CHAPTER IX.

[19]I mean of course Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, whichalonethe Church of England recognizes as Christian Sacraments,Sacramenta Evangelica, "Sacraments of the Gospel" (see Art. xxv., par. 2).

[20]Certa testimonia, efficacia signa(Art. xxv.). It is worth the while to point out that a "sign" is "effectual" when iteffectually does the work of a sign, not some quite different work. A seal is an effectual seal, not because, conceivably, its matter could be used as a powerful medicine, but because,attached to its document, it effectually seals the document's validity. A seal is in this respect a special sort of "effectual sign." And so are the Sacraments.

[21]See the Parker Society's collection of authors for Bullinger'sDecades, or Doctrinal Sermons; officially recognized as a body of divinity by the Church of England in Elizabeth's reign.

MISTAKES ABOUT CHURCH DOCTRINE.

While on the subject of Church Doctrine, I may go a little further, and remind you how very likely you are to discover in your rounds many mistakes about both the doctrine and the government of the Church of England. I have had considerable experience of such questions in the way of private pastoral ministry; I havefound pious dissenters, or church-people whom they had influenced, fully persuaded that the Church of England teaches unconditional regeneration in the hour of Baptism, that she teaches at least a near approach to Transubstantiation, that she entrusts to her priests the power of conferring or withholding the divine forgiveness, and that, officially and in set terms, she "unchurches" all communities not episcopally organized.[22]It is well to be quite sure that these beliefs about the Church are mistakes, provably such, in the light of the Prayer Book and Articles, and of history. It has been my happiness to bring some such questioners as I have described to "sincere and conscientious communion with" the Church of England, in a loyalty which leaves ample room for loving sympathy with all true Christians. And the chief means has been the production of proof that the Church herself, as distinguished from particular teachers and leaders in the Church, does not teach the tenets alleged.

[22]As regards the Scottish and Continental Protestant Churches it is not too much to say that, with the very rarest exceptions, English Church writersof all schoolsregarded them as "Sister Churches of the Reformation"—till about 1830.

DEFECTIVE VIEWS OF SIN.

But to come back to matters more primary than even these; I must remind my younger Brother that there is, all around him, in the average circles of even church-going people, a sorrowfully faint insight into the sinfulness ofSin; into the terrible realities of itsguiltbefore God (a point too often absent from even earnest modern teaching), and of itspower; yes, and into its truenature, as it comes out, not in outbursts of word or deed, or in practices which public opinion condemns, but in imagination, in desire, in tone. It may surprise us (when we think how very elementary are the spiritual principles involved), but I fear it is a fact, that sin is regarded by vast numbers of church-people (I am not thinking at all of "the lapsed masses" now) as a matter of little importance if it does not come out in some very positive form. Multitudes among us are quite insensible to the spiritual penetration of the law of God, and have never given a thought to the question of a heart-surrender to His will in everything, and the sin of merely withholding that surrender.

Then, to take another primary subject of adifferent class; there is a wide and general ignorance of the great lines of Christian Evidence, and a large open door accordingly for the active attacks of shallow, or subtle, unbelief. Few have ever been taught in any definite way the supreme significance in this respect of the fact of the Lord's Resurrection, and its mighty walls of proof; and the reasons for our belief that the Bible is indeed not of man but of God; the witness of history to prophecy; and so on.

LET US DROP SEEDS OF TEACHING.

I owe an almost apology for this long talk about subjects of doctrine, and practice, and evidence. But I have kept all along the purpose of this chapter in view. I wish to remind my Brethren how very much they may do, in the course of visitation, todrop seedsof fact, of truth, of principle, in careful, thoughtful words, the product of private reading and reflection, called out by some natural occasion. Undoubtedly, the subjects I have outlined are themes for the pulpit, and for the Bible class, as well as for the visit. But my feeling is that the visit gives opportunities quite of its own for didactic work. We ought to be "natural"everywhere; but we are sometimes suspected, or imagined, to be less so in public than in private; and besides, in private we give and take; we are open to question and answer; and this may give quite special advantage to the word spoken, quietly and pleasantly, but pointedly, in the pastoral interview.

"PURCHASE THE OPPORTUNITY."

"The priest's lips should keep knowledge." [Mal. ii. 7.] The Clergyman should be ready everywhere to be the teacher on the great subjects which he is supposed to make his own. He will never intrude instruction, or parade it; but he will everywhere be on the watch for the occasion for it, ἐξαγοραζόμενος τὸν καιρόν, "purchasing the opportunity," [Eph. v. 10.] at the cost of care.

VISITATION OF THE SICK.

And here I may come again to that important branch of visitation, the visitation of the sick. The Church, as we well know, provides a Form of Visitation; most helpful and suggestive in its principles and outline for all. But it is, as you are aware,imposedby the Canon (lxvii.) only on such Clergymen (very scarce personages) as have no licence to preach. As a fact, we Presbyters are left to our own discretion in this sacred part of our work; and that discretion we should seek prayerfully to cultivate. How different are the circumstances in each one of an average series of sick-visits! As I write the words, such a series from my own past days rises up before me; and I transcribe a few recollections from the book of memory.

A SERIES OF VISITS.

W.S. is a retired tradesman, a thoughtful and rather reticent man; brought up a Socinian, and professedly such still. I am trying to lay siege to him, not without merciful tokens of hope from the Lord. And the simple plan is, not to open the controversy between Socinus and Scripture, but to arrange that each visit shall have its short Scripture reading, its friendly talk, and its prayer, all bearing mainly on the deadliness of sin and the wonder and glory of salvation. I happen to know that the married daughter of W.S., a very intelligent woman, was brought from heresy to a divine Saviour's feet by means of a sermon, not on Christ's Godhead, but on the sinfulness of sin.

T.H. is a sturdy old blacksmith, old enough to have been bred in the infidel school of Carlile (quite another person than Carlyle), andsteeped in old-fashioned Chartism. He always has the newspaper on his now helpless knees, never the Bible; but he almost always has some Bible difficulty ready for me. It is pleasant to be able this afternoon to show him, holding the page up before his eyes, that his last stumbling-block is one of his own (or his friends') bold invention. He meets civility always civilly, and never resents a natural transition from the last bit of politics to the Gospel. But it is a hard, sad case. The Lord only knows how the apparently motionless conscience fares.

T.G. is a fine, manly artizan, a coach-painter, scarcely yet in middle life; lately the somewhat bitter and very self-satisfied critic of his good and devoted wife's simple faith. I have had rather discouraging talks with T.G. before to-day; but now he is very ill, and a few Sunday afternoons ago he sent across the road for the Curate, who to his own solemn joy found him broken down in unmistakable conviction of sin, asking what he must do to be saved. It is a blessed thing to visit him now, for already the rays of the eternal sun areshining between the clouds of a deeply genuine repentance; and the visitor's task is plain,—

"To teach him all the mercy, while he shows him all the sin."

Soon it will be my happiness, I hope, to administer to him, as a penitent believer, with his now happy wife and a faithful friend, the precious Communion; and I look forward to see him depart in due time in the peace of God, to be with Christ, for whom already he has learnt to testify.

Then comes another visit, to one of our "bettermost" neighbours; this door bears, or ought to bear, the proverbial brass knocker. But be the door what it may be, there is great need and great mercy inside it. The dear man, W.T., lately in active professional life in the home civil-service, is sinking under the most agonizing of human maladies, and it is very near the close; this is the second visit to-day, in his urgent need. But, blessed be God, grace, once absent, has found its way through the terrible obstacle of pain, and his scarcely articulate utterance—intelligible to his visitor only because now so familiar—speaks of the joy and rest of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the sufferer's longing for the salvation of another soul, a soul very dear to him.[23]

[23]Wonderful to say (it is to me very wonderful), I have known more than one bright conversion take place amidst the untold pangs of such an illness.

Such visits tell upon the heart, and upon the head, and perhaps the round among the suffering has been long enough to-day. To-morrow we will try to get a quiet half-hour with W.R., a shopkeeper, sinking in consumption; a man of no common natural refinement and thoughtfulness, but long troubled with that sort of scepticism which is generated (who knows in how many cases?) by the mysteries, not of God's revelation, but of His providence. For him, too, the visitor's business is to lay a gentle siege, "here a little, and there a little," trying never to lose patience with objections and difficulties, but rather to sympathize with themas to their pains, and then to suggest the answer in Jesus Christ. And oh joy, the Lord is finding the way in, through His Word, and the clouds are passing away from theman's mind, and soul, and forehead, as he is getting to "knowWhomhe believes."[24]

[24]I possess a beautiful little Bible given me by dear W.R., who has now been many years with Christ. Such a gift is a very sacred treasure to a Pastor.

Then we can walk round the corner—how the beloved streets and lanes rise up in memory before me as I write!—to see J.F., a young printer, dying in the brightest joy and peace, won from carelessness to a solid faith by the work and witness of earnest dissenting Christians, but glad and thankful to receive the Communion of the Lord from his dear Vicar, or his Vicar's son. And then five minutes' walk takes us to a tiny alley in the denser part of the widespread parish, where a poor life-long cripple, W.G., lies day and year upon hislittlebed—little, because though the head is full-sized, and the brain within it is an adult brain, the body has never grown since childhood. Here is a case for steady sympathy, and also for gentle and steady aiming at instruction as well as comfort. And then, not far off, we will take the privilege of a quiet visit to an aged Christian woman, J.N. In long past yearsloving saints found her pining in extreme poverty, and sunk in a dull, despairing indifference. Now it is a great spiritual help to sit in her little attic beside her, and draw her on to speak (she is no loquacious person by nature, and needs drawing on) about the needs of the soul, and the glorious fulness of the Son of God. She is no common Christian; not only in life but in thought this appears. At the time of her conversion, she could not read a letter. Since then, she has repeatedly read with great spiritual insight and enjoyment Archbishop Leighton's Commentary on St Peter. Here is a room in which the visitor learns quite as much as he teaches. And so he does in a still smaller and much darker room, three minutes' distant from J.N.'s. There lies blind R.W., in his strong days the head-servant of an old farmer of our village, and to all appearance as little capable of spiritual interests as the animals he fed. But on his sick-bed, the comfortless couch of many declining years, a loving visitor, a devoted lady-worker, has found him out, and the Lord has found him out through her. He neverknew A from B in his life, and never will. But do you want proof of the power of grace to quicken mind, as well as to convert soul? Come with me up the stairs into dear old R.W.'s darksome room, and in the course of our talk you shall hear his quavering voice saying things, quite humbly and naturally, about the glory of his Saviour, and the way of salvation, and the joy and peace of his heart in God, which are not only loving ascriptions but clear and sound divinity. It is good to be with him.

I have spoken mainly, though not only, of cases of warm interest and encouragement. Of course there are sorrowful and heart-trying visits to the sick. One such, to poor old T.H., I have described. And we might see the much older A.C., a woman of near ninety years, who seems impenetrable to the true light, though grateful and kindly towards the visitor; and B.F., older still, ninety-six, so vain of her age that it is difficult to get her off the beloved theme; and J.G., a steady, self-righteous man; and C.W., clever, and disposed to scoff; and T.B., known to be leading a very evil life, civil, but immovable.

RESOLVE TO BE A VISITOR.

The work is very various, very interesting, and full of the call for "long patience," while full, too, of blessed encouragements and surprises. But "the time would fail me." Ah, let me not close without saying to my younger Brother how deeply humbling to me are the memories of those pastoral days, and humbling above all as I look back and wish now, in vain for ever, that I hadvisited more, among both the sick and the whole. "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord"; "To Thee only it appertaineth to forgive sins."

My dear younger Brother, resolve that by the grace of God you will be a visitor, whatever else you are, or are not. And be a visitor who respects his neighbours, who feels with them, whose heart lives with them, and who on the other hand watches over his call to instruct them, to clear up and deepen their thoughts of self, and God, and life, and death, and salvation, and duty, and eternity.

A CONVERSION AT EIGHTY-SIX.

"Go, labour on; spend and be spent." There is a sure reward, seen or not seen as yet; and often the most unlikely quarter shall prove the quarter of blessing, and the last shallbe first. One recollection, drawn out of my earliest childhood, shall close this wandering talk. It is of dear old Mrs E., then aged quite eighty-six. She must have been born under the rule of King George the Second. A farmer's widow, she had been absolutely and perfectly respectable all her life, and was entirely satisfied with her state and her prospects for the next world. My dear Father, and his devoted Curate of those days, the Rev. W.D., not seldom saw her, but without leaving any apparent impression on her conscience. At last that conscience woke. The Curate read a chapter, in her hearing, to her pious invalid daughter, who had sought her mother's conversion for years in prayer, and hadlivedtrue Christianity all the while in her mother's home. And on a sudden, something in that chapter (it was the third of Romans) said to the old lady, "You have lived eighty years in the world, and never done a single thing for the love of God." The conviction was tremendous in its depth and quality, and it lasted long. But a very bright light followed, and shone with holy fulness through what proved to beseveral remaining years of beautiful old age. She rejoiced in her adorable Saviour with joy unspeakable, a joy meanwhile perfectly sober and full of the good fruits of loving righteousness. She died at last, singing, or rather musically murmuring,Rock of Ages.[25]And my recollection, across seven-and-forty years, is of that dear old lady of the past, sitting upright in her parlour, as my Mother led me in to see her, and wearing a look upon her face which I can only now describe as a remembered ray of light.

[25]My dear Father, many years ago, published a full narrative of Mrs E.'s last days, in a little volume of pastoral recollections,Pardon and Peace.

"I love, I love my Master;I will not go out free;For He is my Redeemer,He paid the price for me."I would not leave His service,It is so sweet and blest,And in the weariest momentsHe gives the truest rest."

Miss F.R. Havergal.

CONTENTS

THE CLERGYMAN AND THE PRAYER BOOK.

Dear pages of ancestral prayer,Illumined all with Scripture gold,In you we seem the faith to shareOf saints and seers of old.Whene'er in worship's blissful hourThe Pastor lends your heart a voice,Let his own spirit feel your power,And answer, and rejoice.

In the present chapter I deal a little with the spirit and work of the Clergyman in his ministration of the ordered Services of the Church, reserving the work of the Pulpit for later treatment.

THE PRAYER BOOK NOT PERFECT BUT INESTIMABLE.

Let me begin by a brief reminder of the greatness of the spiritual treasure which we possess in the Book by which we minister. How shall I speak of it as I would? "The Prayer Book isn't inspired, I know," said an old coast-guardsman some years ago to a friend of mine, "but, sure and certain,'tis as bad as inspired!" "I find the Liturgy," said another veteran, Charles Simeon, "as superior to all modern compositions as the work of a philosopher on any deep subject is to that of a schoolboy who understands scarcely anythingabout it." "All that the Church of England needs to make her the glory of all Churches," said Simeon's friend, the late Rev. William Marsh, "is the spirit of her own services."

I am not so blind as to maintain that our Book is ideally perfect, and that its every sentence is infallible. It is not quite literally "as bad as inspired." After using it in ministration for nearly five-and-twenty years I own to the wish that here and there the wording, or the arrangement, or the rubrical direction, had been otherwise in some detail, perhaps in some important detail. I do certainly wish very earnestly indeed that the Revisers of 1661-2 had expressed themselves more happily in that Rubric about "Ornaments" which within recent years has proved—little as they expected it, or intended it, to do so—such a fertile field of discord. But for all this, my five-and-twenty years' ministerial use of the Prayer Book has only deepened my sense of its inestimable general value and greatness.

If a temperate and equitable revision were possible at the present time I should welcome the prospect on most accounts. But it seemsto me plain that it isnotat present possible. And meanwhile I thank God from my inmost heart for the actual Prayer Book as a whole.

Let me point out a very few of the claims of the Book on our love and gratitude; and now specially in view of what we may sometimes hear said about it by Christians not of our own Church.

i. Observe its profound and searchingspirituality. It is quite true that in a certain sense the Book takes all who use it for granted; it assumes them to be worshippers in spirit and in truth; it does not pray for them, or lead them in public worship to pray for themselves, as for those who do not know and love God, who have not come to Christ. But then what form of public, common prayer can well do this? And meantime the Book does, especially in the service of the Communion, and particularly in that too often omitted part of it, the "longer Exhortation," beginningDearly beloved in the Lord, throw the worshipper back upon himself for self-examination. This is just the method of St Paul in his addresses to the Christian community. Hewrites to all as "saints," "faithful," "elect," "sanctified." What does he mean? Does he mean that those glorious terms are satisfied by the fact that all have been baptized, or even that all are communicants at the sacred Table? Not at all. He takes all for granted as being what they profess to be, when he greets the community [Rom. viii. 9; 1 Cor. xvi. 22; 2 Cor. xiii. 5; Gal. v. 6.]. But he says also, "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His"; "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema"; "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you—except ye be ἀδόκιμοι, counterfeits?" "In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love." Such sentences throw a flood of holy and searching light on the sense in which St Paul "took them all for granted." And the Prayer Book is in true harmony with both parts of the Apostle's method.

WHAT IT TAKES FOR GRANTED IN THE WORSHIPPER.

And then, think what the Bookdoesthus searchingly and helpfully "take for granted." It assumes a deep sense of sin, such a senseas is indeed "grievous unto us." It takes for granted our deep desire both for pardon and for spiritual victory. It assumes our desire to be "kept this day without sin"; to "follow the only God with pure hearts and minds"; to "be continually given to all good works"; to "be enabled by the Lord to live according to His will"; to have "all our doings ordered by His governance"; to have "such love to Him poured into our hearts that we may love Him above all things." It assumes our desire to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest all the Holy Scriptures." It assumes our readiness to "suffer on earth for the testimony of the truth, looking up steadfastly to heaven, and by faith beholding the glory that shall be revealed." It assumes our adoring devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ, and that we present "ourselves, our souls and bodies, a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice," to our God.

I heard a few years ago of a remarkable case of secession from the Church of England. A thoughtful and conscientious man left us because, as he said, he could no longer seem to concur in such words of intense spiritual realityand surrenderwhile he did not fully mean them. On his principles, I fear there ought to be a large exodus from our Church. But that is not the fault of the Church, or of the Church's Book. It is the fault of the worshippers, and it is a solemn call to us not so much to criticize the Liturgy as to "examineourselves."

THE PRAYER BOOK AS A WEAPON.

In this connexion I am reminded of a characteristic saying of an honoured friend of mine, now at rest with the Lord after a long and faithful ministry. He was one of those men who instinctively speak strongly, perhaps sometimes roughly; but such roughness is often useful. "The Prayer Book," said he, "is always handy to throw at people's heads"; figuratively, of course, not literally. He slung it out in vigorous quotations from his pulpit, point blank at the unreality, and formalism, and pharisaism, and love of this present evil world, which too often underlies the most precise "churchmanship" and the most punctual church-going.

My old friend's strong word may carry a suggestion to some of my younger Brethren; though I would advise their deferring aprojectileuse of the Book till they are seniors in the Church. But the youngest Minister of Christ, in all loving modesty, may reach many a conscience (beginning with his own) by well-timed words from the Prayer Book, showing what the Book takes for granted in the worshipper.

SCRIPTURALITY OF THE BOOK.

ii. Next I point to the abundant and loyalScripturalityof the Prayer Book. I venture to say that no Service Book in the world is quite like ours in this. This characteristic lies on the surface; in the wealth of Scripture poured out in every service before the people; Psalms, Lessons, Canticles, Epistle, Gospel, Introductory Sentences, Decalogue, Comfortable Words. At the Font, in the Marriage Ordinance, at the Grave, it is still the same; Scripture, in our mother tongue, full and free, runs everywhere. And below the surface it is the same. Take almost any set of responses, or any single prayer, and see the strong warp of the Bible in it all.

*"THE PREFACE" ON THE BIBLE.

And then go for a moment from the Services to the Preface of the Book, and see what the Fathers of our English Liturgy thought and intended about the place of the Holy Scriptures in worship.I hope my Brethren have all read that "Preface" with care; I mean, of course, the whole length of introductory matter which precedes the Tables of Lessons; nothing of it later than 1662, most of it (indeed all but the first section, written by Sanderson) dating in substance from 1549.[26]I hope it has all been read by you; but I am not quite certain of it, so little attention is at present called to those important and authoritative statements of principle. But however well you may already know them, they will repay another reading; and so you will be reminded again that the really first thought in the minds of the men who gave us our Prayer Book in English was to let "the Word of Godhave free course and be glorified" [2 Thess. iii. 1.] in all the worship of the people. Those men were learned in the past, and they reverenced history and continuity. But they reverenced still more the heavenly Word, and where they found the ample reading and hearing of it impeded by even immemorial usage, the usage had to give way, without reserve, to the Bible.

[26]I do not forget that some modifications in detail, as to the Lectionary, are quite recent.

Yes, the Prayer Book is, whatever else it is, searchingly, overflowingly Scriptural; full of the Bible, full of Christ. Let us drink its principles and its manner in, that they may come out in our life and our preaching.

And now for a few simple practical suggestions on our ministerial use of the Book.

USE THE BOOK WITH DILIGENCE.

i. First, I would entreat my younger Brother to resolve in the Lord's name that his own use of the Prayer Book in his ministration be to him a thing of sacred importance and personal reality. Weneedto form such a resolve deliberately, and to watch and pray over it. Do we not know what strong temptations lie in the other direction? We have to use these forms over and over again; before many years are over perhaps we could "take" a whole service, except the appointed Scriptures, without looking at the book: is it not too easy under such conditions to read as those who read not, and to pray as those who pray not? And all too often the Clergyman, younger or older, allows himself almost consciously, almost on principle, to form an inadequate estimate of his Prayer-Book work. Perhaps he regards the prayersas in such a sense "the voice of the Church" that he is willing to be little more than a machine through which the Church offers them. Or perhaps on the other hand he lets himself forget their immense importance, under a strong, and just, sense of the sacred importance of the Sermon. He is alive and awake in the pulpit, and seeks his Lord's presence there, and realizes it as sought; but in the desk—he goes by himself, and much of his precious time there is spent in thought which wanders to the ends of the earth while his voice does its decent but somnambulatory part alone.

*USE IT WITH LIVING REALITY.

I can only appeal with all my heart to my younger Brother not to let it be thus with him. And the only effective recipe against the trouble is faith, exercised in prayer and watching, with a full recollection of the urgent importance of the matter. For indeed itisall-important that the servant of God should be "given wholly to" his work, at the reading desk, at the lectern, at the Table, at the Font.

PRAY THE PRAYERS.

It is easy to say, as it is often said, that we "must not preach the prayers," must not obtrude our personality in leading the devotions of the congregation; that our part is to be regular and audible, and otherwise to "efface ourselves." Most certainly we ought not topreachthe prayers, in public any more than in private. But then, we ought topraythem. Most certainly we ought not to obtrude our personality upon the thought of the worshippers. But then, we ought to serve them with our personality, and we can best do this, surely, by a spirit and a manner which is unmistakably that of the fellow-worshipper, who feelshimselfto be in the presence of the King, and knows that the petitions and the promises are for him at least a holy reality. I am perfectly well aware that it is noteasyto steer between a more or less mechanical manner and a demonstrative one, and that perhaps of two evils the former is the less. But I am sure it ispossibleto steer the right line, by using sanctified common-sense, and asking for a little candid counsel from those who hear us, and above all by being what we seek to seem—true worshippers, spiritually awake and humbly reverent.

As long as man is man, so long will the lawof sympathy hold good. And by that law it is certain that the way to promote, so far as we can, a spirit and tone of true worship in our people is to possess—and to show—that spirit ourselves, as we lead, and also join, their worship. Never declaim the prayers, but always pray them, from the soul and with the voice.

"GIVE ATTENDANCE TO THE READING" OF THE LESSONS.

ii. I spoke just now of what we should do at the lectern. Let me earnestly press upon my Brethren the great duty of rightly reading the Lessons. Do you want to carry out the will and purpose of the Church of England? As we have seen, that purpose is above everything to glorify the Word of God. See then that the Lesson, as read by you, is as audible, as intelligible, as impressive as you can make it. Take care beforehand that you understand its points, its arguments, its emphasis. Take counsel with yourself, and perhaps with others, about ways and means for bringing these things out in your public reading. Remember that for very many of your people (I fear I am right in saying so) the Church Lessons are the most solid pieces of Scripture they ever hear,or ever read. Many years ago it was not uncommonly said that in "these days of universal reading" we might perhaps abbreviate our Church Lessons. But since that time it has been more fully and sadly realized, by very many of us at least, that universal reading does not mean universal Bible reading by any means, but much rather universal newspaper and novel reading. The heavenly Book isterribly unfamiliarto multitudes of churchgoers, as you will find, if you ask, when you go about your parish; of this we have already thought. Therefore, make all you can of the reading of the Lessons in public worship. Πρόσεχε τῇ αναγνώσει, says the Apostle to Timothy, "Give attention to the reading" [1 Tim. iv. 13.]; does he not mean, be diligent in reading the Scripture to the people? The precept is as much as ever in point in our day.

OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED BY THE OCCASIONAL SERVICES.

iii. As regards the occasional services, Public and Private Baptism, Marriage, Burial, I would earnestly counsel my Brother to put personality into his reading in them all, in the moderate sense indicated above. The fact that suchoccasions are necessarily more or lessspecialin their interest for some at least of those present should never be forgotten; bring the power of a sympathetic interest and earnestness to bear upon it. In administering Public Baptism I have often realized this to a very peculiar degree. Who can feel the least fondness for little children, and have the slightest insight into a parent's heart, and not do so? Our service is undoubtedly long; very long indeed when accompanied by a chorus of perhaps several little crying voices. But let the servant of God "be in it," and he will find himself much more touched than troubled by the babies' lamentations as he speaks to the sponsors about the young helpless souls, and turns to the Lord of all grace to dedicate them to Him and to invoke His blessing on them for time and eternity, and then applies the watery Seal of all the promises to their small foreheads. I have always found it very hard to get through that service with a perfectly steady voice; and after all, why should we be so careful to do so?

PrivateBaptism is indeed a special occasion.There are reasons, no doubt, why it must not be too readily administered; in some parishes parents, for one reason or another, too often try to secure "a christening" in private, on insufficient grounds, with no intention of a public dedication afterwards. But when the case is clear, and you are at the little suffering one's side, perhaps with a distressed mother close beside it and you, see to it that you so minister the rite, so read the few precious words, as both to sympathize and to teach. Let me add that Private Baptism often brings the Clergyman into a house where religion is utterly neglected; and the opportunity may be a priceless one, if the power of love and spiritual reality is with you in the work.

And when you officiate at a Wedding, different as the conditions are from those just remembered, still do not forget that for at least some there present the hour is a deeply moving one. And is not the Marriage Service a noble one to read, to interpret, with its peculiar mingling of immemorial and archaic simplicity with a searching depth of scriptural exhortation, and a bright wealth of divine benedictions?Throw the power of a true man's solemnized sympathy into your reading of that service.

PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF THE BURIAL SERVICE.

Of the ritual of the Grave I hardly need to speak. I know only too well that there are funerals and funerals. There are occasions of unrelieved sadness. There are occasions when the Minister's heart is chilled by a manifest and utter indifference. But the saddest, dreariest of burials is an opportunity for the Lord. Whether or no you see your way to give an address, let it be seen that you are dealing with God in the prayers, and read the Lessons "as one that pleadeth with men."

A brief word in passing on the problem raised by some of the phrases of our Burial Service. Let me call attention to the studied generality of the words,In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life. Before 1662 this ran "in sure ... hopeof resurrection, etc.," which, as you will observe, expressly applied the "hope" tothatcase of burial; the change was evidently made on purpose to relieve conscience in the matter. Then remember that the whole service is constructed, like all our services, for the member of theChristian community taken on his profession; and that assumption, unless flagrant facts withstand it, is to be made, in public ordinance, as much at the grave as elsewhere. And do not forget thathope, be it ever so "trembling," isneverforbidden at a grave-side. I am no advocate of what is called "the larger hope"; I dare not be. But I am deeply convinced that mercies of the Lord, in cases quite beyond our possible knowledge, are experienced in the very act of departure.

"Betwixt the stirrup and the groundMercy I sought, mercy I found."

That instance has many parallels; and God only knows their limits. Never should we say, whatever we may awfully fear, that such and such a soul isto our knowledgelost.

As regards the practical management of extreme cases, the young Clergyman will of course act altogether under his Incumbent. And the young Incumbent will remember that he can have recourse to his Bishop for counsel.

THE HOLY COMMUNION.

iv. Let me say one special word on our administration of the precious ritual of theTable of the Lord. I am not attempting here any discussion of its doctrinal aspects in detail. For myself, as I have said elsewhere, I make no secret of long-settled "Evangelical" convictions. I regard the Holy Eucharist as above all things else the Lord's way of sealing to His true Israel the unutterable benefits of the New and Everlasting Covenant, rather than an occasion on which He infuses into them His glorified Manhood. His sacred Body and Blood are, for me, the Body and the Bloodas they were, once for all, at Calvary, and as they are not therefore literally now; and my participation in them is accordingly my participation in the virtues of the Atoning Sacrifice, there once and for ever wrought and offered. But this is by the way. I speak now of our spirit and manner in the administration, in respect of some principles which are little if at all affected, it seems to me, by even grave differences of doctrinal theory. Alas, at the present day it is too often the case that the communicant is fairly bewildered by the varieties of Communion ritual, or by the complications of it. Ought this to be so, onanytheory of the Eucharist? Did I for one believe our adorable and belovedLordto be locally present (I use the words not technically but practically) on the Holy Table as nowhere else here on earth, I think that all my instinct would go towards a reverence whose depth was manifested not by an elaborate ceremonial but by the most solemn possible simplicity of act. A ritual whose details must be matter of careful practice, and which suggests almost the need of a Spanish master-of-the-ceremonies—oughtthatto be the natural effect of an, as it were, invisible Presence?

SIMPLICITY AND REVERENCE.

But probably I write for readers whose inclinations or risks lie little in that direction. And for them I say, let your administration of the blessed Communion always combine a manifest reverence and a restful simplicity. The Lordisthere, the Master of His own Table, the Prince of His own Covenant, ready to give His people His royal Seal by your hands. And His people are there, to have their sacred interview with Him. Do not obstruct their view, their colloquy; humbly aid it. Be their servant, as inHispresence;obtrude yourself as little as you possibly can.

ADDRESSES ON THE PRAYER BOOK.

As I draw the chapter to a close, I make one practical recommendation to my younger Brethren. It is, to do what they can to interest their people in the Prayer Book, and to promote its intelligent use, by taking what opportunities they can to talk to them about it. Many a private occasion for this will no doubt present itself. But if now and then a simple lecture on the history of the Prayer Book can be given, and if possible well illustrated, it will be very useful; and so will be a series of week-night devotional addresses on the teaching of the Prayer Book. And let not the need of plain matter-of-fact explanation of obsolete terms and technical phrases be forgotten on such occasions. Of course the Curate will carefully consult his Incumbent on the whole matter. But few of my elder Brethren will not feel with me that such "talks upon the Prayer Book," carefully considered and conducted, whether by Incumbent or by Curate, may be of the greatest use, under our Master's blessing.

"MORE CEREMONIAL, LESS WORSHIP."

One last word, and I have done with these suggestions. An English Bishop once told me that he had lately met a gentleman who, after ten years' residence abroad, returned to England, and to his place as a worshipper in our Churches. "Do you remark particularly any change or advance in what you see there?" "I observe on the one hand much more ceremonial, on the other hand, apparently, much less worship. Fewer kneel, fewer respond, fewer around me seem devoutly attentive." Less worship! Is it so indeed? Let the very opposite be the case, so far as our influence and teaching can have effect, with our fathers' Prayer Book in our hands, and in our hearts.

"Lo, God is here; Him day and nightTh' united quires of angels sing;To Him, enthron'd above all height,Heaven's hosts their noblest praises bring;Disdain not, Lord, our meaner song,Who praise Thee with a stammering tongue."Being of beings, may our praiseThy courts with grateful fragrance fill;Still may we stand before Thy face,Still hear and do Thy sovereign will;To Thee may all our thoughts arise,Ceaseless, accepted sacrifice."

J. Wesley, fromTersteegen

CONTENTS

PREACHING(i.).

Earthen vessels, frail and slight,Yet the golden Lamp we bear;Master, break us, that the lightSo may fire the murky air;Skill and wisdom none we claim,Only seek to lift Thy Name.

I have on purpose reserved the subject of Preaching for our closing pages. Preaching is, from many points of view, the goal and summing up of all other parts and works of the Ministry. What we have said already about the Clergyman's life and labour, in secret, in society, in the parish; what we have said about his study and use of the Book of Common Prayer; all, so far as it has been true, ought to contribute its suggestions as we approach this great theme.

THE PULPIT THE CENTRAL POINT.

For, indeed, "the Pulpit" (I use the word in its widest application, wide enough to cover the mission-room desk, or the preaching place in the open air) is no mere isolated item in the midst of other matters which call for a Clergyman's attention. If the man is working, andordering his work, aright, the Pulpit will not be a something which has to be taken by the way, a link in a long chain in which committees, clubs, and social gatherings, and the like, are other and co-ordinate links. It will be a sacred central point, the living heart of the busy life, to which everything will bear relation. To the Pulpit everything will somehow converge, and from the Pulpit everything will be influenced. As the Pastor moves about amongst his people, he will be gathering incessantly, from all parochial places and seasons, material which will tell upon his sermons; he will be getting to know his people's minds and lives with an intimacy which will give his preaching to them a point which otherwise it could not have. And when he stands in the Pulpit, this continually accumulating knowledge will come out, not indeed in the way of diluting or distorting his Gospel, but so as to give its eternal and holy message a point and closeness of application which will ensure its "coming home," as God gives the blessing.

TEMPTATIONS TO FORGET THIS.

It needs thought and care to keep the parish and the sermon thusen rapport. Butsuch thought and care is infinitely well worth taking. The Clergyman who longs to be useful for his Lord in the highest degree he can be, cannot possibly think lightly of his sermons. Yet he may be tempted, half unconsciously, to treat them too lightly in practices, particularly if he is beset with a consciousness that he is not "a born preacher," or if he stands in the opposite danger of having a "fatal" facility of speech. Let the Clergyman only remember that his sermon, his public delivery of instruction, of exhortation, in the Lord's name, is not to be an exhibition of his own powers of thought or utterance, but a faithful message-bearing to his own flock, in the light of what he knows of Christ and the Word on the one side, and of the needs of the flock on the other, and he will find a most useful encouragement, or a most useful corrective, as the need may be. "O my Lord, I am not eloquent," [Exod. iv. 10.] will be no disheartening thought, as he carries to the pulpit the ever-growing weight of pastoral experience, all giving point and freshness to the unalterable message. And the secret temptation to think the sermon a light thingbecause mere words come easy, will be powerfully counteracted in the other case not only by contact with the realities of life in the daily work, but by remembering that the sermon will have to do with not an abstract audience butthese particularsouls and lives thus laid on the man's conscience and affections.

THE PASTOR PREACHES TO THOSE PARTICULAR HEARERS.

Let me repeat it as earnestly as I can. The sermon, if it is to be what it should be, should be affected at every point by the facts of the preacher's own inner life, and by those of his intercourse with his people. Those facts must, of course, be thoughtfully weighed and handled. The tact which is so important in a Pastor, and which is best learned and developed in the school of Christ's love, will see instinctively how to apply in preaching the experience gained in prayer, in conversation, in every branch of ministering life. We shall remember that indefinite harm, not good, may be done when a man, particularly a young man, unwisely preaches what may fairly seem to be personalities; I have known some sad instances in point here. But taking that for granted, assuming the good sense and sympathy ofthe preacher, I am quite sure that the most eloquent sermon, adapted toanyaudience, is far less likely to be blessed and used by our Lord than the sermon which is penetrated with the Pastor's personal intimacy withthat particularaudience, and which goes therefore straight from him to them.

It has been well said that preaching may be described as "truth through personality"; not merely the presentation somehow of so many facts and thoughts, but the presentation of them through the medium of a living man, who brings into the pulpit his heart, his character, his experience, and so gives out his message. We may add to this suggestive dictum that the true pastoral sermon is also "truthtopersonalities"; the living man's delivery of the message to living men and women whose life, more or less, he knows. And so it presupposes some real amount of pastoral intercourse, intelligently brought to bear on pulpit work.

PREPARE SERMON IN THE PARISH.

I linger a little over these thoughts, though they are little more than introductory. For experience tells me how easily, in these days,the Clergyman is tempted to dislocate his "parish work" from his sermons, to the great loss of one or both parts of his duty. And if once he begins to think of his sermons as a thing really apart, which must be got through somehow, but rather as a mere duty than as a vital ministerial function, the results will be sad for the sermons. So I lay stress on the thought that the sermon-preparation ought to go on not only in the study, over the Word, but in the parish, over the hearers of it. The more constantly this is recollected, and put in practice, the less fear will there be that the sermon will be a weariness either to people or to preacher.

"LABOUR IN THE WORD."

But let me, however, entreat my younger Brother, by any and every means, to watch and pray against a slack or low view of his function as a preacher. From very many quarters at the present day we are invited to slight our sermon-labour. Sometimes it is "work," organization, committees, which is set against the sermon; sometimes it is the reading-desk and the Communion Table—the liturgical functions of the Ministry. Letpastoral activities and holy rites alike have ample place in our thoughts and work; but for Christ's sake, my Brother in the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, do not forget the Word. A Christian Church where preaching sinks to a low ebb, where the labour of public teaching and exhortation is neglected, in favour either of machinery or ritual, cannot possibly—I dare to say it deliberately—be in a truly healthy state now, and most assuredly is not laying up health and strength for years to come. For the very life of our flocks, and of our Church, and for the dear glory of our Master, let us "labour in the Word and teaching." [1 Tim. v. 17.]

"LITHO SERMONS."

Is it necessary, in the case of any reader of these pages, that I should not only appeal thus in general, but add one special entreaty—always to preachyour ownsermons? Probably it is not necessary; but it may be "safe" [Phil. iii. 2.] nevertheless. Not long ago I was distressed to read, in the advertisement columns of an excellent Church newspaper, a conspicuous announcement of a series of "litho sermons," that is, I suppose, sermons so printed as tolook like manuscript. If such literature has a sale, it is a miserable fact. Can these discourses possibly be either written by a "man of the Spirit," or used by such a man? I say, No. The production of them (in order to be lithographed), and the use of them in their "litho" state, are untruthful acts, untruthful in the very sanctuary of truth. The Lord pardon—and the Lord forbid!

Better the most stammering and incoherent utterances of a man who loves the Lord, and the Word, and the flock, and who in Christ's Name does his best, than the unhallowed, and usually, I think, vapid glibness of such acted as well as spoken falsehoods.[27]And surely, the more the Clergyman keeps his pulpit and his parish in living relation, the less will he be tempted, be it ever so remotely, by any exigencies, to dream of expedients such as these.

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