I have not, indeed, one moment’s anxiety as to your response. You love the place, this place at least, where God’s honour dwelleth. I believe that your periodical offerings on this monthly occasion will be almost, or perhaps quite, equal to those which you make for any work of piety or charity: and I may remind you that there is an especial reason why your offerings should be large at the outset, inasmuch as already four months are gone by of the current year, and we have to supply in eight months the resources (as they hereafter will be) of twelve.
But on this point I feel an entire security. You will never allow those who undertake the office of your Churchwardens to incur any responsibility but such as you cheerfully guarantee to them. I will rather take the opportunity of saying one word upon the more general question.
We have never in this place—certainly not for many years past—laid a compulsory church-rate. We have always allowed those who would to refuse payment. Even when the law was clearly with us, we have never taken advantage of it. So far, we might, if we would, have regarded the new Act as confirming and stereotyping our own local custom.
But there were these two differences. We could no longer carry with us the influence, the persuasion, of an unenforced compulsion. We could no longer say, as heretofore, He that may command, entreats. Henceforth it was lawful to refuse.
Again, we could no longer extend our payments over the whole Town; and, with whatever abatements from caprice or principle, hope to enlist, in the work of reparation or maintenance, the sympathies of an entire population.
It became necessary, therefore, that we should look to the Congregation alone; and, in one form or in another, ask those to support, who really love and use, this House of God.
Hence our appeal to you this evening. And if on future occasions the appeal is commonly made to you in silence, without special enforcement from this place, yet let me hope that you will all register it in your minds as a just claim, and not suffer these periodical gatherings to lose their interest or to fail in their amount.
Why repair ye not the breaches of the House? The subject expands itself before us, and we read the remonstrance as applying no longer to the fabric, but rather to these three larger and more sacred topics, the Congregation, the Church, the soul.
1. That anxiety which we do not feel about the fabric, for we are sure that you will attend to it, we cannot stifle as regards the Congregation.
For indeed it is this which makes the House. The building is only valuable, only significant, for the sake of the inmates. When it is asked of us, Why repair ye not the bleaches of the House? we may look up indeed at our broken pinnacles, our not watertight roof, our falling flowers, our patchwork pomegranates, and think that these too require attention or deserve reproach; but, after all, these are not the real things; these altogether make not the House; the House, the Temple, now, in these days of spirit and Gospel, is the community, the congregation, the living body within. How is it with this? Are there no breaches here, visible not to an eye of flesh, but to One who seeth in secret?