Part 17 (1/2)
Perhaps it was just as well for a boy that these glimpses of beautiful worshi+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 cereot 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 worshi+p I am eternally their debtor, and the friends hom I shared them have helped to shape ious 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 froard 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 fro, ”The believer's conflict with Sin is all stuff”
This teaching had its natural consequences, and theyear ere touched by the much more wholeso holly free from the perilous stuff which had defiled the previous h it shook the faith of some who had cultivated the husk rather than the kernel of ritualisenerous tribute paid by Dr Liddon on Whitsun Day, 1876:
”Last year two Aiven, together with earnest belief in so spirit of fearless enterprise Certainly they had no such credentials of an Apostolic Ministry as a well-instructed and believing Churchht which God had given thereat cities with the ardour of Apostles; spoke of a higher world to thousands who pass the greater part of life in drea only of this; and made many of us feel that e them at least the debt of an example, which He Who breatheth where He listeth ive us”[67]
When I ca Oxford, ”the world was all before me where to choose,” and Ion my habitual place of worshi+p St Paul's Cathedral had lately awoke froory, and Liddon, was beginning to show the perfection of worshi+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 theto offer in the way of see the Gospel at St Paul's, Dean Stanley at West the fine rhetoric and dubious history which were his substitutes for theology, and with reference to which a Jewish lady said to hteen years, and I have never heard a word frohan 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 worshi+p refined, artistic, and rather prim St Alban's, Holborn, ”the Mother and Mistress” of all ritualistic churches, coelical 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 arrave 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 nificence 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-truun to reverberate the rolling eloquence of Dr Farrar At St Peter's, Eaton Square, ae Wilkinson, afterward Bishop of St
Andrews, doation which, having regard to the numbers, wealth, and importance of the men who composed it, was the reat noblemen, landed proprietors, Members of Parliament, soldiers, lawyers, doctors, and ”men about toere 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 chane 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 Confirood exahbours by fifty years' indifference” ”Sell that diamond cross which you carry with you into the sin-polluted ative 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 hen I first knew it, and when I compare ood elicals, with their plain teaching about sin and forgiveness, are gone, and their place is taken by the professors of a flabby latitudinarianisnores sin--the central fact of human life--and therefore can find no place for the Atonely 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 conificant iradually discovered that they have an indigenous ritual of their own--dignified, expressive, artistic, free froets--and that they have no need to iiulish Rite is one of the wholeso, 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 shaainst a too boisterous rhetoric No doubt a really fine extereat work of art; but for nine preachers out of ten the ards 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 ” waiting for them; or because they think they can make that profession--that, and none other--coence; or because they iine that a scantier talent and abe made to suffice” ”These notions,” he added, ”are out of date, one Act of Disestablishment would annihilate them” That Act of Disestablish for it Even the ”Fa men seek Holy Orders because they ork Clerical dreaence, have gone out for ever; and the English Church has in her commissioned service a band of lory to any Church in Christendoo, has not ht 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 ive And I should think that no e has spoken on so s But all this was desultory business, and I always desired a ation