogeneous elements. We live in days when clerical heads are no longer thought to possess a monopoly of learning and wisdom, and no sovereign would ever dream of making a prelate Lord Keeper of the Seals. The days are past when the laity had an unhesitating confidence in the judgment of bishops and clergy-. In short, it is my own firm impression that if a Bill is brought into Parliament drawn up on the lines of the Commissioners’ Report, it will probably be very roughly handled, and may possibly lead to very disastrous results. I should not be surprised if, like the Public Worship Act, it went into Parliament in one shape and came out in quite another, or else was so completely altered that the promoters would feel obliged to drop it altogether. As a general rule, the less our Church goes to Parliament for help the better.

In the meantime, where are we? And what is our position? A wellknown layman told the Reading Congress last year that the Report of the Commissioners had slain and destroyed the Clergy Discipline Act, and the Public Worship Act; and I presume he meant that those two Acts were laid on the shelf and would never be used again. I can see nothing to justify the assertion. On the contrary, at the beginning of this very year the famous Miles Platting decision supplied unanswerable proof that the verdicts of the existing Courts are regarded by Judges as binding on the Church, that a Presbyter who notoriously disobeys the laws laid down by the present final Court of Appeal may lawfully be refused institution by a Bishop, and, in one word, that the old Courts are not dead, but alive! From that Miles Platting decision, we must remember, there has been no appeal.

NOTE:

Miles Platting is a suburb of Manchester. In June, 1869, Sir Perceval Heywood, patron of the living, appointed as incumbent the Rev. Sidney F. Green. Six months later the Rev. James Fraser was appointed Bishop of Manchester. In 1871 it was reported to the Bishop that Mr. Green was introducing ritualistic practices into his parish and the Bishop wrote to admonish him. In 1874 the Bishop refused to accept as a candidate for holy orders a Mr. Cowgill (nominated by Mr. Green to the curacy of Miles Platting) because he seemed inclined to sit loose to Church law. In 1877 the Bishop again wrote to Mr. Green concerning ritualistic practices which were still being introduced at Miles Platting, and the dispute between the two carried on into 1878 when the Church Association also entered the fray. As Mr. Green persistently refused to give way, the matter went to an Ecclesiastical Court over which Lord Penzance presided. The decision went against Mr. Green who eventually, in March, 1881, was committed to Lancaster gaol, not for his use of ritual, but for contempt of Court, for he had stated his determination not to submit to Parliamentary law in matters ecclesiastical. In November, 1882, on the motion of the Bishop, he was released, Mr. Green having decided to resign his living. The patron of the living now presented to it Mr. Cowgill whom Bishop Fraser had formerly refused to institute as curate, but he refused to constitute him as incumbent on the ground that he declined to undertake not to continue Mr. Green’s ritualistic practices. The patron then commenced an action against the Bishop, but in December, 1883, judgment was given in the Bishop’s favour, after which he proceeded to present and institute a non-ritualistic candidate for the office. The contest now ended. The whole dispute was of profound interest to Bishop Ryle. On this see The Lancashire Life of Bishop Fraser, J. W. Diggle, 1889: pp. 397- 426.

One thing is very certain: if the present Courts are ‘dead,’ of which there is not the slightest proof, we are in a state of 1. complete anarchy, and how long this anarchy is to last no man can possibly say. Some persons, I know, are pleased to call the existing state of things ‘a period of truce,’ and tell us that we have only to sit still and wait, and that everything is in a way to come right at last. I confess that I am unable to see what they are waiting for, and what there is to justify their serene expectations. It is admitted on all hands that nothing whatever can be done to solve our ecclesiastical problems except by an Act of Parliament, and I can only repeat my deliberate conviction that an appeal to Parliament for relief may produce very awkward results. Perhaps I am mistaken, but this, at any rate, is my present opinion.

My advice to all Churchmen at this critical juncture is to give up expecting much from Parliament, and to try to make the best of our present position. Order is Heaven’s first law. The way of patience is surely better than the way of disobedience and threats of secession. The decisions on Ritualism which have been given of late years, and which the Judges evidently regard as binding on the Church at present, may not be perfect, and a day may possibly come when greater liberty may be allowed to clergymen on some ceremonial points, so long as they are honestly loyal to the Articles to which they declare their assent at their institution. But the day has not come yet, and till it does come I cannot see the propriety of disobeying judgments, merely because we do not like them or the Courts which pronounce them. Until it does come it is the plain duty of the Bishops to require obedience to the Queen’s Courts, and it is not reasonable, just, fair, or kind, to expect them to sanction disobedience.

No doubt it is easy work for some liberal-minded laymen to say that the Church of England is comprehensive, and that every earnest clergyman ought to be allowed to do exactly as he likes without interference. But surely every wise and thoughtful layman must admit that there are limits to comprehensiveness, and that no corporate body can possibly continue in a healthy state in which the first conditions of membership are habitually broken and trampled under foot. It would be an immense blessing to our beloved Church if all her clergy would cease to indulge in vain expectations, and to strain after sanction for novelties in the administration of the Lord’s Supper which do not affect the validity of the sacrament and are not necessary to salvation, and if they would be content to walk in the old paths which satisfied such men as Jewel, Hooker, Andrews, Davenant, and Hall. As for those clergymen who habitually persist in doing things which the Queen’s Courts have distinctly condemned, I fail to see how their conduct can be justified, and I wonder how any sensible layman can support them. They place their Bishop in a most painful and awkward dilemma. He must either sanction illegality, and pour contempt on his Sovereign’s judicial advisers, or else he must sanction the prosecution of some popular clergyman, and at once be branded and denounced as a persecutor by a public which is always ready to support a defendant. What is a Bishop to do? It is a state of things which is gradually becoming intolerable, and unless remedied threatens to throw the whole Church into confusion. (2) The second thing which I regard as a dangerous tendency in these times is a disposition throughout the Church to attach an exaggerated importance to the externals of public worship. This is a very delicate subject, and it is extremely difficult to handle it without giving offence, and exposing myself to misunderstanding and misrepresentation. But I dare not turn away from it, and I ask your best attention while I try to lay it fully before you.

No intelligent Englishman of common observation can fail to observe that there has been an immense improvement during the last half century in the conduct of public worship in the Church of England. Dirty, slovenly churches; careless, ill-managed ceremonial; neglect of outward decorum; are no longer tolerated in the Establishment, and are seldom to be found except in out-of-the-way corners. Millions of money have been spent within the last forty years in restoring and beautifying old parish churches. Music and singing receive much more attention than they did in the days of our grandfathers. The organist, the choir, and the hymn-book are more thought of than they used to be. The Lord’s Supper is administered more frequently than it once was, and not at intervals few and far between. For all this, I for one am sincerely thankful. If the scaffolding of religion is carelessly constructed, it is vain to expect that the building will be carried on in a workmanlike manner. But now come some very serious questions which I want to have seriously examined. With all this outward show of religion, is there any proportionate increase of internal reality? With all this immense growth of external Christianity, is there any corresponding growth of vital godliness? Is there more faith, repentance, and holiness among the worshippers in our churches? Is there more of that saving faith without which it is impossible to please God, more of that repentance unto salvation without which a man must perish, and more of that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord? Is our Lord Jesus Christ more known and trusted and loved and obeyed? Is the inward work of the Holy Ghost more realized and experienced among our people? Are the grand verities of justification, conversion, sanctification, more thoroughly grasped and rightly esteemed by our congregations? Is there more private Bible reading, private prayer, private self-denial, private mortification of the flesh, private exhibition of meekness, gentleness, and unselfishness? In a word, is there more private religion at home in all the relations of life? These are very serious questions, and I wish they could receive very satisfactory answers. I sometimes fear that there is an enormous amount of hollowness and unreality in much of the Church religion of the present day, and that, if weighed in God’s balances, it would be found terribly wanting. For after all we must remember that it is written, ‘Man looketh at the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh at the heart.’ The great Head of the Church has said, ‘This people draweth near to me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.’ He has also said, ‘The true worshippers shall worship in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.’ If there is one thing more clearly taught than another in the Word of God, it is the utter uselessness of formal outward worship, however beautifully conducted, when the hearts of the worshippers are not right in the sight of God. I suspect that the Temple worship in the days when our Lord Jesus Christ was upon earth was as perfectly and beautifully performed as possible. I have little doubt that the music, the singing, the prayers, the dress of the priests, the gestures, the postures, the regularity and punctuality of the ceremonial observances, the keeping of the feasts and fasts, were all perfection itself, and there was nothing faulty or defective. But where was true saving religion in those days? What was the inward godliness of men like Annas and Caiaphas and their companions? What was the general standard of living among the fierce zealots of the law of Moses who crucified the Lord of Glory? You all know as well as I do. There is only one answer. The whole Jewish Church, with all its magnificent ritual, was nothing but a great whited sepulchre, beautiful without, but utterly rotten and corrupt within. In short, the Jewish Church was intended by God to be a beacon to all Christendom, and I am certain that these are days in which its lessons ought not to be forgotten.

We must not be content with what men call ‘bright and hearty’ services, and frequent administrations of the Lord’s Supper. We must remember that these things do not constitute the whole of religion, and that no Christianity is valuable in the sight of God which does not influence the hearts, the consciences, and the lives of those who profess it. It is not always the church and congregation in which there is the best music and singing, and from which young people return saying, ‘How beautiful it was,’ in which God takes most pleasure. It is the church in which there is most of the presence of Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, and the congregation in which there are most ‘broken hearts and contrite spirits.’ If our eves were only opened to see invisible things, like the eyes of Elisha’s servant, we might discover to our amazement that there is more presence of the King of kings, and consequently more blessing, in some humble unadorned mission room where the Gospel is faithfully preached, than in some of the grandest churches in the land.

There is nothing like testing systems by their results. Let us ask quietly whether there has been any increase of Christian liberality and spiritual-mindedness in the land, in proportion to the enormous increase of attention to external worship. I am afraid the reply will be found very unsatisfactory. In many cases, the money given by a congregation to help missions at home and abroad, and to promote direct work for the salvation of souls in any way, would be found absurdly out of proportion to the money expended on organist, choir, ferns, flowers, and general decoration. Can this be right? And is this a healthy state of things? Does the annual contribution of money for religious purposes throughout England and Wales, in these days of enormously increasing wealth, bear any proportion to the gigantic expenditure on racing, hunting, shooting, yachting, monster entertainments, dressing, dancing, and the general round of recreation? Yet all this goes on in the face of an immense increase of external religion. I cannot think this a symptom of a healthy condition. I shall never forget what an American clergyman said to me not long ago, when I asked him what he thought of the state of Church religion on revisiting England after an absence of some ten years. He told me in reply that while he saw a great increase of music, singing, and ceremonial religion in our public worship, he could not see the slightest increase, but rather a decrease, of true religion among our worshippers. I have a sorrowful suspicion that the American was not far wrong.

I commend the whole subject to the close attention of all my clergy. I am convinced that it demands the notice of the whole Church of England. I leave it with a few words of explanatory caution, which in a day of abounding misrepresentation I wish emphatically to use. If any one supposes that I want to return to the old-fashioned dry and dull worship of former days, he is totally mistaken. Nothing of the kind! God forbid that we should ever go back to the ancient parson and clerk duet, the miserable singing of a bad version of David’s Psalms, and the wretched, tasteless music which satisfied most, if not all, of our ancestors. So far from this, I contend that our services are not ‘bright and hearty’ enough; for I call no service thoroughly ‘bright and hearty’ until every worshipper repeats all the responses, and takes part in all the praise, and refuses to leave these things to the choir. But what I do long and desire to see is a just proportion of attention to every part of church worship. And I contend that there is never a just proportion until the pulpit receives as much attention from the minister as the reading-desk and the choir, and until the sermon is just as powerful and ‘bright and hearty’ as the singing. The preaching of the pure Word of God is declared by our Articles to be the first mark of a healthy Church. It is sound doctrine taught and preached, and not ritual, which in every age the Holy Ghost has used for awakening sleeping human consciences, building up the cause of Christ, and saving souls. The dens and caves and upper rooms in which the primitive Christians used to meet were doubtless very rough and unadorned. They had no carved wood or stone, no stained glass, no costly vestments, no organs, and no surpliced choirs. But these primitive worshippers were the men who ‘turned the world upside down,’ and I doubt not that their places of worship were far more honourable in God’s sight than in after ages was St. Sophia at Constantinople or St. Peter’s at Rome. It was well and truly said that in those ancient days ‘the Church had wooden communion vessels, but golden ministers,’ and it was this which gave the primitive Church its power. And when religion began to decay, it was said that the conditions were reversed; the ministers became wooden and the communion plate golden. But I want everything in the English Church in the 19th century to be golden. I long to have everywhere golden ministers, golden worship, golden preaching, golden praying, and golden praise. I want everything in the service of God to be done as perfectly as possible, and no part of it to be scamped, slurred over, done carelessly, and left out in the cold. I charge you affectionately, my reverend brethren, to make this your aim in the Diocese of Liverpool. Let the best, brightest, and heartiest services be always accompanied by the best and ablest sermons that your minds can produce and your tongues deliver. Let your sermons be addresses in which Christ’s blood, mediation, and intercession; Christ’s love, power, and willingness to save; the real work of the Holy Ghost, repentance, faith, and holiness; are never wanting--sermons full of life, and fire, and power; sermons which set hearers thinking, and make them go home to pray. Then, and then only will the Church of England have its just influence in every Diocese, and God will open the windows of heaven and give us a blessing. The very best and most elaborate services are only means to an end, and that end should be the salvation of souls. All is not done when people have heard beautiful music and singing, and seen the most ornamental ceremonial. Are their hearts and consciences better? Is sin more hateful? Is Christ more precious? Is holiness more desired? Are they becoming more ready for death, judgment, and eternity every week that they live? These are the grand ends which every clergyman should set before him in every service which he conducts. He should strive to conduct it with an abiding recollection of the eye of God, the sound of the last trumpet, the resurrection of the dead, and the judgment-seat of Christ, and not with the petty thought, ‘Is my service bright, hearty, and well done?’ That these may be more and more the aims of every clergyman of the Church of England in the present day is my earnest prayer.

(3) The last tendency of the times which appears to me to require watching is as follows. I think there is a growing disposition throughout the land, among the clergy, to devote an exaggerated amount of attention to what I must call the public work of the ministry, and to give comparatively too little attention to pastoral visitation and personal dealing with individual souls. It is a tendency which I regard with much apprehension, and the more so, because I believe it is a snare to many excellent and well-meaning clergymen, and calculated insensibly to mar their usefulness. I wish therefore to say a few words about it.

There is no doubt that there are far more doors of public work open to an English clergyman in the present day than there were in the days that are past. Weekly lectures, weekly Bible-classes, prayermeetings, communicants’ meetings, Sunday school teachers’ meetings, young men’s meetings, young women’s meetings, children’s meetings, temperance meetings, purity meetings, committee meetings, mutual improvement meetings, are all multiplied enormously within the last twenty years. It sometimes almost takes my breath away to hear the programme of weekly work which some excellent clergymen announce upon a Sunday from their reading-desks, as the parochial bill of fare for the next six days. As I have listened, I have wondered how any one man, with only one body, can keep so many irons hot, and get through such an amount of work, and do every part of it well. And when I hear, as I do occasionally with sorrow, that such excellent men break down in health, I hear it without surprise. I admire their zeal extremely, but I could wish it was tempered with discretion, and I feel doubts rising in my own mind whether they are using their talents with prudence and proper economy. In short, I suspect there are some who would do more if they would do less, and would do a few things with tenfold efficiency if they would not attempt to do more than flesh and blood can possibly grasp. Three powerful, heavy, crushing blows, making everything go down before them, are surely better than six, feebly and faintly delivered.

But the serious point to which I want to direct your attention is this. There are but ‘twelve hours in the day’, and it is clearly impossible for any clergyman to fill up his time with public work in addressing, or operating upon, large bodies of people in large parishes, and at the same time to keep up the old-fashioned habit of efficient houseto-house, family, and personal pastoral visitation. And I must earnestly and affectionately entreat my clergy to lay this matter to heart, to review carefully their own systems of employing their time, and to take heed that they make time every week for a due proportion of systematic house-to-house visitation.

To secure the sympathy and personal affection of parishioners is one great secret of ministerial usefulness. Thousands of people care little for eloquent sermons and powerful addresses, addressed to large crowds in which they form nothing better than an insignificant unit. The way to their hearts is to be found by going to their houses, sitting down by their side, taking them by the hand, dealing with them individually as friends, and exhibiting a brotherly interest in their sorrows and their joys, their crosses and their cares, their difficulties and their troubles, and the births, marriages, and deaths of their families. The man whose minister treats him in that way will hear his minister with tenfold attention upon Sunday, and will say to himself, as the sermon goes on, ‘This is the kind-hearted person who visited and talked with me last week, and I am ready and glad to hear what he has got to say.’ What ‘the masses,’ as they are called in the present day, want, and value when they get it, is sympathy and brotherly kindness from those that are above them. I firmly believe that one reason why many of the working classes in our large overgrown parishes never go to church, is the want of pastoral visitation which the unfortunate clergyman, with all the demands of a myriad of people upon him, cannot possibly find time to give. If every working man in a great city like Liverpool could be regularly visited at his own home once a month, and talked to by a friendly, loving, wise clergyman, it is impossible to conceive what an immense amount of good would be done. It was a true saying of that wise man, Dr. Chalmers, that ‘a house going minister makes a churchgoing people.’

I must plainly say that I want to see a return to the old paths. We have gone far enough in the direction of public work. We shall do well to go back to the system of our forefathers. They certainly did less public work than we do, but I suspect they did far more in private. Let us not be ashamed to follow their example. Of one thing I am very certain, and I say it with the experience of forty-three years of ministerial life, and after careful observation of the results of work done by others, both in town and country parishes. It is my settled and deliberate conviction that a clergyman of comparatively moderate gifts, who preaches the gospel and gives a large quantity of his time to pastoral visitation and personal dealing with souls, will be found at the last day to have done more for the cause of Christ than a clergyman of far superior gifts, who, although he preaches the same gospel most faithfully, is only seen in the pulpit, and in the lecture room, and on the platform, but is never seen in the houses of his people.

Let me now wind up this over-long Charge with an earnest request that you will all continue instant in prayer for the Church of England at large, and for your own Diocese in particular. Let us all pray that year after year there may be more charity and brotherly love among the members of our communion. Let us not be always looking at the things wherein we differ, but at those wherein we agree. Let High Churchmen try to believe that most Low Churchmen are not necessarily anxious to become Dissenters, and really love the Church and the Prayer-book quite as much as they do. Let Low Churchmen try to believe that High Churchmen are not necessarily half Papists, and have no desire to go over to Rome. Let Broad Churchmen try to believe that men of other schools may be just as friendly to free inquiry, and science, and the exercise of reason, as they are themselves. Above all, let us all give up the habit of thinking every one is party-spirited who does not agree with us, or of flattering ourselves that we are the only persons who hold no party views. The best of us know everything very imperfectly. Half our controversies are mere logomachies, and arise from the different sense we put on words. No school among us has any monopoly of theological light and knowledge. But if we do disagree, let us disagree pleasantly and without bitterness. If we cannot all be of one mind, and see everything alike, and support the same Societies, and work exactly on the same lines, at any rate let it be a settled principle with us to make the best we can of one another, and to work with one another as much as we can. While there is much to deplore and to humble us in this part of the Lord’s vineyard, there is yet much for which we ought to be thankful. When I remember Liverpool forty-five years ago, and call to mind how few clergymen there were in this part of England at that date who made any mark on the public mind, and then consider how many there are among the 187 incumbents of this new Diocese who are doing good work which will stand the fire, I do thank God most heartily. I rejoice, and I will rejoice.

I am thoroughly convinced that there never was a time when there was such an immense door of usefulness open to the Church of England in every direction as there is at the present day, and not least in Lancashire. If every incumbent in the land was faithful to the principles of his own Church, and always, like Sir Henry Lawrence, ‘trying to do his duty’; if every incumbent within the three loyal schools of our comprehensive Church was awake, and alive and stirring in the pulpit, the reading-desk, and the parish, and armed with love in his heart and truth on his tongue; if this was the state of things, I believe the Church of England might safely smile at the attacks of all her foes, and shake the nation for good to its very centre. At present too many Churchmen are but half awake, and do not realize how much there is to be done, and how much they might do if they would go to work in the right way. Our forefathers in the 17th and 18th centuries had no such advantages as we have, no such open doors both at home and abroad, no such help from the press and the steam-engine, no such complete liberty of action. But as for us, we stand on vantage-ground, and countless fields are white for the harvest, while, alas! the labourers are few. May I not conclude all by saying, ‘Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth labourers,’ and grant us a true revival. Let us often use that wellknown Collect, ‘Stir up, O Lord, the wills of Thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of Thee be plenteously rewarded.’

APPENDIX: CHAPTER 3 TABLE 1

The following is a summarized Statement, carefully drawn up from Visitation Returns, of the Total Expenditure in each Rural Deanery in the Diocese of Liverpool, on building, enlarging, or restoring Churches, on building or enlarging Schoolrooms, and on building Mission Rooms or Parish Rooms, during the three years ending Total £145,385.

TABLE 2

The following is a summarized Statement, carefully drawn up from Visitation Returns, of the Money contributed and expended in each Rural Deanery in the Diocese of Liverpool, for Parochial Charities, Diocesan Institutions, Home Missions, and Foreign Missions, during the three years ending October 1884: Total £98,771 I think it right to say that the sum total in each of these Tables does not represent the whole amount of money actually expended and contributed. But unhappily the returns from some Parishes, in reply to my 37th and 38th Articles of Inquiry, are very incomplete.

J. C. LIVERPOOL.