such awful responsibility to God, as a council of the Bishops of His
Church. Since the Holy Spirit presided in the first council of
Jerusalem, faithful souls have looked with deep interest to the
deliberations of those whom Christ has made the shepherds of His flock,
and to whom he gave His promise, "Lo, I am with you always to the end of
the world." The responsibility is greater when division has marred the
beauty of the Lamb's Bride. Our words and acts will surely hasten or
(which God forbid) retard the reunion of Christendom. Feeling the grave
responsibility which is imposed on me to-day, my heart cries out as did
the prophet's, "I am a child and cannot speak." Pray for me, venerable
brethren, that God may help me to obey His word--"Whatsoever I command,
that shalt thou speak." I would kneel with you at our Master's feet and
pray that "the Holy Spirit may guide us into all truth." We meet as the
representatives of national Churches; each with its own peculiar
responsibility to God for the souls intrusted to its care; each with all
the rights of a national Church, to adapt itself to the varying
conditions of human society; and each bound to preserve the order, the
faith, the sacraments, and the worship of the Catholic Church, for which
it is a trustee. As we kneel by the table of our common Lord we
remember separated brothers. Division has multiplied division until
infidelity sneers at Christianity as an effete superstition, and the
modern Sadducee, more bold than his Jewish brother, denies the existence
of God. Millions for whom Christ died have not so much as heard that
there is a Saviour. It will heal no divisions to say, Who is at fault?
The sin of schism does not lie at one door. If one has sinned by
self-will, the other has sinned as deeply by lack of charity and love.
The way to reunion looks difficult. To man it is impossible. No human
_eirenicon_ can bridge the gulf of separation. There are unkind words to
be taken back, alienations to be healed, and heartburnings to be
forgiven. Where we are blind, God can make a way. When "the God of
Peace" rules in all Christian hearts, our Lord's prayer will be
answered--"That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in
Thee, that they all may be one in Us, that the world may believe that
Thou hast sent Me." No one branch of the Church is absolutely by itself
alone the Catholic Church; all branches need reunion in order to the
completeness of the Church. There are blessed signs that the Holy
Spirit is quickening Christian hearts to seek for unity. We all know
that this divided Christianity cannot conquer the world. At a time when
every form of error and sin is banded together to oppose the kingdom of
Christ, the world needs the witness of a united Church. Men must hear
again the voice which peals through the lapse of centuries bearing
witness to the "faith once delivered to the saints," or else for many
souls there will be only rationalism and unbelief--while this sad, weary
world, so full of sin and sorrow, is pleading for help, it is a wrong to
Christ and to the souls for whom He died that His children should be
separated in rival folds. As baptised into Christ we are brothers.
Notwithstanding the hedges of human opinions which men have builded in
the garden of the Lord, all who look for salvation alone through faith
in Jesus Christ do hold the great verities of Divine faith. The
opinions which separate us are not necessary to be believed in order to
salvation. The truths in which we agree are parts of the Catholic
faith. The Holy Spirit has passed over these human barriers, and set
his seal to the labors of separated brethren in Christ, and rewarded
them in the salvation of many precious souls. The grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the renewing and sanctifying influences of the Holy
Ghost are the same in the peasant in the cottage, and in the emperor on
the throne. They share with us in the long line of confessors and
martyrs for Christ. We would not rob them of one sheaf which they have
gathered in the garner of the Lord. We rejoice that Churches with a
like historic lineage with us are seeking reunion. Churches whose faith
has been dimmed by coldness or clouded by error are being quickened into
new life from the Incarnate Son of God.
Our hearts go out in loving sympathy to the Old Catholics of Europe and
America, whose names always will be linked with Selwyn, Wilberforce, and
Wordsworth, Whittingham, Kerfoot, and Brown, in defence of the faith.
It is with deep sorrow that we remember that the Church of Rome has
separated herself from the teaching of the primitive Church by additions
to the faith once delivered to the saints, and by claiming for its
Bishop prerogatives which belong only to the Divine Head of the Church
While we honor the devotion and zeal of her missionary heroes, and
rejoice at the good works of multitudes of her children, we lament that
lack of charity which anathematizes disciples of Christ who have carried
the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
We bless God's Holy Name for the fraternal work which has been carried
on under the guidance of the see of Canterbury, and which we trust will
lead ancient Churches to a deeper personal faith in Jesus Christ.
We are sad that some of our kinsmen in Christ, children of one mother,
have forsaken her ways. God can over-rule even this sorrow, so that it
shall fall out to the furtherance of the Gospel. They must take with
them precious memories of the love and the faith of the mother whom they
have forsaken, and of the liberty wherewith the truth in Christ has made
her children free--under God these may be a link in the chain of His
providence to the restoration of unity. It is a singular providence
that at this period of the world's history, when marvellous discoveries
have united the people of divers tongues in common interests, He has
placed the Anglo-Saxon race in the forefront of the nations. They are
carrying civilization to the ends of the earth. They are bringing
liberty to the oppressed, elevating the down-trodden, and are giving to
all these divers tongues and kindreds their customs, traditions, and
laws. I reverently believe that the Anglo-Saxon Church has been
preserved by God's Providence (if her children will accept this Mission)
to heal the divisions of Christendom, and lead on in His work to be done
in the eventide of the world. She holds the truths which underlie the
possibility of reunion, the validity of all Christian baptism in the
Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. She ministers the two
sacraments of Christ as of perpetual obligation, and makes faith in
Jesus Christ, as contained in the Catholic Creeds, a condition of
Christian fellowship. The Anglo-Saxon Church does not perplex men with
theories and shibboleths which many a poor Ephraimite cannot speak--she
believes in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in
Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, three Persons and one
God, but she does not weaken faith in the Triune God by human
speculations about the Trinity in Unity. She believes that the sacred
Scriptures were written by inspiration of God, but she has no theory
about inspiration. She holds up the Atonement of Christ as the only
hope of a lost world; but she has no philosophy about the Atonement.
She teaches that it is through the Holy Ghost that men are united to
Christ. She ministers the sacraments appointed by Christ as His
channels of grace; but she has no theory to explain the manner of
Christ's presence to penitent believing souls. She does not explain
what God has explained, but celebrates these Divine mysteries, as they
were held and celebrated for one thousand years after our Lord ascended
into heaven, before there was any East or West arrayed against each
other in the Church of God. Surely we may and ought to be first to hold
up the olive branch of peace over strife, and say, "Sirs, ye are
brethren."
In so grave a matter as the restoration of organic unity, we may not
surrender anything which is of Divine authority, or accept terms of
communion which are contrary to God's Word. We cannot recognize any
usurpation of the rights and prerogatives of national Churches which
have a common ancestry, lest we heal "the hurt of the daughter of my
people slightly," and say "peace, where there is no peace;" but we do
say that all which is temporary and of human choice or preference we
will forego, from our love to our own kinsmen in Christ.
The Church of the Reconciliation will be an historical and Catholic
Church in its ministry, its faith, and its sacraments. It will inherit
the promises of its Divine Lord. It will preserve all which is catholic
and Divine. It will adopt and use all instrumentalities of any existing
organization which will aid it in doing the Lord's work. It will put
away all which is individual, narrow, and sectarian. It will concede to
all who hold the faith all the liberty wherewith Christ hath made His
children free.
_Missions_.--In the presence of brethren who bear in their bodies the
marks of the Lord Jesus, I hardly know how to clothe in words my
thoughts as I speak of Missions. The providence of God has broken down
impenetrable barriers--the doors of hermit nations have been opened;
commerce has bound men in common interests, and so prepared "a highway
for our God"--Japan, India, China, Africa, Polynesia, amid the solitudes
of icy north, and in the lands of tropic suns, world-wide there are
signs of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The veil which has
so long blinded the eyes of the ancient people, our Lord's kinsmen
according to the flesh, is being taken away. We bless God for the good
example of martyrs like Patteson, Mackenzie, Parker, Hannington, and
others, who have laid down their lives for the Lord Jesus. We rejoice
that our branch of the Church has been counted worthy to add to the
names of those who "came out of great tribulation, and have washed their
robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." "A great and
effectual door is opened." There is no country on the earth where we
may not carry the Gospel. The wealth of the world is largely in
Christian hands. The Church only needs faith to grasp the opportunity
to do the work.
In the presence of fields so white for the harvest, we must ask, "Lord,
what wilt Thou have me to do?"
1. There must be unceasing, prevailing intercessory prayer for those
whom we send out to heathen lands. The hearts of all Christian nations
were turned with anxious solicitude to that brave servant of God and His
country in Khartoum. Shall we feel less for the servants of Christ who
have given up home and country to suffer and it may be to die for Him?
Some of us remember that when Missions were destroyed, when clouds were
all around us, and the very ground drifting from under our feet, that we
were made brave to work and wait for the salvation of God by the prayers
which went up to God for us. When "prayers were made without ceasing of
the Church unto God," the fast-closed doors of the prison were opened
for the Apostles. It will be so again.
2. There must be the entire consecration of all unto Christ. The wisdom
of Paul and the eloquence of Apollos may plant, but "God alone giveth
the increase." If success comes, if "the rod of the priesthood bud and
blossom and bear fruit," it must be "laid up in the ark of God." He
will not give His glory to another. The work is Christ's. "We are
ambassadors for Him." "I have chosen you and ordained you that ye
should go and bring forth fruit."
3. They who would win souls must have a ripe knowledge of the sacred
Scriptures. "They were written by inspiration of God. . . . that the
man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
Our orders may be unquestioned, our doctrine perfect in every line and
feature, but we shall not reach the hearts of men unless we preach
Christ out of an experimental knowledge of the truths of Divine
Revelation. There is but one Book which can bring light to homes of
sorrow, one light to scatter clouds and darkness, one message to lead
wandering folk unto God. This blessed Book will be to every soldier and
lonely missionary what it was to Livingstone dying alone in Africa, or
to Captain Gardiner dead on the desolate shores of Patagonia, whose
finger pointed to the words, "The Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from
all sin."
4. We must love all whom Christ loves. We may have the gift of
teaching, we may understand all mysteries, we may have all knowledge, we
may bestow all our goods to the poor, we may even give our bodies to be
burned, but without that love which comes alone from Christ, we shall be
"as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." With St. Paul we must say,
"Whereinsoever Christ is preached I do rejoice, and will rejoice."
5. Above all gifts we need the baptism of the Holy Ghost. When this
consecration comes there will be no cry of an empty treasury. We shall
no longer be weary with the bleating of lost sheep, to whom we have to
say, I have no means and no shepherd to send you.
_Christian Work_--We rejoice at every sign that Christians realize that
wealth is a sacred trust, for which they shall give an account. We
rejoice more that they are giving that personal service which is a law
of His kingdom. Men and women of culture and gentle birth are going
into the abodes of sickness and sorrow to comfort stricken homes and
lead sinful folk to the Saviour. Brotherhoods, Sisterhoods, and
deaconesses are multiplying. Never was there greater need for their
holy work. Many of our own baptized children have drifted away from all
faith. To thousands God is a name, the Bible a tradition, faith an
opinion, and heaven and hell fables. But that which gives us the
deepest sadness and makes all Christian work more difficult is that so
many of those to whom the people look for example have given up the
Bible, the Lord's Day, the house of God, and Christian faith. Alas!
they are telling these weary toilers whose lives are clouded by anxiety
and sorrow that there is no hereafter. "They know not what they do."
They are sowing to the wind and will reap the whirlwind. May God show
them the danger before if is too late! The loss of faith is the loss of
everything; without it morality becomes prudence or imprudence. When
the tie which binds man to God is broken all other ties snap asunder.
No nation has survived the loss of its religion. We are appalled at the
mad cry of anarchy which tramples all which we hold dear for time and
eternity under its feet. We cannot look into its face without seeing
the lineaments of that man of sin who "opposeth and exalteth himself
above all that is called God and worshipped." Antichrist is he who
usurps the place of Christ. "He is antichrist who denieth the Father
and the Son." Our hearts go out in pity for those whose mechanical
ideas of the universe may be a revolt from a mechanical theology which
has lost sight of the Fatherhood of God. We stand where two ways meet.
We shall take care of the people or the people will take care of us.
The people are the rulers; the power of the future is in their hands.
Limit their horizon to this life, let penury, sickness, and sorrow
change the man to a wolf, let him know no God and Father Who hears his
cry, no Saviour to help, no brother to bind up his wounds, let there be
on the one side wealth and luxury and wanton waste, and on the other
side poverty, misery, and despair, and there will be, as there has been,
a cry for blood. We wonder why men pass by the Church to found clubs
and brotherhoods and orders. They will have them, and they ought to
have them, until the Church is in its Divine love what its Founder
designed it to be--the brotherhood in Christ of the children of our God
and Father. What the world needs to-day is not alms, not hospitals, not
homes of mercy alone. It needs the spirit and the power of the love of
Christ. It needs the voice, the ear, the hand, and the heart of Christ
seen in and working in His children. No powers of government, no
_prestige_ of social position, no prerogatives of Churchly authority can
meet the issues of this hour; we have waited already too long.
Brotherhood men will have, and it will be the brotherhood of the
commune, or brotherhood in Christ as the children of our God and Father.
Infidelity answers no questions, heals no wounds, fulfils no hopes. The
Gospel will do, is doing, to-day what it has done through all the ages:
leading men out of sin and darkness and despair to the liberty of sons
of God.
In a day of division and unrest there will be many questions which
perplex earnest souls. Some will dwell on the subjective side of the
faith, others will think most of its manifestations in the life. These
questions will affect organization for Christian work, public worship,
and find expression in the ritual of the Church. There is no room for
differences if Christ be first, Christ be last, and Christ in
everything. The ritual of the Church must be the expression of her
life. It must symbolize her faith; it must be subject to her authority.
As the years go by worship will be more beautiful. The "garments of the
king's daughter may be of wrought gold," and she "clothed in raiment of
needlework," but "she will have a name that she liveth and is dead,"
unless her "fine linen is the righteousness of the saints." Lastly, to
none is this council so dear as to those whose lives are spent in the
darkness of heathenism, or who have gone out to new lands to lay
foundations for the work of the Church of God. In loneliness, with
deferred hope, neglected by brethren, your only refuge to cry as a child
to God, it is a joy for you to feel the beating of a brother's heart,
and hear the music of a brother's voice, and kneel with brothers at the
dear old trysting-place, the table of our Lord. Let us consecrate all
we have and are to Him, let us remember loved ones far away, let us
gather all the work we have so long garnered in our hearts and lay it at
his feet. We shall not have met in vain if out of the love learned of
Him we give each to the other, and to all fellow-laborers for Him, a
brother's love, a brother's sympathy, and a brother's prayers. I do not
know how to clothe in words the thronging memories which cluster around
us in this holy place, what searchings of heart, what cries to God, what
communions with Christ, what consolations of the Holy Spirit have been
witnessed in this sacred place. I cannot call over the long roll of
saints, confessors, and martyrs, whose "name are written in the Lamb's
Book of Life." Two names will be remembered to-day by us all. One,
that gentle Archbishop Longley, who in the greatness of his love saw
with a prophet's eye the Mission of the Church and planned these
conferences that our hearts might beat as one in the battle of the last
time. The other, the wisest of counsellors and the most loving of
brethren, the great-hearted Archbishop Tait, whose dying legacy to his
brethren was "love one another." They have finished their course and
entered into rest. A little more work, a few more trials, and we, too,
shall finish our course. We are not two companies, the militant and
triumphant are one. We are the advance and rear of one host travelling
to the Canaan of God's rest. God grant that we, too, may so follow
Christ that we may have an abundant entrance to His eternal kingdom.
V. _SERMON AT THE FOURTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF
ST. ANDREW IN CLEVELAND, OHIO, SEPT. 29, 1889_.
"_God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life_."--ST. JOHN, iii. 16.
SIN, sorrow and death have not been invented by Christian priests. They
are world facts, they belong to every home, and are hid in every man's
heart. There can be no design without a designer, no law without a
lawgiver, no creation without a creator. So I say, with the leading
scientist of England, "God is a necessity of human thought." Is this
God an inexorable ruler, whose right is His infinite might? or is He an
eternal Father, whose might is His infinite right? And so the question
comes home to the heart: Does God care for us? The body is cared for.
Every invention of man ministers to the life that is between the cradle
and the grave. Man has created nothing. The lightning would run its
circuit in the Garden of Eden as well as when Morse made it man's
messenger. The veil has been lifted so that man can look into God's
storehouse and read laws as old as creation. But the body is not the
man. You ask me how do I know I have a soul? I know it as I know I
have a body--by self-consciousness. There is no place in this world
where men are not compelled by absolute necessity to recognize the act
and the will of a soul within, which directs the act. I ask again, does
God care for me? I say it reverently, brother, you cannot conceive of a
God who could create a world like this, if He can feel one throb of pity
for His children, unless you believe He has provided a remedy for sin,
sorrow, and death. The coming of God into the family of man is an
absolute necessity of the very being of God. The incarnation is the
outcome of the possibility that God can love. I turn then to this
record and I ask, is this Jesus the friend that the world has waited for
and looked for? No one that has walked this earth could use the words
which every day rested upon His lips: "I and the God you worship are
one." "I am the bread that is come down from heaven, and the bread I
shall give you is My flesh, and I give it for the life of the world."
"I am the resurrection and the life; if any man shall believe in Me, if
he were dead he shall live"--unless he were God incarnate. The miracles
of Jesus were not violations of the laws of nature; they were the divine
proofs that that God whose hand is behind every law of nature had come
into the world to help those who needed help. When He multiplied bread
in His hands, He did of His own will that which God does when He
multiplies the wheat in the harvest. When He created the wine of Cana,
He did that of His own will which He does when He distills the dewdrop
in the clusters of the vine. But that which unseals my heart, is the
divine compassion, is the tender pity, is the love that never turns from
the weary. If man had invented this Gospel, the story of Mary Magdalene
would never have been in the record. It is not in the wrecks strewn
along the path of life that men would find those they would lift to the
bosom of God. It is the Divine eye that pities, it is the Divine hand
that is reached out to save. I follow Him to the cross, I follow Him to
the grave, where we are going, where our loved ones are sleeping. The
third day He came back from the darkness; He showed men, by the marks of
the nails in His hands and by the print of the spear in His side, that
He was the very Jesus they parted with at the foot of the cross; and He
ascended to heaven to be the friend of any aching heart that needs a
friend at the right hand of God. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a
philosophy, it is not a dogma; it is the story of a Person, a real hand
to grasp, a real Saviour to love, a real God to save. Marvelous as is
this story that never can grow old and will be the burden of the songs
of the redeemed, more wonderful is the Christ of history. Men ask for
proof. You do not ask for proof of a sun when the world is bending low
with golden harvests The other day there was a gathering of great men,
scholars, philosophers. It so happened that one man who had lost his
faith, congratulated his fellows that superstition was dying out, that
the day was at hand when Christianity would be an effete thing of the
past. James Russell Lowell rose, the blood rushing to his cheeks, and
quietly said: "Show me twelve miles square in the world in which I live
where childhood is cared for, where womanhood is reverenced, where old
age is protected, where life and property are absolutely safe, where it
is possible for a decent man to live decently--where the Gospel of Jesus
Christ has not gone before and made that life possible; and then I will
listen to your revilings of my Master." Can I go nearer your heart?
There is a wide difference between men, but there is one side of human
nature that is the same; it is that we call the heart--that which loves,
that which fears, that which suffers, that which is the same in the
poorest laborer that ever handled the spade as in the greatest scholar
that ever graced a university. If we can get the rubbish from the
heart, the good news of God sounds the same to all.