SOME THINGS FOR HIGH CHURCHMEN TO THINK ABOUT.
LONDON, _October 3, 1902_.
It does not follow, from what I said in my former letter about
the different forms of service in use among Episcopalians and
Presbyterians, respectively, that the latter necessarily disapprove
of the use of written prayers. So far is this from being the case
that Calvin and Knox themselves wrote liturgies, though neither they
nor their successors believed in the rigid prescription of fixed
forms, but insisted upon ample freedom for the use of such original
prayers as occasion demanded. The Book of Common Prayer itself,
which is the product of every Christian age and Christian people,
including Reformers, Presbyterians, Puritans and Lutherans, as well as
Romanists and Anglicans, and which is used constantly by the Episcopal
churches throughout the English-speaking world, owes no little to the
influence of men of our faith and polity, and especially to that of the
illustrious Genevan reformer, John Calvin. The General Thanksgiving,
called "the chiefest treasure of the Prayer-Book," is said to have been
composed by the Rev. Dr. Edward Reynolds, a distinguished Presbyterian
member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and afterwards Bishop of
Norwich. These prayers, as well as other parts of the Book of Common
Prayer, are constantly used, in whole or in part, by many Presbyterian
ministers when leading the public devotions of their people, and the
more such models of prayer are studied by Presbyterian ministers in
general the sooner will they cease to deserve the reproach that
their manner of conducting this important part of public worship is
sometimes rambling, slovenly and unedifying. No minister of our time
of any denomination was more acceptable and helpful in the conduct
of this part of the service than the late Rev. Dr. Moses D. Hoge, of
Richmond. His prayers were characterized in a preëminent degree by good
taste and propriety of expression, as well as by unction. He was a
diligent student of the best liturgies, such as those of Calvin, Knox
and Cranmer. His biographer, speaking of "the elaborate and laborious
preparation that he made for this service, as evinced by his papers,"
says: "Dr. Hoge's peculiar power in prayer was not merely the result of
what is called the 'gift of prayer.' Not only his celebrated prayers on
great public occasions were carefully written out, but from his early
ministry he wrote prayers for every variety of occasion and service,
and formulated petitions on every variety of topic."
[Sidenote: The Huguenot Presbyterians in Canterbury Cathedral.]
When we visited Canterbury Cathedral, the other day, we were reminded
of another striking proof of the liberty of Presbyterian usage in this
matter. The place is, of course, one that brings to mind innumerable
events of interest, ranging all the way from the tragedy of Thomas a
Becket's death to the comedy of the struggle that took place in St.
Catherine's Chapel, Westminster, in 1176, between the Archbishops of
Canterbury and York, a scuffle which led to the question of their
precedence being decided by a papal edict, giving to one the title of
Primate of all England, to the other that of Primate of England. One
cannot help thinking, in connection with it, of the official titles of
the two great Presbyterian bodies in our country, the technical title
of the Northern Church being the Presbyterian Church in the United
States of America, and the technical title of the Southern Church being
the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Fuller's _Church History_
gives a racy account of the scene referred to: "A synod was called at
Westminster, the Pope's legate being present thereat; on whose right
hand sat Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, as in his proper place.
When in springs Roger of York, and finding Canterbury so seated,
fairly sits him down on Canterbury's lap (a baby too big to be danced
thereon); yea, Canterbury's servants dandled this lap-child with a
witness, who plucked him thence, and buffeted him to purpose." But far
more interesting to us than the story of this undignified behavior on
the part of these two dignitaries, and even more interesting than the
thrilling story of Becket's murder, was the chapel in the crypt, where
for three hundred and fifty years the Huguenots, who were welcomed
by Queen Elizabeth and given the use of this part of the cathedral,
have continued to use the ancient Presbyterian forms of worship which
they brought with them when driven from France by Roman Catholic
persecution. And it is a very interesting fact that the liturgy (in
French) which they use is almost the same as the Book of Common Prayer,
but immensely significant that the congregation continues to observe
the Lord's Supper seated, after the Presbyterian form. The communion
plates and cups, which we had the pleasure of taking up in our hands,
were brought by the refugees to England three hundred and fifty years
ago, but are still in use.
[Sidenote: The Concomitants and the Intoning.]
From what has now been said, it is clear that it is not altogether
the use of the Prayer-Book which gives to the American Protestant
worshipping in an Anglican church that curious feeling of strangeness
and formalism. It is rather the Romish-looking arrangements about
the "altar," the crosses and candles and cloths, the vestments and
processions, the turning of the people towards the east when they
pray, the "vain repetitions" of certain parts of the liturgy, such as
the Lord's Prayer, which sometimes occurs four or five times in one
service, and the "intoning" of the service, that is, the literally
monotonous recitation of the prayers, without any rising or falling
inflection, every word being uttered in precisely the same tone,
without the slightest variation. I do not mean that all these features
always occur in every service. Sometimes one or more of them will
be omitted, such as turning to the east in prayer, or intoning. For
instance, Canon Hensley Henson, whom we heard a short time ago at St.
Margaret's, Westminster, where the late Canon Farrar preached so long
and so brilliantly, and who, though quite radical in some of his views,
is the most thoughtful preacher among the ministers of the Anglican
Church in London at the present time, did not intone the prayers which
he offered, though his assistant did. I do not know whether Canon
Henson's usage is from necessity or choice--whether it is because he
cannot intone or because he does not care to do so, preferring to
address the Almighty in the same natural and expressive tones which he
uses in communications with his fellow-men.
[Sidenote: Canon Hensley Henson at St. Margaret's.]
Canon Henson does not look the least like the typical Englishman. His
appearance is antipodal to that of the beefy, bluff, full-blooded John
Bull. He is slender, clean-shaven, boyish, white, his face "sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of thought." His body may be delicate, but
there is no lack of vigor about his mind. The strength and charm of
his preaching, due chiefly to the freshness of the thought and the
purity and clearness of the language--for he has no marked advantages
of presence or voice or manner--draw great crowds to St. Margaret's.
We had to wait at the door for some time to let the pewholders have a
chance, but when the word was given the crowd at the door poured in
and quickly overflowed all the vacant seating space. Shortly after he
began his sermon, which was read throughout, three ladies rose to leave
the church, and I was not a little astonished to hear him stop and
say, with what I thought was a touch of irritation, "I will wait till
those ladies get out." No doubt it is vexatious to have people leave
the church during the sermon, but no minister has a right to pillory
anybody in that fashion, unless it is somebody who is known to be in
the habit of interrupting the service in that way. The minister has no
right to assume that people are doing a deliberately discourteous or
culpably thoughtless thing. The probability is that one of the ladies
in the group referred to was sick or faint and had to withdraw. This
kind of rudeness may be naturally expected from some of the men who in
our country have done so much to degrade the fine name of "Evangelist,"
but surely one does not expect it from a gentleman like Canon Henson.
[Sidenote: Canon Henson on Anglican Narrowness.]
While bound to criticise Canon Henson for this breach of good manners,
I hasten to express my cordial admiration of his courtesy, courage, and
Christliness in general, and especially of the power of his statement
of the claims of Christian love against the Anglican custom of refusing
to commune with Nonconformists. The most remarkable sermon preached by
any clergyman of the Established Church during our sojourn in England
was a sermon preached by him before the University of Cambridge on the
text, "There shall be one fold and one Shepherd," in which he advocated
the admission of Nonconformists to the sacrament. Hear him:
"The primary need of the hour is more religious honesty. In the
classic phrase of Dr. Johnson, Churchmen beyond all others need 'to
clear their minds of cant.' '_Let love be without hypocrisy_' is
the kindred protest of St. Paul. Bear with me while I bring these
considerations to a very simple, indeed an obvious application. On all
hands there is talk of Christian unity. Not a Conference or a Congress
of Churchmen meets without effusive welcome from Nonconformists. A
few weeks ago I sat in the Congress Hall at Brighton and listened to
a series of speeches by prominent Nonconformists, all expressing the
warmest sentiments of Christian fraternity. I reflected that by the
existing law and current practice of our church all those excellent
orators and their fellow-believers were spiritual outcasts; that, if
they presented themselves for the Sacrament of Unity, they would be
decisively rejected; that, in no consecrated building, might their
voices be heard from the pulpit, though all men--as in the case of Dr.
Dale, of Birmingham--owned their conspicuous power and goodness. The
contradiction came home to my conscience as an intolerable outrage, and
I determined to say here to-day in this famous pulpit, to which your
kindness has bidden me, what I had long been thinking, that the time
has come for Churchmen to remove barriers for which they can no longer
plead political utility, and which have behind them no sanctions in the
best conscience and worthiest reason of our time. I remembered that
in my study, at work in preparation of the sermons which expressed my
obligation as a Christian teacher, I drew no invidious distinctions.
Baxter and Jeremy Taylor, Dale and Gore, Ramsay and Lightfoot,
Döllinger and Hort, George Adam Smith and Driver, Ritschl and Moberley,
Fairbairn and Westcott, Bruce and Sanday, Liddon and Lacordaire, these
and many others of all Christian churches united without difficulty in
the fellowship of sacred science; it was not otherwise in my devotions.
Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Nonconformist were reconciled
easily enough in the privacy of prayer and meditation. The two persons
whom I venerated as the best Christians I knew, and to whom spiritually
I owed most, were not Anglicans. Only in the sanctuary itself was
the hideous discovery vouchsafed that they were outcasts from my
fellowship. I might feed my mind with their wisdom, and kindle my
devotion with their piety, and stir my conscience with their example,
but I might not break bread with them at the table of our common Lord,
nor bear their presence as teachers in the churches dedicated to his
worship. It seemed to me that the love so lavishly expressed in that
Congress Hall must, at least on our side, be a strangely hollow thing.
It is true that the presiding bishop reminded the Nonconformists that
there were doctrinal differences which could not be forgotten or
minimized, but this obstacle was effectively demolished by the debates
of the Congress--debates which revealed the widest possible doctrinal
divergence between men who, none the less, communicated at the same
altars and owned allegiance to the same church."
[Sidenote: What Canon Henson could see in Virginia.]
Such a discourse from such a man in such a place naturally created a
sensation in England. It would not have done so, as to its main point,
in Virginia. Why? Well, the fundamental reason is that the average
Virginia Episcopalian represents a much higher type of Christianity
than the average English churchman, broader, sweeter, truer. Indeed, if
there are in any church anywhere people of lovelier character, truer
charity, and more genuine devotion to our Lord than the evangelical
Episcopalians of Virginia, many of whom it has been my good fortune
to know long and intimately, I have never heard of them. I only wish
the type was more common in some other parts of the country. Now,
the things so trenchantly stated by Canon Henson in the foregoing
excerpt are mere matters of course to the mind of your evangelical Low
Churchman in Virginia. To him it is no uncommon thing to break bread
with Christians of other denominations at the table of our common Lord
or to hear the gospel preached by ministers of other churches from the
pulpits of his own. I have heard it said that this fraternal attitude
is deprecated by some of the younger clergy in Virginia of late, and
that through their opposition this open recognition of other Christian
people and their ministers is less common than it used to be. I should
be sorry to believe it, and I know some facts which seem to disprove
it. Four or five years ago I myself was invited to deliver the Reinicke
Lecture to the students of the Episcopal Seminary at Alexandria, Va.,
and did so with a feeling of as cordial welcome as I had ever received
anywhere in my whole life. I have been repeatedly invited to preach in
Episcopal pulpits. When the General Assembly of our church meets in
Lexington, Va., next May, you may rely upon it Presbyterian ministers
will be invited by the rector of the Episcopal church there to supply
his pulpit on Sunday, just as they are by the pastors of the other
churches. More than that, I have a friend in the Presbyterian ministry,
now a pastor in Baltimore, who not long ago, by invitation of the
vestry of an Episcopal church in a Virginia town, not only occupied the
pulpit and preached, but also wore the surplice and administered the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
[Sidenote: Are Virginia Episcopalians Becoming Less Liberal?]
It may be true that there is a reaction going on even in Virginia
against this spirit of Christian fellowship, and that things of this
kind are less frequent than formerly; but, if so, I am satisfied that
it is a reaction with which the Virginia laymen have nothing to do, and
which they will oppose as soon as they become aware of it,[6] and I am
sure, too, that clergymen will not be lacking who will make a strong
stand against it.
[Sidenote: Decreasing Attendance in the Anglican Churches in London.]
One or two other facts which may well be pondered by High Churchmen
have been brought to light by the census of church attendance in
London, recently taken by the _Daily News_ of that city. The census
shows that, while more than one-half of the five millions of people in
London are Christian worshippers, there has been a decrease in church
attendance of over one hundred thousand since 1886, that this decrease
has been almost entirely in the congregations of the Church of England,
and that the attendance in the Established and Nonconformist churches
is now about equal.
The census shows further that in wealthy districts the Established
Church, as we might expect, has the majority. As was also expected,
Nonconformists have a majority in middle-class districts. But, contrary
to all expectations, Nonconformists are a majority in the working-class
districts and among the very poor. It was often said that only the
ritualists were getting hold of the poor, and many supposed the
Salvation Army was doing great things amongst the lowest people. It is
one of the surprises of the census that ritualism fails to attract the
non-churchgoing classes.
In the proportion of the sexes present, in almost all cases the
Episcopal churches showed two women to one man; in nonconformist
churches the proportion of men was greater, being two men to three
women. Does not this preponderance of men in the nonconformist
congregations indicate clearly that if the Church of England is to
retain her hold upon men she must lay less stress upon the appeal to
the æsthetic sensibilities and more upon the appeal to the mind; that
she must make less of the ornamental features of public worship and
more of the didactic; less of millinery, music and marching, and more
of the preaching of the gospel? As the _British Weekly_ puts it:
"The great means of attracting the people is Christian preaching.
Whenever a preacher appears, no matter what his denomination is, he
has a great audience. Nothing makes up for a failure in preaching. The
churches of all denominations, if they are wise, will give themselves
with increased zeal and devotion to the training of the Christian
ministry. I have no doubt that it is for lack of a trained order of
preachers that the Salvation Army has failed in London. Nor will any
magnificence of ritual or any musical attractions, or any lectures on
secular subjects, permanently attract worshippers. It can be done only
by Christian preaching."
[Sidenote: An Episcopalian Estimate of Presbyterian Preaching.]
In this connection the following clipping from _The Evangelist_ is not
without interest, as showing that both the disease and the remedy are
at least partially recognized by some observers within the English
Church:
"A recent writer in _The Guardian_, one of the leading Church of
England papers, laments the decay of preaching within his own
communion, and is forced to contrast the conditions obtaining in
Presbyterian churches with those which prevail in Episcopalian ones,
to the obvious disadvantage of the latter. While it is true that the
Church of England has some great preachers, as it always has had, the
ordinary village vicar is scarcely mediocre. Such is not the case among
the Presbyterians--in Scotland, with which the writer is familiar--or
in America, Canada, Australia, or in missionary lands, where the same
standards and ideals are in effect. Here are the characteristics of
Presbyterian preaching as described by a Church of England critic:
"'Their ministry lays itself out for the cultivation of prophetical
power, and not without success. In general, they are students of
Hebrew, which the English clergy are not. The consequence is that for a
good Old Testament sermon you must go north of the Tweed. In England we
confine ourselves almost exclusively to the New Testament, not merely
because of its transcendent importance, but because it is ground with
which we are more familiar. But the loss to our people is great.
"'Then, again, the Scottish ministers are students of German theology.
More or less they are at home in the writings of the great German
thinkers, both orthodox and liberal. We, as a rule, are not....
"'One more point. In travelling through Palestine some years ago, with
a view to the study of biblical geography, I was greatly struck with
the preponderance of Scottish ministers who were there on the same
purpose intent. I think it no exaggeration to say that they were in
numbers to the English clergy as five to one. Evidently they regard it
as a necessary part of that same biblical equipment they are so careful
about, that they should with their own eyes realize the scenes of the
sacred narrative. A pilgrimage to the Holy Land is now so easy, and is,
moreover, to any thoughtful Christian teacher so fruitful in results,
that it is a marvel it should not be made an ordinary addition to a
university or theological college course. To any one who will go with
a reverent mind and open eyes, and with his Bible as his Baedeker, it
is an unparalleled experience for life. If it is objected to on the
score of expense, I ask, How do the Presbyterian ministers, and a large
proportion of Nonconformist ministers also, manage to accomplish it?'"
The _Guardian_ itself, in an editorial comment on the decreasing
attendance of men in the Anglican churches, says frankly that a large
number of men are "repelled by the extremely low standard of preaching
which prevails, and the comparative success of Nonconformity may be
due in part to the attention which is devoted to the preparation of
the sermon." "Another source of offence is the over-elaboration of
musical services, and the practical exclusion of the congregation
from any real share in prayer and praise. It is a fatal policy which
drives the devout but unmusical away from our churches to chapels in
which they can find greater simplicity and greater heartiness. One
of the surprises of the census has been that the Nonconformists have
been found to be strong not only in middle-class districts, but in the
regions where poverty abounds. The poor, we believe, are attracted by
greater simplicity, and it must be acknowledged that the services of
our Prayer-Book are difficult for the uninstructed to follow and to
appreciate. There is a stage at which a greater elasticity of worship
is needed, and for this we make no adequate provision."
According to the latest statistics, the relative strength of the
Established Church and the free evangelical churches is as follows:
Sittings. Communicants.
Established (estimated), 7,127,834 2,050,718
Free, 8,171,666 2,010,530
S. S. Teachers. S. S. Scholars.
Established, 206,203 2,919,413
Free, 391,690 3,389,848
FOOTNOTE:
[6] _December, 1903._--It was an immense satisfaction to me to learn,
on my return to America, that in the matter of the proposed change in
the name of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the laity had saved the
day and decisively defeated the clerical delegates who represented
the pro-Catholic sentiment, and wished to call their denomination
the American Catholic Church, and thus make it appear that there was
closer sympathy between Episcopacy and Romanism than between Episcopacy
and Protestantism. In one diocese in particular, in which I have
always felt a peculiar interest, although the Bishop in his opening
address made a strong plea for the change, and although he carried the
clergy with him, he and they were overwhelmingly defeated by the lay
delegates. Would it not be a singular situation if the clergy, the
official leaders of the people in spiritual things, should come to
stand as a class for all that is reactionary or bigoted or trivial,
while the people themselves represented the real spirit of Christ?
There may be such a tendency on the part of the clergy in other
dioceses, but I can hardly believe that it is true of those in Virginia.