“There is no doubt,” as Lord Russell says, “that concession gives rise
to demands for fresh concession, and it is right that it should be so.
The true limit is, that all it is just to concede should be conceded;
all that it is true to affirm should be affirmed; but that which is
false should be denied.” Besides this power of concession, which she
has in a much greater degree than any other religious body, the English
Church, if she be a Catholic Church, as she pretends to be, has also
greater power of assimilation. Let her not be afraid of those sides
of the truth which have been most prominently put forward by other
religious communities. She can assimilate them if she pleases, and it
is her duty to assimilate whatever is true in them. Her mission in this
world is not to hold her own in the sense of resisting all reform,
of resisting all concession, but her duty and her mission is to go
to the lost people of our country, and of every country where she is
established or where she exists, and to draw those together into her
fold who cannot get into that of other religious bodies, which have
such limits as I have been speaking of to bar the gates of admission.
Her great mission is to seek and save those which are lost in every
community. The highest title of her ministers is _Servi servorum Dei_
(the servants of the servants of God), and, if she remembers this
high mission, if she endeavors by her life to exemplify her Master’s
spirit and to illustrate His life, she never need be afraid of
disestablishment or disendowment. What did the greatest of churchmen
who ever lived say on the point of people carrying on those miserable
squabbles that are dividing us in this day? They were saying, “We are
of Paul,” “We are of Apollos,” “We are of Peter?” and he said, “Who is
Paul? Who is Apollos? Who is Peter?” If you only understand to what an
inheritance you are called to, “all things are yours, whether Paul, or
Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present,
or things to come, all are yours, for ye are Christ’s, and Christ is
God’s.”