“I’m a Church-body myself; I was born a Church-body, and I mean to remain one till I die; but I don’t see that’s any reason for thinking hard things of the chapel-folk just because they likes to go to heaven another way.”
A crude confession of faith, do I hear you say? But you will admit that through it breathes a spirit of love and kindliness. And more—that it embodies, in homely words, a great spiritual truth; for is it not only by many different ways, and yet by the one Way, that we can all arrive at our goal?
The islands were for many years, as we have seen, under the abbots of Tavistock, who held spiritual jurisdiction under the bishops of Exeter. But not a single bishop ever set foot on them until 1831!
In a letter written by John Grandison, Bishop of Exeter, to the Pope, in the reign of Edward III., he says that no bishops in person ever visited these islands, but were wont to depute friars for that purpose.
Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter came in 1831, and again in 1838 to consecrate the new church on St. Mary’s. The islands since then have come under the diocese of Truro.
Troutbeck, writing of St. Mary’s in 1794, says: “The clergyman who officiates has neither institution nor induction to this benefice, nor visitation nor a licence from the Bishop of Exeter, but holds his preferment at the will of his patron, the Lord-proprietor. Formerly he was the only clergyman upon the islands; and children were brought from the off-islands to be baptized, often at the risk of their lives; but as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge has sent an assistant minister who resides at Tresco, and visits all the off-islands occasionally in fine weather, the inhabitants are not only benefited by his instructions and exemplary conversation, but freed from the inconveniences under which they formerly laboured.”
The other off-island churches were only supplied by native fishermen, who were appointed by the agent to read prayers and sermons agreeable to the doctrines of the Church of England.
Bryher is now the only inhabited island on which there is no resident clergyman; but a service is held every Sunday afternoon, and one evening during the week by the clergyman from Tresco. On Sunday mornings and evenings there is a service in the chapel, conducted by one of the fishermen-farmers, at which, I was told, Spurgeon’s sermons are read. “We’ve been having them forty years, and we aren’t tired of them yet.”