Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography Part 17

Perhaps it was just as well for a boy that these glimpses of beautiful wors.h.i.+p were few and far between. One was saved from the perils of a mere externalism, and was driven inward on the unseen realities which ceremonial may sometimes obscure. And then, when one got up to Oxford, one found all the splendours of the sanctuary in rich abundance, and enjoyed them with a whole-hearted self-abandonment. I need not repeat what I have already said about St. Barnabas and Cowley and the other strongholds of Catholic wors.h.i.+p. I am eternally their debtor, and the friends with whom I shared them have helped to shape my life.

But, in spite of all these enjoyments, religious life at Oxford between 1872 and 1876 was not altogether happy. A strong flood of Romanism burst upon the University, and carried some of my best friends from my side; and, concurrently with this disturbance, an American teacher attacked our faith from the opposite quarter. He taught an absolute disregard of all forms and rites, and, not content with the ordinary doctrine of instantaneous conversion, preached the absolute sinlessness of the believer. The movement which, in 1874, he set on foot was marked by disasters, of which the nature can best be inferred from a characteristic saying, "The believer's conflict with Sin is all stuff."

This teaching had its natural consequences, and the movement issued in spiritual tragedy.

In the following year we were touched by the much more wholesome enterprise of Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Their teaching was wholly free from the perilous stuff which had defiled the previous mission; and though it shook the faith of some who had cultivated the husk rather than the kernel of ritualism, still all could join in the generous tribute paid by Dr. Liddon on Whitsun Day, 1876:

"Last year two American preachers visited this country, to whom G.o.d had given, together with earnest belief in some portions of the gospel, a corresponding spirit of fearless enterprise. Certainly they had no such credentials of an Apostolic Ministry as a well-instructed and believing Churchman would require.... And yet, acting according to the light which G.o.d had given them, they threw themselves on our great cities with the ardour of Apostles; spoke of a higher world to thousands who pa.s.s the greater part of life in dreaming only of this; and made many of us feel that we owe them at least the debt of an example, which He Who breatheth where He listeth must surely have inspired them to give us."[67]

When I came up to London after leaving Oxford, "the world was all before me where to choose," and I made a pretty wide survey before deciding on my habitual place of wors.h.i.+p. St. Paul's Cathedral had lately awoke from its long sleep, and, under the wise guidance of Church, Gregory, and Liddon, was beginning to show the perfection of wors.h.i.+p on the strict line of the English Prayer-Book.

Being by temperament profoundly Gothic, I hold (with Sir William Richmond) that Westminster Abbey is the most beautiful church in the world. But it had nothing to offer in the way of seemly wors.h.i.+p; and, while Liddon was preaching the Gospel at St. Paul's, Dean Stanley at Westminster was delivering the fine rhetoric and dubious history which were his subst.i.tutes for theology, and with reference to which a Jewish lady said to me, "I have heard the Dean preach for eighteen years, and I have never heard a word from him which I could not accept." At the Temple, Dr. Vaughan was at the height of his vogue, and Sunday after Sunday was teaching the lawyers the effective grace of a nervous and finished style.

All Saints, Margaret Street, St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and St.

Barnabas, Pimlico, showed a type of wors.h.i.+p refined, artistic, and rather prim. St. Alban's, Holborn, "the Mother and Mistress" of all ritualistic churches, combined Roman ceremonial with the pa.s.sionately Evangelical teaching of the greatest extempore preacher I have ever heard, Arthur Stanton. St. Michael's, Sh.o.r.editch, and St. Peter's, London Docks, were outposts of the ritualistic army. The Low Church congregated at Portman Chapel, and Belgrave Chapel, and Eaton Chapel (all since demolished), at St. Michael's, Chester Square, and St.

John's, Paddington. Broad Churchmen, as a rule, were hidden in holes and corners; for the bizarre magnificence of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, had not yet superseded the humble structure in which Henry Blunt had formerly preached into the d.u.c.h.ess of Beaufort's[68] ear-trumpet; and St. Margaret's, Westminster, had only just begun to reverberate the rolling eloquence of Dr. Farrar. At St. Peter's, Eaton Square, amid surroundings truly hideous, George Wilkinson, afterward Bishop of St.

Andrews, dominated, sheerly by spiritual force, a congregation which, having regard to the numbers, wealth, and importance of the men who composed it, was the most remarkable that I have ever seen. Cabinet Ministers, great n.o.blemen, landed proprietors, Members of Parliament, soldiers, lawyers, doctors, and "men about town," were the clay which this master-potter moulded at his will.

Then, as now, Society loved to be scolded, and the more Mr. Wilkinson thundered, the more it crowded to his feet. "Pay your bills." "Get up when you are called." "Don't stay at a ball till two, and then say you are too delicate for early services." "Eat one dinner a day instead of three, and try to earn that one." "Give up champagne for the season, and what you save on your wine-merchant's bill send to the Mission-Field."

"You are sixty-five years old, and have never been confirmed. Never too late to mend. Join a Confirmation Cla.s.s at once, and try to remedy, by good example now, the harm you have done your servants or your neighbours by fifty years' indifference." "Sell that diamond cross which you carry with you into the sin-polluted atmosphere of the Opera, give the proceeds to feed the poor, and wear the only real cross--the cross of self-discipline and self-denial." These are echoes, faint, indeed, but not, I think, unfaithful, of St. Peter's pulpit in its days of glory.

When I look back upon the Church in London as it was when I first knew it, and when I compare my recollections with what I see now, I note, of course, a good many changes, and not all of them improvements. The Evangelicals, with their plain teaching about sin and forgiveness, are gone, and their place is taken by the professors of a flabby lat.i.tudinarianism, which ignores sin--the central fact of human life--and therefore can find no place for the Atonement. Heresy is preached more unblus.h.i.+ngly than it was thirty years ago; and when it tries to disguise itself in the frippery of aesthetic Anglicanism, it leads captive not a few. In the churches commonly called Ritualistic, I note one great and significant improvement. English Churchmen have gradually discovered that they have an indigenous ritual of their own--dignified, expressive, artistic, free from fuss and fidgets--and that they have no need to import strange rites from France or Belgium.

The evolution of the English Rite is one of the wholesome signs of the times. About preaching, I am not so clear. The almost complete disuse of the written sermon is in many ways a loss. The discipline of the paper protects the flock alike against shambling inanities, and against a too boisterous rhetoric. No doubt a really fine extempore sermon is a great work of art; but for nine preachers out of ten the ma.n.u.script is the safer way.

As regards the quality of the clergy, the change is all to the good.

When I was a boy at Harrow, Dr. Vaughan, preaching to us on our Founder's Day, spoke with just contempt of "men who choose the Ministry because there is a Family Living waiting for them; or because they think they can make that profession--that, and none other--compatible with indolence and self-indulgence; or because they imagine that a scantier talent and a more idle use of it can in that one calling be made to suffice." "These notions," he added, "are out of date, one Act of Disestablishment would annihilate them." That Act of Disestablishment has not come yet, but the change has come without waiting for it. Even the "Family Living" no longer attracts. Young men seek Holy Orders because they want work. Clerical dreams of laziness or avarice, self-seeking or self-indulgence, have gone out for ever; and the English Church has in her commissioned service a band of men whose devotion and self-sacrifice would be a glory to any Church in Christendom.

An active politician, as I was thirty years ago, has not much leisure; but all through my parliamentary work I sought to bear in mind that Life is Service. I helped to found the White Cross League, and worked hard for the cause which it represents. I bore a hand in Missions and Bible-cla.s.ses. I was a member of a Diocesan Conference. I had ten years of happy visiting in Hospitals, receiving infinitely more than I could ever give. And I should think that no man of my age has spoken on so many platforms, or at so many Drawing Room meetings. But all this was desultory business, and I always desired a more definite obligation.

On St. Luke's Day, 1895, my loved and honoured friend, Edward Talbot, formerly Warden of Keble, was consecrated 100th Bishop of Rochester; and the diocese at that time included all South London. As soon as he established himself there, the new Bishop, so I have already stated, asked me to come across the Thames, and do some definite work in South London. At first, that work consisted of service on a Public Morals Committee, and of lecturing on ecclesiastical topics; but gradually the field contracted in one direction and expanded in another.

It was in 1891 that Dr. Temple, then Bishop of London, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, being anxious to lighten the burden of preaching which lies so heavily on hardworked clergy, determined to license lay-readers to speak in consecrated buildings. It was a bold step, and of doubtful legality; but the Bishop characteristically declared that he would chance the illegality, feeling sure that, when the Vicar and Churchwardens invited a lay-reader to speak, no one would be churlish enough to raise legal objections. The result proved that the Bishop was perfectly right, and the Diocese of London has now a band of licensed lay-preachers who render the clergy a great deal of valuable aid. I was from the first a good deal attracted by the prospect of joining this band, but Parliament and Office left me no available leisure. When Dr. Talbot became Bishop of Rochester, he at once took in hand the work of reorganizing the body of Lay-Readers in his Diocese; and before long had determined to follow the example set by Bishop Temple, and to license some of his readers to speak at extra services in consecrated buildings. He made it quite clear from the first--and the point has subsequently been established by Convocation--that there was no idea of reviving the Minor Orders. The lay-reader was to be, in every sense, a layman; and, while he might speak, under proper restrictions, in a consecrated building, he still would speak not "as one having authority," but simply as brother-man to brother-men.

I was admitted to the office of a Diocesan Lay-Reader, in the Private Chapel of the Bishop's House at Kennington, on the 15th of January, 1898, and have been permitted to spend fifteen years of happy service in this informal ministry.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] Cf. Froude's "Short Studies in Great Subjects."

[63] It may perhaps be worth noting that my parents were married, in 1834, by a Special License issued by my grandfather as Abbot of Woburn.

[64] _Letters on the Church and Religion._ Vol. I., p. 385.

[65] Pottesgrove.

[66] J. H. Shorthouse--Introduction to George Herbert's _Temple_.

[67] _Influences of the Holy Spirit._ University Sermons, Series II.

[68] Charlotte Sophia, d.u.c.h.ess of Beaufort, a leader of the Evangelical party, died 1854--aged eighty-four.

THE END