Five Sermons

by Henry Benjamin Whipple

IV. ADDRESS IN LAMBETH CHAPEL, AT THE FIRST SESSION OF THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE, JULY 3, 1888.

Most reverend and right reverend brethren: No assembly is fraught with such awful responsibility to God, as a council of the Bishops of His Church. Since the Holy Spirit presided in the first council of Jerusalem, faithful souls have looked with deep interest to the deliberations of those whom Christ has made the shepherds of His flock, and to whom he gave His promise, "Lo, I am with you always to the end of the world." The responsibility is greater when division has marred the beauty of the Lamb's Bride. Our words and acts will surely hasten or (which God forbid) retard the reunion of Christendom. Feeling the grave responsibility which is imposed on me to-day, my heart cries out as did the prophet's, "I am a child and cannot speak." Pray for me, venerable brethren, that God may help me to obey His word—"Whatsoever I command, that shalt thou speak." I would kneel with you at our Master's feet and pray that "the Holy Spirit may guide us into all truth." We meet as the representatives of national Churches; each with its own peculiar responsibility to God for the souls intrusted to its care; each with all the rights of a national Church, to adapt itself to the varying conditions of human society; and each bound to preserve the order, the faith, the sacraments, and the worship of the Catholic Church, for which it is a trustee. As we kneel by the table of our common Lord we remember separated brothers. Division has multiplied division until infidelity sneers at Christianity as an effete superstition, and the modern Sadducee, more bold than his Jewish brother, denies the existence of God. Millions for whom Christ died have not so much as heard that there is a Saviour. It will heal no divisions to say, Who is at fault? The sin of schism does not lie at one door. If one has sinned by self-will, the other has sinned as deeply by lack of charity and love. The way to reunion looks difficult. To man it is impossible. No human eirenicon can bridge the gulf of separation. There are unkind words to be taken back, alienations to be healed, and heartburnings to be forgiven. Where we are blind, God can make a way. When "the God of Peace" rules in all Christian hearts, our Lord's prayer will be answered—"That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they all may be one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me." No one branch of the Church is absolutely by itself alone the Catholic Church; all branches need reunion in order to the completeness of the Church. There are blessed signs that the Holy Spirit is quickening Christian hearts to seek for unity. We all know that this divided Christianity cannot conquer the world. At a time when every form of error and sin is banded together to oppose the kingdom of Christ, the world needs the witness of a united Church. Men must hear again the voice which peals through the lapse of centuries bearing witness to the "faith once delivered to the saints," or else for many souls there will be only rationalism and unbelief—while this sad, weary world, so full of sin and sorrow, is pleading for help, it is a wrong to Christ and to the souls for whom He died that His children should be separated in rival folds. As baptised into Christ we are brothers. Notwithstanding the hedges of human opinions which men have builded in the garden of the Lord, all who look for salvation alone through faith in Jesus Christ do hold the great verities of Divine faith. The opinions which separate us are not necessary to be believed in order to salvation. The truths in which we agree are parts of the Catholic faith. The Holy Spirit has passed over these human barriers, and set his seal to the labors of separated brethren in Christ, and rewarded them in the salvation of many precious souls. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the renewing and sanctifying influences of the Holy Ghost are the same in the peasant in the cottage, and in the emperor on the throne. They share with us in the long line of confessors and martyrs for Christ. We would not rob them of one sheaf which they have gathered in the garner of the Lord. We rejoice that Churches with a like historic lineage with us are seeking reunion. Churches whose faith has been dimmed by coldness or clouded by error are being quickened into new life from the Incarnate Son of God.

Our hearts go out in loving sympathy to the Old Catholics of Europe and America, whose names always will be linked with Selwyn, Wilberforce, and Wordsworth, Whittingham, Kerfoot, and Brown, in defence of the faith. It is with deep sorrow that we remember that the Church of Rome has separated herself from the teaching of the primitive Church by additions to the faith once delivered to the saints, and by claiming for its Bishop prerogatives which belong only to the Divine Head of the Church While we honor the devotion and zeal of her missionary heroes, and rejoice at the good works of multitudes of her children, we lament that lack of charity which anathematizes disciples of Christ who have carried the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

We bless God's Holy Name for the fraternal work which has been carried on under the guidance of the see of Canterbury, and which we trust will lead ancient Churches to a deeper personal faith in Jesus Christ.

We are sad that some of our kinsmen in Christ, children of one mother, have forsaken her ways. God can over-rule even this sorrow, so that it shall fall out to the furtherance of the Gospel. They must take with them precious memories of the love and the faith of the mother whom they have forsaken, and of the liberty wherewith the truth in Christ has made her children free—under God these may be a link in the chain of His providence to the restoration of unity. It is a singular providence that at this period of the world's history, when marvellous discoveries have united the people of divers tongues in common interests, He has placed the Anglo-Saxon race in the forefront of the nations. They are carrying civilization to the ends of the earth. They are bringing liberty to the oppressed, elevating the down-trodden, and are giving to all these divers tongues and kindreds their customs, traditions, and laws. I reverently believe that the Anglo-Saxon Church has been preserved by God's Providence (if her children will accept this Mission) to heal the divisions of Christendom, and lead on in His work to be done in the eventide of the world. She holds the truths which underlie the possibility of reunion, the validity of all Christian baptism in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. She ministers the two sacraments of Christ as of perpetual obligation, and makes faith in Jesus Christ, as contained in the Catholic Creeds, a condition of Christian fellowship. The Anglo-Saxon Church does not perplex men with theories and shibboleths which many a poor Ephraimite cannot speak—she believes in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, three Persons and one God, but she does not weaken faith in the Triune God by human speculations about the Trinity in Unity. She believes that the sacred Scriptures were written by inspiration of God, but she has no theory about inspiration. She holds up the Atonement of Christ as the only hope of a lost world; but she has no philosophy about the Atonement. She teaches that it is through the Holy Ghost that men are united to Christ. She ministers the sacraments appointed by Christ as His channels of grace; but she has no theory to explain the manner of Christ's presence to penitent believing souls. She does not explain what God has explained, but celebrates these Divine mysteries, as they were held and celebrated for one thousand years after our Lord ascended into heaven, before there was any East or West arrayed against each other in the Church of God. Surely we may and ought to be first to hold up the olive branch of peace over strife, and say, "Sirs, ye are brethren."

In so grave a matter as the restoration of organic unity, we may not surrender anything which is of Divine authority, or accept terms of communion which are contrary to God's Word. We cannot recognize any usurpation of the rights and prerogatives of national Churches which have a common ancestry, lest we heal "the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly," and say "peace, where there is no peace;" but we do say that all which is temporary and of human choice or preference we will forego, from our love to our own kinsmen in Christ.

The Church of the Reconciliation will be an historical and Catholic Church in its ministry, its faith, and its sacraments. It will inherit the promises of its Divine Lord. It will preserve all which is catholic and Divine. It will adopt and use all instrumentalities of any existing organization which will aid it in doing the Lord's work. It will put away all which is individual, narrow, and sectarian. It will concede to all who hold the faith all the liberty wherewith Christ hath made His children free.

Missions.—In the presence of brethren who bear in their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus, I hardly know how to clothe in words my thoughts as I speak of Missions. The providence of God has broken down impenetrable barriers—the doors of hermit nations have been opened; commerce has bound men in common interests, and so prepared "a highway for our God"—Japan, India, China, Africa, Polynesia, amid the solitudes of icy north, and in the lands of tropic suns, world-wide there are signs of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The veil which has so long blinded the eyes of the ancient people, our Lord's kinsmen according to the flesh, is being taken away. We bless God for the good example of martyrs like Patteson, Mackenzie, Parker, Hannington, and others, who have laid down their lives for the Lord Jesus. We rejoice that our branch of the Church has been counted worthy to add to the names of those who "came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." "A great and effectual door is opened." There is no country on the earth where we may not carry the Gospel. The wealth of the world is largely in Christian hands. The Church only needs faith to grasp the opportunity to do the work.

In the presence of fields so white for the harvest, we must ask, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"

1. There must be unceasing, prevailing intercessory prayer for those whom we send out to heathen lands. The hearts of all Christian nations were turned with anxious solicitude to that brave servant of God and His country in Khartoum. Shall we feel less for the servants of Christ who have given up home and country to suffer and it may be to die for Him? Some of us remember that when Missions were destroyed, when clouds were all around us, and the very ground drifting from under our feet, that we were made brave to work and wait for the salvation of God by the prayers which went up to God for us. When "prayers were made without ceasing of the Church unto God," the fast-closed doors of the prison were opened for the Apostles. It will be so again.