Prospects of the Church of England / A sermon preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster, on Sunday evening, August 30, 1868, on the occasion of the first offertory in lieu of a church-rate

by C. J. Vaughan

For example, my brethren, is there not too great a disproportion here between the real and the nominal worshippers? Is it not lamentable, is it not even discreditable, that so many should be present at one Service once on the Lord’s Day, and so few at any other Service either on this Holy Day or on any other? that so many should come together here this evening to listen to music or preaching, so few to pray and to praise, so few to break the Holy Bread, or to drink the Sacred Wine? Is not this one of the breaches of the House, the spiritual house, which wants repairing amongst us?

2. But this carries me on to a somewhat wider field, which I have called not the Congregation, but the Church. And here, as is natural indeed in these eventful, these quickly moving times, my thoughts are upon our own Church, that communion which is the congregation of congregations; that communion which we have heretofore known as the Church of England by law established.

So rapid has been the course of events in late years—I might single out the last ten, or the last five, or (quite by exception) the last year of all—that Church-people must prepare themselves, I feel sure, for a speedy, a scarcely gradual, demolition of all that has been distinctive, all that has been exceptionally advantageous, in their position. An eminent man and excellent Bishop, who was laid in his grave last Friday, was wont to say, If I live ten years, I shall be the last Bishop of Peterborough. It is more than probable that some of my younger hearers this evening may live not only to see what we call the Church of England thrown altogether upon voluntary offerings for its maintenance—in which case some of them may remember in old age the first collection made in the Parish Church of Doncaster for the repairs of its fabric and the expences of its services—but also to find it at least an open, perhaps a very doubtful, question, to whom shall belong the Churches themselves and the glebe-houses—whether indeed there shall be left to the old Church of England, as we still fondly call it, any vestige of that legal standing which has made her hitherto the calm shelter of her children, the admiring wonder of foreigners, and the mark of obloquy or envy (as the case might be) to thousands of her domestic enemies.

I am far from regarding this prospect—be it far off or near—with unmixed alarm or dismay. I never believed that the Establishment, as such, was Christ’s Church in England, or that the withdrawal of the favour of the State would be the putting out in our communion of the Divine Shechinah. It is not so much for the Church that I fear: for I firmly believe Christ’s words, Lo, I am with you alway, and doubt not that the old, the everlasting benediction is able to repeat itself in many new, many diverse forms. I do fear something for the State, when it ceases to have a religion. I do fear something for the average tone of religion in our cottages and in our palaces, when there is no longer one form of worship which has upon it the stamp of pedigree and of custom; when it is an evenly balanced question with every man and with every family, Whither shall I go this day for God’s worship? whither, or whether any whither? I do fear that there will be more and more in many houses of a cold indifferent scepticism, a Christless education and a Godless life. I do fear that more and more may reach old age ignorant of a Saviour, and go to their graves without any sure and certain hope of a resurrection to eternal life.

For the Church itself I fear not. In so far as the Church of England (so called) has had Christ in her and God with her, she is indestructible and immortal. In so far as she has trusted in outward advantage, and suffered herself, in her priests or in her people, to become sluggish, lukewarm, contemptuous, or persecuting—in so far let a change into adversity—God grant it—reform her. The great question for all of us, in our several stations, more especially in the days which are now coming, or almost come, upon our Church, must be this one of the text, Why repair ye not the breaches of the House?

Let the Priests of the Temple ask it—ask it of themselves—Are they trusting at all in the advantages of an Establishment, and negligent, in the same degree, of that personal industry, of that individual self-sacrifice, which alone can justify their endowment, maintain their honour, or do their work? If the Established Church of England, as such, be swept away, then, along with it, will go all idle, inconsistent, scandalous Ministers: those who are to serve at God’s Altar afterwards must be only such as are respected by their people: let it not have to be said that England would gain as much as she loses by ceasing to have an endowed, an established Ministry, inasmuch as, quite as often as not, the Parish Minister was an indolent, an unworthy, or an inefficient man! This is the way in which the Priests must set themselves to repair the Temple-breaches.

Then for the People. To what end does a Church exist amongst us? To what purpose this costly, this almost magnificent apparatus of vestment and ritual, of Cathedral Church and elaborate minstrelsy? Does it mean anything, or nothing? If it represents to the country, in symbol and form, the wants of man’s soul, and the absolute necessity of a Divine communion, then prove it by the using! Do not talk of the duty of the State, of the rights of the Church, of Apostolical Succession and an authorized Ministry—and never use any! When the Church of England ceases, with our will or without it, to be an established, privileged, or favoured Church at all; then, how many of you will be found to come forward in its maintenance? How many of you will worship here, when there is no longer any traditional or conventional propriety in doing so? How many will accept their position, in reference to man, as only one out of fifty or a hundred denominations—treat with all respect and charity others who follow not with them—and yet, for themselves, become but the more earnest and devout Churchmen, in proportion as State aid and legal endowment become things of the past—things, it may be, of remote and almost forgotten history?

And, meanwhile, let me ask this of the Churchmen here assembled this evening, Are we half as liberal—I ask it advisedly—in giving for the maintenance of our Church, as are many bodies of Nonconformists in their offerings for theirs? You know that we are not. Let us look about us in this matter. Let us rise to the emergency. Show that you value your Church, by giving bountifully in her behalf. If the Church is what you profess it to be, surely it is worth something, something even of self-sacrifice, to maintain it in its efficiency. You know that there are many amongst us to whom the Church costs nothing. On one pretext and another, they evade all her burdens. They grudge the very rents of their sittings; and if those rents were exchanged to-morrow (as I would they were) for Offertories, still they would give nothing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. By this grudging, this ungenerous spirit, we are drawing down upon ourselves, as a judgment, the sentence of disestablishment and disendowment. Be it not so amongst us! Count no money better spent than that which is given for the repairing of the breaches of this House; meaning now by the House, not only or chiefly the fabric, but rather the purpose for which the fabric stands—the edification and salvation of human souls. Above all, see that you rightly, earnestly, industriously use the means of grace herein afforded you. What would not they give, who are gone from us this last week by disease or accident, unrepentant, unredeemed, for one such feast of love as was accepted this morning by but six and twenty souls—for one such opportunity as we have enjoyed this evening of drawing nigh to the Throne of Grace through our one Divine Lord?

3. Thus, then, we pass naturally, in conclusion, to that House, or Temple of God, which is of all the most intimate, the most sacred, the most inaccessible; yet in which, if anywhere, the true fire burns of an acceptable sacrifice—the real altar is built of lively, living, devoted stones. That House is the soul; and it, too, has its breaches. Yes, we know it. That Temple—which ought to lie four-square, which ought to have everything in its place, which ought to be gleaming with the fire of the Holy Ghost, and adorned with the precious stones of a meek and quiet and pure and Godward spirit—that Temple, of which the light ought to be shining through into the life, and making every act and word and thought gracious and beneficent and God-recalling—that Temple is all jagged and disordered and spotted and sin-stained—that Temple lets its altar-fire go out every half-hour, and suffers a darkness that may be felt to settle down upon its chambers—making unbelievers at last say, If that be faith, give me reason; if that be piety, give me conscience; if that indeed be religion, let me know only the heathen’s revelation—of good sense, good nature, and an elevated self-love!

Why repair ye not the breaches of the House?