III
FISHERS OF MEN
We have meditated upon our work as messengers, and then on our work as physicians and surgeons; but the duties given us are so various that it ought to make us feel how extraordinarily full of interest our work is. Every faculty of the mind and spirit is wanted for this wonderful work. We are called sometimes stewards representing the Master to the people of the world, looking after the menservants and the maidservants, foraging for the food of the household and giving it out. Then another time we are watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, walking up and down watching over the city and blowing the trumpet when the danger comes, continually holding up our hands in prayer.
We do our work as messengers running with a message, as physicians and surgeons going up and down the ward, and then suddenly we hear a voice ring, as it were, from heaven: "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." Here we have quite a different picture—the wind-swept deck of the fishing-smack in the teeth of the tempest. "Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find." We are fishers fishing for men. What a different picture from the others! And I think we ask, rather sadly, some of us, who have been working night and day, whether we are successful fishers of men. We say: "Master, we have toiled all the night and taken nothing." I have this huge parish of ten thousand people to look after, and what is the result of my work among them? Have I been a successful fisher of men? And that makes us, of course, ask ourselves in a day like this: "What is the secret of successful fishing? If I have toiled all the night and taken nothing, and all the day and taken very little, what ought I to do? My time is getting on; the evening will come, my fishing will be over. Can I not discover in the presence of my Lord to-day what He would have me do different from what I have been doing, that I may bring to His feet a greater harvest of souls than I have ever brought yet?"
(1) And the first secret of successful fishing is variety of method. There are some of us, no doubt, who do fish on our holidays in the literal sense, and we know how again and again in the salmon rivers we have tried fly after fly. And yet in our fishing for men we often tie ourselves down to one monotonous kind of method, never thinking of varying it. But if we have found one method fail, surely we might try another. Why should we be tied down to one particular humdrum method if it has been tried for years and failed? Of course, there are certain things which must be the same. We have no right to complain for a moment of what some people call the monotony of Mattins and Evensong for ourselves. Mattins and Evensong are not at all monotonous. I remember thinking, when I made that promise which everyone makes when they are ordained, of obeying the Prayer-Book and saying Mattins and Evensong every day, that it would be a kind of slavery to me. But, on the contrary, I find it a chain that binds me about the feet of God. The lessons in these services are four "letters from heaven" every day, as Canon Liddon called them. We have spent an immense time in Convocation—nine years—in considering what variations in the authorised services of the Prayer-Book may be admitted, and we have almost agreed upon a supplementary book which will give an immense variety to the service: a great many more antiphons, a rewritten preface to the Confirmation Service, the Marriage Service carefully revised, and some things definitely sanctioned for the Church at large which we have used under provisional sanction in this diocese. We hope to have the new supplementary book out at the end of the war. Think, for instance, of the Psalms. Has not the Great War revealed to us the depth of the Psalms—"the war-songs of the Prince of Peace," as they have been called. The war has given to many a new meaning which we never saw before. And think of all the needs of the sick of the parish, and our personal needs, all to be woven into these beautiful services which we use every day, and which seem to bind us to the feet of God. If any of you have drifted away from your regular use of Mattins and Evensong, or if you have not started it in your own churches, make a resolution to start it from to-day. When your people hear the bell ring, that will tell them that at any rate the clergyman is at his prayers.
Of course, we do not want our beautiful services to be altered in substance; but we may have variations sanctioned by authority. In fishing for men we are not bound by one method. If we find that one method does not succeed, we must try another. I have already sanctioned in the diocese a shortened form of Evening Service. For those not reached by services in church we must have open-air services. People will listen at the windows in the little square or street in which they live. There must be, too, special services for such organisations as Boy Scouts and Church Lads' Brigade. For the ordinary Sunday-School we are now able to have new methods provided by experts for the diocese. Then, if the Sunday-School system does not seem to suit your particular parish, try catechising in church. I am only suggesting—it is not for me to lay down this or that rule as to what is to be tried. My point is this: With the Holy Spirit guiding you, and with the inventiveness of love, you will be able to bring out of your treasure things new and old. Although one of the oldest things in the world, the Church is yet the youngest. We never grow old, and, acting with the inventiveness of youth, we ought to be thinking out new plans and new methods all the time; and while I am speaking upon the inventiveness and freshness of the successful fisherman, I need not say that I shall be only too happy to sanction almost any new experiment you may wish to make in fishing for men, if you will submit to me the prayers you think of using, and if I think the suggested method consistent with the teaching of the Church to which we both belong.
(2) Then there must be, too—every true fisherman knows this—a ripple on the water for fishing, best of all a light breeze in the morning. That means that it is a fishing-day. And do you not know what I mean when I say that there seems to be no ripple on some parishes at all? The whole of the surface of the parish seems as dull as ditch-water—no ripple, no fish. If there is no sense of expectancy, no keenness, no enjoyment, no happy spirit, among the workers, there will be no fish. I would like you to ask yourselves whether there is such a ripple in your parish, or whether it is all very dull and dead. And I would like to ask anyone who seems to recognise that there is nothing going on, and that there has been no catch, yesterday, to-day, or the day before, to ask himself if he cannot go back and create a ripple in the parish. When you think over how that ripple is to be created, of course, it can only be by the power of the Holy Spirit brooding over the waters, as He originally brooded over the waters and brought cosmos out of chaos. I believe the chief way, if I may reduce the metaphor to prosaic terms, the chief way must be by constantly praying for the parish and the people, that the Holy Spirit may come and stir the dulness by creating a spirit of expectancy and a joy in the work. When you are obviously enjoying your work yourself, and making the Sunday-School teachers and the workers enjoy it, you may expect a ripple in the parish. Joy in the work is a most attractive thing. There must be the joy throughout the parish, among clergy and workers; the curates and the Vicar must be at one, with no friction between them, and they and the workers a real band of brothers and sisters all fishing in the same waters. Pray very earnestly for this. I shall not bring in more at this point about the necessity for intercession. Remember that it is the parish priest who is perpetually praying for his people individually, and teaching his people to pray, who is the most successful. In my experience it is the praying parish that has a ripple on the surface. I see a wonderful quantity of fish caught in a parish of that kind.
(3) Then think what is the cord or line by which the fish are caught. "I will draw them with the cords of a man," by human influence, by personality. Now this question of personality is a very difficult one. Dr. Newman is said to have stated that he dreaded personal influence. Well, of course, it is quite easy to see what he meant. He dreaded such personal influence in religion which is used to make people simply like us or to draw them to ourselves and to leave them there—that is to say, he dreaded a misuse of personal influence. So misused, no doubt, personal influence is a dangerous thing. But that does not alter the fact that people are drawn to Christ by personal influence, and that we must use our personal influence if we are to be successful fishermen for Christ.
And that brings me to this personal question: Is there anything in ourselves that puts people off? I wish to be perfectly frank. Is it not a fact that we clergy sometimes do put people off by our manner and appearance? Even the smallest thing is important if it is going to spoil the line or cord that is to draw people to Christ. I believe we put off people more than we know by carelessness about our appearance, or manner, or matters of that kind. So much depends on us that we cannot take too much care of our personality. We should see to it that when people meet us they can see the attractiveness of goodness in us, and be drawn to our Lord because they are first attracted to His representative. And do ask yourselves—I might seem to be personal if I went into details: Is there anything in my manner that is spoiling Christ's work so that He cannot fish with me, cannot draw others through me? Is it because I am not humble enough, or is there something in me, some unattractive feature or characteristic, that is spoiling the fishing?
(4) And then, of course, there must be the hopefulness of the fisherman. The true fisherman is nothing if he is not hopeful. "Master, I have toiled all night, and caught nothing; nevertheless, at Thy word I will let down the net." The true fisherman never knows when he may be successful; he is always expecting something at the last moment, and he manages to infuse hopefulness into his fellow-workers; he hopes that there is going to be good fishing in the day or the night. I had a rather touching illustration of the value of hopefulness in a little hospital near where I was spending a holiday. Five sisters, friends of mine, who really managed the whole hospital, sent a telegram from the village asking if I could come and see one of the young soldiers, whom they could make nothing of. He was absolutely in despair. He had lived a bad life, and I think it was the presence of these five good girls who were nursing him that made him feel the contrast between his life and theirs, with all its purity and goodness. The contrast brought him to repentance. Still, he thought it was too late to change. He could not be forgiven. I went to the hospital. There he was, a young man about twenty-eight, really in despair. It took me a long time to get any hope in him. At last, when he had gone into his whole life, and I had given him absolution, and had a prayer with him, I saw a sort of hope come into his face. The change was extraordinary. He said: "Will you pray with me again, Bishop?" In all my experience I have not very often been asked like that to pray again with a man. They are generally shy, and satisfied with the first prayer. I prayed with him a second time. He wrote me afterwards a charming letter, asking me to send him a Bible and Prayer-Book, which I did. What that man wanted was hope, nothing but hope; he was in despair about himself. "God shall forgive thee all but thy despair." We shall never catch a man like that unless we can infuse into him that glorious hope which we have ourselves. I persuaded him that he was not too late, and he was saved by hope.
Now do let us carry back the hopefulness of the fisherman to our parishes, whatever may have happened in the past. Many of you have been in your parishes very many years, and no doubt sometimes you have felt very despondent. Start again to-morrow as if you had just begun. Though you have toiled all the night and perhaps caught nothing, cast your net on the right side of the ship, and the next five years will be the most fruitful years your parish has ever had. People will notice a different spirit about yourself. Try a completely new method, and you will have a wonderful success. There will be a ripple on the water which there has not been before. Be hopeful about it, and then, if you have to stay on in the same parish five or ten years more, it may be a wholly different story from what it has been up to now.
(5) In the next place, a successful fisherman must have a very deep faith. Of course, the ordinary fisherman must have some sort of faith. The good fisherman believes certain things all the time he is fishing. He believes in the laws of the wind, studies them, and acts according to them. He sets his sail according to them, if he is fishing in the sea, and he knows that he must do so if he is to reap of the unfathomable harvest of the sea. He believes in all these things, and on a stormy coast he must be a man of great faith, dealing with great unseen movements and powers all round him. He learns their laws, and he knows that if he acts according to those laws he is successful as a rule. But do you not see that we are just like that ourselves? Really we are in touch with all kinds of unseen powers and movements. We have to believe, for instance, in the salvability of every soul in the world; we have to believe that every soul is meant for the Gospel, and the Gospel is meant for every soul. We have to believe in that man in the worst slum of our parish; we have to realise that the Gospel is fitted for him and he is fitted for the Gospel. No one has ever been found yet who could not be made into a bit of a saint in time. And the Gospel, tremendously deep as it is, is also so simple that the simplest can understand it. That is the wonderful thing about it. We have to believe in it—intensely believe in it; we have to believe in the wonderful power of these tides of the Spirit sweeping round a parish and working wonders; we have to believe in the influence of the unseen wind that blows over it and to pray often: "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon them."
We are, as a matter of fact, working amidst unseen and tremendous forces. We talk about the power of God. The power of God! Why, He keeps the whole universe going, twenty million suns always moving on through space. He alone knows whither they are going. Twenty million burning suns! look at the power of that; think what power that alone implies! and then think of the saving power of one drop of blood shed upon the Cross, when you consider Who it was that hung there. Think, again, of the wonderful influence, the downrush of the Spirit: some of you have seen it in missions; we believe in it at every Confirmation. We are really in touch with most tremendous powers. If we had more faith we should be better fishermen. Therefore we do want a stronger faith in our Lord Himself, always at the heart of our work, a real living faith in a living Lord with us all the time.
(6) And then, sixthly, we must fish for men one by one. Of course, we can have great concerted movements. I shall never forget a midnight march through Westminster at half an hour after midnight on a Saturday night. We swept like a net, bringing quite twenty young men out of every public-house. As we counted them in the church school, we could see that most of them were three-quarters drunk. We could see what would be prevented if the public-houses of London were shut earlier, as, indeed, they now have been during the war. It has benefited Russia greatly that she has abolished the whole vodka traffic. We could not take pledges that night from those men: they were not in a condition to make them; but the Church of England, with all her great organisation, ought to be able to prevent that sort of thing, and catch these souls one by one. Here comes in the need of personality; we must talk to each of these young men, provide somewhere else where he may spend his evenings, and remember that you can only catch fish one by one.
(7) And the last point of all is that, to be successful, the fishing-fleet must be kept together. You really are a fishing-fleet, and not merely individual fishing-boats. When a deanery is kept together, it shows a brotherhood, a cohesion, which is a very beautiful thing to see. To a large extent you are such, but, still, even the best-worked deanery can resolve to work more together than they have done, in happy co-operation, the clergy and people of each parish taking an interest in another's parish, rejoicing in its successes and praying for it in its troubles. If the whole deanery meets regularly for united intercession, this must have a great effect upon the mission work in the district. It must have an effect also upon mission work among the heathen for the Church at home to feel part of the same fishing-fleet as the Church abroad, the workers in one ship beckoning to their partners in the other ship to come and help them.
Well, then, take back with you these simple thoughts which I am trying to put before you as your Bishop and fellow-priest. Pray to be made more keen, more alert, more active and enthusiastic messengers. Pray to be skilful, patient, thorough, good physicians, and kinder celestial surgeons. And, perhaps above all, pray to be hopeful, faithful fishermen; go out together as a fishing-fleet on the great ocean, believing in all the possibilities which lie beneath the surface; realise the presence of your Master directing from the shore the whole fleet. And then at the end of all things, in the morning of the great day, you will have a harvest of souls to draw to the shore to His feet.