“Mr Raymond says it was the most unwise thing they could have done. And he says so of the turning forth under the Act of Uniformity, eighty years ago. He thinks the men who were the very salt of the Church left her then: and that now she is a saltless, soulless thing, that will die unless God’s mercy put more salt in her.”
“But suppose it do, and the bishops get them turned out again?”
“Then, says Raymond, let the bishops look to themselves. There is such a thing as judicial blindness: and there is such a thing as salt that has lost its savour, and is trodden under foot of men. If the Church cast out the children of God, God may cast out the Church of England. There are precedents for it in the Books of Heaven. And in all those cases, God let them go on for a while: over and over again they grieved His Spirit and persecuted His servants; but at last there always came one time which was the last time, and after that the Spirit withdrew, and that Church, or that nation, was left to the lot which it had chosen.”
“Oh, Ephraim, that sounds dreadful.”
“It will be dreadful,” he answered, “if we provoke it at the Lord’s hand.”
“One feels as if one would like to save such men,” I said.
“Do you? I feel as if I should like to save such Churches. It is like a son’s feeling who sees his own mother going down to the pit of destruction, and is utterly powerless to hold out a hand to save her. She will not be saved. And I wonder, sometimes, whether any much sorer anguish can be on this side Heaven!”
I was silent.
“It makes it all the harder,” he said, in a troubled voice, “when the Father’s other sons, whose mother she is not, jeer at the poor falling creature, and at her own children for their very anguish in seeing it. I do not think the Father can like them to do that. It is hard enough for the children without it. And surely He loves her yet, and would fain save her and bring her home.”
And I felt he spoke in parables.