AT THE BICENTENARY FESTIVAL OF THE
CORPORATION OF THE SONS OF THE
CLERGY.
[MAY 10th, 1854.]
My Lord Mayor,—
Allow me to return you, on my own behalf, and on that of the Royal Family, my best thanks for the manner in which you have proposed our health, and to you, gentlemen, for the cordial response which you have made to the toast.
I am, indeed, highly gratified to have been a witness to the Two Hundredth Anniversary of this Festival, testifying, as it does, that the people of this country do not relax in efforts which they have once undertaken, and do not forsake the spirit which animated their forefathers.
When our ancestors purified the Christian faith, and shook off the yoke of a domineering Priesthood, they felt that the key-stone of that wonderful fabric which had grown up in the dark times of the middle ages was the Celibacy of the Clergy, and shrewdly foresaw that their reformed faith and newly-won religious liberty would, on the contrary, only be secure in the hands of a clergy united with the people by every sympathy, national, personal, and domestic.
Gentlemen—this nation has enjoyed for three hundred years the blessing of a Church Establishment which rests upon this basis, and cannot be too grateful for the advantages afforded by the fact that the Christian Ministers not only preach the doctrines of Christianity, but live among their congregations an example for the discharge of every Christian duty, as husbands, fathers, and masters of families, themselves capable of fathoming the whole depth of human feelings, desires, and difficulties.
Whilst we must gratefully acknowledge that they have, as a body, worthily fulfilled this high and difficult task, we must bear in mind that we deny them an equal participation in one of the actuating motives of life—the one which, amongst the “children of this generation,” exercises, perhaps of necessity, the strongest influence—I mean the desire for the acquisition and accumulation of the goods of this world.
Gentlemen—the appellation of a “money-making parson” is not only a reproach but a condemnation for a clergyman, depriving him at once of all influence over his congregation. Yet this man, who has to shun opportunities for acquiring wealth open to most of us, and who has himself only an often scanty life-income allotted to him for his services, has a wife and children like ourselves; and we wish him to have the same solicitude for their welfare which we feel for our own.