My “Recollections of a Long Life” began with a notice of being born in Norwich; and as the last visit to my birthplace was at the time now indicated, I think it is a fitting point for terminating my narrative.
CHAPTER XVI
In completing this volume I propose to take a survey of what I have seen and noticed, amongst distinct religious denominations, during seventy years.
I. To begin with the Church of England. I remember hearing a sermon by the late Bishop of Manchester, at the reopening of Chester Cathedral, when, in no measured terms, he dwelt upon ecclesiastical abuses, as they existed during the last century, and the earliest part of the present. He exposed the nepotism of bishops, the worldliness of clergymen, and the indifference of Church-people to religion in general. About the same time another prelate privately told me that things in his diocese, when he was first consecrated, had reached such a point as made it wonderful how the Establishment had survived. He complained of the limited power diocesans had at command, to repress existing evils, and gave an instance, how in his own case he had spent a large sum without any effect for the removal of a clergyman who had dishonoured his profession. About the facts charged against the delinquent there could be no doubt, but proceedings failed through technical objections. I remember when I was a youth there were scandals in the diocese of Norwich, publicly known, yet legally unassailable. Plurality and non-residence were notorious. Preaching was neglected to a shameful degree; in one case fifteen churches were served by three incumbents. Livings had to be sequestered through clerical insolvency or scandalous misconduct. Bishop Stanley wrought a great reformation in these respects, much to the dismay of delinquents, much to the satisfaction of parishioners. I remember him perfectly well. Of slight figure, with white hair, he tripped along the streets of Norwich on a Sunday, to one church after another without giving beforehand notice of his movements, but surprising rector or curate at the close of the service by rising to pronounce the benediction. He was as unremitting and efficient in his clerical position, as he had before been in his naval duties. The magistrates’ seat prepared Ambrose for his episcopate at Milan: the deck of a ship prepared Edward Stanley to rule the diocese of Norwich.
The typical High Church clergyman of my early days was a person perfunctorily discharging his duties, living on civil terms with his parishioners, known in the parish by clerical costume, reading prayers in a surplice, and preaching in a black gown, visiting the best society in the neighbourhood, kind to the poor, and looking upon Dissenters as a rather suspicious class.
But a great change took place in 1832. Earnest men, as we have seen, arose at Oxford, who devoted themselves to the study of certain Anglo-Catholic divines and Greek and Latin fathers. Some of them introduced ritualistic practices, older than the Reformation. The change under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth was approved by them no further than as it wiped away stains from the face of popery. I recollect a High Church layman telling me he liked an ornate service, but that he was left far behind by the newly advanced party. I have myself witnessed ceremonies in Anglican churches so nearly approaching the Romanistic that only a practised eye could discern the difference. There were, however, men of another order, who had a liking for Anglo-Catholic theology, but eschewed revived ceremonialism; and I have heard a High Churchman in Westminster Abbey preach such a sermon on the necessity of the Holy Spirit for the salvation of souls as, with a few expressions, a Methodist might have delivered. He pronounced a glowing eulogium on John Wesley. On one side this clergyman appeared a warm-hearted Evangelical, on the other, he was a staunch High Churchman.
When I think of Evangelicals early in this century, they present a different class from men of the type just described. As a boy in Norwich I heard Simeon of Cambridge, and Legh Richmond of Turvey; and I remember them at this moment as they appeared in the autumn of that year to advocate the British and Foreign Bible Society. The former of the two does not come to my recollection so vividly as the latter; him I can now see, with his pleasant face, and large spectacles, mounting, with a lame foot, the pulpit stairs of St. Lawrence’s Church—attired, not in a white surplice, but in a black gown: nothing priestly in his appearance and manner. His sermon was on behalf of the Society for Promoting Christianity among Jews. He took for his text, “For thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favour the dust thereof.” With a soft, winning voice, and “a sweet reasonableness” he discoursed on the interest, which all Christians should feel in building up the Church of God, especially with stones gathered from ruins of the House of Israel. In St Andrew’s Hall he spoke on behalf of the Bible Society, and related a conversation he had on the subject with the Emperor Alexander of Russia, when he visited England after the Napoleonic wars. He also told touching stories of what the Word of God could do for people amidst sins and sorrows. As to Charles Simeon, whom I heard, he did not penetrate like dew, but came down with hailstones and coals of fire.
At a later period Episcopalians bestirred themselves in many parts of the country, and from end to end, in building and other efforts for church extension, and I recollect Dean Alford told me how surprised the Church Commissioners were at the liberal response given to challenges for aiding ecclesiastical objects.
In 1865 the old Act of Uniformity was modified so as to relieve the consciences of such as scrupled to declare unfeigned consent to everything contained in the Prayer-Book. Now the requirement was an assent to the Articles, the Common Prayer, and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, and a declaration that the doctrine of the Establishment was agreeable to the Word of God. In 1867 a commission was appointed to regulate public worship, the result of which was unsatisfactory.
In former pages of this volume I have noticed devoted and exemplary Churchmen through whom my own soul has been nourished and stimulated. It would be ungrateful not to recognise, on these pages, spiritual benefit I have derived from sermons preached and books written by living Churchmen.