(b) Or is it that the fault is not so much intellectual as moral, and there is really something between you and Christ—something which is making your message appear unreal, because there is something in your life which contradicts your message? It has been a very blessed thing that a number of men have seen what that thing is during these Quiet Days. Is there anything in your life which contradicts your message? I remember hearing—it was not in this diocese—of a priest who did not dare to speak to his young men and boys about certain things, because his own conscience reproached him. That is the sort of thing that makes your message sound hollow when you get up to deliver it, in the pulpit or in the Bible-class. "Search me, O Lord, and seek the ground of my heart, prove me and examine my thoughts and see whether there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." This must be our prayer. If we say that to our people, we must say it to ourselves, and get it put right, though it may be like plucking out the right eye or cutting off the right hand. When it is put right your message will ring true again.
(c) Or is it what you may call "middle-aged low spirits"? Is it something like accidie. Dr. Paget describes that dreariness of feeling that comes over some in middle age. "You cannot expect that amount of keenness from me at my age," a man says. I think of three men myself—Bishop Wilkinson, Bishop King and Canon Body—who were to the last day of their lives as keen as when they started. So when you think of these three men, it cannot be middle age or old age that really produce this accidie. I dare say it would be equally true of Mr. Simeon or Mr. Wesley, but I only happen to know of these three men, who were like fathers to me. They were as keen up to the day that they died as ever they were in their lives. Bishop Wilkinson's last words before he died—an address to a committee of his Prayer Union in his diocese—were the same burning words that had fired the rich people of Eaton Square and the miners of the North.
Well, if it is not middle age or old age, must be ourselves who are to blame. Therefore let us ask for a revival of our keenness, and not put down the want of it to old age or middle age. Of course, it may be that a man—I want to be quite frank about that—a man has been too long where he is. If you knew how much prayer and thought I personally give to this matter, how anxious I am to move men when I see a move would be for their good, you would realise how distressing it is to me to keep a man in one place when he would be much better moved, or promoted to a living. But the simple fact is there are not enough livings to go round. I want you to realise how urgently we at the centre feel the danger of men getting stale or being kept in one place too long. But it is not from the man's point of view that we ought to look at it. He may pray to have a change. But while he is there he is the messenger to the people, who are constantly changing. There is a new population constantly coming in. He must be there ready for them. And those who remain in the parish are still depending upon him. He is their messenger; he must not let them suffer because he is tired of his particular post. I cannot imagine any of those three men, whom I knew so well, in the least letting the keenness of their message be diminished because they thought they ought to be moved somewhere else. A man may feel very sad because he cannot do more, but he must not let his work fall off, although he may be praying that in God's providence he may have a change.
(3) Then comes the waiting before God for the message. Pheidippides bowed his head even in the heat of the race, bowed his head and listened. And, you know, one of the things we have certainly found out lately is that the great fault of the Church of England is not listening. We pray, but we do not wait for an answer. It is the ten minutes after prayer that matters. It is listening for the answer to come back. One of the reasons why English clergy need a Quiet Day is that they are not good listeners to God. We talk to Him, we even, as someone has said, chatter to Him like little children chatter to their parents, but we do not listen for the reply. We must listen for the reply when we speak to God. We must wait for our message. It must be renewed every day. What is the message that I am to take to the people? Rearrange all your time so that you may have time for listening. That has been crowded out. It is not a question of how many visits you can make in a day, but of the atmosphere you take with you on those visits, and the atmosphere depends upon the previous "waiting upon God." Then when you go on your visit the Holy Spirit opens the door of the heart of those to whom you go.
(4) Then notice, fourthly, the abandonment of the messenger. I am sure St. Paul really loved the picture of the runner. Do you notice he is always going back to it? The runner flung aside his cloak, with his eyes fixed on the goal, like Pheidippides the messenger; that is exactly what he did: he flung everything away for speed and alertness, in order to be there in time—the one thing that mattered. Do you not think that it may be true that we have become too comfortable as messengers? May it not be that we have lost the alertness and keenness and the mobility of the messenger? We have just settled down into our comfortable homes and creature comforts. They hinder our movements, and we do not run with the alertness of a messenger of God. Of course, we have to be part of a great system, to have parishes, to settle down in a certain place, and to secure that no one is neglected in the parish. But we must remember, we clergy of the Church of England, that we are not working for a particular parish or country only, but for the whole world. We must not rest content in being a stolid yeomanry, who can only fight in our own country, but we are to be a mobile alert force for the conversion of the world. We ought to be entirely and absolutely independent of our comfortable homes, of our comfortable way of life. It is good to go into camp and be content to stay there for a couple of months. We ought to feel that having food and raiment, with these we shall have enough. That love of comfort is a great danger; it greatly hampers us in our task and in our alertness as messengers.
And, again, if we are a mobile army for the world, we ought to be ready to go to any part of the world to which the Spirit of the Lord directs us. It often happens that the Spirit catches away some young curate, and he is found in some unpronounceable place in Japan or China. He is there because the Spirit has taken him there. Therefore we have to question ourselves very strictly to-day, it seems to me, as to whether we are detached enough to be messengers, or whether we have got clogged by mere custom and the comforts of life, so that we do not move quickly enough. Or again, we may be hampered in our movements by the demand for a full Catholic service for our own solace and comfort. Those men at the front who are receiving the Holy Communion before the battle have little barns for their service, with flickering and guttering candles. When they come home they will tell us they have never had such a Communion service in their lives as those they had with their comrades. Honestly I consider it is right to have, if we can, a beautiful service which uplifts our souls, to give our people all the Catholic privileges possible. But we ought not to be dependent upon it; we ought to recognise that the heart of the thing is also in the poor barn and the guttering candle. We all ought to be content to do without many things that we have now, if only we may be allowed to carry our message to the ends of the earth.
(5) And then, when he comes, he is to give the full message. Pheidippides stood before his people and gave it all, the warning, and the comfort and the inspiration. Do not leave anything out. One part is as important as another. He gave the whole rounded message, and we must be careful to do the same. We must be careful not to let the Gospel consist of one doctrine only—for example, the Atonement. The Atonement is a part of the Gospel—a glorious part of it—but it is not the whole message by any means. There is the Gospel of Grace. We are saved by the death of Christ, but we are saved by Grace and the means of Grace—the power in the water of life to refresh the soul that is pardoned, and the beautiful sacramental teaching handed on to us. The prodigal comes back, and he receives the robe and the ring, and the home, and the feast, and the shoes for service—all these things. The prodigal of to-day wants them too; the Father's kiss—the outward and visible sign of the Father's love; the ring in Confirmation, the robe in Baptism, the home in the Church, the feast—the Holy Communion—the shoes for service. You have got to tell them about everything. You have no right to say of one doctrine: "This is the whole Gospel." We must teach the Gospel of the Resurrection and the Ascension as much as the Atonement, and the Church's Sacraments as well. Therefore we have to ask—have we not?—whether our teaching has degenerated into some little shibboleth, which we keep repeating over and over again. We must be messengers of the whole message, and we must see that we are giving the message in its fulness, or else there may be souls unsaved who might be saved by the very part of it which we leave out. We might be astonished if we catechised our people as to what we have really taught them in ten years. Have we simply given them a series of moral exhortations, or the same part of the message, year after year, and not the whole message?
(6) Then, lastly, we must seal the message with our lives. "Do you really mean to say"—I believe it was a girl who asked the question when present for the first time at an Ordination Service—"do you mean to say that every clergyman I have ever met has been through that?" Well, apparently we do not always give the impression that we have. The messenger has to seal the message by his life, and by conduct consistent with such a trust, but also he has got to seal it, if necessary, with his death.[21] Pheidippides died