worship 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 worship. 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 God 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
God had given them, they threw themselves on our great cities with the
ardour of Apostles; spoke of a higher world to thousands who pass 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 worship. 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 worship 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 worship; 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 substitutes 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 worship refined, artistic, and
rather prim. St. Alban's, Holborn, "the Mother and Mistress" of all
ritualistic churches, combined Roman ceremonial with the passionately
Evangelical teaching of the greatest extempore preacher I have ever
heard, Arthur Stanton. St. Michael's, Shoreditch, 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 Duchess 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 noblemen, 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 Class 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
latitudinarianism, which ignores sin--the central fact of human
life--and therefore can find no place for the Atonement. Heresy is
preached more unblushingly than it was thirty years ago; and when it
tries to disguise itself in the frippery of æsthetic 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 manuscript 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-classes. 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, Duchess of Beaufort, a leader of the Evangelical
party, died 1854--aged eighty-four.
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